On December 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 to declare 11 October as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. For its second observance, this year’s Day will focus on “Innovating for Girls’ Education”.

Why is this day so important? Read more to find out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-liang/why-the-international-day_b_4082212.html

He says,
"Some people write books,
and
other people give them things to write about."

He has eyes made of nicotine.
He sold his soul to Nashville.
From the back of this throat he generates heat
and light

He smirks at me and
I feel exposed and
am intensely aware of my feet.
There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

All I want is to freeze-
Give me a bed carved from an iceberg- it melts over the course of a thousand years.
Make it white and pure and porcelain.
It has claws
like a bathtub.
I will float in the water
and
with wrinkled fingertips
I will write your story.


Author Bio:
Leah Thomas is a 23-year-old Appalachian-American living in Lexington, Kentucky. She is finishing up her English degree from Morehead State University and can probably be found under a tree sniffing a flower.

When I imagine the night I was conceived, it’s this:
My parents, middle-aged,
heavy from cheap food and worry,
dutifully acting out the ritual
they choreographed on their wedding night,
careful not to wake the baby
asleep in the corner of their tiny bedroom.

Then I understand who I am;
I was programmed from before birth to be
predictable, to wear responsibility
and shame like my sister’s hand-me-downs.
In motion, I rarely break a sweat.
When I lie down in love, I sleep with my guilt.
And when I wake with the dawn, my day has already been lived.


Author Bio:
The author lives in Salt Lake City and is the mother of three daughters. A psychic once described her as "oozing feminine energy." She has many interests. including reading literature, playing volleyball and gardening. She always says that she has no time and yet she manages to watch a number of creatively bankrupt television shows.

We all make choices.
I made mine.
Dismissal of future consequences served
as my golden ticket to do what I wanted
when I wanted
and whom I wanted…
Once upon a time, I defined myself as a free bird.
I flew in and out of countless bedroom windows from the
West to the East Coast, London too.
I collected personal souvenirs along the way.
No cages could imprison me
I slipped through the tightest bars in masquerade balls
with drizzled lies
until the Call came…
On that day, when the first snowflake danced down my car’s window shield,
I was told my life adventures would need to be postponed…
my extracurricular activities ushered in my Finale sooner
than I anticipated.
No more one-night stands.
No more exotic dancing on top of bar tops,
while lip-syncing to the 80s dance hits.
No more phone calls.
My so-called friends abandoned me without any hesitation,
including my best friend.
Now, I wait all alone in children-sized PJs that would fit a ten-year-old,
while my hospital bed swallows me up each night.
I’m afraid to look at myself in the mirror
because I don’t know who’s staring back at me.
I smashed all the mirrors in the house with a hammer three months ago
when I saw a frail and pale creature
painted with sores and fish scales all over its face
and naked body.
Sometimes, I notice a feather or two on the floor,
before my mother sweeps them up.
Her cries echo the halls each morning from
4:00am to 7:00am.
I know this will be my last summer to watch
the Ladybug Family
play outside my window in their tree house.
The prison I swore that would never surround me found me…
Someone once asked me if I had my life to relive,
then what would I have done differently?
I’ll tell you everything.
Everything…


Author Bio:
Miracle Austin works in the hospice world. She's an emerging author who enjoys writing diverse free-verse poetry with mini-stories and short stories. She's been writing since first hearing “Who’s Gonna Drive You Home,” by The Cars. She's working on her first novella and resides in Texas with her family.

Spring painted the beginning
of my end, gown sterile
as a field of alabaster lilies.
Summer arrived, traced your name
by the sea on shifting sand,
blue water scattering the sun's
glitter. Fall, leaves a kaleidoscope
of bronze, sienna, and honey.
Fall shook the fields, stripped
thinning willows of what remained.
Winter came, unforgiving: ice storm
in the desert, glass dagger dangling
from rotted eaves, final
ember of a dying fire,
isolated,
no warmth from another.


Author Bio:
Janna Vought received her MFA from Lindenwood University in Saint Charles, Missouri, is an AWP Intro Journal's Nominee in Poetry for 2013, and has published in multiple genres. 

I throw the stones meant for me to walk upon
At the cats that roam the neighborhood in search of rats
To fight the war my fathers taught me
Mama beats the rug, then rolls it up behind the sofa
Against the summer’s fury
And watermelons lie cool as dogs beneath the bedroom cot
The skeleted key to the door where every grandfather sat
from  “when I was a boy…”
Hangs yet on Tata’s shriveled neck aside her golden cross
And there she still sits
waiting on the balcony, head bent, readying her kussa
Outside, olive trees, gnarled, bowed and older than the door
Still put out pits for fire, wood to carve pilgrims’ crosses
And oil sold to America’s Middle Eastern grocers for the sons
Gone to Ahmerica
To take new blood as blonded brides
Swim in deep cool pools
And learn to dream in English
There they teach their Walt Disney’d children dipping pita into hummus
And olive’s oil pooled with the taste of “When I was a boy…”
When I am 17, I too will go as the others have--
Packing my suitcase with the olives and the oil that I will miss
Kiss my mother and hug my father
To find the dream -- a chocolate and coca-cola filled life
Until alblad, back home, has emptied of us all


Author Bio:
Kelly Jadon is a graduate of Spring Arbor University and holds a degree in English with a focus on poetry. She is a teacher, poet and collage artist. One focus of her writing has been on the Christians of the Middle East, a relatively unknown minority. She also writes the syndicated column "Hometown Heroes" which publishes nationally online and locally in newspapers and magazines. Kelly has recently written a book of post-modern poetry, soon to be published.

Acordava com fome de conhecimento,
numa necessidade insana de tudo saber.

I don’t understand what you are saying.

Se alguém não gostasse dos meus escritos,
logo iria corrigí-los, in a critical voice.

Now I feel much closer to myself
Because I know I don’t understand
O que eles significam.


Author Bio:
Desirée Jung is a writer and translator. Her background is in film and literature. She has received her M. F. A in Creative Writing and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. She has published translations and poetry in Exile, The Dirty Goat, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Antagonish Review, Gravel Magazine, The Literary Yard, TreeHouse, among others. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mom brought home a terrier,
fluffy white with beady eyes.
You couldn’t control yourself,
throwing the k9 into the air,
laughing, thinking
he was a great toy.
You could not understand, that when
he ran away, weeping
“I love you” was not a coherent excuse.


Author Bio:
Hannah Sackin is 16-years-old and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a poet, writer, feminist, and a short film director.