THE COPPER QUILL

In celebration of Women's History Month, the team here at the Copper Quill have chosen a selection of our favorite female writers. 

Chosen by Mi'Angel McRae,

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer and author of her debut novel “Stay with Me”, my favorite book thus far. It’s about a couple experiencing fertility issues and how they and their families cope with it. Adébáyọ̀ has taught me that I can put my all into a story, plot, and characters, have it be worth it, and still have more creativity left in me to keep creating. I feel lucky to have experienced “Stay with Me” and wish I could read it again for the first time. 

Adébáyọ̀ has written for many well-known magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, and more. She’s published stories and poems in many anthologies and has a play titled "PROVENANCE”. 

http://www.ayobamiadebayo.com/about-ayobami/

Chosen by Jordan Heagy,

Madeline Miller is an American author known for writing mythological realism. Her two novels, "The Song of Achilles" (2011) and "Circe" (2018), won her many awards including, the Orange Prize for Fiction, Gaylactic Spectrum Award, Athennaeum Literary Award, GoodRead's Fantasy Choice Award, and The Kitschies. Miller attended Brown university in 2001, and earned a bachelors and masters in classics. She began to draft her debut novel, while teaching Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high schoolers on the side. She eventually returned to higher education to work on her PhD at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. Currently Miller is writing her third novel, a retelling of the myth of Persephone. 

You can check out Miller's novels at https://madelinemiller.com/ 

Chosen by Mari Martinez,

Naoko Takeuchi, born in 1967,  is a Japanese manga artist and writer who created the infamous manga Sailor Moon. When she was only 24, she wrote and illustrated her manga fully and eventually became published— creating a beloved and worldwide loved series. She is married to Yoshihiro Togashi, the author of Hunter X Hunter, whilst learning the art style with hopes of continuing the manga. Takeuchi is a beloved mangaka and an inspiration to women in the manga illustration and writing field.

Chosen by Julie Shepard,

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), perhaps most famous for her classic novel Jane Eyre, lived in Yorkshire, England, with her family. Tragically, she lost her mother and her two older sisters at a young age. Her widowed father, Patrick Brontë (which he anglicized from the surname “Brunty” or “O’Brunty” when he emigrated from Ireland to England), largely relied on his extensive library to educate Charlotte and her remaining siblings, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Inspired by a gift of toy soldiers their father gave to Branwell one day, the imaginative Brontë children each adopted one of the soldiers to become a character in the land of Angria, an imaginary world they created. The Brontës wrote stories about Angria, often compiling their tales in tiny, handwritten books that they sewed together themselves. In her book Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart (reviewed by Carl Rollyson on the SFGATE website), author Claire Harmon attests that the children’s ventures into Angria were “oddly like a sort of compulsive ‘gaming,’ two hundred years before the appropriate technology had been invented.”

As young women, Charlotte and her sisters, Emily and Anne, sought to have a book of their poetry published. They used pseudonyms to mask their identity as women in an effort to increase their chances of securing a publisher. Their book, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which featured their pen names in the title, was published in 1846. Charlotte went on to write the novel Jane Eyre, which was published in 1847, along with several other novels.

To learn more about Charlotte Brontë and to read some of her work, please see the resources listed below:

·         www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charlotte-bronte   

·         https://www.bronteireland.org/

·         https://www.bronte.org.uk/

Chosen by Rick Kearns,

"Magdalena Gómez, the daughter of a Spanish Gitano (Romaní "gypsy") father and a Puerto Rican mother, was raised to be a storyteller. The intellectually gifted child of unschooled parents, she discovered the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and translations of Chinese women poets on her own at the age of eight in a South Bronx library and has been writing ever since.

Ms. Gómez is an award-winning performance poet, playwright, performer, teaching artist and highly sought after keynote speaker and workshop facilitator.  Her original series, Writing from the Belly, which she facilitated for women for over a decade at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was the training ground for the now yearly performance of Body Politics at the university.  She was also on the faculty of New WORLD Theater’s 2050 Project for several years, and has had her plays and performance poems produced in venues such as: INTAR; Pregones; Puerto Rican Traveling Theater; Boston Playwright's Theater; HERE in NYC;  Ko Festival; Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts; BING Arts Center; Factory Theater (Boston); BAAD! among others.  She has received play development awards from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures; the Massachusetts Cultural Council; Arts International (in collaboration with the Augusta Savage Gallery) and an NEA Master Artist Award from Pregones Theater, among others. Dancing in My Cockroach Killers, a dramatization of her poems and monologues, was performed in 2013 to the critical acclaim of Off-Broadway audiences and was reprised to critical acclaim in 2014 at the Los Angeles Theater Center. The 2018 Washington D.C. Premiere at Gala Theater was brought back to PRTT off-Broadway that same year.

She is the co-founder and artistic director of Teatro V!da, www.teatrovida.com  the first Latin@ theater in Springfield, Massachusetts, and founder of the Ferocious Women’s Group bringing to public view voices of women and girls through writing and performance. For ten years, Ms. Gómez performed nationally as a jazz poet with the late baritone saxophonist, Fred Ho.

Ms. Gomez is also a New England Public Radio commentator, national speaker and columnist with the Point of View Newspaper. She is the co-editor of Bullying: Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions and Catharsis, the first multicultural, intergenerational and multi- genre anthology on bullying. A book of her poetry, Shameless Woman,  was recently released by Red Sugarcane Press, NYC. Her role in the Nuyorican Literary movement was recently cited in In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam, by scholar and poet Urayoán Noel. The University of Connecticut Storrs invited Ms. Gomez for the coveted honor of housing her literary archives at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center."

Source of Magdalena Gómez's Bio: http://www.magdalenagomez.com/podcast--bio.html 

We're excited to share the Winter issue of The Copper Quill with you. We hope you enjoy our selection of creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual artwork, including a series of photos taken by our faculty advisor, Richard Kearns.