Menopause: The Anthology

Dr Catherine Pestano is a social worker and menopause activist. She has led two successful largescale workplace menopause programmes, for Croydon local authority and for the Open University, awarded two national diversity and innovation awards. Visiting Fellow at the Open University, she has authored on menopause for the OU Nursing programme. Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor of almost all our anthologies and runs the Annual Solstice Shorts Festival. Cherry is the author of an epic fantasy novel, two collections of short stories, a photographic diary of a community opera, and has had many stories in anthologies, magazines and online. Her novel of sibling hatred in the 1920s, The Bog Mermaid, won the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose prize 2022.

• From Menarche to Menopause Cath Holland8Pause Rachel Playforth13A sudden ending Anne Macaulay14My Wild Fires Marina Sanchez16The Grandmother Hypothesis Genevieve Carver17Be Cool Tina Bethea Ray18more the use the womb is put to than the womb itself Jane Ayres20Flashes of Kindness Victoria Bailey21Women of Your Age Erica Borgstrom22Night Sweats Julie-Ann Rowell24Red Clover and Black Cohosh Days Anne Caldwell26A Cabin in the Woods Lucy Lasasso27Washing Mary Jane Ayres32Deja vu Sian Northey34Shape-shift Alyson Hallett35Obit: My Last Egg Susan Bennett36Woman's Work Cheryl Powell37Relieved Victoria Bailey39The Other Side of Nowhere Jessica Manack40Flush Anne Caldwell42Foreign Land Ellesar Elhaggagi43Fairy Tales for the Over Fifties Alison Habens44Black Armour Joanne Harris48Breakup Helen Campbell52my vulva & i used to be friends Jane Ayres53Menostop Kim Whysall-Hammond54Shamans in Luburbia Kavita A Jindal55A Summer Prematurely Here Victoria Ekpo61Nuclear Tingle Karen F Pierce63Ruby-Red Jewel Martha Patterson64HUM PBA CK JP Seabright65Over the Bloody Moon-a prose poem Adele Evershed66You have been this country I have known Jane Burn68Dried Susan Cartwright-Smith70Evorel Clare Starling72The Change Ginger Strivelli73China Anne Caldwell77Natural wastage Anne Eccleshall78Gutsy Menopausal Woman Chloe Balcomb79O Womb Mary Mulholland80Silver Swans Amanda Addison82Monthly Tessa Lang84men-oh-paused - haibun Victoria Bailey85Demeter Elizabeth A Richter86Her mid-life performance review Ruth Higgins88The Farmer's Fire Jane McLaughlin89Wilding Em Gray93On Discovering a New Energy Source Claire Booker94Enough Already Claire Lynn95