VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. Somewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Features, Recent September 29, 2015.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Written by Women. By Sarah Menkedick. On the eve of Vela’s launch in September 2011, Sarah Menkedick sat down and wrote out her vision for the magazine. Vela has grown and evolved tremendously since then, but the fundamental purpose and spirit of the publication have remained unchanged. As Sarah hoped, we are still and will continue to be ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

FEATURES | VELA

Features April 20, 2017. Family Trees. By Iza Wojciechowska. My grandfather, a young boy in a red coat wandering the deep and snowy Lithuanian woods, found a litter of wolf cubs in a hollowed oak that had been rent by lightning. He placed the abandoned pups in the hood of his coat and carried them home, where he raised them, or he let

them go

THE UNLISTED LIST

Support Vela. The Unlisted List. I In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater,

their

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America THE ART OF THE MISTAKE Alice Driver is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (University of Arizona Press 2015) and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, a collaboration between journalist Julián Cardona and artist Alice Leora Briggs that explores and maps the new language of violence in Mexico. Driver is a columnist at Al Jazeera English where she SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES Support Vela. Photo: az. Sheila Black’s Six Poets with Disabilities. By Sheila Black. When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which

Keller

VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. Somewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Features, Recent September 29, 2015.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Written by Women. By Sarah Menkedick. On the eve of Vela’s launch in September 2011, Sarah Menkedick sat down and wrote out her vision for the magazine. Vela has grown and evolved tremendously since then, but the fundamental purpose and spirit of the publication have remained unchanged. As Sarah hoped, we are still and will continue to be ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

FEATURES | VELA

Features April 20, 2017. Family Trees. By Iza Wojciechowska. My grandfather, a young boy in a red coat wandering the deep and snowy Lithuanian woods, found a litter of wolf cubs in a hollowed oak that had been rent by lightning. He placed the abandoned pups in the hood of his coat and carried them home, where he raised them, or he let

them go

THE UNLISTED LIST

Support Vela. The Unlisted List. I In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater,

their

SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES Support Vela. Photo: az. Sheila Black’s Six Poets with Disabilities. By Sheila Black. When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which

Keller

RICH COUNTRY

Anne P. Beatty is a writer and high school English teacher. Her nonfiction has appeared in The American Scholar and North American Review and is forthcoming in the anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. She holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in Teaching from Duke

University.

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America

ABOUT | VELA

About. Support Vela. About. S ince 2011, Vela has taken steps to help close the byline gender gap by publishing exceptional nonfiction writing by women, and by drawing attention to outstanding work by women writers at other online publications, print magazines, and publishing houses. We are not a “women’s magazine” and our

writers aren

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

A STORY ABOUT HANOI

The old story isn’t gone exactly, but she realizes she’s living a new story. A year after moving to Hanoi, our narrator decides to actually live in Hanoi. She signs a contract, gets a work permit, starts taking Vietnamese lessons. She drives around the block slow and wobbling, her shoes scraping the asphalt. WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Eula Biss’ “White Debt” in New York Times Magazine. Eula Biss’ piece comes at an important time, providing a deeply thoughtful and nuanced example of how white people can and should be thinking about their place in racist systems. Using the idea of debt, Biss speaks directly to her own experiences with WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle” in Harper’s. Days after I read Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle,” I still found its terse images prying into my days. It begins with a sketch of Martin’s mother, a woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South, and her relationship with blackness—she

says she has

THE LIMITS OF COMPASSION The American Heritage Dictionary defines compassion as “the deep feeling of sharing the suffering of another in the inclination to give aid or support, or to show mercy.”. It is from the late Latin compati, a cognate that means “to suffer with.”. PEPFAR was only possible in a country wracked with fear. WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Karen Palmer’s “The Reader is the Protagonist: Exiting a Horror Story” in Virginia Quarterly Review. Palmer’s piece begins with a family on the run. It’s her family, but they have new names and are not sure where they’re headed. They’re fleeing–her, her second husband, her two daughters

buckled

THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. S omewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Of all the places in the sky, she focused on a steady, defined, crimson dot—easily identified as a hunk of rock among blinking stars. FEATURES | VELA | PAGE 2 It’s said that in the old deaf boarding schools, the ones that didn’t allow Sign, the students would wait deep into the night for their moment, feigning their dreams

HELEN HAYWARD

Helen Hayward. Helen Hayward is a freelance writer with a background in magazines, psychotherapy, publishing and higher education. Her third book, A Slow Childhood, a memoir of family life, appears in February 2017.Currently living in Hobart, she has lived in Adelaide, London and Melbourne. VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED Milestones. Exactly one week before my first book came out, my daughter weaned and potty trained. She did this in a day. After months, maybe even a year, of my hand-wringing about a possible eternity of diapers, about when and how to perfectly ease her off the boob, she woke up one morning and became a kid.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Sarah Menkedick is the founder of Vela. Her writing has been featured in Harper's, Pacific Standard, The Los Angeles Times, Oxford American,

Aeon, Guernica,

ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

FEATURES | VELA

The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

PLACED | VELA

Placed “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

THE UNLISTED LIST

I. In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater, their collections more representative of the world we live in, rather than reminiscent

RICH COUNTRY

Anne P. Beatty is a writer and high school English teacher. Her nonfiction has appeared in The American Scholar and North American Review and is forthcoming in the anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. She holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in Teaching from Duke

University.

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which Keller always appeared to be some kind of saint) and a book called Karen by Maria Killea about her daughter who had cerebral palsy. Karen was always kind even though everyone was mean to her, excluded her VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED Milestones. Exactly one week before my first book came out, my daughter weaned and potty trained. She did this in a day. After months, maybe even a year, of my hand-wringing about a possible eternity of diapers, about when and how to perfectly ease her off the boob, she woke up one morning and became a kid.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Sarah Menkedick is the founder of Vela. Her writing has been featured in Harper's, Pacific Standard, The Los Angeles Times, Oxford American,

Aeon, Guernica,

ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

FEATURES | VELA

The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

PLACED | VELA

Placed “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

THE UNLISTED LIST

I. In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater, their collections more representative of the world we live in, rather than reminiscent

RICH COUNTRY

Anne P. Beatty is a writer and high school English teacher. Her nonfiction has appeared in The American Scholar and North American Review and is forthcoming in the anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. She holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in Teaching from Duke

University.

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which Keller always appeared to be some kind of saint) and a book called Karen by Maria Killea about her daughter who had cerebral palsy. Karen was always kind even though everyone was mean to her, excluded her

ABOUT | VELA

S ince 2011, Vela has taken steps to help close the byline gender gap by publishing exceptional nonfiction writing by women, and by drawing attention to outstanding work by women writers at other online publications, print magazines, and publishing houses.. We are not a “women’s magazine” and our writers aren’t writing exclusively for a female audience on “female” subjects (a

PLACED | VELA

Placed “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”

RICH COUNTRY

Anne P. Beatty is a writer and high school English teacher. Her nonfiction has appeared in The American Scholar and North American Review and is forthcoming in the anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. She holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in Teaching from Duke

University.

THE LIMITS OF COMPASSION Emily Bass is a writer, AIDS activist and program director at an advocacy organization focused on global access to HIV prevention. She's the recipient of a journalism Fulbright award for reporting on AIDS treatment rollout in Uganda, her writing has appeared in the WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Eula Biss’ “White Debt” in New York Times Magazine Eula Biss’ piece comes at an important time, providing a deeply thoughtful and nuanced example of how white people can and should be thinking about their place in racist systems. WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Karen Palmer’s “The Reader is the Protagonist: Exiting a Horror Story” in Virginia Quarterly Review. Palmer’s piece begins with a family on the run. It’s her family, but they have new names and are not sure where they’re headed. THE ART OF THE MISTAKE Alice Driver is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (University of Arizona Press 2015) and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, a collaboration between journalist Julián Cardona and artist Alice Leora Briggs that explores and maps the new language of violence in Mexico. Driver is a columnist at Al Jazeera English where she WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle” in Harper’s. Days after I read Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle,” I still found its terse images prying into my days. It begins with a sketch of Martin’s mother, a woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South, and her relationship with blackness—she says she has “never experienced a single moment of racism,” doesn’t use the descriptor of THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS Sarah Smarsh is a journalist whose writing on class, politics and cultural boundaries has appeared in or is forthcoming from Harper's and The New Yorker online, The Believer, The Guardian, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, McSweeney's and others.Her essay "Poor Teeth," for Aeon, was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2015.Smarsh has taught creative writing and journalism at Washburn

HELEN HAYWARD

Helen Hayward. Helen Hayward is a freelance writer with a background in magazines, psychotherapy, publishing and higher education. Her third book, A Slow Childhood, a memoir of family life, appears in February 2017.Currently living in Hobart, she has lived in Adelaide, London and Melbourne. VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. Somewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Features, Recent September 29, 2015.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Written by Women. By Sarah Menkedick. On the eve of Vela’s launch in September 2011, Sarah Menkedick sat down and wrote out her vision for the magazine. Vela has grown and evolved tremendously since then, but the fundamental purpose and spirit of the publication have remained unchanged. As Sarah hoped, we are still and will continue to be ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

FEATURES | VELA

Features April 20, 2017. Family Trees. By Iza Wojciechowska. My grandfather, a young boy in a red coat wandering the deep and snowy Lithuanian woods, found a litter of wolf cubs in a hollowed oak that had been rent by lightning. He placed the abandoned pups in the hood of his coat and carried them home, where he raised them, or he let

them go

THE UNLISTED LIST

Support Vela. The Unlisted List. I In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater,

their

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America THE ART OF THE MISTAKE Alice Driver is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (University of Arizona Press 2015) and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, a collaboration between journalist Julián Cardona and artist Alice Leora Briggs that explores and maps the new language of violence in Mexico. Driver is a columnist at Al Jazeera English where she SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES Support Vela. Photo: az. Sheila Black’s Six Poets with Disabilities. By Sheila Black. When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which

Keller

VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COMFEATURESMANIFESTOABOUTSUPPORT VELABODY OF WORKBOOKMARKED The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. Somewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Features, Recent September 29, 2015.

WRITTEN BY WOMEN

Written by Women. By Sarah Menkedick. On the eve of Vela’s launch in September 2011, Sarah Menkedick sat down and wrote out her vision for the magazine. Vela has grown and evolved tremendously since then, but the fundamental purpose and spirit of the publication have remained unchanged. As Sarah hoped, we are still and will continue to be ARCHIVES | VELA | WRITTEN BY WOMEN | VELAMAG.COM The first and only haircut I have given was to my mother, and because we were both nervous I took my time setting up a single-seat beauty

parlor in

CONTRIBUTORS

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni; Rachel Friedman; Mira

Dougherty-Johnson

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

FEATURES | VELA

Features April 20, 2017. Family Trees. By Iza Wojciechowska. My grandfather, a young boy in a red coat wandering the deep and snowy Lithuanian woods, found a litter of wolf cubs in a hollowed oak that had been rent by lightning. He placed the abandoned pups in the hood of his coat and carried them home, where he raised them, or he let

them go

THE UNLISTED LIST

Support Vela. The Unlisted List. I In 2013, we compiled the Unlisted List: a compilation of long and short-form nonfiction written by women that future list-makers and anthologists, should they notice that their inclusion of women is on the paltry side, might peruse and thereby make their “bests” and “greats” better and greater,

their

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY Heather Kirn Lanier is working on a collection of essays about disability and parenting, to which “SuperBabies Don’t Cry” belongs. She received a 2016 Vermont Creation Grant for the project and has published related essays in The Sun, America Magazine, and Salon.She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Teaching in the Terrordome: Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach For America THE ART OF THE MISTAKE Alice Driver is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (University of Arizona Press 2015) and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, a collaboration between journalist Julián Cardona and artist Alice Leora Briggs that explores and maps the new language of violence in Mexico. Driver is a columnist at Al Jazeera English where she SHEILA BLACK’S SIX POETS WITH DISABILITIES Support Vela. Photo: az. Sheila Black’s Six Poets with Disabilities. By Sheila Black. When I was a kid with what is usually called “a visible disability,” braces on my legs, the only books people ever gave me about disability were biographies of Helen Keller (in which

Keller

ABOUT | VELA

About. Support Vela. About. S ince 2011, Vela has taken steps to help close the byline gender gap by publishing exceptional nonfiction writing by women, and by drawing attention to outstanding work by women writers at other online publications, print magazines, and publishing houses. We are not a “women’s magazine” and our

writers aren

PLACED | VELA

Manifesto. About. Support Vela. Placed. “Place,” writes the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other extreme the whole earth.”. Placed will address relationships to place, very broadly defined: the body is a place, the earth is a place, a favorite chair

is a place, a

A STORY ABOUT HANOI

The old story isn’t gone exactly, but she realizes she’s living a new story. A year after moving to Hanoi, our narrator decides to actually live in Hanoi. She signs a contract, gets a work permit, starts taking Vietnamese lessons. She drives around the block slow and wobbling, her shoes scraping the asphalt. WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Eula Biss’ “White Debt” in New York Times Magazine. Eula Biss’ piece comes at an important time, providing a deeply thoughtful and nuanced example of how white people can and should be thinking about their place in racist systems. Using the idea of debt, Biss speaks directly to her own experiences with WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle” in Harper’s. Days after I read Dawn Lundy Martin’s “Weary Oracle,” I still found its terse images prying into my days. It begins with a sketch of Martin’s mother, a woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South, and her relationship with blackness—she

says she has

THE LIMITS OF COMPASSION The American Heritage Dictionary defines compassion as “the deep feeling of sharing the suffering of another in the inclination to give aid or support, or to show mercy.”. It is from the late Latin compati, a cognate that means “to suffer with.”. PEPFAR was only possible in a country wracked with fear. WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Women We Read This Week. By Vela. Karen Palmer’s “The Reader is the Protagonist: Exiting a Horror Story” in Virginia Quarterly Review. Palmer’s piece begins with a family on the run. It’s her family, but they have new names and are not sure where they’re headed. They’re fleeing–her, her second husband, her two daughters

buckled

THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS The First Person on Mars. By Sarah Smarsh. S omewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars. Of all the places in the sky, she focused on a steady, defined, crimson dot—easily identified as a hunk of rock among blinking stars. FEATURES | VELA | PAGE 2 It’s said that in the old deaf boarding schools, the ones that didn’t allow Sign, the students would wait deep into the night for their moment, feigning their dreams

HELEN HAYWARD

Helen Hayward. Helen Hayward is a freelance writer with a background in magazines, psychotherapy, publishing and higher education. Her third book, A Slow Childhood, a memoir of family life, appears in February 2017.Currently living in Hobart, she has lived in Adelaide, London and Melbourne. WARNING: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /HOME/VELAMAG6/PUBLIC_HTML/WP-CONTENT/PLUGINS/CJ-POPUPS/FRAMEWORK/ASSETS/ADMIN/HELPERS/METABOX/INIT.PHP

on line 746

Vela | Written by Women | VelaMag.com

__

* Home

* Submit

* Vela’s Second Nonfiction Contest

* Press

* Writers

* Masthead

* Archives

* Features

* Columns

* Body Of Work

* Bookmarked

* Milestones

* Outlines

* Placed

* The Writing Life

* Women We Read This Week

* Manifesto

* About

* Support Vela

__

*

*

*

__

* Home

* Submit

* Vela’s Second Nonfiction Contest

* Press

* Writers

* Masthead

* Archives

* Features

* Columns

* Body Of Work

* Bookmarked

* Milestones

* Outlines

* Placed

* The Writing Life

* Women We Read This Week

* Manifesto

* About

* Support Vela

*

By Sarah Smarsh Features

, Recent

October 20, 2015

THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS

Read More

*

By Heather Kirn Lanier

Features

April 7, 2017

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY

Read More

*

By Rufi Thorpe Features

June 21, 2016

MOTHER, WRITER, MONSTER, MAID

Read More

*

By Simone Gorrindo Body of Work November 10, 2015

TINY LITTLE MESSES

Read More

*

By Sarah Smarsh Features

, Recent

October 20, 2015

THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS

Read More

*

By Heather Kirn Lanier

Features

April 7, 2017

SUPERBABIES DON’T CRY

Read More

* __

* __

AN EVENTFUL NIGHT AT THE BOARDWALK IN DEFENSE OF MOTHERHOOD AS ART

THE WRITING LIFE

"When you can’t write, you write lists. To-do lists. Reading lists. Life lists. Lists of things to be repaired or fixed. Packing lists. Shopping lists. You write longhand in tight, tiny letters that you need paper towels, eggs, butter, apples, chicken breasts, and

spinach."

Read more

WOMEN WE READ THIS WEEK Alexandra Sacks on the birth of a mother; Nina Martin and Renee Montagne on maternal mortality in the U.S., Susan Dominus on open marriage, and Monica Heisey's spoof of girl novels.

Read more

BOOKMARKED

"I love this challenge: to produce an authentic storytelling experience in an unprecedented way—especially when the story and storytellers are radically engaged in dismantling the predominant ways that story is complicit in oppression and erasure."

Read more

BODY OF WORK

"Lunch at the Fournets is just as I imagined it would be. Their apartment is tidy but stylish, colorful but understated. The two girls, aged three and six, wear matching navy blue jumpers from Petit

Bateau."

Read more

PLACED

"What is the human place in the universe? I have begun to be obsessed by this question, but the answers that come from today tend toward the economic and political. Take effective political action, say the voices; agitate for legislation to abate climate change, take public transportation, contribute."

Read more

OUTLINES

"It took such a long time for me to see that the book was about our relationship and that it was an abusive relationship. I didn't see that until very close to the end of writing it. I was just blind to it, myself. And that's what it was like being in it , too: I couldn't see it for what it was.."

Read more

MILESTONES

Exactly one week before my first book came out, my daughter weaned and potty trained. She did this in a day. After months, maybe even a year, of my hand-wringing about a possible eternity of diapers, about when and how to perfectly ease her off the boob, she woke up one morning

and became a kid.

Read more

RECENT

Bookmarked , Recent

June 29, 2016

SARAH LADIPO MANYIKA’S SEVEN BOLD AND NEW INTERNATIONAL VOICES By Sarah Ladipo Manyika Not all stories have been written, far from it. Have you ever read a book about food from West Africa? You have? Well, then…

Milestones , Recent

January 27, 2016

#MOTHERHOODTHROUGHINSTAGRAM

By Sarah Menkedick

My baby was 18 months old when I joined Instagram. I figured the platform would be a way to connect with other mothers and…

Features , Recent

October 20, 2015

THE FIRST PERSON ON MARS

By Sarah Smarsh

Somewhere near Kazakhstan, the 1980s: At nighttime, surrounded by goats, a little girl lay on her back in a pasture and pointed a small telescope toward the stars.

Features , Recent

September 29, 2015

SUPERDONOR

By Katie O'Reilly

Egg donation is nobody’s first choice. In a plush, glass-walled conference room in a Charleston hotel, a leading reproductive endocrinologist from South Carolina is illustrating as much.

Features , Recent

June 16, 2014

TESTIMONY

By Jessica Pishko

Because of the fog, no one can enter San Quentin. Inmates must remain in their cells to be counted. We must remain on the outside.

Features , Recent

May 13, 2013

LESSONS OF GRIEF

By Amy Butcher

The day that it happened, the United States Postal Service unveiled The Simpson’s collectors’ set—a five-stamp commemorative booklet

featuring…

WRITTEN BY WOMEN: A MANIFESTO By Sarah Menkedick Read the story � Vela Magazine 2015 / Website by Jorge Santiago / Iconography by Mia Sakai

Back to top __