It’s that time of year: December Letters Project preparation time!
We invite you and/or your families, clubs, organizations, schools, and communities to be part of MITA’s – 2025 – December Letters Project. This is MITA’s annual local literacy project, but we encourage others to run a December Letters Project in their local communities if you’re not local to the greater western New York region.
Continue reading “2025 December Letters Project”
Safe is Halfway Across the World
“Otaghet boo adam gerefte” (your room smells like human). This is a classic Ariana expression meaning your room is getting stuffy. Before I can sit up on the bed, she walks to the back of the bedroom and opens the room’s only tiny window. “And clean this mess, will you?” pointing to the bedroom floor. We go back and forth between English and Persian.
Continue reading “Shahrzad Sajadi”
Dear Abu
It’s a curious thing. I don’t know why when I see photos of you I must fight the urge to cry. First as a kid it was anger, then sadness, wondering why? Now as a grown woman, it’s still sadness and tears. As if my heart has been broken. As if my heart has been ripped out of me. As if there’s an emptiness inside, a void that’s never and will never be filled.
Continue reading “Daaimah Lyon”
I Collected Four Pall Bearers Along the Way
1: The Notifying Officer
Estranged is an elegant word for a particular brutality. My family is sick with it. My brother died within the immurement of many estrangements: from me, from our bad father, from our mother, from (presumably) friends and old lovers. Meaning, he died alone. “Unattended” is the word the very gentle sheriff used when he broke the news to me a full country away from that brother, away from his body that was now in need of a next of kin. We don’t discuss how or why my brother was not in possession of a next of kin during the last moments of his life nor in the many days he waited after death for neighbors to summon a clean-up crew.
Continue reading “Deb Rogers”
And a Cherry on Top
It was a brisk January day, the sun was bright and shining. It was the kind of day when I look out the window and the sun convinces me Spring has come early, I go outside and then have to immediately zip my jacket all the way up, pull my collar high around my neck and shove my ungloved hands into my pockets: ridiculing myself for being naïve.
Continue reading “Diane Renee Tomasi”
Blended days. Some days I feel like I can handle it all. Other days I feel like I can barely get out of bed. Continue reading “Stephanie Velez, MSW”
Ashes To The East
Francine Bankowski handed the neatly wrapped bundles of cloth to the woman before her—her slender, icy hands trembling—noting her customer’s look of distaste when they touched.
I’m cold and tired, not filthy, Continue reading “Lisa Carter”
Madwomen in the Attic 