Monkey
I once saw a monkey jerking it.
It was at the zoo, of course, where several blue faced baboons swung over plaster tree trunks and romped across a funny little walkway modeled after a hanging bridge. As much as schools want zoo visits to be positive, educational experiences that transform the lives of young people forever, what has stuck with me in a lifetime's worth of field trips is deflated polar bears, hobbled cheetahs, and a monkey ignoring all the other monkeys to beat his meat.
I think a lot about the animals in the zoo actually. Are they unhappy? I imagine it’s depressing to have your marrow-deep instincts defined by other, more intelligent animals who not only decide your needs but parcel, package, and portion them back to you with toys and treats.
I wonder if zoo animals have the capacity to give a shit. Do they, bred in captivity, look at the multitudes roaring in at them, look at the frayed hemp ropes and fatuous innards of their enclosures and know in their soul that something is wrong? Or am I simply anthropomorphizing them?
Attributing my human emotions to these citizens of plain, jungle, and ice flow. Maybe they don't know any better, and rending prey is not so different than being fattened by hand. Can the cheetah long to run if he only has room to pace? I get home from work and have nothing but me time. I can watch whatever I want: makeup tutorials, ten ways to get him addicted to you, a review of the latest Disney venture. I watch someone complaining about other people complaining and I leave a comment complaining that there is too much complaining.
Her name was “Roxy” and she was the coolest person I’d ever met.
“Do you like Zach or Cody better?” She asked me while digging a piece of driftwood into compacted sand. The twig split apart in her small hands, and she proceeded as if it hadn’t, just to spite it.
“If this doesn’t get better, I may have to cater Christmas.”
The words hung in the air like the smell that affixes to your hair when you’ve been frying chicken cutlets over the stove in anticipation of the holiday. My Italian American ears burned. Christmas was Christmas. The women planned menus, stood in long lines at Waldbaum’s, the Italian salumeria, the bakery. The men drifted between courses in various states of uprightness and sleep while the women - elbow deep in sudsy water - tried to figure out who forgot to stir the sauce, causing it to stick to the bottom of the pot.
To the boy I never loved,
You walked over, reached in my car, and shook my hand. Then it was over. The last time I saw you.
My grandmother, Nana, taught me how to braid. She pulled me up to the circular dining table as I held on to my stuffed animal, placing him into a chair next to me. I watched Nana focus as she cut three pieces of green yarn, fern green yarn. The strings were a modest length, but to a six-year-old, they looked like my height. As she taped the three strings to the table, she explained the art of braiding.
When I was small, the line where the grain fields met the sky through my bedroom window was the edge of the world. I stood on my tiptoes at that window, little fingers pressed hard into the scarred wood of the sill, nose pressed to the window screen that smelled of thunderstorm and dirt.
The slumbering house cradles the echo of your footsteps as you wander its sleepy halls. Sleep should have come for you hours ago, but your anticipation has successfully warded off any chances. The contractions come so lightly and irregular that you wonder if it’s even labor. Perhaps it is the Braxton-Hicks you read about.
Two YouTubers I've never met give me both sides of an argument I am not a part of. It is very entertaining. Their videos are interrupted constantly by ads for wrinkle cream and home delivery cheeseburgers and cars that cost what I gross in a year.
I go Incognito on Chrome.
It only takes a minute.
Afterwards I stare at the slant of my ceiling and watch the walls bruise with twilight. My housemates are home–marked present and accounted for by the strips of light under their doors–but the living room and kitchen are as dark and empty now as they will be come midnight.
Maybe I'll have a bath or drive down to the gas station for another pack of American Spirits, but probably I'll just roll to my side and see what's trending on Netflix and squint into the cold, blue light from my phone while my room slowly turns black around me.
— Brittany Meador
Some of the most compelling creative nonfiction begins with the feelings we are tempted to avoid: anger, resentment, shame, fear, or the sense that we have an axe to grind. In this six-week workshop, writers will explore how to follow that emotional heat toward deeper, more honest work—without sacrificing compassion, complexity, or craft. Through close readings, writing exercises, discussion, and constructive feedback, we’ll consider how to transform strong feelings into writing that reaches beyond catharsis and connects with readers.
IT’S NO SECRET THAT FEEDBACK IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS.
In fact, we argue that it might be the most important part of the process.
But it’s hard to find a writing community. It’s hard to find the people who are willing to take the time and the effort to read your work and give the feedback you really, truly deserves.
That’s where HerStry Critique Groups come in!
HerStry Critique Groups are small groups of 6 women who gather online for 6 weeks to share their writing, give constructive feedback and gain skills as writers.
Weekly online sessions last approximately ninety minutes, with three women sharing their work each week. Writers of all genres and levels are welcome and you may share both works of fiction and nonfiction.
Sessions take place on Mondays 7PM CT, Tuesdays 11AM CT, Fridays 11AM CT
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE HERSTRY CRITIQUE GROUPS?
Six 90 minute live workshop sessions
Three 20 minutes sessions in the “hot seat” to get you work critiqued
Written and verbal feedback from your fellow workshop participants
A weekly in depth edit and critique of your work from the group leader after each session
Weekly writing goals and accountability check ins
Full video recordings of each session to keep for your records
Say goodbye to the lonely, stuck in your head writing life!
LET’S WRITE!
From conception to submission. Let’s make summer sizzle with stories.
Writing a short story doesn’t happen in one session. It takes multiple drafts to get it exactly right, to create characters that come to life for the reader and a world they can’t stop thinking about. In this seven week course we will work on a single short story from conception to submission ready. The seven week session will include generative brainstorming sessions, short story craft talks, multiple workshops for feedback from fellow writers, and detailed line by line feedback and edits from your instructor. Plus, we’ll talk about submission venues, cover letters, and when to know if your story is ‘finished.’
IT’S NO SECRET THAT FEEDBACK IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS.
In fact, we argue that it might be the most important part of the process.
But it’s hard to find a writing community. It’s hard to find the people who are willing to take the time and the effort to read your work and give the feedback you really, truly deserves.
That’s where HerStry Critique Groups come in!
HerStry Critique Groups are small groups of 6 women who gather online for 6 weeks to share their writing, give constructive feedback and gain skills as writers.
Weekly online sessions last approximately ninety minutes, with three women sharing their work each week. Writers of all genres and levels are welcome and you may share both works of fiction and nonfiction.
Sessions take place on Mondays 7PM CT, Tuesdays 11AM CT, Fridays 11AM CT
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE HERSTRY CRITIQUE GROUPS?
Six 90 minute live workshop sessions
Three 20 minutes sessions in the “hot seat” to get you work critiqued
Written and verbal feedback from your fellow workshop participants
A weekly in depth edit and critique of your work from the group leader after each session
Weekly writing goals and accountability check ins
Full video recordings of each session to keep for your records
Say goodbye to the lonely, stuck in your head writing life!
October 7, 14, 21, 28, November 4 and 11 CT
WRITING THE SEX SCENE.
Writing a sex scene can be delirious fun, a harrowing challenge, a literary milestone—possibly the most important part of building your short story or book. In our six weeks together, you’ll experience just about every possible emotion as you explore the erotic in different modes: comic, tender, harrowing, soul-shattering … because it really is all about the characters’ feelings, not just the mechanics. So we’ll talk about tone. Vocabulary. Metaphor. Sensory detail. How to get big emotions on the page … and when to pull back and let the reader’s imagination go to work.
This is a course for writers who want to explore the intersection between the novel and short stories, and would like to weave their short stories into a story cycle (or collection of "linked stories" or "composite novel"). This is also a class about the interaction of form and content, and how one influences the other. We will read works of interlinked stories by writers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, focusing on modern classics and contemporary practitioners of these hybrid forms. Weekly discussions will center on elements of craft, such as the expansion and compression of time, setting as an organizing and connecting principle, character development within and between stories, structure and plot for interconnected stories, and responding to literary influences in the same genre.
This six-week course guides writers through the literary submission process, offering insider insight and practical tools to help you get your work into the world. We’ll demystify everything from reading submission calls to writing cover letters and choosing the right journals. Along the way, we’ll workshop short bios, develop submission trackers, and build personalized plans that align with your voice and goals.
By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a polished piece ready to send, a tailored submission list, and the confidence to navigate the lit mag world with clarity and purpose.
Ideal for writers of literary fiction, poetry, personal essay, memoir, and hybrid forms.
Tension feels tangible to a reader, an active experience. But from a craft perspective, tension is often a function of restraint, palpable from what is withheld, delayed or left unresolved. Why do some stories feel urgent even in stillness while others fall flat despite dramatic events? Our impulse to resolve tension often comes from a deeply human instinct to seek coherence and moral clarity, but resisting that instinct creates compelling narratives. When we let characters misbehave or allow ambiguity in their actions, we pull readers closer to them.
This course examines tension as a narrative force. We’ll consider how writers can counter the impulse to resolve too quickly, to justify wrongful acts or to redeem a character’s behavior. By looking at ways to sustain tension without escalation into spectacle, we’ll experiment with evoking it in the ordinary and the unspoken. The class will combine close reading, craft reflection and writing prompts to practice distinct approaches to writing tension. This course is designed for writers working in fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms who are interested in deepening the psychological and structural complexity of their work. Ultimately, tension is what compels the reader to turn the page.
In this generative writing workshop, ecologist and poet Anne Marie Wells will introduce participants to some of today's eco-poets and essayists and guide participants through a series of writing prompts that will use the outdoors and personal experience as inspiration for creative expression. No writing experience is necessary to participate.
Brittany Meador is a spoken word poet and amateur lexicographer from the red rocks of Arizona. She is constantly inspired by commonplace occurrences like snatches of grocery store chatter and the way a stranger holds their pen. Most recently, she was published in the winter issue of Sixfold Literary Magazine. Her favorite word is trenchant.