The CWCW Blog

IT WASN’T AN item on a bucket list, though that’s what I had told people. A bucket list was easier to explain than the countless classes I had registered for, attempted, and subsequently quit after six months or six weeks. Then there were the classes I took “on and off” for years, such as tango. I can’t remember how I got into tango, [...]

WHEN I WAS sixteen years old, I was eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant with a close friend when he asked a humorous but pointed question: “So what you’re choosing to do with your life is essentially this: You are going to move your arms back and forth repeatedly in order to make a strip of metal wiggle, which will then cause air molecules to [...]

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 [...]