Cigarette burn holes in my cardigan meant Mom kept me close. I counted them in her comforter, seared edges lined up...
Fiction
The Keeping Room is an online magazine for all women writers, poets, and artists.
We are looking to publish your short stories, essays, free writing, poetry, and photo essays that touch on topics related to Women’s Wisdom, Lessons Learned, Self-care, Bodies, Relationships, and Community.
Writers selected for publication will be paid $25
When The Mermaids Came by Holly Barratt
It was early Valentine’s Day morning when the first one washed up dead near Bridgend. By 10am there was a crowd around...
The Gifted Class by Mary Morris
It happened during the sweltering summer that they lived out of town, the summer of the white Ford station wagon’s inevitable demise…
Seedlings by Jody Lisberger
The day I caught my twin sister Eliza kissing Danny Quinn, I never stopped to think they had a secret. Is that how the kiss felt to her? Like she already knew they were both gay?
SEX & SPATULAS by Pat Ryan
Betty never thought food would be important. She never thought about food at all, certainly not about cooking it. Since leaving home, she ate most meals in the way she liked best: with a book or magazine on the table…
Notes from Camp Chaparral By Hillary Tiefer
Date entry: Sunday, July 12, 1970
I’m coping by writing these notes. I got the idea from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground that was assigned in my AP English class during my last semester of high school.
Catch and Release by Stacey C. Johnson
It’s easy to get used to certain things, like aching shoulders and a sense of floating outside your life, looking down…
A TALL GLASS OF LEMONADE ON A HOT DAY By Cindy Knoebel
The burly sheriff, pressed uniform the color of gravy, knocks on the frame of the tattered screen door…
Another Bride in Porto by Jennifer Sears
“When I desire you a part of me is gone…” Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
Blurter by Patricia Dutt
They drove all day without any music, leaving the Finger Lakes in Sam’s old Honda just ahead of a snowstorm that would close the schools and the airport’s two gates
I Don’t Have Time for This by Carol Denson
“Jen, will you spray my mouth?”
“Coming.” Jen stopped scrubbing a pot, dried her hands, and walked into the bedroom.
Delphiniums in Silence by Sara Masciola
They ran out of milk three days ago. Looking into the refrigerator for an alternative, Nora saw a white and green carton of orange juice sitting nearly alone …
Borrowed by Berkley Carnine
It wasn’t lying if you planned to tell the truth eventually, that’s what Annie Rae had told herself when she’d made the appointment two weeks ago. She’d needed to do this thing in her own way …
Wildflowers by Kate Snow
My body holds the history of so many Mississippi summers that a bead of sweat rolls down my back in anticipation. I leave the relative cool of the house…