Today we present “The Jade Plant,” a poem by Martha Rhodes, which is to say that you will read the work of one of poetry’s most esteemed polymaths.

In her new memoir, Edna O’Brien is rebellious and ravenous for adventure. Anchee Min struggles in America after shocking deprivation in China. Marisa Silver imagines the hope and disenchantment experienced by the “Migrant Mother” in Dorothea Lange’s famous photograph. And Khaled Hosseini’s novel examines the spiritual scarring left by tyranny, war, crime, lies, and illness on his characters.

By Alexandra MacAaron

The movie is nearly two and a half hours long, so I was prepared for an epic. I was also, to be honest, prepared to be disappointed. And I was wrong.

Many a poem will be read today. Some of them will be treacle, some treasure. “Boiling Point,” by Andrea Cohen, is treasure.

In this week’s Wednesday 5: Afghan Journalist Najiba Ayubi wins a ‘Courage in Journalism’ Award; a father’s well-intentioned letter to his young daughter about keeping a “man’s interest” turns controversial; the “Great Gatsby” film unearths a myriad of misrepresentations and stereotypes about the 1920s flapper; “Scandal,” as ridiculous as the plots are, works because of cast chemistry; and a poignant video re-imagines a world where hate crimes don’t exist.

In [Screened], poet, photographer, and teacher Star Black turns her lens toward her youth, never relaxing her grip on the reality of adolescence.

In this week’s Wednesday 5: Women behind the lens at the recent Tribeca Film Festival; TV shows that hired no women writers in 2011-12; Jenna Lyons takes J.Crew from “ugly duckling to fashion arbiter”; a centenarian, Kathryn Wasserman Davis, dazzles us; and Saudi Arabia launches its first anti-domestic-violence campaign.

By Deborah Harkins

The (pleasant) challenge for 40-year-old director Kirsten Kelly: Mount a play involving 50 brides and 50 flight-suited, helicopter-dangling grooms on the stage of a 60-seat theater.

Ginger Andrews has been known to say she thinks each of her poems is actually a prayer. Today we give thanks for her gifts and for the chance to present one of her joyful poems of thanksgiving.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s wit, forthrightness, and perceptiveness make the book special. She calmly addresses the fears and selfish motivations we visitors would never admit to, and offers counsel on dilemmas we’d have no idea how to handle.

This week, in celebration of the Pulitzer recognition of the luminescent Sharon Olds, we salute each of the six women who have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry since the year 2000.

By Alexandra MacAaron

“I’m going to get into so much trouble for saying this,” says author Jean Hanff Korelitz. “I think women are more willing [than men] to keep multiple ideas in their heads at the same time. . . . We know that crazy humor and great sadness are bound up together, because that is the way many of us live our lives.”

By Chris Lombardi

In “Holding Silvan,” Monica Wesolowska explores with honesty the kind of questions most of us don’t want to think about — the kind of choices people make for their loved ones when they’re about to die.

Pauline’s poem, presented here, speaks for itself. Yet, given her age (26) and the unusual circumstance of her appearing here, we hope you will want to get to know her better. We’d like you to have the chance to read the harrowing stories she wrote to us.

“I regularly encounter women who don’t know their real age or name because they were trafficked into the sex industry before they could read or write,” declares Pauline Lacanilao, a young poet who has set out to shine a light on misogyny in the Philippines.