Take a minute to scroll through the delightful offerings in ArtsMart, and you’ll find fascinating books on every subject, for every taste, and from every genre--poetry, memoirs, history and biography, children’s books, essays, mysteries, fiction both speculative and historical. You’ll also find writing workshops and retreats, music, even grownup coloring books - something for each and every taste and hour and mood.



When you purchase an item from ArtsMart, you are helping Persimmon Tree fulfill its mission of providing an audience for the writing and art of women over 60. ArtsMart’s advertising rates are purposely set very low in order to afford to as many older women writers and artists the opportunity to connects with potential purchasers.

Persimmon Tree is an Amazon and Bookshop.org associate, which means our journal receives a small royalty every time you make a purchase by clicking through to Amazon or Bookshop.org. The price to you is no higher, but your purchase helps Persimmon Tree continue its vital work.

Dr. Alanna Davidson’s life is upended when her father is shot and paralyzed the same night a cutting-edge medical robot is stolen from his laboratory at DARPA. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved.
 
Alanna, now a senior resident at Los Angeles Memorial Hospital, is puzzled when high-profile patients start dying unexpectedly after routine surgeries and resolves to investigate the deaths.
 
At the same time, the LAPD is tracking a serial killer with a surgical signature who is leaving bodies in the most dangerous neighborhoods of the city.
 
When a Memorial resident becomes the newest victim, Alanna’s investigation leads to her father’s stolen robot and to a predatory healthcare company intent on taking over Memorial Hospital. But Alanna’s sleuthing draws the killer’s attention. Not only her career, but her life is now in danger.
 
“Smart, relentless, and terrifyingly plausible, Remote Control fuses cutting-edge medical technology with chilling suspense. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough watching Dr. Alanna risk everything to uncover a truth more sinister than you could ever imagine!”  
— Laurie Stevens, author of the Gabriel McRay Thriller Series.
 
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books2Read, or ask for it at your local independent bookstore.

(guest poetry editor, Persimmon Tree, Issue #60, Winter 2021-2022)
 

Barnacles sparkle, puffins glint, human practices result in fish-strewn beaches. Like blue-green algae on lakes and ponds, red tide is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Nourished by human waste and warming waters, cyanobacteria multiply in harmful algal blooms (HABs) that release neurotoxins. In a whirl of games, addictions, concussions,swimming bans, Red Tide at Sandy Bend posits a world of creaturely interdependence visceral and intimate.

“Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics.” — Denise Duhamel, Best American Poetry blog

“She brings to her work the rich flavors of the natural world, yet her destination is clearly news of the inner self, its perceptions, its relationships with others. She is not afraid of delight, neither does she shirk the hard tasks of anger, pain, and deep caring.” — Mary Oliver

Featured chapbook poem in December 2025 Philly Poetry Chapbook Review.

Order from The Bodily Press or get a signed copy direct from author.

Find out more at https://marygilliland.com

Grandmother Alice Benson wrote these two books with her granddaughters Greta, 12, and Genevieve, 14.

The collaboration gave all three a chance to share their imagination, curiosity, creativity, and a sense of adventure, qualities that young people have in abundance, but that many of us seem to have less and less of as we age.

They represent a grandmother’s quality time with her granddaughters, critical discussions of important topics and, most importantly, the creation of beautiful memories that will last long into the future.

For more information, visit Alice’s website, alicebensonauthor.com.

 
THE BOOK WE NEEDED! A collection of poems focusing on the everyday thoughts and dreams of older women and the challenges we face: the death of a spouse or a dear friend; the mysteriously old people at our sixtieth high school reunion; middle of the night obsessing about events from half a century ago. Gratitude. Fear. Wisdom. Patience and Love.

“Nanci Woody’s poems, like the knots in our hands, tell the truth, even as individual poems provide the reader with a bouquet of blossoms.”— Bob Stanley, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento; past President, Sacramento PoetryCenter; author of Language Barrier

“Nanci Woody captures what it means to remember, to forgive, and to keep loving across the decades.” — Geri Spieler, past President, Peninsula Branch, California Writers Club; author of Housewife Assassin- The Woman Who Tried to Kill President Ford

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or your favorite independent bookstore.

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance coloring book and 2026 calendar are both great gifts for women, girls, dance lovers, and those who love them.

Veteran New York City dance photographer Julie Lemberger created this unique coloring book based on her photography, to celebrate innovative, entrepreneurial, and steadfast women dance artists. Have fun and relax coloring images of women who dance. An admirer remarked: “A lovely and poignant book. Made with love and reverence.”

The products feature dance artists Wendy Whelan, Yoshiko Chuma, Michelle Dorrance, Hope Boykin, Eiko Otake, Netta Yarushalmy, Urban Bush Women, and many more.

The coloring book offers 90 pages of personalities to get to know, biographies, and even a glossary of dance terms for the 21st century. The calendar, also a coloring book, offers 12 distinct women to brighten each month of 2026.

For more about the artist: julielemberger.com.

Available at etsy.com/shop/dancecoloringbook.

 
 
Growing up in the shadow of a brilliant older sister, with a father who dismisses her ambitions, music is the one place Ernestine belongs. Her flute teacher sees what no else does: talent, fire, and potential. For years, he is the father she never had. She excels in competitions and dreams of being a professional musician, but her father ridicules her plans and insists she attend Emory University as a math major.

At twenty, she wins a seat in the Atlanta Symphony, sitting beside that beloved mentor. It is everything she ever wanted. After her successful first year, however, the mentor turns against her and tries to get her fired. He chips away at her confidence with relentless verbal attacks, sending her spiraling into depression.

Confused and isolated, she faces a choice no young artist should ever have to make: whether to leave a prestigious job with no guarantee of finding another or stay and face further abuse from her mentor. In the fiercely competitive world of classical music, Countermelodies is a story of betrayal, resilience, and the stubborn love of music that refuses to be silenced.

Winner, NYC Big Book Award (2024) and Indie Reader Discovery Award (2025)

“A disturbing and compelling tale of resilience, determination, and musical passion.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Whitman explores power dynamics, patriarchal oppression, and music as personal salvation. … a story of persistence and survival in a world at the mercy of toxic misogyny.” — BlueInk Review

https://ernestinewhitman.ag-sites.net/index.htm

Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore.

 
 
Set during the ‘forever wars’ that followed 9/11, The Angle of Falling Light movingly explores the demons that survivors must wrestle with in the wake of tragedy. Beverly Gologorsky brings us a great cast of characters, at their center three working-class women trying to shape lives of their own in a world that seems to promise them nothing but deadening repetition.

Brave and faltering, they face daunting conundrums of love, care, and the pull of freedom. How do we live past the terrible knowledge that we cannot always help those we cherish the most? Are we still entitled to seek happiness? Knowing how easily disaster can strike the vulnerable, how do we dare to take the risks required for a satisfying life? Is such a thing even possible in a society hooked on war, dangerous drugs, and hatred of the ‘other’?

Alongside the unforgettable trio of Nina and her two daughters (the beautiful but heedless Marla and shy, determined Tessa—barely an adult, but forced to pick up the pieces when her home life shatters), we also spend time with Rhonda, an 80-something artist whose struggle to stay independent in the face of physical limitations and family pressure complements Tessa’s quest to become a photographer.

Gologorsky’s unsparing vision of the bleakness so rampant in a nation addicted to combat and inequality only renders more compelling her portraits of these women bound and determined to make a way from no ways.

Available from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore.

“Ronnie Hess’s Eggphrasis is a mix of astute and sympathetic observations about her backyard chickens and encounters with wild species, interwoven with her perspectives on life. Her poetry is by turns amusing and poignant, while providing insight into the birds she writes about.” — Anna Pidgeon, Beers-Bascom Professor of Conservation, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Throughout this collection, birds are a delight, a cause for concern, a flock, unique individuals, worthy of attention in and of themselves and for what they sometimes suggest about us humans. These insightful poems present for our regard the narrow and the wide earth and all who find a place here to fly, to walk, to write, and to practice their art.” — Margaret Rozga, author of Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems, and 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate

Available from https://ronniehess.com/poetry/eggphrasis

 
 
In 1974, a German student, Ina Andreae, comes to Los Angeles to study — and, later, commits suicide. Fifty years later, her brother Wolfgang Andreae visits Deena Metzger, who was Ina’s teacher, to ask Deena what she knew of Ina. What follows from that alliance is this novella, a fiction that is not a fiction, an unfolding emergence of facts, events, and stories, showing us how wounds going back to Hitler still affect us, and their startling resemblance to the grim political dramas of today.

“…A heart-breaking, heart-enhancing ghost story of whirlwind proportions, an incantatory, ethical thriller masterfully rendered by one of our great contemporary visionaries.” – Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden and The Suicide Museum

Available from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore.

Learn more about Deena Metzger at deenametzger.net

 
 
A struggling woman is admitted to a prestigious Chicago hospital seeking help for her compulsions. Instead, her unethical psychiatrist ignores her actual problem and “treats” her as a victim of satanic ritual abuse. He uses powerful drugs and discredited forms of therapy to convince her she spent years in a cult where she sacrificed babies and committed other heinous acts.
 
Every page of Weaver’s riveting memoir shows how she struggled to maintain her sanity through one terrifying experience after another.
 
Learn more about the book and its author at jamielynweaver.com
 
Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, or ask for it at your local independent bookseller.

Now What? is a revealing, witty series of reflections on living while old. Butler offers the reader a welcome glimpse into the richness, foolishness, limitations, bravado, and freedom of a vividly lived 88-year-old life.

From balky knees and balkier institutions to late-life friendships, continuing resistance against fools and knaves, and gratitude for each new morning, Butler writes the truth of old age exactly as she lives it: vividly, imperfectly, on her own terms. These clear-eyed observations refuse syrup and sentiment. Instead, they offer the relief of recognition—and the freedom that comes from naming what we’re not supposed to say out loud.

For every person who is old, becoming old, or loving someone who is, “Now What?” is a companion and a dare: keep telling the truth, keep choosing your life, and keep going.

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or your favorite independent bookstore.

How can we find meaning in the face of aging, illness, and the inevitability of death? How can we respond to the double plague of a fierce pandemic and a divided society?

The keenly observant and urgent poems of The Holy & Broken Bliss are grounded in daily existence, human tenderness, the rituals of a long marriage, and the poet’s ongoing spiritual quest. In the middle of a world that seems to be breaking down into suffering and anger, the spare and direct lines of these poems, surrounded by silence, offer a kind of healing. The poems ask us to consider what living looks like inside of ongoing misery (misery we often are responsible for making and accept-ing). They call us to ask ourselves how we locate joy and even laughter when despair is ever-present.

The Holy & Broken Bliss contemplates free will, autonomy, self-control, the commodification of ourselves, and our desires for vengeance, satia- tion, rage, and acknowledgment of our collective sicknesses, along with the sacred possibilities of love, communication with nature, the power of art, and the “need to praise.”

“Ostriker confronts the intricate dance between spiritual despair and revelatory beauty in her ethereal 17th collection. … [The Holy & Broken Bliss] resonates long after the final page, reminding readers that even in a fractured, plague-stricken world, there is still a living, breathing force within all things.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Available from Alice James Books, Amazon or Bookshop

 
A daughter’s story. A mother’s spotlight. A life on stage.
 

Growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1940s, the shy only child of a glamorous, eccentric divorcée learns early that life will never be ordinary. From walking in on her mother posing nude for an artist to navigating the unpredictable world of single parenthood long before it was common, her childhood was equal parts bewildering and unforgettable.

In this poignant and witty memoir, Ellen Tovatt Leary reveals how her mother’s flamboyant spirit became both her greatest challenge and her greatest gift—the unlikely force that propelled her toward the theatre. With sharp humor, theatrical anecdotes, and unflinching honesty, she captures the struggles of a diffident child, the drama of a mother who could command applause even in a nursing home, and the triumph of finding her own voice.

A story of resilience, identity, and the complicated bond between mothers and daughters.

The audible version is read by the author. Available from Amazon.

In Snakeberry Mamas, Mary Alice Dixon’s words from the wild conjure an Appalachian landscape of lust, where sex, song, and witchy women charm the reader with chant. From the crossroads of Witcher Way Holler to the waters of Hungry River, these poems carry you into a magic world of owl-women, dandelion girls, and the memories of dead mothers alive in the heartwood of trees. In these liminal places grief makes knife blades of red pickled eggs; a goddess offers salvation in tongue of fire; a hellfire-and-brimstone suffragette shares a recipe for britches with balls. Mary Alice Dixon makes poetry that muses mountains and maps gardens you will never want to leave.

www.maryalicedixon.com.

Available from Amazon, or order it from your local independent bookseller.

Imagine calling yourself a writer. Now it’s time to make it real. Let Scribbly help you become the writer you’ve always wanted to be…without the pressure.

My name is Kim Duke and I’m a full-time writer, Amazon best-selling author and my work has been featured on NBC News, the Globe and Mail and other international media.

My mission is simple. To get more women writing with intention, fun and freedom!

My gentle writing program is mailed to your home every 30 days. Each Scribbly is loaded with quirky writing tips, prompts and examples. My team and I devote over 100 hours into each issue. Gorgeous illustrations, research, art, science and writing that reach out from the pages to inspire you. I can’t wait for you to see your Scribbly!

Scribbly is a gentle writing program that encourages your creativity and gets you writing in five minutes. If you want to explore creative nonfiction writing (without pressure) – you’ll love Scribbly! The best part? When you’re a Scribbly member, you get a chance to submit your writing for publication in Scribbly.

Hooray for Snail Mail!

More about the Scribbly Program can be found at www.kimdukewrites.com/Scribbly

Writer Astrid is a woman who is pulled to write, who loves hard and works hard. She struggles bravely with the hardships, savoring the challenges and the triumphs, of single motherhood of bi-cultural children. The transitions she experiences include a move to San Francisco, a demanding job, early cancer, a sensitive wounded son, abuse, a rebellious teenage daughter, a younger lover.

From Amazon reviews:

 
Available from Amazon, Bookshop, and your independent bookseller.

 
 
Unflinchingly honest, this collection of anecdotes treats the challenges of aging with clarity and wit. Here, the losses are diluted with laughter, the shiver gives way to a shrug, the OMG to LOL. Readers weary of the “how to” books that promise to reverse the aging process will welcome the dark humor of a self-described narcissist preoccupied with her mortality. From fears of dementia to hearing loss, cosmetic procedures to breast cancer, joint replacement, and heart surgery, the octogenarian author mines the comic potential of her humbling experience of the later years. The witty and sometimes poignant essays in this collection may not silence the ticking of the clock or slow the falling sand of the hourglass, but they are bound to resonate with readers from middle age and beyond.

“A work that is moving, honest, funny and human.”
— Bob Mitchell, best-selling author of 13 books

Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble.

Find out more about the author and the book at marydonaldson-evans.com

 
 
Leaving Home at 83 is an intensely personal story yet one shared with thousands of aging women who are wondering whether to move closer to their children and leave their friendships behind or stay in their communities. Readers will see their own questions on these pages and recognize their own fears, insecurities, and uncertainties.

Butler examines the often-unspoken struggle to sustain our autonomy as we age and our conflicted longing for dependency as we become more vulnerable. Both longings are embedded in the desire not to be a burden to those we love.

With its sharp humor and refreshing honesty, this wry account brings a welcome and necessary perspective to the inevitable moment when we end one chapter of our lives and begin whatever comes next.

“…The ensemble of characters is hilarious, jaw-clenching, at times worthy of a Jack Russell Terrier head tilt. Butler’s writing is tender, funny and unequivocally relatable.”
—Karen Lee Erlichman, D.Min, LCSW, psychotherapist, spiritual director, writer and mentor.

Available from Amazon and at www.sandrabutler.net.

 
 
“The magic of this book is that in a time of global suffering, its author ‘walked to the edge of an old and used up world and hummed a tune of invention.’ Brava!” —Dante Micheaux

“If the beautiful is what delights us, and the sublime is what leaves us awestruck and wanting to kneel, Margo Berdeshevsky’s poetry is both beautiful and sublime. From the naked hunger of the heart to the cosmic force of ‘that world none can see —’ this poetry rises and rises, falls and rises, on a magnificent music that challenges death, defies our human cruelty, and is faithful.” –Alicia Ostriker/ Chancellor Academy of American Poets, NY State Poet Laureate, and Persimmon Tree advisor

“Margo Berdeshevsky’s It Is Still Beautiful To Hear The Heart Beat seems to leap up and declare a rhythmic homage to the world, and one is called to gaze into one’s own eyes and see patterns of the past and future — life and death. And when the speaker says, ‘It was one single arrow of passion, and Eros was good with it’ a unique voice pierces us.”–Yusef Komunyakaa/ Pulitzer Prize recipient

Learn more at margoberdeshevsky.com and https://margoberdeshevsky.simplesite.com/

Available from Amazon or your local independent bookstore.

 
 
Stories that become our memories are even better when we share them. We recall the details, the conversations, the ups-and-downs and colorful backdrops.

In our minds, we hear the tone of voice, see the smiles and the raised eyebrows. Mostly, Perceptions are fictional tales with an element of real-life people, places, and events woven in.

Turn the pages from Jewish rites of passage to a hiatus in Portugal, men challenged as they transition to single life in middle age, then recognize seasonal celebrations with settings on both sides of the ‘Pond.’

Jane Manaster’s Perceptions invites you to share all these and more from a very personal view. Meet Jane’s friends and enjoy reading how she has blended the stories together in her wonderful life.

Available from Amazon or ask for it at your local independent bookstore.

Night at the Musée d’Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities is a vibrant memoir of travel poems centering on Judy Wells’ appreciation of well-known European painters, architects, writers, and musicians associated with great European cities. Her poems explore artists in France, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Spain, from Van Gogh, Chagall, Matisse, and Balzac in Paris, to Velázquez and Goya in Madrid, and Gaudí in Barcelona.

Wells interweaves her own personal life into her poems, which illustrate her creative responses to her travels at different times—from young adult in France to older woman confronting aging in Barcelona. Her poetry encompasses various poetic styles—lyric, narrative, and surprisingly for a book on European travels, haiku.

Night at the Musée d’Orsay
 

If the curators knew
I, a moth, was in the Van Gogh room
they’d be shocked!
But what do they expect—
I love light and I’m particularly
attracted to a painting
of stars—globs of light
reflected in a river.
 
I’ve sat on top of these yellow blobs
and survived though I can feel
the heat of these stars
right through the paint.
Light bulbs are cold by comparison
though I’m not singed by Van Gogh.
I’m transformed and waves of ecstasy
wander through my wings.
 
I rest on Van Gogh’s stars all night.
In the morning I flit to a cottage
and settle on a deep blue iris.
The tourists think I’m part of the painting.
I laugh. I’m just a moth
with grand taste.

Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, and www.regentpress.net

 
 
What if you woke up one morning and found you had been changed into a dragon? You learn in a dream that your pesky brother can change you back with a kiss, but how do you tell him that when you can only screech and roar?

And if you do manage to become a princess again, will you be satisfied with the quiet life of the castle or will you be restless and drawn to go off on quests? And will your dragon side help you or get you in trouble?

“Nancy Schimmel has written an enchanting story…a tale of empowerment and joy.” — Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of No Stopping Us Now

Nancy Schimmel is a nationally known storyteller and an award-winning writer of songs for children. The Princess and the Witch is recommended for ages ten and up.

Available from Bookshop, Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore

 
“Gwen Suesse’s latest book, Notes from Planet Widow, serves as a powerful antidote to the pain and insecurity women who’ve suffered a loss profoundly understand.” —Shawn LaTorre, for Story Circle Network

Planet Widow is a story of rebirth, describing the trail of insights that knit themselves together to restore my sense of wholeness within an altered context. While I couldn’t totally eradicate grief, I could learn profound lessons from it. Finding the courage to be open to it as a fierce teacher, I slowly lived my way into a new realization of self that includes grief, transforming disorientation into grounding and a measure of peace.

“A loving, gracious invitation to a land that is ever so difficult to traverse.” —Geneen Roth, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Women, Food, and God

“… satisfying grief memoir… In taut, uncluttered prose, the author organizes her thoughts in accordance with the core lessons she learned during her healing process.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Ideal for people who are navigating profound loss, Notes from Planet Widow offers welcome comfort, polished writing, clear-eyed guidance, and—by its very existence—heartening proof that we do survive grief … and even can thrive in the wake.” —Book Life Reviews

Learn more about the author at https://www.gwensuesseauthor.com/

Available from Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble, or ask for it at your local independent bookstore.

The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery reunites readers with Gabriela Domenici, the smalltown librarian whose accidental sleuthing puts her on the frontlines of death and danger. At the heart of the mystery is The Traitor’s Map, which is either a hoax or, just possibly, an artifact from the American Revolution. When Gabriela assigns the map as a research project to a group of college students, one of them is found murdered on the lakeshore—triggering a spiral of death and deceit that soon embroils Gabriela and the man she loves.

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or your favorite independent bookstore.

 
NOT a Father’s Daughter is an intimate portrait of a woman who unknowingly declared at age eight that she would not be a puppet on a string, not a father’s daughter. Unaware of why her resolve to reject patriarchal dogma was so strong, she reflects on how she observed the world around her and fought the injustices she encountered. Interwoven into her memories and experiences, an inspiring manifesto springs forth for women and men, with equal measures of spirit and soul.

Unapologetic and with courage and compassion, important and controversial issues of the day are explored. Through thought-provoking analysis, light is shed on the ways in which the acquired mind upholds traditional gender roles and thereby the patriarchy and the damaging effects of the patriarchy’s assaults on both men and women.

The reader will be drenched in a lively, thoughtful discussion to trigger reflection and provide understanding to the question, “Why do….?

With candor and wisdom, the author’s call to action requires a dismantling of the acquired gender differences and the bonding together of both men and women of all ages, of all ethnicities to smash the toxicity that pummels and plunders our institutions, our cultures, our country, our world. This dismantling requires the soul and spirit and compassion and courage of each of us.

Available in March from online book sellers, local independent bookstores, or from the author.

Learn more about the author at https://www.elizabethrodenzauthor.com

 
 
Love Letters to the Wild traces the essential bond between human beings and the natural environment. The letters and poems of this volume are book-ended by two long letters, beginning with storm clouds in Death Valley and ending at the poet’s home during a catastrophic deluge. The book sets a personal joy and gratitude against a hunger for belonging, and against the relentless destruction of all that is non-human.

“Janet MacFadyen’s newest collection seeks and invites us to be “pried open,” to “see how leaves underfoot lay down their bodies as a sentence.” The letters of this collection—to storm clouds, woods, gray light, wasps, an old house—seek to still time…for a moment of reckoning with fish, swans, squirrels, wind, and chickadees. I’m grateful for this meditation, this call to attention.” — Elizabeth Bradfield, author of SOFAR: Poems, and co-creator of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry

“…each of these lyrical pieces invites us back into embodied experience of the physical world, until we realize that we are every element that surrounds us—“the parched forest… cricket wings… a dried up stream.”… Spend some time with this gorgeous volume, and you will soon throw open the door, aching for more contact with the wild Earth again.” — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart

For more, visit https://www.dosmadres.com/shop/love-letters-to-the-wild-by-janet-macfadyen/

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and your local independent bookstore.

 
“Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay’s spirited, aptly-titled collaboration, The ‘She’ Series: A Venice Correspondence, reads like a dream image that totally alters your day, and that, even days later, has everything to do with you. In these ghostly pages, She is, and is again—mesmerizing, gorgeously-wrought, and alone. She is desire—lushly so, wholly-present, and unrequited. And She is in touch with everything in this life, as in a dream—the way talking out loud, to somebody else, keeps it real.”
— Ralph Angel, author of Neither World and Your Moon

“Could it be that a shifting balance between two voices is the best way to enter a murmur of wings? Come, let yourself be unstrung by dream-logos, the surf in the distance kneeling and falling. The night is full of wonderwork: open the door of dark water and cross over the threshold.”
— Marsha de la O, author of Antidote for Night

Available from Bookshop, Amazon, or order it from your local independent bookstore.

 
 
The Sitting Room Library is devoted to the collection and curation of interdisciplinary, international, and cross-genre literature, poetry, and art by and about women. Seeking to restore the history of women’s achievements and preparing for the challenges in the future, the Sitting Room Library is committed to fostering research, writing projects, and programs for students, interns, independent scholars, and common readers through grants, internships, fiscal sponsorship, and publishing opportunities. The Sitting Room Library welcomes visitors of all genders, ages, backgrounds for reading, learning, conversing, contemplating, writing, and exploring this unique collection of books and archives in our peaceful indoor and outdoor spaces offering refuge and renewal in person and online.

 
A soulful memoir of desire and a woman’s midlife quest to let go—in jazz and in life
 
Lisa—a classically trained pianist, wife, and mother—yearns for something she can’t define. After she begins a study of jazz improv with an outspoken, trailblazing musician from the ’70s girl band era, a woman who encourages Lisa to let go musically and emotionally, life takes an unexpected, irrevocable turn. When they become lovers, what began as a desire to learn jazz becomes a lesson in letting go: with music, with an old way of living, and finally with life itself.


With rhythmic, imaginative prose, Fly, My Darling explores the resilience of love, the weight of loss, the undeniable pull toward freedom, and the transformation that occurs when a woman finally asks, What do I really want? Based on the author’s years together with musician and visionary composer Lynda Roth, past and present weave together in this intimate journey of awakened eroticism and music.

“A graceful and spare memoir of personal transformation and loss.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Available at Bookshop, Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and through your local independent bookstore.

More at LisaKRichter.com