Tag Archives: Anne Valente

The three pieces in Emprise this issue share a common theme: girls at the cusp of becoming women. Would you mind telling us a little more about the pieces and the series they’re part of? Where did the idea for the series come from? What was the urgency to write about girls, and particularly girls at this age?

This was a project that popped up out of nowhere for me a few months ago.  I’d been writing short stories of longer length and also working on a novel, and had no real plans to create a series of any sort.  But these short little vignettes started coming, in bursts between working on longer pieces, and I began to recognize the pattern among them.  I also paid attention to my own interest in them.  I’m not sure where the urgency comes from, other than my own attention to the ways girls change over the course of girlhood due to a number of external pressures and factors.  I’ve linked together about 25 different years of ages for these separate girls, though I’m still not entirely happy with the project as a whole.  I think I’ll call it a work-in-progress for now.  My biggest challenge with it is finding an overarching umbrella to link them all without putting forth a voice for the experiences of all girls and women.  Surely there’s some common ground that women share, but not a single narrative by any means. Continue reading →