Women Writing for (a) Change Jacksonville is a growing community for writers in Jacksonville and North Florida. Established in 2014 by Jennifer Wolfe, we are here to nurture and celebrate individual voices by facilitating supportive writing circles and encouraging people to craft more conscious lives through the art of writing and the practices of community.
We offer regular writing circles, art exhibits featuring women artists, and an annual anthology of women writers and artists who have participated in our circles over the years. We also host special events highlighting women writers, artists, and community leaders.
We are a radically inclusive community that strives to create safer spaces for women’s voices. We believe, as Pat Schneider wrote, that “everyone is a writer” and that everyone’s story has value. While we focus primarily on those who identify as women, we aim to create a supportive, non-threatening environment for all participants. We encourage everyone in our community to help foster an atmosphere where others feel safe and validated.
Our vision is to build healthy, conscious communities where the words and creative expressions of women, girls, and individuals—from all cultural backgrounds and life circumstances—are nurtured, developed, and celebrated. We believe this work contributes to positive cultural transformation and a more just and equitable society.
We are guided by the values of confidentiality, consent, choice, and consideration of others in the community. We seek to be a feminist organization that is intersectional, antiracist, climate-conscious, and radically inclusive. We align with the Conscious Feminine values listed below and recognize that our work toward a just and equitable society is an ongoing journey. We are actively committed to moving in this direction.
Women Writing for (a) Change Jacksonville is an affiliate site of Women Writing for (a) Change in Cincinnati. Since 1991, WWf(a)C has evolved into a powerful and empowering community of women and girls telling our stories. We are a radically inclusive community of women creating change in ourselves and in the world—one truth, one voice at a time.
“[We are] participating in the transformation of culture by creating, naming, and supporting leaders in the practice of conscious feminine values: truth-telling, empowerment, nurture-with-rigor, transparency, vulnerability, conscious collaboration, depth-orientation, hospitality, [and] the capacity to hold paradox, especially the paradox of fostering individual gifts alongside fostering planetary and community well-being.”
—Mary Pierce Brosmer, Founder, Women Writing for (a) Change
Dear friends,
We invite you to submit your work for the latest edition of our annual anthology, a river rising: Anthology of Women’s Voices: BODIES and FACES (Vol. 8), by July 15, 2026.
ELIGIBILITY
- Writers: Writers who identify as women and have participated in any of our Jacksonville writing circles since 2020. If possible, please submit at least three thoroughly edited pieces to give us the best opportunity to select the one that best fits with our theme.
- Artists: Artists who identify as women and/or with the feminine experience and are located in the Northeast Florida region. Art will be selected based on relevance to the theme and intentionality. Please submit more than one piece to give us the best opportunity to select a work that aligns with the theme.
Space is limited to 30 writers (15 poems, 15 essays, approximately) and 40 artists; please submit early. Writers and artists who participated in the Bodies and Faces writing semesters (Fall 2025 and Spring 2026) will be given first priority if necessary.
Although we strive to be a radically inclusive publication, we reserve the right to decline writing or art that we feel does not fit the theme, is harmful to others, violates our community standards (see our website), or requires significant further development to be ready for our audience.
Additionally, in keeping with the spirit of this anthology, all writing and artwork must be an original work created by the submitting artist or writer. We are interested in the texture of lived experience, not content generated by artificial intelligence. Please bring us the work only YOU can make.
DEADLINE: JULY 15, 2026
THEME: Bodies and Faces This anthology is based on writing and art inspired by the theme of our Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters: Bodies and Faces.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS DETAILS
“I am somebody. A body. A difficult body, to be sure… But some body. Mine. Me. In establishing myself as a writer, however modest my success, I have ceased to be nobody. I have written my way into my embodied self, and here I am at home.” —Nancy Mairs, Remembering the Bone House “Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections—and that we work to create space for those intersections.” —Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
For our eighth annual anthology, Bodies and Faces, we are creating space for women writers and artists to engage with embodiment, identity, visibility, vulnerability, and radical self-love. This volume will carry the stories we carry in our bodies and on our faces—seen and unseen. As a community, we ask: What does it mean to fully inhabit ourselves? Which wounds have scarred over? What memories, joys, and griefs linger beneath them?
Inspired by the work of Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology, this anthology seeks works that honor the body as a living archive of experience, pleasure, survival, contradiction, becoming—the beauty of being known from the inside out.
Rooted in our circle process of deep listening and thoughtful response, this collection continues the legacy of Women Writing for (a) Change Jacksonville by celebrating the power of creative expression as the thread that allows us to better understand ourselves and connect with one another.
We welcome writing and visual art that explores:
- The body as memory
- The mask we present, the face we hide
- Embodiment
- Beauty, shame, visibility, and self-perception
- Identity
- Self-love and self-acceptance
- Touch, intimacy, and connection
- Healing and reclamation
We invite you to bring your whole self to the page or canvas, in all of your fullness and nuance. We are excited to see the world through your eyes and collaborate on a collection that centers the many ways we come home to ourselves and to each other.
ART GUIDELINES
- Artwork must be the original work of the artist.
- Upload artwork that is camera-ready only (high resolution, high quality, 300 DPI).
- We accept paintings, collage, mixed media, photography, and sculpture.
- Digital art may also be accepted, including works with sound, video, etc.
- By submitting, artists agree that images of their work may be used in promotional materials for the anthology and related events. NOTE: See terms of use below.NOTE: See terms of use below.