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***All material must be original and unpublished.
On the Playground, I Think About How a Mother Is Like a Moth
By Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is a curriculum...
FICTION
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 person who isn't prepared to lose what's gone will do whatever they can to hang on until the line breaks. When we used to go to the aquarium, Pa...
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. “Mrs. Ordwell?” Cups a hand around his eyes, squints into the interior gloom. A basket of laundry on the floor next to a sofa covered with a flowered sheet. A...
Another Bride in Porto by Jennifer Sears
“When I desire you a part of me is gone…” Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet In Porto, everything shimmers with white. Churches with white towers line the city’s white hills. Women wearing flowing white pants and white high heels hobble up and down the city’s...
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. Sam sat beside Matt reading poetry and listening to podcasts. Somewhere in the blue hills of Virginia,...
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. “I need my melanoma,” Margo said. “Melatonin, Mom. Melanoma is skin cancer,” said Jen. She pointed the sprayer into her mother’s mouth. Margo gasped...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Anticipatory Grief by Debbi Welch
Isn’t good old-fashioned grief enough? Loss, tears, the flooding of memories? I’ve grieved and am still grieving my mother, father, stepfather, and brother, as well as many other relatives and dear friends. I’ve sat with others through their losses. It’s a fact of...
Sonata by Julie Lockhart
C-sharp (#): Compositions in a minor scale, such as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata in C# Minor,” can evoke a misty evening of sad contemplation, moody ruminations, even grief. When Michael lived with me before we married, I set a Type-A goal to learn the sonata’s three...
Grandma Helen by Stacy Alderman
The only picture I’d ever seen of my maternal grandmother was her wedding portrait. Its muted hues, her close-lipped smile, the bundle of blooms in her hands, were spread in canvas across a 10x12 frame, and this image rested on a darkened shelf in our garage. I felt...
Educating Grandma by Marilyn Morgan
A product of the fifties, I grew up with Donna Reed, Pat Boone, and the most daring heartthrob of all, Elvis Presley. So when my fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Lia, said to me, “Grandma, I’m not a girl,” I felt the wind ravel right out of my lungs. When I came to,...
Drawing Blood by Sherry Stratton
Blood draws have been hard on me my whole life. The medical techs tell me my veins are small. Sometimes they resort to a pediatric needle. And I’ve learned there’s such a thing as a “butterfly needle.” Once, I was turned away at a blood drive because they didn’t have...
POETRY
Infinity Pond
by Carol Sadtler
Infinity Pond lap upon lap, around and backin sparkling aqua circlesour rhythmic kicks aeratewater into froth—arms dipin synchrony—propeljoy we are beautiful in our blue and greenswimsuits—my younger sister and I—like newly-hatched sunfish—knowthe wriggle and glide in...
Wizening by Jennifer Weiss
When my gnarled toes graze a desolate bedand I stow away your time-frayed pillowcase,may I remember: The trace of your fingers that unraveled me.The rubescent communion of our lips.The bliss when I nuzzled the cleft of your neck.How our souls connected like puzzle...
Tomato Season
By Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is a curriculum designer, poet, and mother. She holds a B.A. in English from Ohio...
The Water Cycle
By Luciana Francis
Luciana Francis is a Brazilian-born, UK-based writer of poetry and fiction. She holds a BA (Hons) degree in Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of...
On the Playground, I Think About How a Mother Is Like a Moth
By Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is a curriculum designer, poet, and mother. She holds a B.A. in English from Ohio...