NEWS BREAK

Welcome to The Venus Auditorium

The doors to our women's community publication are open — come inside.

We’re glad you’re here.

We are two women who have spent the last year building something we didn’t see enough of in the world: a genuinely safe, genuinely creative space for women to write. Not to become writers — to find out what they actually think, feel, and know. It turns out those are different things, and the gap between them closes remarkably fast when you sit down with a prompt and other women who are doing the same thing.

The Venus Auditorium has two purposes. We facilitate creative writing for women — in guided sessions, online and in person — and we publish the voices that come out of our writing community.

That second part is new. This publication is new. And we’re excited about it.

Why a Substack

What we kept seeing in our sessions was this: a woman would write something in thirty minutes that stopped the room. Something true, something specific, something that made everyone else quietly think I have felt that too. And then the session would end and the piece would go back into a notebook.

We wanted a place to bring those pieces into the world — where they belong, where they’re needed, where they can quietly shift the direction of things.

With our community Substack, many of these women take their first steps out into publicity.

What’s coming on April 19th

We’re launching with seven pieces written by seven women in our community — all created under our spaceholding, in the context of our writing sessions.

Seven voices, seven experiences of being a woman right now. There is humor and grief, nature and cosmos, tenderness and fire. Each piece is genuinely different from the last, and each one earns its place here.

We’ll be publishing each piece individually in the days leading up to the 19th, so you can start reading before the official launch. On April 19th, we’ll send our first newsletter introducing all seven writers and their work.

Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.

Two invitations

The first is simply to read. These pieces were written by real women, from real experience, in a room full of trust. We think you’ll feel that.

The second is to write with us. If anything you read here makes you think I have something to say too — we want to hear it. Our writing sessions are open to all women, no experience needed. You don’t need to think of yourself as a writer. You only need to be a little curious about your own voice.

Details on how to join are on our website. We’d love to have you.

with fierce love,

Almina & Alex

The Venus Auditorium

The Venus Auditorium is founded by Almina Hodek and Alex Terwilliger. We run guided creative writing sessions for women online and in person. This Substack publishes the voices that come out of that work.