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.
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Crystal K. Odelle
My second year of my MFA program my advisor, Greg Martin, went on sabbatical and Michelle Otero joined the department as a visiting writer to teach the creative nonfiction workshop. She was super nice but I’d come to New Mexico for a REAL graduate school experience, which in my mind meant tough critique, no kid gloves. Michelle, however, ran her workshop in a kinder, gentler way. She wore kid gloves and offered lots of encouragement and support. I bristled at first but soon found that while Michelle’s approach might not have been what I wanted, it was exactly what I needed. It has been rewarding to maintain a connection to her over the years. She was an inspiring poeta and community-builder long before becoming Albuquerque’s Poet Laureate and we are so honored to share her words. ~JenniferPlume: When did you know you were a writer?Michelle Otero: I first knew when I was living in Mexico, halfway through my MFA. I had taken a year off to pursue a Fulbright project facilitating writing workshops for women survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Oaxaca bookended things for me. My time there started with an invitation to submit my work to Momotombo Press and ended shortly after my book release party. I know and forget and know again. Knowing I’m a writer is like many things for which I strive, reach a milestone, and then am humbled to realize it takes work and practice to keep it up – mental health, speaking Spanish, yoga, traveling alone, making tamales. I know I am a writer when I am writing, and then I forget, and then I write and know again. P: Where do you get your ideas?MO: It feels more like the ideas get me. I could spend the rest of my life writing about the place and people I am from – borderlands, New Mexico, fronterizos and all our complicated history, and how we make beauty out of mud. Though I still identify primarily as someone who writes creative nonfiction, I now more fully embrace my poet and short story and playwright self. The image or line or situation or question usually tells me how it wants to be explored. I know when I’m forcing an essay to be a poem or muscling a monologue into a short story. It really helps when I’m feeling blocked to have another form of exploration.P: … Read more
