The CWCW Blog

My mom gave me plenty of great advice over the course of her lifetime. Don’t “should” on yourself.  (I should do this! I shouldn’t have done that.) Don’t date men you wouldn’t consider marrying.  It’s a waste of your time and theirs. Don’t expect people to be more than they’re capable of being. But my favorite, and one of the hardest ideas to [...]

I’VE BEEN THINKING a lot about past friendships as I write this blog. My friendships I made in master ballet teacher’s Finis Jhung’s brilliant ballet classes at the Alvin Ailey Extension led me to reconsider my role as a friend.  Mr. Jhung’s classes led me to meditate on seeing myself and how others see me. It was through his classes and the [...]

A FEW YEARS ago, (five, to be exact), I took a job as the executive director of the Feminist Press. Prior to that, I had written six books about feminism (for houses like FSG, Seal, and Akashic), dozens of features for magazines, made two activist documentaries, and was a regular on the Women’s and Gender Studies lecture circuit. I felt [...]

MEMORY DEVOURED THE SUMMER OF THE ONE-YEAR anniversary of Vinni’s disappearance. I thought about renting the house—the perfect punishment—in Spring Haven, but I knew that wasn’t the answer. John D’Orfini kept his eye on the calendar. In the weeks leading up to the first anniversary, he called and left a voice mail: “Just checking in. [...]

I HAD THE quintessential New York City experience on Easter Sunday. I spent several hours at the Museum of Modern Art, transfixed by the exhibit Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil. I had no idea who Tarsila was, but a recent piece about her that aired on CBS Sunday Morning, really spoke to me. The exhibit features more than 100 [...]

HARD TO BELIEVE, but Conversations With Creative Women is coming up on interview #300! And what a roster of women we’ve had the pleasure to meet and get to know: educators, actors, authors, athletes, filmmakers, musicians, painters/sculptors, museum curators, writers, fashion designers, business women, scientists, explorers, social [...]

SHE DIDN’T RUN into a door. She didn’t get punched by a stranger in the street. Someone who claimed to love her did this. The nurses and doctors in the ER know it. The cops know it. The neighbors know it. The children know it. But no one really wants to know it. Women with black eyes make people uneasy. He seems like such a great guy! [...]

OVER 200 CHOREOGRAPHERS and dancers from 38 countries descended on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in late January for the second-ever Women in Dance Leadership Conference, the brainchild of choreographer, dance educator, and film producer Sandra Shih Parks. Hosted by NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the Danspace Project, the conference had [...]

WHEN I FOUND out I was going to Kolkata, I was terrified. The rumors of being placed at gunpoint and of sex trafficking sent chills down my spine. I still agreed to go. At first we were going to go for my dad’s documentary on former sex trafficking victims who learned how to make jewelry. But, the day before we were supposed to leave, that job [...]

THIS PAST DECEMBER I took a vacation with my husband. It was our first vacation without children in over 30 years. It was a vacation to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, my birthday, Christmas, and any other major event you can think of because money is tight these days and we rarely indulge ourselves. This time, however, we pulled out [...]