women
Online Exclusive: “Purple Eyeshadow,” memoir by Rene Denfeld.

Online Exclusive: “Purple Eyeshadow,” memoir by Rene Denfeld.

An online exclusive … “When it was quiet I would stand and look out the windows at the streets I had recently escaped, and I was filled with such a surge of life.” When I was sixteen, I fought my way off the streets by getting a job at McDonald’s. It was the one on 6th...
Family Laundry: “What Came Between a Woman and Her Duties,” by Luanne Castle.

Family Laundry: “What Came Between a Woman and Her Duties,” by Luanne Castle.

“In the past, Mrs. Culver has been aided and abetted by her female friends in the art of painting …” Jennie DeKorn Culver, the author’s great-great-aunt, lived c. 1861–1947. BROAD STREET presents the second installment of a series tracing Luanne Castle’s ancestry in poems and short prose — with photographs, newspaper clippings, and other source materials: the small...
Family Laundry: “An Account of a Poor Oil Stove Bought off Dutch Pete,” by Luanne Castle.

Family Laundry: “An Account of a Poor Oil Stove Bought off Dutch Pete,” by Luanne Castle.

“She and the fire column in movement, she forward. It spins upward a hallucinatory dance…” BROAD STREET presents the first installment of a series tracing Luanne Castle’s ancestry in poems and short prose — with photographs, newspaper clippings, and other source materials: the small things from which Luanne has pieced together family history.The poem itself can be...
Share This Poem: "His Word in Rural Illinois," by Ellen Stone.

Share This Poem: “His Word in Rural Illinois,” by Ellen Stone.

“… woman’s body like a metal safe —  these flatlands …” Our “Small Things, Partial Cures” theme continues with a remarkable poem by Ellen Stone. You can download and print a full-size broadside by clicking on the first version below — or scroll down to read in plain format. His Word in Rural Illinois By Ellen Stone   Red-winged blackbirds...
Online Exclusive: "Mad Heat Be Praised," by Kat Meads.

Online Exclusive: “Mad Heat Be Praised,” by Kat Meads.

“Mad Heat Be Praised”  An excerpt from Miss Jane: The Lost Years. “Has mad heat created Zombie Jane?” Kat Meads, who contributed “Leaving the House” to Broad Street’s “Maps & Legends” issue, bids adieu to summer swelter with an excerpt from her latest book combining women’s studies and fiction, Miss Jane: The Lost Years. A native...