"That's what you're wearing tonight?" Ethan asked me. It was the afternoon before his eighth-grade graduation and we'd run into each other in front of the pizza place on our block. I was on my lunch hour and he was wandering with a group of friends after having finished his half day of school.
Read More...

Last month's prompt invited readers to write a poem on the theme "Mother to Father."
Read More...

Literary Mamas share what they are reading this summer. Take your pick!

Download the list to bring to your local bookstore or library.
Read More...

How refreshing it was to open Gravity Pulls You In, a new collection of essays and poems about parenting children on the autism spectrum. Gravity is the table at the coffeehouse where I sat with other mothers. Gravity is the support group meeting, and the friend on the other end of the telephone who knew just what I was going through.
Read More...

Ian is not finished telling me about how I have betrayed him. "I can't believe you left me there!" he hisses. "I can't believe you weren't there when I needed you. Why weren't you there to help me?" His eyes are filled with tears and disbelief. While I apologize, I feel him growing up, just a little, as he sees -- not for the first time, and not for the last -- that his mother is fallible, not one hundred percent trustworthy. This, I know, is one step on the path to realizing his mother is mortal.
Read More...

Leslie sits cross-legged on a rickety wooden dock at daybreak, snorkel and mask on her lap, waiting for her research team to arrive. After navigating the morning market -- crowded with vendor carts and rainbow pyramids of hairy eggplants, dragon-striped melons and papayas--and passing through its humid, curry-scented morning haze, she's hungry. Oh, to have another shot at yesterday's Christmas dinner, spicy Thai noodles with shrimp and red chilies.
Read More...

The three-year old's hand is an enormous fist,

rings of alien lights wink on its width.
Read More...

Blood Strangers, a new memoir by Kathy Briccetti is both a coming out and coming-of-age story as well as a genealogical mystery, which untangles a multi-generational chain of adoptions, family secrets, and fatherless children. Briccetti earned a Ph.D. In clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley and an MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast program of the University of Southern Maine. In 2009 she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She currently works as a school psychologist and writer/editor in the Bay Area where she lives with her two sons. Briccetti talked with Berkeley writer Suzanne LaFetra about birthing her book, the significance of Father's Day in a two-mom household, and the way family ties bind us through the generations.
Read More...