Welcome to Writers Resist the Fall 2024 Issue

The collage by Kristin Fouquet is an apt introduction to this issue, launched in the final throes of the chaotic, often hateful presidential campaigning. How wonderful it would be if the joyful prospect of electing the first woman president of the United States could be just that.

Perhaps we can make it so by encouraging all our sisters and other beloveds to use our hard-won right to vote. As Kristin’s artwork warns us, “Suffrage or Suffer.”

But first, a very fond farewell to one of our founding editors, Sara Marchant, who has a few words to share:

In the last days of the late 1900s, I woke up underneath a beanbag chair on the bamboo floor of a thrashed house not my own, missing a shoe, cake-frosting in my hair, and with full awareness that hijinks had ensued. My first thought was: That was an excellent party.

Today, while reading this issue of Writers Resist, please picture me in my pajamas, bedhead resplendent, toasting you, dear readers, contributors and editors, with my second cup of coffee.

Writers Resist was born from worried dread about our future and righteous anger over our present reality, and there is still much work to be done, but I know I leave her in capable hands . . . and it has been an excellent party.

Now, this issue has a notable dose of dystopias, but—or because of that—you should find some kindred souls in the works of our contributing writers and artists—and if you’d like to join them for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, on Saturday 16 November at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC, please request the Zoom link via WritersResist@gmail.com.

D. Arifah, “Watching Over the Horizon“

Linda Bamber, “Endless War“

Robyn Bashaw, “Beware the Homo Sapiens“

Cheryl Caesar, “Grass“

Chiara Di Lello, “Abecedarian for Billionaires“

Matthew Donovan, “I Believe Her“

Kristin Fouquet, “Suffrage or Suffer“

Ellen Girardeau Kempler, “Poem in Response to Mass Shooting Number 130 in the United States 2023“

Michael Henson, “The Dream Children of Addison Mitchell McConnell III“

Jacqueline Jules, “How I Feel About the 2024 Election“

Craig Kirchner, “The Coming“

Christian Hanz Lozada, “When I hear ‘migration,’ I think of ships“