Artemis Journal is an annual, juried publication that masterfully interlaces poetry and visual art, creating a radiant tapestry that celebrates the spirit of our region. Our mission is to uplift and showcase the creative voices that echo from the Appalachian hills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, nurturing artistic expression and weaving a strong, interconnected community.
Founded in 1976 as a writing workshop for survivors of domestic violence in the misty embrace of Southwest Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Artemis Journal began as a luminous sanctuary for voices long silenced. By transforming anguish into art, these workshops offered women not just a tool, but a lifeline: the power to write, to heal, and to reclaim their stories. Over the years, Artemis Journal has blossomed into one of the region’s most enduring and distinctive literary and arts publications, a testament to the resilience and creativity born from adversity.
Across five decades, the Roanoke-based journal has published over 3,000 poems and works of art, showcasing both emerging and renowned talents in American literature and visual arts. Pulitzer Prize winners, Poet Laureates, and new Appalachian voices appear side by side, making Artemis one of the few U.S. publications to fully integrate visual art and poetry throughout its pages.
Nurturing the next generation lies at the very heart of our mission. Artemis offers hands-on mentorship to young writers, guiding them through the vibrant process of creating a literary and art journal and compelling social media content. Students from Hollins University gain invaluable experience through our internship program, and we are proud to have two talented Hollins interns currently shaping our work. This year, we are thrilled to join forces with Roanoke City and the Roanoke City Public Library to launch a permanent regional Youth Poet Laureate program. These rising literary voices will not only contribute to our legacy, but will also help shape the celebration of our 50th Anniversary—an event made even more special by the presence of our distinguished guest, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, who will spend an afternoon session with the propective Youth Poet Laureates.
Artemis further amplifies creative voices through its bi-monthly podcast, Artemis Speaks. Hosted by Founder and Editor Jeri Rogers, the podcast features insightful conversations with artists and writers whose work graces the journal’s pages. Now in its vibrant fifth season, reaching 5000 listeners, Artemis Speaks invites listeners behind the scenes of artistic creation, offering intimate glimpses into inspiration, process, and passion—while championing the rich diversity that defines our creative community.
As a nonprofit, Artemis (Artemis Artists and Writers Inc. 501c3, EIN 52-1354121) donates 10% of annual sales to a local women’s shelter, remaining steadfast in its mission to amplify diverse creative voices from the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond.
This year, Artemis celebrates its 50th anniversary with a public launch event at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke on September 4, 2026, featuring guest speakers, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze and internationally acclaimed artist Michele Oka Doner as our cover artist.
ARTEMIS SPEAKS PODCAST FEATURING BETH MACY
BETH MACY, AUTHOR OF PAPER GIRL
Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist who writes about outsiders and underdogs. Raised poor in a small Ohio community, she is the award-winning author of three New York Times bestselling books examining rural communities left behind by corporate greed and political indifference.
A Guggenheim Fellow and a Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard, Macy has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. Her book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, is a combination memoir and reported analysis of the rural-urban divide told through the lenses of backward mobility, political polarization, and the decimation of local news.
Artemis Speaks Podcast – Dorothy Gillespie Documentary
Join the conversation with son Gary Isreal, President of the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation, and daughter Dorien Gillespie Bietz, children of Dorothy Gillespie, as they reflect on the many gifts their mother had in a groundbreaking documentary Courage, Independence and Color. The documentary will be shown on May 22, 2022 at the Grandin Theater in Roanoke, Va.
Artemis Journal was borne out of writing workshops for abused women. Ms. Gillespie donated her print celebrating Women in the Arts. The journal’s mission is to support, develop, and encourage the talents of artists and writers from the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond. Now in its 48th year, Artemis Journal looks back at its beginnings.
Dorothy Gillespie, acclaimed artist, donated her pastel painting to Artemis for our first cover, which became the citie’s first mural in downtown Roanoke, Va.
To Listen to the podcast, go to our Podcast Section on this website
Jeri Rogers and the refurbished mural in year 2022 holding the first Artemis Journal with Gillespies image.
Dragonfly Project
Part of Artemis’s mission is to reach out to younger Writers and Artists
Teacher, Michele Evans’s class in Loudon Count was gifted Artemis Journals by donors John Keiling and Nina Schlossman
Student Eugene, John Keiling, Michele Evans, Nina Schlossman
‘Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’
Nikki Giovanni & Jeri Rogers, Editor Artemis Journal
HBO has acquired the Documentary which won the Sundance Film Festivals best documentary of 2023
In the opening scene of Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson’s searching documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, the poet Nikki Giovanni shows her cards: “I don’t remember a lot of things,” she says as images of a glittering galaxy and archival footage of the poet as a child flash onscreen. “I remember what is important and I make up the rest. That’s what storytelling is all about.”
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project wants to let Giovanni choose how she is remembered without sacrificing an allegiance to linearity and mainstream appeal. So the documentary, anchored by the vivacious personality of its subject, blends its experimental inspirations (Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro) with the duty of a compositionally legible portrait (Timothy Greenfield Sanders’ Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am).
Hello 2023
We are off to a busy start, all submissions are now in and our Editors are making selections for the next journal. Thank you to all who have made submissions and to our supporters. The Artemis 2023 will be released next summer with an official launch at the Roanoke Taubman Museum of Art in the Fall. Stay tuned for details.
In the meantime, our Podcast, Artemis Speaks is now in the 3rd season with 40 interviews of artists and writers from our library. A big thanks to my co-producer, Skip Brown of Final Track Studio, who makes the magic happen.
Skip Brown, Producer recording Jordan Harmen singing our Posdcast theme song “Slow Down”
2023 Podcast Interviews
https://www.artemisjournal.org/podcast
Susan Hankla, Poet
Susan Hankla Poet has s long history with Artemis. Back in 1977, as a young writer, Susan’s poetry appeared in the very first edition of Artemis Journal. VA. For many years she worked as a traveling poet-in-the-schools working with underserved communities in Virginia, through generous grants from The Virginia Commission on the Arts. This made her love of teaching creative writing grow into reaching out to the Richmond community offering adult writing classes at the VMFA Studio School, The Visual Arts Center, & The University of Richmond. Her debut collection of poems, Clinch River, was released in 2017 and her second poetry book was just released, titled I’m not Evelyn published by Groundhog Press.
Nikki Giovanni, Poet
As a witness to four generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America’s political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni’s poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.
1977 Artemis Journal cover image, Passages V by Sam Krisch
Go to our Podcast section to hear Artemis Speaks interviews
Artemis Journal Launch
Regional culture kicked into a big gear on Friday at the Taubman Museum of Art. Our September launch featured our guest speaker, acclaimed poet, Nikki Giovanni. Our sold out crowd cheered our program which also had Southwest Virginia ballet Companie’s student dancer, alexis Potter performing along with Nikki giovanni’s reading of her poem, “Fall in Love, (for Artemis). Jordan Harmon, musican perfored music for the event.
The museum played host to two events in one. Roanoke’s annual Artemis Journal, devoted to Southwest Virginia artists and writers, had its launch party. “For the Love of a Book” is the theme for the 45-year-old publication’s latest iteration. The journal, developed from writing workshops for domestic violence victims in the region, this year features works that Nikki Giovanni inspired with her poem, “Fall in Love (For Artemis).”
The publication also features former U.S. Poet laureate Natasha Trethewey; Virginia poet laureates Ron Smith and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda; and Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa Igloria. Artists and writers from Floyd County — Colleen Redman, Katherine Chantal, Starroot and Lisal Kayati — are in the pages, along with more creators from around the world, according to information that Artemis editor Jeri Rogers provided.
New Podcasts featuring writers, Giovanni, Goette, Zanelli
Join host Jeri Rogers as she speaks to Nikki Giovanni about jazz, Jane Goette about her newly published novel, & Italian Poet, Alessio Zanelli
The renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni has a new album “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.”
In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different.
The new album, a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet.
“The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren’t just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let’s sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”
” The truth exists in the world and it is the job of the poet to pull the truth out of violentical air and place it with care upon the page to be casted from the mouth to the hearts of the people.”
– Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother, Irreversible Entanglements)
Nikki with Jovan recording at Final Track Studios with co-producer, Skip Brown
Jane Goette’s novel, A River Road Memoir is a journey through a young girl’s idyllic childhood in the rural South to her restless adolescence when the Civil Rights struggle becomes urgent and personal to her family. The unfolding story is told through the second daughter’s eyes. Jane is a serious child, the one her father calls, “a tree full of owls,” always thinking, observing, and wondering about meanings. Unresolved conflicts continue around the family table as the Civil Rights movement evolves, the Vietnam War begins, and chemical plants spring-like poison mushrooms along the river. Set in the 1950s and 1960s, the conflicts reflected in this book are hauntingly familiar to readers today as Americans continue to battle over the nation’s identity and values.
Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English, a language he has learned completely as an autodidact. His work has appeared in some 200 literary journals from 17 countries including, in the USA: Artemis, California Quarterly, Concho River Review, Italian Americana, The Lyric, North Dakota Quarterly, Philosophy And Literature, Potomac Review, Worcester Review, and World Literature Today, among about a hundred more. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.
To listen to the podcast, go to our podcast section
Artemis Journal Feminist Futures Award Winner
Artemis Speaks Podcast connects with Artist
Steven Kenny
Making connections
Artemis Journal is pleased to introduce a new artist to our community, Artist Steven Kenny, who makes nature his centerpiece in all his paintings. This connection to nature is good for us, and Steven reminds us of that vital connection.
According to Dr. Miles Richardson in Positive Psychology, “Knowing your place in nature brings meaning and joy.”
Living in our human-made world, we become disconnected, and emerging research is showing that a feeling of connection with nature is good for us.
There are many ways to expose yourself to nature, a simple walk in nature, the Japanese shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, or if you can’t get outside, you can immerse yourself in Steven Kenny’s art.
Steven was born in Peekskill, New York in 1962 and now resides in Check, VA. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design, receiving a BFA in 1984. After studying independently in Rome he gained notoriety as a freelance commercial illustrator, later devoting his full attention to fine art. His award-winning paintings are exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe.
“I believe future generations will look back on the period you and I now live in and will consider [Steven Kenny] one of the leading artists emblematic of contemporary painting in the first quarter and more of the 21st Century.”
– Paul Chimera, Dali historian with The Salvador Dali Society and author of the book, Dali & His Doctor: The Surreal Friendship Between Salvador Dali and Dr. Edmund Klein
LISTEN