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Literary Mama is celebrating Father's Day all month with our poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and reading list. Read on!
Reviews
06.20.09 | Gathering Storms A Review of Kristina Riggle's Real Life and Liars (review by Masha Hamilton): "When our children can't feed or dress themselves, when they fall and skin their knees or become feverishly ill, of course they need us. But as mothers, how long should we be asked to put our children's needs first? Even after they’re fully grown adults? Even as we face our own deaths? These are among the questions that drive Kristina Riggle's debut novel, Real Life and Liars, an engaging drama focusing on a mother and her three adult children, told with great humanity and a deft comic touch."
Columns
06.20.09 | Doing It Differently watches a new generation make history, while Mama at the Movies travels to where history -- and literature -- were (literally) written.
Now Reading
06.20.09 | Each month, we ask Literary Mamas to share what is on their bedside table, in their purse, or somewhere in the shifting work pile. This month, Literary Mamas are reading with their kids, reading to escape, reading to renew, and reading to entertain. This is a round list; there is at least one here to please even the pickiest reader!
Download the list to find it fast at your local bookstore or library.
Blog
Literary Mama editors chime in on upcoming events, literary news, and other happenings around the maternal blogosphere.
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Creative Nonfiction
06.13.09 | In Night Moves, Tim O'Connell writes: "About 3:00AM I heard footsteps in the hall. I knew they were Devin's. He and Danny have distinct nighttime steps. Danny's come quickly; he scampers from his room to ours. Devin's are slow and plodding. His shadow self entered the room and climbed onto his bed. He seems bigger at night, in the dark. 'Can we cuddle?' he asked."
And in Christine White's Discarded, she writes, "'We need your discards!' reads the postcard from the Vietnam Veteran's National Headquarters. I imagine it's from my father even though I know it's direct mail. 'Please call now,' it says, in big bold letters, underlined. They sell whatever is donated and use the profits to support state and national programs. After the word "programs," in parenthesis, the card clarifies, 'homeless Veterans, agent-orange related health problems, improved hospital care for veterans with disabilities.' They mean men like my father. Veterans who came home with 'adjustment' issues. I grew up without him with stories about him unemployed, drunk and homeless."
Finally, Jeannie Marshall offers Advice From My Father: "For me, my father has never existed. He is only an echo of memory, more faint even than the memory of the house where we all once lived together. When I was five or six and desperate for something more tangible than a story, I asked my mother if we could dig him up. She told me that all we would find were bones and teeth, maybe hair. I would have liked to see those things, whatever remained of him."
Fiction
06.13.09 | He Waits Helplessly , by Emma Shortt: "The metal bed was pushed head-first against one graying wall, and it and the woman on it were shaking, ever so slightly. Also in the room was a veneered cabinet, chipped around the edges, and a chair that had seen far too many years. There was more spring left on the chair than padding and so the man chose to stand next to the bed.
"There should have been another woman in the room, one who would know what to do. But they didn't know where she was, or even when she might arrive. The man hoped it would be soon."
Essential Reading
05.08.09 | This Father's Day, Literary Mamas share four essential titles containing a variety of insights for fathers everywhere. Celebrate this special day with a good book!
Share the love! Download the list to find it fast at your local bookstore or library.
Essays
06.06.09 | In I Am a Secret Novelist, Marian Berges writes, "When I was growing up I never wanted to leave the dinner table, not wanting to miss my father's stories. When he was in a good mood he was a wit, an intellectual performer. He kept his inner life hidden; there were no anecdotes about his childhood; he seemed to come from nowhere; sui generis. No sisters, no brothers."
Feeling inspired? Check out the related writing prompt.
Poetry
06.06.09 | For Father’s Day month, fathers, daughters, and fathers’ partners present us with fruit, sparks, seeds, and adventurous labor: A Bag of Green Apples by Stephanie Bryant Anderson: "Your fruit lives in me / where you, and your blood, spill." Upon Discovering My Wife Curled on a Dog Towel in the Downstairs Bathroom During My Fifth Month of Pregnancy by Tricia Asklar: "I carry the embers of my family mixed / with the sliver of an unknown someone. . ."; Tooth Fairy by Amy Watkins: "I carry it to him on my open palm, tiny / and shaped like a chisel. . ." Morning Ride by Amy Watkins: "I judged your mood by the way you said / at sunrise, 'How's that old mule doing?'" Penny Horse by Matthew Vetter: "and I am left / alone, desperately clutching my bags, / nodding my head and humming along …"; Measurements by Matthew Vetter: "He will fall and I will know his pain / because I will count the seconds …"; holding my son at 2 a.m. by larry bauer: "i sprayed a / second mist / of 'bad-dream / spray'" and Shavuot (First Fruits) by David Harris Ebenbach: "The boy sees it all for what it is:"
Profiles
05.31.09 | A Conversation with Pamela Tanner Boll. Who Does She Think She Is? is a documentary film that profiles several mother-artists, including painters, writers, sculptors, actors and poets, revealing the point at which their motherhood and creativity meet. Editor-in-Chief and Mama at the Movies columnist Caroline Grant, who had written about the film in her column, was intrigued by the woman behind the film, director Pamela Tanner Boll. Grant spoke with Boll about what it was like to embark on a project in the previously unfamiliar territory of film, the ways in which motherhood and creativity exist together, and the message she’d like viewers to take with them after seeing her film.
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