By: Story Circle Network Members
ISBN: 979-8986130217
Story Circle Network, 2024
This volume explores the importance of friendship in women’s lives. One of the lessons learned from our common pandemic experiences is that personal relationships and interactions do matter. In fact, the Mayo Clinic recently conducted a study that determined that the lack of friends, leading to loneliness, is as harmful to our health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. But what defines a friendship? The answer is as varied as the number of women responding to that question.
Leading these reflections is the Foreword by former Story Circle Network president, writing teacher, and author Helen (Len) Leatherwood, who warmly and wisely sets the context for this collection:
“The essays, memoir pieces, poems, and fictional stories in this anthology reveal the multilayered aspects of friendship. The joy, pain, ambivalence, and love that friendship brings, whether in the past, the present, or the hoped-for future. Within these pages, you will recognize your own experiences, empathize with those who chronicle painful outcomes, and laugh with those who describe the lighter, more joyful moments of friendship.”
We hope that this set of uplifting creative works will inspire readers to send an email or text, write a note, or pick up the phone to tell someone special—to paraphrase the classic Golden Girls theme song— “Thank you for being my friend.”
About the Author
Real Women Write is an annual anthology series of writing by SCN members, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, showcasing the talent and creativity of our own writing women. Story Circle Network values every woman’s story, and in Real Women Write we publish writing about both the individual life in all its uniqueness, and a woman’s life as it’s understood by all women.
Volume 23 in the series is The Power of Friendship. In this anthology, 64 authors, all Story Circle Network members, contributed 80 creative works—65 prose, 16 poems—on what friendship means to them.
About the Editor: Shelley Johnson Carey is the author of numerous articles, short stories, and poems, and of the nonfiction book Thin Mint Memories: Scouting for Empowerment through the Girl Scout Cookie Program. She recently retired from her nearly 40-year editorial career, where she worked on several award-winning magazines and journals. Most recently, she served as the editor of Peer Review, a higher education journal, where she worked with hundreds of authors to polish their writing. Shelley has a BA from Hampshire Colleges and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She has facilitated several writing workshops for teens and adults. She is currently revising a novel about a group of friends based on her own lifetime friendships. Shelley serves as Board Secretary and Publications Coordinator for Story Circle Network.
To learn more about Story Circle Network Members and her work, please see www.storycircle.org
