poetry

  • What No One Told Me About Writing a First Novel

    By Peggy Arthur Greetings! No one told me that finishing a first novel might require disappearing. Not in a dramatic, romantic way. No cabin in the woods. No vow of silence. Just a series of small, deliberate choices. Staying in when I could have gone out, declining invitations, turning down the noise during a season

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  • Reclaiming the Broom: A Sacred Symbol of Power, Protection, and Passage

    By Peggy Arthur Greetings! Let’s reframe the way we view brooms. For too long, the broom has been dismissed as a mundane domestic object, reduced to cleaning floors and women’s labor. But when we pause, close our eyes, and listen inward, we make room for intuition to take root. That intuition awakens spirit. Through this

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  • Rooted Reads: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

    By Peggy Arthur Greetings! This Rooted Read stretches forward in time but remains deeply anchored in the past. Unlike the previous books I’ve recommended, Parable of the Sower was written in 1993 and at the time, set in the future, 2024. But not the far-off, flying-cars kind of future. No, the world Octavia Butler imagines

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  • Rooted Reads: James by Percival Everett

    “What if the enslaved were never silent?” By Peggy Arthur Greetings! Why It’s Rooted James is not just a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s a literary reckoning—a powerful act of reclamation. Told through the eyes of the enslaved Jim—here named James—Percival Everett unearths a history long buried under myth and whitewashed nostalgia. Everett dares

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  • Rooted Reads: Beloved by Toni Morrison

    “What if memory never leaves the body?” By Peggy Arthur Greetings! Why It’s Rooted Beloved is a ghost story—but not the kind that simply haunts. It lingers like cigar smoke in the fabric, like memory in the soil. It tells the truth: that the past never dies—it lives in us. Through Morrison’s storytelling, we witness what

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