Nanora Sweet finds power in women's writing, a power that she believes still isn't always recognized.

For the 16th edition of literary journal Natural Bridge, she wanted part of it devoted to poetry, fiction and essays "responding to women writers."

Natural Bridge received more than 500 submissions, and for the new edition it features poets citing the daring of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the "brave face" of Gwendolyn Brooks, the mountain-moving stanzas of Marge Piercy. "A lot of the poems are about bravery, about personal power," Sweet says. Short stories and personal essays are also included, written by both men and women.

Sweet was the guest editor for the edition, published by the University of Missouri at St. Louis where she is an English professor and faculty member of the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies.

The university's master of fine arts program has been publishing Natural Bridge for eight years, giving students a chance to read and edit submissions. They also argue over which creative works should be published. UMSL students and professors cannot submit their own work.

For the latest edition, five contributors from four states wanted to pay their own way to gather in St. Louis for a reading, joining several local writers.

This past week, Sweet discussed women writers and the recent edition of Natural Bridge.

Q: Why did you ask writers to focus on "responding to women writers"?

A: As a writer, I'm really conscious that writers not only base their writing on their experience, but on their reading, their language.

Women writers have been popular in many eras, but they tend to disappear from history.

Q: Do you mean they aren't anthologized as much?

A: Yes. They aren't as established in literary culture … in anthologies, in criticism, they aren't thought to have as much literary power.

Q: Why?

A: For me it's not a mystery. Who are the editors and anthologists? Traditionally, these have been men. Maybe, as poet Annie Finch says, we need "an entire literary apparatus" that brings women writers to the foreground … an old girls' network, if you will. Even more, we need to recognize creative writers like the women and men in our special section who show openly that women writers have influenced their work.

Q: You are involved in the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies at UMSL. How are gender studies faring now?

A: We have experienced a growth spurt lately. We have three new joint appointees (in history, political science and criminology, in addition to gender studies).

Q: Are gender studies more woven into university courses now, than say 30 years?

A: I think it is. I think people who left academics 20 or 30 years ago would be very surprised to find the things that are taken for granted now as subjects and topics. Women's history, gender in politics, the psychology of women. They've become more accepted.

Q: Is there really a need for gender studies now?

A: We certainly think so. Just using this issue of Natural Bridge as an example. It's one thing to institutionalize a course — and another thing to incorporate it into living culture. Natural Bridge, for example, is on the margins of academia and the rest of the world. When people write creatively they write about their lives. This is a venture in sticking our toes out into the world.

One of the contributors, Rebecca Ellis, is the publisher of the new Cherry Pie Press, which along with the group Loosely Identified, is a supporter of living poetry by women in our region.

Q: Don't current anthologies include women?

A: Yes, they do. But there was the relatively recent case of Harold Bloom (1998) refusing to include in the 10th anniversary issue of The Best of Best American Poetry anything Adrienne Rich had chosen for the anthology two years before. Also, of 19 guest editors for the series, only five have been women.

Q: What is the role of literary journals today?

A: Journals are much more than text files. They are works of art in themselves. I say that because I am as much a critic as a poet.