Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Community
30 March 2020
Make art about the changing nature of community in these times.
Posts tagged ‘religion’
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Oh the Music
29 March 2020
“If music be the food of love, play on”–Shakespeare
Make art about the power of music, the power of song, of singing, alone or together, in difficult times.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Elders
26 March 2020
My grandmothers. Two women from completely different worlds, cultures, backgrounds, across a vast socioeconomic divide, brought together at the end of their lives, because my parents loved each other, and loved them.
From Miz Pearl I learned about survival, food preservation, foraging, mending, how to find and create beauty even on the darkest days, and the power of prayer, especially when it’s sung. From Miz Ann I learned about the joy to be found in making things with your hands, the value of being a smartass, the pervasive connection of laughter, which fork to use 🙂 and how even the brashest and most self-regarding among us can learn the power of gratitude and humility.
Fierce women, strong women, wise women, loving women, despite the brokenness life dealt both of them. When they lived together, sharing the same room in my parents’ house, in the twilight of their lives, they became unlikely friends and sisters. ‘Cause that’s what Love does. 
Make art about what you’ve learned from elders, about the gifts they bring to our lives.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Together
23 March 2020
Even though we’re social distancing, we’re not alone. People everywhere are showing so much imagination and commitment to reaching out across the imposed distance.
Make art about coming together, about the strength we have when we come together, about how much more is possible we come together.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Regular Comfort
22 March 2020
One of the ways I’m coping with self-isolation is by working to keep what I can of my daily and weekly routines.
Waking at the same time I would if going to campus to work, walking the dog at the same times along the same route each day. That quiet cup of coffee in the morning, the slow ease of a glass of red wine at night.
Wednesdays I strip the beds, wash sheets, and put crisp, new bed linens on, with assistance from a particularly ‘helpful’ cat 😀
Saturday mornings I clean and wash the litter boxes, empty out and clean my fridge, mop the hardwood floors, clean the bathroom.
These small acts so much a part of my ‘normal’ weekly schedule, I’m finding, are helping to make the crisis we’re all sharing a bit less overwhelming, providing some balance in a regular, now-that’s-better, way.
“Routine” as a descriptor often gets a bad rap, but right now, it feels a lot like comfort.
Make art about the comfort to be found in routines.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Feeding
18 March 2020
Nourish the body. Feed the soul.
Thinking on all the things that fed me these last few days. Yes, the meals shared with my son, but also my brother-man Eric in West Virginia, with his guitar, serenading the world with an Irish song, the silly memes my sister Adaire and I sent back and forth to each other, my young alum Katlyn and her friend selflessly working to collect donations for families and kids in need in quarantine, my current students excitedly discussing their short stories and poems in our online class, my friend Brigid writing a new comic who shared the pages with me, the sound of my friend Lynne’s laughter through the phone, my old dog sleeping on his purple pillow, my silly cat Moco biting my elbow because I was ignoring him, the humming of the bees across the burgeoning green in my yard, the multitude of good people out there doing good work teaching, sharing, cooking, donating–coping, all of them, in beautiful, humane, and community-minded ways.
So much, in the midst of this fear, to feed the soul.
Make art about one thing recently that fed your soul.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Through that Window
17 March 2020
Often we’re too busy to notice the view right in front of us. One of my students, when I asked about what they missed being away from home, softly described the view of the city at night from his bedroom window in what he called ‘the projects where I live.’
“At night,” he said, “the lights go on forever, and every light, I think, is a soul.”
Make art about seeing the world through your window.
Quarantine Prompt a Day <3 Oh the Possibility!
16 March 2020
This is an in-class exercise I do with my Baby Poets, an attempt to get them to understand the emotional and emblematic power of every day objects.
Make art about one object that represents “possibility” for you.
Special Sunday Call for Submissions <3 Reading Series for Virginia Womxn Writers!
Womxn at Red Door 104: Words & Art
A New Reading Series Celebrating Virginia Womxn, Womxn-Identifying, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, & Nonbinary-Identifying Writers
Womxn at Red Door 104: Words and Art, created to celebrate Virginia womxn writers, is a partnership between Creative Writing at Longwood University and Red Door 104, a unique gallery and art learning center owned and operated by the tireless and talented Audrey Sullivan, in historic downtown Farmville,Virginia.
The series will consist of two events annually:
- A reading and reception in April 2020, with two featured readers and five cameo readers.
- All selected readers will then also have the unique and exciting experience of having visual art created by central Virginia artists in response to their submitted work. This art will be revealed in a second event, an art opening at Red Door 104 the following October.
The first Womxn at Red Door 104 reading will take place from 2-4 pm on Saturday, April 4, 2020. The art opening will take place in October 2020, date tba.
Selected writers must be available to read in person, and should be willing to attend both events.
Believing that artists should be compensated when possible, we will award all selected readers a small token honorarium.
Please submit writing samples, as detailed below, along with a 50-75 word bio, via Submittable. Please include in your bio your current Virginia city of residence.
Submissions are limited to current Virginia residents.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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