Current Issue: Summer 2016

Letter from the Managing Editor

Welcome to the 9th issue of VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices & visions.

VoiceCatcher is staffed entirely by a new cast of volunteer editors with each issue. There is a fresh breeze blowing through every edition, then, which keeps us open to new forms, styles, and ideas. As we managing editors work with the editorial teams for an issue, we get to revel in their smarts, their commitment, and their insights. We see the care with which they consider each piece, reading them multiple times and preparing comments that they first share with the team, and often, eventually, with the writers themselves. They lobby for pieces that move or excite them, demonstrating what aspects of the work - music in the language; its humor or pathos or both - feel new and affecting. For those submissions that we don’t accept, we offer writers the option to receive written feedback that we hope they can use to further refine a piece. Creating an issue, therefore, feels almost as much about the pieces that aren’t selected as it is shaped by those that are.

The works we present in this summer issue move us. They are poems, stories, and works of art that constitute a solid body held together by the voices of women from our community. They are about connections and loss, about the roles we inhabit as humans, primarily as women. They offer a tight focus on lives being lived, on instants of beauty, confusion, contentment, and change, and in so doing, they reveal broad truths. It is this drive to make meaning, after all, that compels us to create, and to seek out, art and literature.

We hope you will enjoy this issue.

Warmest regards,

Michelle Fredette and Jennifer Kemnitz
Co-Managing Editors

Poetry A sampling of the powerful female creative force thriving in our region.		Prose Six women dazzle us with both their honesty and humor.		Artwork Four artists use layering and process as metaphors for life beyond art.		Contributors Meet the fabulous women behind the voices and visions of our ninth issue.

LETTER FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR POETRY         Isabel's Purse by Deborah Akers         refuge by Deborah Akers         Kiteboarder at Road's End by Cathy Cain         Caramel is Made at the Verge of Burning by Deborah Dombrowski         Controlled Burn by Linda Drach         Approaching Seventy by Carol Ellis         Zygote by Nancy Flynn         In Collision by Delia Garigan         My Mother's Hair by Leanne Grabel         Sheen by Leanne Grabel         Allegiance by Melanie Green         on my two thousand, seven hundred and fourth sabbath by Melanie Green         Sitting Shiva on My Birthday by Andrea Hollander         Laws of Physics by Andrea Hollander         I Want to Unfold by Tricia Knoll         My Stairway by Tricia Knoll         Fancy by Barbara LaMorticella         How to Know When You are Dreaming by Jone Rush MacCulloch         Didn't We Touch Clouds? by Eileen Pettycrew         Playlist by Suzanne Sigafoos         No Exit by Charlotte Udziela         Living Alone by Pat Phillips West         My Husband's Handwriting by Pat Phillips West PROSE         Let Me Explain by Carisa Miller         The Itching by Elizabeth Scott         Ben by Edee Lemonier         The Passenger by Alex Behr         Risk Takers by Ashley-Renee Cribbins         Cooking Lessons by Joanna Rose ART         Featured Art by Jeni Lee         I Never Promised You a Rose Garden #1 by Katherine Mead         I Never Promised You a Rose Garden #4 by Katherine Mead         I Never Promised You a Rose Garden #5 by Katherine Mead         Stasis by Sarah Laird         Candescence by Sarah Laird         Candescence (detail) by Sarah Laird         Homage to Comfort Women Throughout the World by Carolyn Campbell         The Beguiling Beauty of Life in Distress by Carolyn Campbell         Reflections of Transitioning by Carolyn Campbell CONTRIBUTORS