“Within the chambers of a quivering heart”: Celebrating Virgo Writers

Within the chambers of a quivering heart, Virgo authors hold many things: jeweled memories and alphabetized archives, boxes of old love letters, battered rule books, and promises of perfection. It is where, as Terry Tempest Williams writes, their “beauty and bravery meet.” Further, it is where their words come from… books and books of them, tumbling out like stones from the polisher or like geodes freshly cracked and turned to the sun. 

Virgos are the authors of the earth. As wise as William Least Heat-Moon, as precise as Mary Shelley, and as enduring as Jean Rhys, they have carved their work from the world for centuries. Take Agatha Christie, who wrote her non-stop bestselling mysteries in the half-hour increments she could whittle away from domestic life. Or Richard Wright, who penned his famous Native Son on the same everyday, all-weather bench in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. Steadfast and sustaining, Virgos are the healers, candle holders, and compasses of the zodiac.

They are the authors who keep us pointed northward and the only ones who will guide us, by celestial hand, through the heart of literature. A place where Rita Dove works in one chamber, and Jorge Luis Borges in another. A place where adrienne maree brown and Mary Oliver live: Julio Cortázar and H.D. and William Saroyan too. A place where nothing is done halfway and where no word is wasted. 

Sarah J. Bofenkamp is a reader, writer, and librarian living in Palouse, Washington. Her partner, Mary, is a Virgo.

Famous Virgo Authors