Archives of Inspiration

from the editor: Fall 2025, Collect

My bookshelf is the centerpiece of my home. There it stands in my living room, and it is the deepest compliment when people pay attention to it. I love to buy books because I love to write in them, and also because the physical copies are a visual representation of the invisible: This is what […]

Halfway to Somewhere: A collection of reasons I love gas stations

By Jennifer Goodman There is something about gas stations that is chaotic and strangely comforting in its own eccentric way. A beautiful liminal space, the threshold from where you were and where you are going. It can feel almost otherworldly, like time slips beneath the flicker of fluorescent lights. The glow shows everything in an […]

From the Editor, Summer 2025: Failure

A couple of years ago, one of my friends asked me if I’d ever felt like I’d failed at something. At the time, I honestly couldn’t think of an example from my own life. We got interrupted and never came back to the conversation, but sometimes I still think about that moment and what I […]

Epic Fails: Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out

We’ve all been there: We do something that’s not as graceful as we might have hoped, or something doesn’t turn out the way we imagined it. It happens to the best of us. Here, seven women offer up their embarrassing moments, in solidarity.   On a nice day, I was practicing my cartwheels. Soon, on […]

from the editor, Spring 2025: New

When we first decided on the theme “new” for this Spring 2025 issue, I thought it would be a fun, lighthearted concept to explore. I kept thinking of images of wearing a new dress or buying a new keychain or getting a new haircut (always a gamble). But when we started putting the stories together, […]

A Home is Created: On moving away from my hometown

By Jasmine Jones I spent the first 24 years of my life in Missouri, specifically Southeast Missouri. I’ve never called another place home. As a child, I remember pressing my face against the car window and memorizing every turn we took to get to Grandma’s house, the grocery store, school and mall. I was afraid […]