Where We Live: The 2010 Girls Write Now Anthology is now available on Amazon.
Guided by this year’s theme Where We Live, we embraced our surroundings — the intimacy of our bedrooms; stoops and street corners; even beyond our city limits.
FROM THE FOREWORD:
“In the ’80s, when I was a runaway, I hopped turnstiles and rode the subways almost daily, just traveling the tracks, killing time, avoiding the New York weather that either loved or hated you. And during these rides, I usually wrote in my journal. Trust me, I wasn’t writing anything profound, just the everyday events of my strange and confusing life.” — Nami Mun
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
“A diverse group of voices fill the following pages, their reach undeniable: In our heads, in our words, and on the page, we reverberate off skyscrapers and bridges, echo through subway grates and school corridors, and melt in the corner coffee shop. From countries that dot the globe, to all five boroughs of New York, to our central Midtown Manhattan meeting point, we receive humbling assurance not only about the imperative of sharing our words, but that those words — and we — represent the world around us.”
FROM WHERE WE LIVE:
“Soon enough, when the sun is waning down over the river, you will reach home. Hang up your lost self on a closet door and look at it for a while. Climb into bed and rest your aching feet. Look at that lost self in the fading light, and then in near darkness. You will bleach it, soak it, dry it in a towel. It looks a little different than before, and you do not try it on for fear that it will not fit. Did you take the wrong self by accident? And then, one day, you will open the curtains and let the naked light into the room, and you will try yourself on again.” — Emma Fiske-Dobell