Blog Voices from Our Community
Read stories, updates, and reflections from artists, staff, and survivors. Here, we share the heart of Awakenings — one post at a time.

In this piece, Taylor Finn explores memory and forgetting, forgiveness and acceptance. How can the forgiveness once directed towards the partner now be redirected towards
- All Authors, All Formats, Memoir

We are kicking off our blog with two editorials from one of our editors and the champion of The Nightingale, Megan Otto. Her clear voice
- Essay

We are kicking off our blog with two editorials from one of our editors, Megan Otto. Her clear voice has guided much of Awakened Voices
- Essay

A. One Friday after school, my mother entered my bedroom. She had a look on her face like when she had to tell me that
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Shawn Aveningo Sanders is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red
- All Authors, All Formats, Poetry

Reprinted with permission from Landscape with Sex and Violence (YesYes Books, 2017) Lynn Melnick is the author of the poetry collections Landscape with Sex and
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“Hi! Welcome to Taco Bell” she says as I walk through the door, so I nod and saunter to the counter where she waits for
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Manda Frederick holds an M.F.A in Creative Nonfiction from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers and recently completed an MA in Literary Studies from Western
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i. Though he now occupies another coast some 3,000 miles away, I feel his shape because I feel my own, split from his, hot about
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It’s been a month, and this is how I eat: I wait until I am starving, my stomach rumbling with gurgling “feed me” noises, as
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Ashley Sapp resides in Columbia, South Carolina, with her husband and furbaby. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of
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i will cleanse my body of unwanted fingerprints in a scalding shower. skin will split, melt, peel and water will run with the red, red,
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the nice guy who comes into your home to clean your windows the friendly doctor who brings mushrooms from the woods the puffed priest who
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Cris is a survivor of early and long term sexual abuse. It’s a relief for Cris to be able to write this so plainly to
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Everything on campus looks the same, but I’m viewing it from underwater. I shake my head to clear my vision. All I see is a
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Thirty years later, the memories come roaring back, in burning waves, like a stomach flu. Memories come unbidden when I am on the subway, in
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