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.
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Crystal K. Odelle
I’m not sure how I became Facebook friends with Sue Silverman; I rarely accept friend requests from people I’ve not actually met in person. I do know several friends who’ve studied with Sue and sing her praises loudly. Maybe it was her generosity in sharing information about writing and publishing on one of The Binders groups for writers (on Facebook) or maybe I’d seen pictures of her fun shoes, but whatever the reason I’m glad. I think Plumesters will enjoy getting to know her and her books, too:Plume: When did you know you were a writer?Sue William Silverman: I never kept a journal, and I never even wrote “bad” adolescent poetry. One day in my mid-twenties, however, I literally sat down at this Smith-Corona portable typewriter and began to write a novel—more or less out of nowhere. From that first moment, when I wrote what was probably a really overwrought sentence, I knew I was a writer. I should add that I was always a voracious reader—probably since third grade.P: You’ve written about some rather challenging topics, most notably sexual abuse and sex addiction, and now death, in essays. Do you have other memoirs in your future? Why memoir and not fiction?SWS: First, just let me clarify, my new book isn’t exactly—or only—about death per se, in that the title is How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences. So it’s ironic!Anyway, right now I’m writing some personal essays, but I probably don’t have another straight-through narrative memoir in me. In other words, my first two books are traditional memoirs. My two most recent books are memoirs-in-essay form. I’ve also written a craft book and two poetry collections.I actually started out writing fiction. I’ve written something like four or five terrible (and thankfully unpublished) novels. As soon as I switched to creative nonfiction, everything fell into place, which is to say I heard my authentic writer’s voice. I never could hear an emotionally authentic voice in fiction. P: Do you have a regular writing practice? A ritual?SWS: I keep it simple. My only ritual is to turn on my computer every day and open the current document! That’s when I know I am at work.P: How do you take care of yourself? SWS: By writing! Truly, I am most centered, and have a feeling of wholeness, when I write. Writing nourishes my soul. It helps me make sense of my life; it helps me discover the metaphors of my life. It fulfills me the way … Read more
