v. 1. The writer herself : an introduction / Janet Sternburg ; Still just writing / Anne Tyler ; Why I write / Joan Didion ; The parable of the cave or : in praise of watercolors / Mary Gordon ; De memoria / Nancy Milford ; My grandmother who painted / Honor Moore ; Creating oneself from scratch / Michele Murray ; On being female, Black, and free / Margaret Walker ; Thoughts on writing : a diary / Susan Griffin ; One child of one's own : a meaningful digression within the work(s) / Alice Walker ; The middle period / Ingrid Bengis ; What it is I think I'm doing anyhow / Toni Cade Bambara ; Blood and guts : the tricky problem of being a woman writer in the late twentieth century / Erica Jong ; The coming book / Maxine Hong Kingston ; Opening night : the opening days / Janet Burroway ; The education of a poet / Muriel Rukeyser ; Becoming a writer / Gail Godwin

v. 2. New essays in new territory : an introduction / Janet Sternburg ; The need to say it / Patricia Hampl ; A four-hundred-year-old woman / Bharati Mukherjee ; A sleeve of rain / Harriet Doerr ; My mother, literature, and a life split nearly into two halves / Kaye Gibbons ; The care-givers / Maxine Kumin ; Travelling writer / Jan Morris ; Hearing voices / Linda Hogan ; A question mark engraved on my eyelids / Elena Poniatowska ; A fire had to be lit / Anita Desai ; My vocation / Natalia Ginzburg ; Shifing things / Joy Williams ; Dipt me in ink / Elizabeth Jolley ; Aspiradora / Diane Johnson ; Nine beginnings / Margaret Atwood ; The house that Jill built / Rita Dove ; Life at close range / Gretel Ehrlich ; The province of radical solitude / Carolyn Forch ̌; Writing with the body / Luisa Valenzuela ; White lanterns / Diane Ackerman ; The writer on, and at, her work / Ursula Le Guin.