We have important news to share with you. Three esteemed writers and activists — V (formerly Eve Ensler), Maxine Hong Kingston, and Gloria Steinem — are joining us to make sure this important fund drive is a success.

• V generously donated $5,000 to get the campaign off to a rousing start, saying, “Often, the exact moment women come into their greatest wisdom, insight, and brilliance is the moment when they are erased by the culture. I am so grateful to Persimmon Tree for being the antidote that lifts and celebrates our voices.”
• Gloria Steinem agrees: “in this youth-obsessed culture, it’s so good to have a place where women can share a longer life experience.”
• Maxine Hong Kingston added her voice to theirs: “Autumn is persimmon season, the time when the fruits of the persimmon tree takes on more lusciousness the longer they age. Just so, Persimmon Tree gives you the creations of women at our wisest and most artful.”

We are in for some dark times, and Persimmon Tree is a light in that inexorably gathering darkness. It is the voice of women over 60 – women who are strong, independent, and immensely talented. We need their voices now more than ever. We need their experience, their wisdom, and their perspective as we have never needed it before. And Persimmon Tree is the only place where you can find those voices consistently and powerfully.

As you think about your gift, please check the gift chart below to see how many more gifts we estimate we’ll need to reach the goal:

Especially in the coming few years, Persimmon Tree’s messages from women artists will be more important than ever, reaching more women and allies and supporters of women. We must make sure that the voices of strong, older women of every race, every nationality, every orientation and gender, are heard. With more voices being silenced, please help keep your (our) voices strong.

If you have never donated, we welcome your first gift. If you have donated before, as you renew your gift please consider increasing your gift. If you have already donated this year, please consider making an additional gift.

To pay using Zelle, address your donation to publisher@persimmontree.org and note in the memo line that it is a donation. To pay with a credit card, you can click here.

Or, if you would prefer to contribute by check, you can do so by making out your check to Persimmon Tree and mailing it to –

At a time when more publications are cutting back, your generous gift will ensure that Persimmon Tree – the only online magazine devoted entirely to the contributions of women over 60 – will continue publishing and raising up women’s voices.

Remember V’s words – “I am so grateful to Persimmon Tree for being the antidote that lifts and celebrates our voices.” And join with her, Gloria Steinem, and Maxine Hong Kingston in acknowledging the importance of Persimmon Tree and its unique mission by making your gift today.

OUR GENEROUS DONORS

Here is a list of the major and most loyal donors to Persimmon Tree. We are grateful to all our donors, no matter the size of your gifts. But, in this era of rising costs, and with Persimmon Tree growing and developing in new and exciting ways, our need for support has grown, too. If your name is on this list, you have our deepest thanks. If it isn’t yet, do think about increasing your donation so we can add it!

We try to ensure that this list is as complete and accurate as it can be, but if you see any errors, or if anyone’s name is missing, please let us know, and we’ll make a correction as soon as we can.

Leading Donors

September 12

by Andrea Carter Brown

  On 9/11, Andrea Carter Brown was a resident of downtown Manhattan living just a block from the World Trade Center. September 12 chronicles her up close and all too personal experience of the attack, but, even more, the continuing horror and eventual healing of the months and years afterward. September 12 won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry, the James Dickey Prize from Five Points, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, the Puddinghouse Press Chapbook Competition, The MacGuffin National Poet Hunt, and is cited in the Library of Congress Online Research Guide to the Poetry of 9/11. “A more haunting memorial to 9/11 than this book will be hard to find. Reading September 12 is a wrenching but restorative experience you won't soon forget".  — Martha Collins, poet, author of Casualty Reports and Blue Front "... detail by detail, we watch the process of innocence captured by absolutely unpredicted trauma, and how the experience lives on and on, through shock and terror, through the kindness of strangers, through the heart of a beloved, through grief and elegy, through normality that will never again be normal."  — Alicia Ostriker, New York State Poet Laureate "This brave book documents great loss, but also hard-won psychic resilience in poems of astonishing beauty and wisdom. September 12 is necessary poetry." — Cynthia Hogue, Poetry Editor, Persimmon Tree

Available from Amazon and Word Works.

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