BLOG

GRANDE DAME LITERARY

WOMEN WRITERS VIBRANT VOICES
ESSAYS MEMOIR POETRY SHORT STORIES

International Women's Day Flash Event
Thank you to writers who have shared their essays, short stories, and memoirs for our first FLASH EVENT. This is a true testament to women writers supporting women writers. We waived the submission fee and asked our writers to pay it forward by supporting nonprofits that provide classes, workshops, mentoring, and encourage women to write. Please consider joining us in this show
of support for women writers.
The posts will be live on March 8th.

Learn more about the nonprofits we are supporting.

help spread the word on your social media channels. please!

NEW! find everything in one place. See the full journal, subscribe to our newsletter to learn about upcoming submission opportunities, or search for your favorite authors and titles.

ALL POSTS

Judgement Day

“Why would someone want to dig around in my memories?” I said. “Long ago and some best left forgotten.” “But you haven’t forgotten, have you Mrs. Mac? Yours goes back to, what age did you say?” Haley laughed and made the “snuk, snuk” noise I’d told her about, when my dad took me out of church and spanked me for being a hellion and me, embarrassed at not being able to control my snorty sniffles when we came back in. “Dad said later I would have been three. Apparently, it cur

Short Stories

Lois Hibbert

16 hours ago

Home

“You live in an apartment? I think it must be cute,” offered my friend naively when I reluctantly admitted I lived in the apartment complex everyone called Fat City. I coveted her home, her two-parent household, her sunken bedroom, her thriving Barbie collection. Much like Molly Ringwald’s character in Pretty in Pink (“I don’t want you to take me home, okay?!”), I was petrified to ever let anyone in my hometown see where we lived, whether it was the green shag apartment in

Memoir

Nicole Irizawa

2 days ago

A Raven in an Apple Tree

When I was a child, my father taught me a trick about how to make yourself wake up at a certain time if you didn’t have an alarm clock handy or even how to remember something you had to do the next morning when you went to bed. He said that what you should do was to picture a blank blackboard, like the kind I knew from school, and then picture yourself picking up a piece of chalk and writing on the blackboard exactly what you wanted to remember the next day. “Try it and see,”

Short Stories

Eleanor Lerman

Feb 25

Marvelous Peggy

My dreamscape shifts, images fading in and out of consciousness. The flickering movie speeds up, then slows, finally resolving into something recognizable: My kitchen. The room is filled with a flat light that casts few shadows, the middle world. A dark-haired woman sits at my cherry wood dining table, examining bone china teacups neatly arranged on a silver tray as if I'd been expecting company. "Your mother loved these," the woman says, holding a translucent white cup wit

Short Stories

Jesse Devyn Crowe

Feb 25

The In Between

There is a certain time of day I call the in-between. The sun is still there, and yet it has already begun to descend. I love this hour because nothing feels final. Not day. Not evening. The light shifts. The day exhales. For a moment, I am not reaching for what comes next. It feels like crossing time zones midair, where two realities exist at once. I have lived here before. Between diagnosis and acceptance. Between goodbye and silence. Between the woman I was

Poetry

Carol Ornstein

Feb 25

The Inheritance

Delisia considered herself to be the good daughter. Blond and slight, she had majored in economics before going on to get a master’s degree in architecture, her ambition driving her to apply for scholarships and marry her way into a higher income bracket. Even an early divorce had not lessened her stature in the family hierarchy as her parents reacted kindly by saying that they hadn’t really liked the husband all that much. Aline, three years younger, was certainly no black s

Short Stories

Sylvia Sensiper

Feb 23

The Autumn Puzzle

Every autumn, a puzzle takes over our house—and, somehow, our lives. What starts as a small box of scattered cardboard quickly grows into a season-long obsession. It’s part hobby, part decoration, part social experiment, and part silent competition between family members who all claim to ‘just be helping.’ We have a folding table that migrates from room to room depending on the season, chasing the best light like a spoiled cat with commitment issues. Sometimes it’s in the liv

Essay

Helaine Fiedler

Feb 23

Between Two Mirrors

The Broken Reflection The last time I saw my sister, Alice, she was being wheeled away from me at a Southern California airport. It was her 71st birthday. The attendant pushed her slowly toward the entrance, and I watched from the car as she became a tiny, frail woman clutching a beat-up canvas bag on her lap. Fear was a cold knot in my stomach, a familiar feeling that pulled me back in time to an entirely different airport almost 40 years ago. That day, my mother, angry for

Memoir

Laura Dinoia

Feb 23

The Bike is Fine

The first time I touched a dead person, I was ten years old at my grandfather’s funeral. I stared at his profile because I was not tall enough to look down at his face. I noticed that the end of his nose turned slightly downward. My Aunt Thelma set a chair next to the casket. She helped me kneel on the seat of the chair for a better view. I looked. It was Grampa for sure. As I turned to descend from the chair, Aunt Thelma said, “Carol, would you like to kiss Gramp

Short Stories

Marcia Calhoun Forecki

Feb 23

My Ghost Remains

Your words chosen oh so carefully. Beautifully. “I want to know you. Tell me anything and everything.” Recklessly. “Let’s move away from here. We can start over, somewhere warmer.” You led me down the most romantic path saying, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” I smiled all the way thinking there would be flowers, diamonds, and a stroller at the end. But it only led to slaughter. Two cuts: first shallow— “I don’t feel the same,” then deep— “No, we ca

Poetry

Madison Williams

Feb 23

2 3 4 5

Has someone else read your work?
Yes. Progress to #2. No, have someone else take a look.
We all think we've written something marvelous.
Did the person give you constructive feedback or was it a friend being nice?
Yes, constructive. Progress to #3. No, it was someone being polite.
Friends are great, but a fellow experienced writer or editor will tell you what is missing.
Are you willing to make changes and deletions?
Yes. Progress to #4. No, ask yourself why not.
Read through the suggestions and comments, take a break, and then decide what changes you can make that will enhance the reader's experience.
Did you check for typos and adhere to the journal's formatting?
Yes, you are ready to submit. No, means it needs a last look.
Formatting mistakes and too many typos can disqualify your work.

GRANDE DAME LITERARY

WOMEN WRITERS VIBRANT VOICES
ESSAYS MEMOIR POETRY SHORT STORIES

NEW! find everything in one place. See the full journal, subscribe to our newsletter to learn about upcoming submission opportunities, or search for your favorite authors and titles.

RECENT POSTS

Judgement Day

Home

A Raven in an Apple Tree

Marvelous Peggy

The In Between

The Inheritance

The Autumn Puzzle

Between Two Mirrors

The Bike is Fine

My Ghost Remains

Ready
to
submit?

STAY IN THE LOOP

GRANDE DAME LITERARY

WOMEN WRITERS VIBRANT VOICES ESSAYS MEMOIR POETRY SHORT STORIES

NEW! find everything in one place. See the full journal, subscribe to our newsletter to learn about upcoming submission opportunities, or search for your favorite authors and titles.

RECENT POSTS

Judgement Day

Home

A Raven in an Apple Tree

Marvelous Peggy

The In Between

The Inheritance

The Autumn Puzzle

Between Two Mirrors

The Bike is Fine

My Ghost Remains

Ready to submit?

STAY IN THE LOOP

WOMEN WRITERS VIBRANT VOICES
ESSAYS MEMOIR POETRY SHORT STORIES

Ready
to
submit?