If the Darkness Is Lacking

Meggie Royer is a Midwest artist and writer working in the gender-based violence field. As a teen writer, she won a National Gold Medal for Poetry and Silver Medal for Writing Portfolio in the 2013 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and her artwork has been exhibited at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Iowa. Her most recent exhibit was a collection of mixed-media images displayed at the 17th Annual University of Michigan Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center art show in April 2022. Royer is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a literary and arts journal for abuse survivors. She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the 2019 Princemere Poetry Prize. Royer’s poetry has been published in Plain China: National Anthology of the Best Undergraduate Writing, The Rumpus, The Minnesota Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and more. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Macalester College and a Master of So