THE KEEPING ROOM
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 via PayPal. Submit via Submittable.
***Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if accepted elsewhere.
***All material must be original and unpublished.
A Woman’s Right to Bear by Tasha Bovain
Photo by Matthias Wagner via UnsplashBefore I knew what I wanted to do for a living as an adult, I imagined my life as a mother, reading bedtime stories and playing dress up with my daughter. I come...
FICTION
I Was Supposed to Stay Out When the Bedroom Door Was Closed by Holly Fine
Cigarette burn holes in my cardigan meant Mom kept me close. I counted them in her comforter, seared edges lined up like Orion’s Belt. Ashes into wormholes into news anchors swirling fears of Grand Theft Auto, men walking dogs, and how we are going to expire the first...
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 rotting carcass. Eventually three officers broke through, dragged it up the beach, quietly loaded it into a van and drove away. Cassie sent me...
Matriarchs by Sarah Stubbs
PROLOGUE I want a yoga instructor with boobs. Real boobs, not those piss-poor B cups; not even C or D will do, although that’s progress. No, I need a yoga instructor with great flapping double F’s, the kind of boobs that make you hot in summer but keep you warm in...
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. The Ford had lasted them for two years, despite having been purchased by Caroline’s mother for a mere $200 in a moment of pure...
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? On that warm afternoon near the end of third grade, as the three of us kicked stones from...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
A Woman’s Right to Bear by Tasha Bovain
Photo by Matthias Wagner via UnsplashBefore I knew what I wanted to do for a living as an adult, I imagined my life as a mother, reading bedtime stories and playing dress up with my daughter. I come from a family where women don’t question if they will have children...
Banned Book Week by Kim Brown
Images by Kim Brown from The Bookstore of Glen EllynThis past week, I was walking down the street of the town where I live with my two-year-old granddaughter, who had recently had a meltdown at the Mexican restaurant on the corner. The village of Glen Ellyn reminds me...
A Lesson in Art & Life by Geri Lipschultz
Photo of Denali by authorI’ll say right now that I did not see Matanuska Glacier or Kenai fjords or Resurrection Bay or the bright blue ice, and I did not venture to fly into the frozen recesses of Denali, where small planes landed on the three-mile-thick glacier...
Awakening by Mary Lane Potter
Painting by Miriam Zora Engel (author’s daughter)“Do you know what dust is?” my twelve-year-old daughter asks, looking up from her biology homework. Her voice swells with the power of knowing and the promise of youth. “Something that makes you sneeze?” I say...
A Scar That Burns by April McCloud
Photo by Hannah Grace via UnsplashThe thing I remember most about dying, is how much it burns. Gasping for air, returning to life, the pain is exquisite. Everything else is burned away as the heat and fire overwhelm me. There is a narrowing of thought and awareness to...
POETRY
![[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology by Monica Prince](https://minervarising.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MonicaPrince_poem-400x250.jpg)
[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology by Monica Prince
[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology Note: A lipogram is a type of Oulipian constraint where each stanza represents each letter in a word that is missing;the stanza must use every other letter of the alphabet except the letter that’s missing. Another name for this is the...
After Dark, by Ellie Altman
After Dark Relishing permission to sleep,I wrestle the day to surrender the pulled curtains, narrow the second-floor window view into a nearsighted blurwhere Queen Street meets Riverside Terrace— a three-way, catty-cornered crossroads under the streetlamp’s glow. An...
SWIM by Jonny Ransbottom
SWIM I found my femininity with him inside of meI was unfamiliar with the skin beneath the tuft of thick hair, that spiral flowerAnd the triangle it forms between my legs I let it grow long like a jungleLeaves cowering and vines twisting I keep this flowerNot to hide...
The Plan by Irene Watson
The Plan Capture shade of sundials in curled hands. Shutter hours passing with a shield of metal marker. Ponder elegance of stone numeralsin their plainspoken steadiness, their correctness. (If) I can move the trapped umbrage south, then maybeit will stifle the dark....
Devour by Eve Croskery
Devour I run the shower, water hot to wash off the day.Almost instantly comes the soundof small palms slapping on cold tiles. You crawl desperately towards my undressed form, my body your lighthouse, reach your arms skywardsand I move to scoop you onto my hip where...