The power and whimsy of hot-air balloons. The sexy, sticky heat of a Kentucky summer evening. Pushing through pain and into dreams best lived. Those are a few of the musings explored in Calliope: the 16th Annual Anthology of Women Who Write, 2009. Calliope is produced by Women Who Write, the premier women's writing group in Louisville, Kentucky. This edition features the six winning entries of the Annual Women Who Write Prose and Poetry Contest. The anthology also features selected prose and poetry of Women Who Write members, several of whom have been published in the local and regional pages...

which of a wind The deadly F-5 tornado of April 3, 1974-destroying a good part of their town and highlighting the shortcomings of their mothers-leads to a possible friendship between two barely acquainted Xenia Ohio girls who are unaware they share some of the same worst fears, including the dread of ending up in a foster home. Willa Wampler, crammed with her family into a small house in the north end of town where she shares one tiny bedroom with her four siblings, has no idea her Central Junior High School classmate, Brianna Crawford, is secretly living alone under an assumed identity in a...