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***All material must be original and unpublished.
“Hymn”, “Feathers”, “Lineage”
by Rikki Santer
Hymn Thirsty for aPleistoncene morning, I’m a graying creaturetrotting in & out of shadows. I rest deep in the...
FICTION
Minimum Wage
By Carolyn McGrath
It was snowing when Bess woke and turned off the alarm. She could see large flakes falling in the dim early light. She slipped from the covers and, shivering, pulled on a robe, collected her clothes and opened the bedroom door. It squawked just as it had a few hours...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
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...
It’s Not Funny: Facing My Laughing Lies by Michelle Goering
I was in Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday morning. I’d coasted to a stop in the middle of the aisle and was staring at the salty snack options, thinking about how none of them were healthy but that I needed something to throw into the family lunch bags. I felt someone behind...
POETRY
Ways to Die While Breathing
by Maryann Gremillion
Ways to Die While BreathingI’ve heard this more than once: Death slides the mind to turbulence and dust, Anytimebullets may break my spine break my spine I can’t decide if this scares me or not Besides, there aremany ways to die ...
Mother Tells Me I’m Not Sick
By Elaine Nadal
Her unrelenting certitude is as irritating as her criticisms of other peoples’ food and her refusal to let anyone cook in her kitchen. She tells me God doesn’t lie-- to have faith. A leap is a star many say can be reached, but I’ve seen a small frog in the middle of...
Burned Toast
Taryn Miller
Rachel has an extraordinary gift to burn toast beyond repair, a talent she inherited from her grandfather, she says. The smell of coffee and fire tells me she’s up. I say, You can throw that away. I can just make you some. She shakes her head and twirls the knife...
Evermore and Poison from Balm
t.m. thomson
Evermore Each of her wing strokes stokes heavy air to currents blends heat with movement softens summer. Many know that her hair is sometimes a cloud of unruly proportions tangling spreading into split ends thinning frizzing that each of her breasts is a...
from V
Carolyn Guinzio
from V ASH The palms were burned to make the ash. On Sunday, V tucked the palm behind the frame of the print of the old man praying. On Wednesday, she went early for her ash. On some plain Tuesday, when trees were reaching erupting arms to a sky tinged with impending...