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***All material must be original and unpublished.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
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...
Fat Girl In Crowded Room by Erica W. Jamieson
I should stand, right? And just start talking? Okay, then. I’m Emily. I should tell you it’s not my first time in group. I mean I’ve been before, a long time ago, in a group, like this. And, well, now I’m back. What else? Oh, just tell you about last weekend? That’s...
Jailbait by Rachel Christina McConnell
Virginia is for lovers, his license plate said, but I sure as hell wasn’t losing my virginity in the backseat of his car. My first time was in a Motel 6. Getting a room was my idea. I thought it was sexy. Romantic, even. He was twenty-four and I was fifteen. Forbidden...
Blues
By Sara Gilbert
I thought I’d be happier to step onto American soil. It was home, after all. I thought it would be comforting or reassuring or something. I thought it would feel like home. But looking at the giant ass American flag across from the escalator came with an emotion I...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
An Echo in the Forest by Jennifer Dodge
It was a spur-of-the-moment camping trip. Normally, you plan your outdoor adventures well in advance. You want to gaze up at the stars and not hear the whoosh of a toilet flush nearby. Of course, there are spots where there are no toilets, but this requires a shovel,...
Sex and Death by Leslie Tucker
I think about sex a lot lately and it’s because there’s so much death occurring all around me. I’m viscerally preoccupied with both, the death and the sex and I’m not certain if my morbid thoughts help me escape my animal nature or reaffirm it. Of what I am certain is...
Common Ground by Barbara Felton
“Am I supposed to give you lunch?” My sister’s question laid bare our mutual uncertainty about how to understand my visit. It wasn’t a holiday. And she hadn’t invited me. Or rather, she hadn’t explicitly invited me. Instead, she’d called me with increasing frequency...
Italian Grandmothers Shared My Pregnancy by Deborah Clark Vance
My morning queasiness, motion sickness, fatigue, bloated abdomen, two missed periods—heck, even my shrinking pants—were telling me, in fact screaming, that I was pregnant. At twenty-one, “mother” wasn’t something I felt ready to be, but I thought my two pregnancy and...
So Loved by Judy Richardson
At first, my throat scratched a bit, maybe because I had been talking or laughing too much at the party, a lively celebration, stocked with tributes, a slide show, drinks, and food. I masqued my sadness during the evening, but my body couldn’t hold out long against...
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,...