Some maps have blue borders
like the blue of your name
or the tributary lacing of
veins running through your
father’s hands. & how the last
time I saw you, you held
me for so long I saw whole
lifetimes flooding by me
small tentacles reaching
for both our faces. I wish
maps would be without
borders & that we belonged
to no one & to everyone
at once, what a world that
would be.
Tag: Hobart Book Village
Spotlight: Leslie T. Sharpe
What people don’t appreciate, is how much nature there is in urban settings. And how crucial those urban settings are. For instance, NYC in on what we call the Eastern Flyway (there are several of these, east to west, which are migratory routes for birds in spring and fall). In spring, birds in their bright, colorful breeding plumage drop into Central Park, among other places in the NYC area, and draw birders from around the world, including as far away from Russia.
Spotlight: Stephanie Nikolopoulos
People are wont to read with their own biases and agendas that we cannot control, and having early readers who come from vastly different backgrounds and perspectives may help a writer at least get a sense of the types of issues that might be misinterpreted.
Spotlight: Keisha-Gaye Anderson
A poem that uses nature or an historical figure to talk about love expands the reader’s understanding of love and opens new vistas of self-awareness. Poetry has the power to help us examine ourselves and provides us with a psycho-spiritual roadmap for evolution.
Spotlight: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
For a long time, as a writer in the diaspora, I felt this pressure to represent my culture honorably, but the question was which culture? I was born and mostly raised in New York, and my love of literature was nurtured in the black books sections of Borders and Barnes and Noble. And I was reared by very proud Ghanaian parents, and had this identity-shifting experience of being sent from ages 12 to 15 to live and school in Ghana. I didn’t feel I could lay full claim to African-American culture or identity, and I didn’t feel completely Ghanaian either though I found myself straining to do both.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Announcing Festival 2018
On September 7, 8,&9th The Hobart Festival of Women Writers will hold its sixth consecutive year of platforming and promoting the work of women writers in all genres. We’re excited to announce that two additional participating writers will read their work at Festival 2018.
Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2018
Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers, an annual three-day weekend dedicated to celebrating and promoting the work of women writers will be held on September 7, 8 &9, 2018 in Hobart, New York, The Reading Capital of New York State.
Spotlight: Cheryl Clarke
I think “finding literary community” has been an important “success story” for Writers as well as Participants at The Hobart Festival of Women Writers. We have created community among the nearly fifty writers who have participated in the Festival. Participants who have enjoyed our craft workshops return each year to participate with Writers they have enjoyed in past years. We have certainly brought new voices for lovers of literature to hear and read. – Cheryl Clarke
Spotlight: Stephanie Nikolopoulos
Being among these incredible writers, teachers, learners, volunteers, and organizers inspires me, challenges me, encourages me far beyond the few days of the Festival.
— Stephanie Nikolopoulos
Spotlight: Blanche Wiesen Cook
“Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men. And Eleanor Roosevelt’s really the dynamo and the spearhead of that effort.”
— Blanche Wiesen Cook
Spotlight: Nancy K. Bereano
“The fact that her prose was published exclusively by small independently owned women’s presses was both a result of the major houses’ narrow perspective and the fact that Audre Lorde’s prose, particularly her myth-shattering essays, was instrumental in framing a changing reality for many women, primarily lesbian women (a readership long dismissed by the mainstream publishing world). ”
–Nancy K. Bereano
Spotlight: Sandra Rodriguez Barron
“A writer could spend a lifetime filling pages about the concept of home and its many definitions. Our mother is our first home, both physically and emotionally. Many of the complications of life spring directly from the memory of losing a primal home, whether that home was an actual place, or a parent, or both. Every break-up, estrangement, or emotional severance can contain a dim echo of its original impact.”
— Sandra Rodriguez Barron
Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2025 