Women’s Voices:

A Creative Writing Project by Danielle Foushée

I tend to read multiple books at the same time, switching back and forth based on my mood or interests. When I noticed that the ideas being discussed in one book impacted the way I understood another, I wanted to be more intentional about how I mixed and matched my reading material.

The first questions I asked were simple:

• What would happen if I included only works written by (self-identified) women?
• Do women's words have a different general character than men's?

Pretty soon, I needed to externalize the intermingling process that was occurring in my brain.

• How would the texts change if I translated them to different media?
• What would happen if I recorded women in my life reading excerpts from different writers?
• Then, how would the recorded excerpts influence one another when I randomized them in controlled, but ever-changing, conversations?

Texts and voices to be used in this project:

• Deep Play by Diane Ackerman
  Read by Jan Foushée
• Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
  Read by Gabrielle Morgan
• (in-progress) Wolfish by Emily Berry
  Read by Dagny Paulsen
• (in-progress) Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  Read by Laura Jo West
• Lonely City by Olivia Liang
  Read by Naomi Chandran
• (in-progress) How to Make Art at the End of the World by Natalie Loveless
  Read by Kimberly Tsen
• (in-progress) God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O'Gieblyn
  Read by Johanna Taylor
• (in-progress) On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
  Read by Lindsey Foushée
• Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit
  Read by Michelle Fehler