This essay traces the life and political legacy of the writer's grandmother, Neva Courrier Taylor—a feminist organizer, abortion rights advocate, and quiet radical in a conservative West Virginia town—and reflects on what her generation’s work reveals about the present moment. Through memory, archival research, and contemporary political context, it examines how gains once thought secure—from reproductive autonomy to gender equality—what it means to inherit a struggle that re

This essay traces the author’s experience raising a Black child amid helicopters overhead, political upheaval, and the quiet erosion of safety once taken for granted. Moving between intimacy and structural critique, it explores how parents attempt to shield their children from violence—and how community, care, and collective responsibility become essential tools for survival when protection is no longer guaranteed.

The writer's experience in her girlfriend's photography class became a microcosm of how lesbian identity is distorted and eroticized through the male gaze. Her essay examines the tension between visibility and voyeurism, and the cultural forces that turn queer women’s intimacy into something consumable.

When women gather around a shared table, they do more than share food — they build community, confidence, and care in a world that often denies them space to rest and belong. The Belladonna Dinner Club is a testament to that quiet, radical act of connection: breaking bread as a form of resistance, and friendship as a kind of homecoming.

On motherhood, fiction writing, and the quiet rebellion of imperfect balance