Bridging Worlds: The 2009 Girls Write Now Anthology is now available on Amazon.
The theme Bridging Worlds was chosen this season because that’s precisely what we do through our one-to-one pair meetings, monthly workshops, and large-scale public readings: dissolve the boundaries between generations and genres; span the divide between emotion and expression; and traverse those conveniently kept and dangerously unexplored places “between blindness and sight,” “rejection and desire,” and “loss and love.”
FROM THE FOREWORD:
“We set out on this journey as women and girls, mentors and mentees, writers and leaders; alternately occupying each role, learning from one another in both planned and unexpected ways, and always arriving on the other side somehow new and changed.”
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
“What writers call voice — that elusive thing that is made up of rhythm and language and details that are yours alone — here they are, in this volume, voice after voice of writers who are not unafraid but instead taking that fear and saying, here I am. This is what I think. This is how I feel. How simple that is to say, and how hard that is to do! Maybe we do need our fear, after all. Fear makes us jump, and we fall into language. These young women make dazzling leaps and sing out their stories. No timid souls here. Jump.” — Judy Blundell
FROM BRIDGING WORLDS:
“He lives on my floor, at the end of the second of the four hallways that branch out from the elevator like the legs of a spider. He strides down the hallway with his hands in his pockets, bouncing with each step as if his legs are too long to move his body efficiently. He is always dressed in the same black leather jacket, which exudes the musty, cigarette-tinged odor that comes from spending years in the same closet. He is the sort of tall, lean person who tends to mold himself into a doorframe whenever there is one available. He is temporary, never really belonging wherever he is: a question mark, an eraser smudge.” — Clio Contogenis