#IndieLitMagGala 2025 Spotlight: Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine
Alan Parry
October 10, 2025
Founded in 2015 and still standing strong a decade later, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine isn’t trying to be edgy, obscure,
On October 4, 2025, we’ll be launching #NotJustPretty — a new series that celebrates artists who identify as women. For us, this project is about refusing to let women’s creativity be reduced or silenced. It’s about amplifying voices in all their diversity, complexity, and defiance.
In this article, we introduce the artists whose work will shape our launch. Through poetry, art, film, and performance, they challenge the stories that have held women back and offer new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. Together, they embody what #NotJustPretty stands for: resilience, imagination, and truth.
after hours
museum statues
of bare breasted women,
stoned into silence
silenced by stone,
cramped
in candle lit corners
drip tears
for cracked ribs,
broken limbs;
waxy ghost arms and legs
puppet-dance with shadows.
From the rafters
red winged blackbirds
swoop down,
build nests
in the braids
of their once hennaed hair.
Artist Statement
‘We recently announced something big: #NotJustPretty — a new series uplifting artists who’ve identified as female. It’s led by Karen Pierce Gonzalez (who does not mess around), and kicks off 4 October…’
When I read the above #NotJustPretty statement in the September 7, Broken Spine newsletter, I laughed. Yep, ‘Karen Pierce Gonzalez (who does not mess around)’ sounds like me.
Is that because as former newspaper journalist, I had to meet deadlines’ – even those late breaking news ones? Writers block not an option, I quickly interviewed people, made calls, reached out to even strangers to establish sincere resources to collaborate with, to get the job done.
Or is it because I like to connect the dots between you and me so neither of us is lonely nor without hope which can tether us together?
Or is it because intuitively I know how important/satisfying it is to be ‘Karen Pierce Gonzalez creative’ (most often unconventional, unplanned)? I have learned, by trial and error, this is how I best move forward in this world, how I can celebrate myself and even include others who want to express their own creativity.
Or maybe it’s because I want to push back the limits for other women, too. Like my daughter, they also deserve to have and live personal dreams of self-worth and value.
So, yes to all of the above.
Every woman has a birthright to wholly be herself in body, mind, and spirit. And, jumping with both feet into an opportunity like this one makes me part of the solution rather than the problem.
Who wouldn’t want that?
To learn more about me (she/her) as poet (chapbooks, poetic librettos, performance poetry), writer (fiction, non-fiction), folklorist, editor/co-editor, and art, please visit.
We approached Tala Lillie to request use of this post’s cover image (from your We Are All series) as the #NotJustPretty website banner and overall branding because it captures what #NotJustPretty is about. The subject matter is all-inclusive; it represents the diverse world of women. The composition itself is a composite of forward-facing and half-hidden faces, bold lines and colors, as well as warm, soft lighting.
Artist Statement
Thank you Karen, and The Broken Spine for inviting me into #NotJustPretty. This particular series is an expression of the thoughts and experiences of being in this skin, orbit around me every single day.
In the frame of where we stand in our history right now, I was contemplating EVERYTHING.
The sounds of women’s voices, too long silenced by weight of patriarchal norms; the wounds we endure beneath what is visible, permanent scars etched into our psyche. I see all too clearly, and feel, the weight pressing down hard— all the expectations, limitations, the absurd, suffocating binary of gender.
But even amidst the chaos aren’t we women, and being women, aren’t we all? We are the ever-growing flicker of defiance. We ignite sparks of resilience.
I only hope this body of work bears testament to the multifaceted nature of womanhood, and celebrates our diversity, our strength, our inner beauty.
The forward-facing women in my composition represent defiant voices demanding to be heard. The half-hidden faces symbolize every complexity we are that cannot be contained, how our quiet strength, when ignored, is dangerous. The bold lines and colors carry our fierce resolve to break free from chains of confining perceptions and expectations. The soft lighting hints that hope is unfailing— we will unlearn, heal. We are still heading toward a future where women’s autonomy is sacred.
We Are All can help us to finally redefine what it means to be a woman, and while doing so, eradicate the misogynistic language that has been used to silence us.
We are not just pretty faces; we are intricate, multidimensional beings, deserving of respect, equality, and freedom from judgment and violence.
Jenny Wong (she/her) is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. Her work was selected for Best Microfiction 2025 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net Anthology, Best Small Fiction Awards, Best Microfiction, and The Forward Prize – Best Single Poem (Written). Her debut chapbook is “Shiftings & Other Coordinates of Disorder” (Pinhole Poetry, 2024). She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains where she makes short poetry films and plans her next adventures. You can find Jenny on YouTube and Bluesky.
Her latest chapbook Light Chemical Sea will be out in Fall 2026 with Bull City Press.
Jenny Wong’s poetry films are mini-masterpieces that combine poetry firmly rooted in explorations of self with moving visual components that are technically precise. Her work reflects a journey into cultural identity as well as poignant glimpses into her own personal fears and struggles.
Artist Statement
I’d like to say my poetry films all started with a little boredom, a lot of time (it was during the pandemic, after all), and a bit of necessity. But the true seeds were planted by two friends. One who taught me how she made her travel videos and another who taught an online course on Japanese poetry. That poetry course sparked a flurry of small poems based on random things I found around the house and in my fridge. I knew these poems had to stick together, but when I started thinking about a home for them, the usual choices of literary magazine and chapbook didn’t feel right. So, they sat.
Finally, during a cold wintry January/February of 2022 (again…more time), I remembered the friend who showed me her travel videos, and suddenly I knew that these poems would be the perfect subjects to try making poetry films. Even if no one watched them, I could learn a new skill and achieve my goal of keeping these poems together. Going through the process, I discovered a new creative joy and a new medium in which I could play. I found myself wanting to experiment even more with the connection between words and imagery, and it hasn’t stopped since.
She
After Jackson Pollock’s painting The She-Wolf (1943), MoMA New York
I will speak
the only way I know
as a wolf-headed woman
song and snarl
kiss and heart-howl
hackling
at every orphan cry
years sucking my flesh
to red seam
I will speak
what I know as truth
as a woman-headed wolf
there are teeth in everything
First published in The Orphic Review and in Daughter of Fire, Yaffle Press, 2025
Lucy Heuschen is a powerful voice for women across the ages. She captures the complexities women in any era, even her own, face without flinching. Her work is both tender and raw, immediate and timeless.
Lucy Heuschen, a London-born poet lives in the Rheinland, Germany. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including Dream Catcher, Skylight 47, The Storms, New Contexts, Ink Sweat & Tears, The High Window, The Orphic Review, Obsessed With Pipework, One Hand Clapping, Green Ink and Lighthouse. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, Lucy was commended in The Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition 2024. Her chapbooks: We Wear The Crown, Hedgehog Poetry Press 2022, and Loggerheads from The Broken Spine, 2024. Her debut collection, Daughter of Fire, was recently published by Yaffle Press. Find Lucy on Bluesky.
Artist Statement
One of my favourite poets, Ruth Padel, said there are many roads through a poetry collection; and for this reading I will focus on “women of history, myth, fantasy and legend”. I’ll be reading from my debut collection, Daughter of Fire. It centres on Margaret of Anjou, the medieval queen of England, a fierce protagonist in the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare’s malevolent “She-Wolf of France”. But there is more to Margaret than blood and vengeance. She was a daughter, wife, queen, mother, politician, leader, warrior, exile. She fought loyally, relentlessly. She risked everything. And she lost it all.
My challenge with these poems is to find the woman behind the slander. The real woman may be lost to us through the passage of time and political agendas. This is where poetry meets the past: when we find gaps and silences in chronicles and histories, they are so often woman-shaped. My poems explore, recreate and seek to understand their experience; to consider what these women share with our lives today.
The She-Wolf plays a central role at the start of Daughter of Fire, throwing down her challenge. She demands to speak; demands that we listen. This poem was inspired not only by Margaret, but by the wolf-mother of the twin founders of Rome and by a Jackson Pollock painting he created during World War II. So often women find themselves at the brutal, bloodied edge of war; Margaret of Anjou certainly was. How do we face and fight our battles – how do we bear our losses – to me, this is what defines us as women. I’m proud to be part of this reading. For me, giving voice to Margaret and other wayward women of the past is its own reward.
Rusty Rose was THERE when it happened. affectionately known as the ‘Grandmother of Stonewall’ she was a part of the Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall), a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in an early June morning in 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Although the demonstrations were not the first time American LGBTQ people fought back against government-sponsored persecution of sexual minorities, the Stonewall riots marked a new beginning for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
And she’s STILL HERE!
Suffragette Crowns
Come women, all hearts, all hues, all generations
tread lightly over roads of tar, cobbles, and dirt
march in solidarity in our homeland
and across the world; we blend to one
in this sea of pink, of suffragette crowns,
a garnish on our heads
Great grandmothers, mothers, grandmothers, aunts,
daughters, friends from long ago, we honor you
you, who have carried us this far
your spirits guide our every ebb and flow
in our blushing sea
we roll call your names, never forgetting
our struggles
as we demonstrate against inequality, for liberty
you are forever embraced in this sea of pink
with suffragette crowns,
a garnish on our heads
Come women, all hearts, all hues, all generations
clamor with determined voices, echo throughout
canyons of time to never be crammed into an
archaic black night again
in this sea of pink, with suffragette crowns,
a garnish on our heads
Combers of change, we demand it,
crash onto our shores of tomorrow
as we proceed
with spirit sisters walking at our side,
conveying promising words to tell
how far they have come
their life-force arouses our confidence,
because of them
we travel forth,
we must go on…
we know we will succeed
Twenty-first Century Women march on; march on
together, in our sea of pink with suffragette crowns,
a garnish on our heads
Veranda Sundown, Local Gems Press
Rita ‘Rusty’ Rose (she/they) is a globally published poet and a beloved iconic LGBTQ+ Civil Rights activist.
Her Long Island, New York, community has been bestowed upon her The Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry and activism. Presently, she serves as Poet Laureate of the Long Island LGBTQ Community.
She has also received proclamations by The Suffolk County Legislature, New York, for exceptional poetry and advocacy.
Her collections include Asylum: from the Inside, an expose re: abuse of the mentally ill in a New York State Hospital. Verandas of Sundown, Flower Poems: Personalities in Bloom. Forthcoming books include Before I leave (poetry)and Return to the Grave (fiction).
By popular vote, Rita B. ‘Rusty’ Rose is also 2025 Best Poet of Long Island.
Artist Statement
Themes of my poems have universal appeal. They capture human experiences — love, passion, grief, fear, sadness, joy, identity; to name a few.
They also reflect my Earthly experiences; be it personal or observed and are written in simple language to enable the reader, whether educated or not, to reap benefit from them, however, beneath each poem’s surface, if we delve deeper, are layers of richness and complexity.
This allows the reader to create their own lasting experience.
Here is a list of the poems I have selected to read:
Founded in 2015 and still standing strong a decade later, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine isn’t trying to be edgy, obscure,
In a lit world still groaning under the weight of gatekeepers, binary boxes, and pay-to-play submission models, new words {press} is a
In the sea of indie presses, few walk their talk like Arachne Press. Founded in 2012 and still run largely solo by
The Broken Spine is a poetry and arts collective proudly published on the coastal edge of North-West England. Founded in 2019 by Alan Parry and Paul Robert Mullen – two school friends reunited after twenty years through a mutual love of poetry.