13 February 2019
Withhold, conceal, hide, hold back, keep, keep back, keep secret, refuse, repress, sit on, suppress
Withholding information, a good thing or a bad thing?
Make art about something being withheld, or about choosing to withhold, or about the results of information being withheld.
12 February 2019
Once when I was a little girl, with my mama, we encountered a particularly grumpy, difficult person. As we moved away from the angry man, under her breath, Mama murmured in her lilting Southern accent, “Mmm, somebody kicked that dog.”
Being the mouthy kid I was, and an animal lover 🙂 I immediately asked, “Dog? What dog, Mama?”
She smiled, saying, “Not a real dog, Mary. That man.”
“The mean one?” I asked.
She nodded, and explained, “When we meet a dog that seems mean, or aggressive, growling at us, we never assume the dog was born vicious, right? We assume that something has happened, that the dog has been mistreated or hurt in some way that made it mean. But we don’t give difficult people the same benefit of the doubt, do we?” She smiled. “Maybe we should.”
Make art about compassion, about a moment you learned compassion, or recognized that you needed to respond with compassion.
10 February 2019
Talked with a friend yesterday about the difference we need to remember: between being a human doing and human being. We’re driven to do, and we forget how much we need and should value rest.
Make art about rest, about the struggle to rest, about your restful place, about finding real rest.
One of my favorite journals 🙂
TWO HAWKS QUARTERLY is an online journal affiliated with Antioch University Los Angeles’s BA program in Creative Writing and is setting the bar for contemporary literature with bold and illuminating poetry, fiction, CNF, and quality experimental work. Read us. Write for us. Submissions accepted year-round. For guidelines, see www.twohawksquarterly.com
7 February 2019
The word “Talisman,” derived from the Greek verb “teleo,” means, primarily, to accomplish, or bring into effect. A Talisman is an object believed to confer on its bearer power or protection.
Make art about a talisman.
4 February 2019
For a number of reasons, over the last eighteen months, I found myself unable to keep up my daily prompts. But I’m back for another try.
Make art about coming back.
14 November 2017
Make art about tools.
15 November 2017
Make art about or inspired or including a litany or a recited list.
Happy Halloween! Death for Beginners is now released on Amazon!
What a perfect date to turn it loose 
❤ Thanks and Love to Karen Kelsay Davies of Kelsay Books for making this book a home, and special spooky gratitude today to Susan Deer Cloud, Clare L. Martin, and Jerry D. Mathes II, for their willingness to read and offer their thoughts on the book
Jessie Van Eerden is the author of Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012), My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press 2016), and most recently, her collection of portrait essays,The Long Weeping, just released from Orison Books.
A West Virginia native, Jessie holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham Review, Willow Springs, Rock & Sling, Appalachian Heritage, Ruminate, and other publications. Her prose has been selected for inclusion in Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia(Vandalia Press); Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean (Ohio University Press); Red Holler (Sarabande); Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman); Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Books); and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin).
Jessie has taught for over fifteen years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She lives in West Virginia where she directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Follow Jessie on Twitter: @jessievaneerden. To see what Jessie has been reading, visit her Goodreads page. To learn more about WV Wesleyan’s MFA program (#wvwcmfa), visit the program website.
Visit Jessie’s website: http://www.jessievaneerden.com/
Buy Jessie’s beautiful books!
Praise for The Long Weeping
“In these startlingly honest and imaginative essays, van Eerden enlarges the world around her, giving flesh to what is all too often flattened by the outside eye, anointing places and people and the throbbing spaces between them as she searches out and sings litanies to what she calls the “larger body I belonged to and could not leave.” Lush and razor-sharp, The Long Weeping shimmers with intelligence and grace. The truest essays I’ve read in a long time.”
—Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread, Queen of the Fall, and Ladies Night at the Dreamland
“Van Eerden is one of the best essayists working today if judged by her craft and intellect alone, but her gifts go beyond those: she is also one of the most honest. The Long Weeping turns a visionary eye and a laser mind on subjects often simplified or even scorned by contemporary culture: white poverty; mysticism; love of family; the wisdom of modest people. Van Eerden is brave enough to say the hard things. She’s strong enough to love the hard places.”
—Ann Pancake, author of Given Ground, Strange as This Weather Has Been, and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley
More from Jessie Online
http://www.jessievaneerden.com/short-fiction-creative-non-fiction/
https://imagejournal.org/artist/jessie-van-eerden/
http://appalachianheritage.net/2015/09/09/interview-jessie-van-eerden/
http://cheatriverreview.com/jessie-van-eerden/
http://memorious.org/?author=217
https://rockandsling.com/2011/03/30/an-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden/
https://web.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview/2014/05/14/jessie-van-eerden-2/
Hear Jessie Read
Happy Reading, y’all!
xo
Mary
Beautiful work from an amazing literary citizen ❤
Leslie M. Rupracht is the daughter of retired artists/art educators who moved their family each summer from Long Island, NY, to the Rupracht farm upstate, north of Syracuse. Leslie’s creative bent was nurtured early by her mother/muse and father/mentor. After earning a BA in English at The State University of New York at Geneseo, where she also studied journalism, public relations and studio art, Leslie infused her career with diverse right- and left-brained experiences. Her poetry has appeared in The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal, Open Cut, THRIFT Poetic Arts Journal, and Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets (all editions); her prose is published in moonShine review, corporate and non-profit newsletters and magazines. Leslie is senior associate editor of Iodine Poetry Journal. Calling Charlotte, NC, home since 1997, Leslie enjoys life and laughter with husband/favorite architect, Will Weaver, and rescue mutt, Magnum.
Buy Splintered Memories from Main Street Rag
Praise for Splintered Memories
What a wonderfully honest portrait of an uncertain life. A woman in constant transition, painfully aware of her own aging, her own flaws, handwriting gone from calligraphic to indecipherable, vanity to humility, reason to compulsion, identity to doubt. This poetic narrative of a daughter’s relationship with a mother whose illness has deprived her of memory illuminates the impermanence of things, the relativity of reality, the tenuous nature of memory, perception and personality, whether they are fiction, or fact, or something in between.—Scott Owens
More from Leslie Online
https://awriterswindow.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/national-poetry-month-leslie-m-rupracht/
http://www.charlottelit.org/event/reading-words-with-love/
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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