Our mission is to build a supportive writing community for women and non-binary writers. We write. We share inspiration. We encourage. Together, we create an energizing community space for writers:
- Plume: A Writer’s Podcast: Our podcast features successful women and non-binary writers, from emerging writers to bestselling novelists and award-winning poets. Our conversations and literary roundtables showcase hard-working talented writers, as we seek advice, insight, and inspiration to bring us back to our collective community. Along the way, our goal is to help writers believe in their voices and projects.
- Our Weekly Drop-in Zoom Group: Now in its third year, this is a virtual drop-in support group, where writers check in about current projects and share writing challenges and triumphs. We also write together in response to a new writing prompt each week.
- Our Plume Slack Channel: This is an online virtual space where women and non-binary writers can share resources, ask questions, connect with other writers, share writing prompts and projects, and offer and receive support in a safe, private space.
- Plume’s Monthly Accountability Group: Plume’s newest community-building addition, the Accountability Group, is designed for writers tackling large-scale writing projects. We meet to set goals, discuss strategies, offer encouragement, and help hold ourselves and each other accountable.
Through Plume’s literary community, we seek to uplift, showcase, and encourage women and non-binary writers wherever they are on their creative writing journey. We’re here to fan each other’s flames.
Visit our Patreon page to learn more about Plume’s affordable membership. Our podcast is available for free on all major podcast platforms.
Become a Plume Patron. Get access to our exclusive online writing community on Slack, bonus podcast content, and more.
Crystal K. Odelle
Our featured writer for October is Atlanta-based poet Danielle Hanson. I met Danielle in the spring at the AWP Conference in San Antonio. It was such a strange, upside-down time at this event that was half-empty as we straddled the line between before and after COVID really took hold in the U.S., so it was a treat to meet someone like Danielle. She’s one of those writers whose affability and warmth stands in stark contrast to work that explores truly dark subject matter. We can’t wait to share more of her writing with you next month! The podcast episode featuring our chat with her will be out next week. In the meantime, please enjoy getting to know Danielle more through this interview.Plume: When did you know you were a writer?Danielle Hanson: Ha! I still think I’m just faking it. But I’m OK with that. I think a lot of kids write a poem or two during school years, but it was in college that I started concentrating on writing and thinking of it seriously. I went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Richard Jackson teaches there. I had my freshman English class with him and he was my academic advisor. He told me I had to take a creative writing class, so I did. I really liked it. I love(d) the game and the challenge of writing poetry, of trying to fit the absurd or funny or personal into a logical structure that makes sense and connects to readers, of making the impossible happen and seem inevitable, of making the trip I took to wherever weave with mythology and science, of bending the world. I still didn’t think of writing as a career, though, even after I got my MFA. I double majored in undergrad and grad school, then had a career in corporate marketing for 15 years. A few years ago, I quit my job and now I consider myself more of a writer, although I might just be a bum.P: Where do you get your ideas?DH: A couple places, primarily. From reading—I don’t mind stealing images/ideas. I use them months or years later in a completely different context. Stealing complete phrases and entire poems is not OK. But letting someone else’s image strike a completely new work from your own mind is fine. That’s the literary dialogue that’s been going on forever. That’s how influence works.The other place … Read more
