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***All material must be original and unpublished.
At Best Farm in Monocacy, Maryland
By Kelsi Folsom
I. Beautiful day for war, fields of yellowing leaves speckled with black spots buffering centuries of secrets stuck in the soil whispering to any root that’ll listen to its’ stories. Put down your...
FICTION
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 and step out into a predatory heat that envelopes the landscape in fever. I breathe in heavy air and let the screen...
If I Die Before I See You by Domnica Radulescu
We saw each other again during a summer storm in the Shenandoah Valley, in the Walmart parking lot. He was returning from a trip to Russia, and I had just settled amidst those blue foggy mountains, pregnant with his child. I had dragged the messiness of my life all...
Amanda Maynard, Author of The Quixote by Carla Miriam Levy
Amanda cradles the book in both hands; she can hardly believe it’s here. She has lurked in McIntyre’s second-hand bookstore for weeks, hoping its musty shelves would offer up this prize, but never really expecting it—because who would want to get rid of a Dorothy...
The Girls
by Kelli Short Borges
Flora stands at the edge of the desert trail, sweat trickling down her back. Scraping her thick chestnut hair back into a high ponytail, she looks forward, her gaze set in determination. Today is the day—she’s going to do it, what she has thought about for years....
Golem
by Victoria Mack
The monster first appears in the shape of a small child, on an unseasonably warm winter day in New York City. It is late morning, and the windowpanes in Becca’s Washington Heights Elementary School classroom, already spotted with greasy fingerprints, are now clouded...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Fight Like a Girl by Justine Payton
CW: sexual violence The man who settled himself between my legs was twice my size. I immediately felt suffocated beneath the pressure of his weight, each inhale rattling against my throat. I was aware of the contours of his legs and genitals pressed tightly...
The Shattered Six-Year-Old Speaks and I Ask her to Return by Gabrielle Ariella Kaplan-Mayer
The shattered six-year-old Before the day I found out about the death camps, my world was Muppets and stories and waiting for the school bus. When I saw particles of dust in the sunlight, I did not think of human flesh. I thought the world was built from love. That...
There Are Giants in the Sky by Natalie Chih-lu Hung
One chilly February evening, my 4-year-old and I sit on his bed, our eyes locked in a playful stand-off. He has just requested Goldilocks and the Three Bears as his bedtime story for the 21st time in a row and I can’t take it anymore. In a last-ditch effort to save...
Her Longing & His Loneliness by L Grace G
Our marriage counselor asked, “So, what happened that night?” I thought back, remembering how our boys were tucked neatly in bed, nestled up under in their warm covers… I returned to the kitchen to do the dishes, and paused in the entrance. There he was, standing at...
DOGGED by Marty Kingsbury
In my 71 years of life, I’ve known lots of pain: scrapes and stitches and broken bones. Pinched sciatica. Bone spurs. Headaches that drum my skull. But this one was different. This one was hard to figure out. It started on a neighborhood walk, when the February sun...
POETRY
MOTHERS
By Claire Scott
Dead twelve years, dusty in a drawer of my heart, like the leaf insects and giant earwigs in the basement of a natural history museum. A tiny figurine, still wearing a tattered terrycloth robe, still holding a glass, although the ice melted long ago. My...
Foot party
By Alys Willman
The first time, you didn’t know what to wear, and were broke anyway. What you had was a short, satiny dress, fishnet stockings stolen from CVS on 10th. Shoes didn’t matter, obviously. The other girls had on corsets and bustiers, thongs, naked legs and feet. The venue...
Color Me Hungry
By Jennifer Thornburg
That was a good launching pad, the sandstone circle at the cemetery where we hung off the marble hands of Jesus, his blank eyes aflame with fire. The sun set, washing that northeast Montana sky with vermillion then orange until we were sated and the grumbling in our...
Birthing Space
By Kelsey D. Mahaffey
There is comfort in the crumpling. That slow surrender syncing low, where body takes the lead—like a knowing before its known, guttural and raw, a maternal embrace with the deep and wide. It’s where intimacy is created, down here on the cold floor, cheek pressed...
A Year To Heal
By Marigo J. Stathis
I once woke up in wild winter, paralyzed by change, when claws emerged and storms surged sunken snow and white wombs from where I came. In mere months, seduced by scents, spanned by veins, I unfolded into sun, blossomed in rain with vernal wings-- a quivering,...