This cross-genre discussion explores how animal and plant metaphors are deployed to constrain women in literary texts. Metaphors can shore up power for those who already have it, reifying the boundary between the rational/civilized/human/(male) and the irrational/wild/animal or plant/(female). We'll spotlight the women writers who reject toxic metaphors that construct hierarchical binaries, instead composing texts celebrating their animal selves, their intricate roots, and sun-reaching stalks.

“Kate McIntyre is the author of the story collection Mad Prairie, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award and is forthcoming from UGA Press. She is an assistant professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she edits the Worcester Review.

Karen Leona Anderson is the author of the poetry collections Receipt and Punish honey. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Grant. She is an associate professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Wendy Oleson is author of two award-winning chapbooks, Please Find Us and Our Daughter and Other Stories. Her fiction has appeared in Copper Nickel, Cimarron Review, SmokeLong Quarterly: Best of the First Ten Years, and elsewhere. Wendy teaches for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension and Washington State at Tri-Cities and serves as Associate Prose Editor for Fairy Tale Review.

Carley Gomez is a Gus T. Ridgel Fellow and PhD candidate in English at the University of Missouri where she studies speculative fiction and border literature. Her creative work is concerned with multiplicity of identities and the intergenerational consequences of colonialism.

Sarah A. Chavez is the author of the poetry collections, Hands That Break & Scar and All, Day Talking. She teaches creative writing & Latinx/Chicanx-themed courses at the University of Washington, Tacoma, serves as Poetry Coordinator for the Best of the Net Anthology, & is a recipient of the 2019-20 Tacoma Artists Initiative award.”