Our Mission Statement
Who We Are
Contributors, A-C
Contributors, D-F
Contributors, G-I
Contributors, J-L
Contributors, M-Q
Contributors, R-T
Contributors U-Z
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Literary Mama
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Our Mission StatementLiterary Mama, an online literary magazine, features writing by mother writers about the complexities and many faces of motherhood. We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, literary criticism, book reviews, columns, and profiles about mother writers. Literary Mama features mama-centric writing with fresh voices, superior craft, and vivid imagery. We are a home for beautiful poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction that may be too long, too complex, too ambiguous, too deep, too raw, too irreverent, too ironic, and too body conscious for other publications. While plenty of other online literary magazines and journals publish writing like this, none devote themselves exclusively to writing about motherhood. And while there are other motherhood-centered sites that publish some fantastic writing, they tend to stick to shorter, non-fiction pieces. At Literary Mama, writers explore ideas and emotions that may be outside the usual scope of commercial writing. Literary Mama is also a resource and outlet for the academic literary community. We provide literary criticism, book reviews, and author profiles. New courses focusing on motherhood and literature are cropping up at universities across the United States, and Literary Mama wants to encourage this trend by providing professors with the information they need. We are a site for writers, not just mothers. At Literary Mama, craft is just as important as theme or message. Writers may need and want to write for the commercial market, but they also may need and want to write for themselves. We know that becoming a mother takes more than the physical act of giving birth or completing an adoption; it takes birthing yourself as a mother through psychological, intellectual, and spiritual work that continues throughout your life. However, women's stories of personal growth as we become mothers tend to remain invisible, untold. Literary Mama honors the difficult and rewarding work women do as they move into motherhood by making these stories visible. Who We AreSarah Brownd, Reviews Editorial Assistant, is a copyeditor for The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Her professional background is in technical editing and writing, although her first love (and undergrad major) is poetry writing. Sarah lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband and toddler daughter Sophie. Melinda Copp, copyeditor in Fiction, is a writer and freelance editor who lives in Bluffton, South Carolina with her fiance and son. She is currently working on her MFA in creative nonfiction at Goucher College. Elrena Evans, Marketing and Publicity Manager, holds an MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, and together with Literary Mama Senior Editor Caroline Grant is co-editor of Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008). Her writing appears in the anthologies Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House 2006) and How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel (Seal Press 2008), as well as in Brain, Child, Episcopal Life, Hip Mama, Relief, and Literary Mama. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family, and blogs at her website. Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, Literary Reflections Editor and Multi-Culti Mami columnist, is a Spanish-American poet, writer, and teacher. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary venues, including Literary Mama, Mamazine, Tattoo Highway, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cicada, Soleado, and the anthology The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change (Seal Press, 2008). Her website is www.TurnPeoplePurple.com and her blog is http://multicultimami.wordpress.com. Violeta lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, their son and two daughters, all adopted as infants from Guatemala, and their two incorrigible dogs. She is currently at work on her first novel.
Kate Haas, Creative Nonfiction Editor, is a writer and freelance editor. Before parenthood, she worked in editorial production at the New England Journal of Medicine, taught blind students in the Peace Corps in Morocco, and was a high school English teacher on both coasts. She writes about it all in Miranda, her zine about motherhood and other adventures. Kate's essays have been published in Brain, Child, The Mothers Movement Online, and Mamazine.com. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two sons. Joanne Catz Hartman, Profiles Editor, lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. She writes the column "Mother Angst" for Literary Mama and is a columnist for San Francisco's J . Her work appears in the anthologies Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, Using Our Words, and The Knitter's Gift. Prior to motherhood, she worked for a New England public television station on an award-winning feature magazine show, was a reporter and photographer for a sailing magazine, an editor at a wire service, and spent a decade teaching middle school. Jenny Hobson, Profiles Copyeditor, lives, blogs, knits, and does GIS in an Ohio River town in West Virginia. She lives with her husband and preschooler daughter. Her blog can be found at Hobson's Choice. Sonya Huber, Creative Nonfiction Editor, is an assistant professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University. Her first book of fiction and creative nonfiction, Opa Nobody (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), opens an imaginary conversation with her long-dead anti-Nazi German grandfather about the way to combine a private life with public responsibilities and political passions. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Literary Mama, Fourth Genre, Passages North, Kaleidoscope, and Hotel Amerika; in three anthologies from Seal Press; in Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, in the forthcoming anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008) and other anthologies; and in The Chronicle of Higher Education, In These Times, and Earth Island Journal. Sonya is a Midwesterner who lives with her husband and son, Ivan, in Statesboro, Georgia. More info at www.sonyahuber.com. Amy Hudock, Ph. D., Founding Co-Editor, teaches English at an independent college prep school in South Carolina, where she lives with her daughter. She is the co-editor of Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press 2006) and American Women Prose Writers, 1820-1870 (Gale 2001), and the author of scholarly essays on nineteenth-century American women writers. Her memoir writing about motherhood has appeared in the anthologies Mama PhD (2008), Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers (2008), Chicken Soup for the Soul: A Tribute to Mothers (2008), and Single State of the Union (2007). Her work has also appeared in periodical publications such as Skirt!, ePregnancy, Pregnancy and Baby, Philosophical Mother. She regularly writes for Literary Mama in fiction, creative nonfiction, and columns. You can read her discussions about mothering in her archived column here at Literary Mama, Mothering in the Ivory Tower, and at Single Mothering Southern Style. Merle Huerta, E-zine Editor, is an army chaplain’s wife, a religious Jew, and a mother of a blended family of thirteen; she has a Bachelors in Psychology from University of Pittsburgh, and a Masters in Instructional Media and Technology from Columbia University. During her husband’s first combat deployment to Iraq in 2003, she began co-writing articles about his experiences at the front. The series, “Notes from the Front,” published in the West Point PointerView, was to serve as an educational travelogue for military cadets at the U.S. Academy who were facing almost certain deployment after graduation. Some of their articles have been published in The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Press, and National Review. Currently, she is studying non-fiction with New York editors at The Writers’ Institute, a specialized graduate-level writing program at CUNY. Much of her writing focuses on the human element, how we survive and emerge victorious after devastating life circumstances. Merle resides in West Point, New York, home to the U.S. Military Academy. You can reach her at jrlexicographerAThotmailDOTcom.
Susan Ito, Creative Nonfiction Editor, lives in Oakland with her husband, two daughters and mother. She teaches writing privately and at UC Berkeley Extension. She is the co-editor of A Ghost At Heart's Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption (North Atlantic Books). Her essays and fiction have appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Hip Mama, Making More Waves, the Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She writes regularly in her weblog ReadingWritingLiving. Suzanne Kamata, Fiction Editor, lives with her Japanese husband and bi-cultural twins on the island of Shikoku in Japan. She is the author of a novel, Losing Kei, and editor of the anthologies, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs and The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan. The author of numerous stories, essays, articles and reviews, her writing about motherhood appears in the anthologies It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons, It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters, Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, and elsewhere. Rebecca Kaminsky, a Founding Editor and Reviews Editor, is a writer who lives in Berkeley, California, with her spouse and two sons. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press, Jan. 2006), as well as the locally best-selling anthology Wednesday Writers: Ten Years of Writing Women's Lives. Rebecca writes the column Down Will Come Baby for Literary Mama, and she has been a guest blogger for The Washington Post. She holds a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Women's Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center. Sharon Kraus, Poetry Editor, is the author of two books of poetry, Generation (1997), and Strange Land (2002), and is still just finishing her third (revolving around motherhood). Recent poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Diagram, Slope, La Petite Zine, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and 6-year-old son. Jen Lawrence, Reviews Editor, is an MBA and former banker who left the world of finance for the world of sippy cups and goldfish crackers. She writes about her experiences on her blog MUBAR (Mothered Up Beyond All Recognition). She also contributes to Literary Mama's blog. Her work has appeared in The Philosophical Mother. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and two children. Sybil Lockhart, Reviews Editor, is a compulsive journal-writer with a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology. She has taught high school French and English, done research in developmental neurobiology, and taught neuroscience at U.C. Berkeley. Her recent essays can be found in Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined and Using Our Words: Moms and Dads on Raising Kids in the Modern Neighborhood, and her writing has also appeared in Brandeis University's Artemis Magazine, The Journal of Neuroscience, and The Journal of Neurobiology. One of her children's nature stories is forthcoming in Ladybug Magazine, and her essay "Naked" was chosen for a forthcoming Alzheimer's Anthology. Sybil is currently at work on her book, Early Stages: a Biologist's Tale of Mothering and Daughtering, a scientific memoir rooted in the stories told in her column, Mama in the Middle. Sybil lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two daughters. Alissa McElreath, Columns Department Editor, teaches English at a small, private college in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two children (7 and almost 4). She chronicles her life as a mother, writer, and teacher on her blog. Starting in January of 2008 she'll be writing for the Family Education Network. Her essay, "That Mommy Thing," will be appearing in Mama Ph.D. (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Amy S. Mercer ("Solitaire"), Blog Editor, is a freelance writer who lives in Charleston, SC with her husband Dale and sons, Will and Miles. She writes Creative Non-Fiction and Short Stories; her personal essays have been published in Skirt! Magazine, Literary Mama, Byline Magazine, Diabetes Forecast and A Cup Of Comfort for Writers. She is a board member of the South Carolina Writer's Workshop, and works as an intern for Crazyhorse, the literary Magazine for The College of Charleston. Amy writes the blog Dreaming About Water, about growing up with diabetes. Kathy Moran ("A Kite in November"), Literary Reflections Editor, has two grown boys and three granddaughters. A retired secondary language arts teacher and literary magazine adviser, Kathy currently works as a teacher consultant for the Greater Kansas City Writing Project and editor of their newsletter Composing Ourselves. Kathy's reflections can be found at Marmee's Corner. Helaine Olen, Profiles and Reviews Associate Editor, is a journalist, occasional essayist, mother of two boys and lifelong bibliophile. Her work has appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Variety,and Working Woman. She lives in New York. Marjorie Osterhout, Free Spirit, lives in Seattle with her husband and son. She has authored two non-fiction books, writes the popular parenting blog MomBrain, contributed to the book anthology It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons (Seal Press, Nov. 2005), and has written many features and essays for magazines such as Parenting and ePregnancy. She cut her editorial teeth at Little, Brown and Co. and went on to work in high tech before coming to her senses and returning to the creative world. Kristina Riggle, Fiction Editor, is a former newspaper reporter and mother to a two-year-old son. Her short fiction has appeared in The Sidewalk's End, Net Author's E2K, Mushroom Opera, and here at Literary Mama. Her first book is making the rounds to publishers while she works on a second novel about divorce, infertility, and family secrets. Lisa Moskowitz Sadikman, Profiles Editor, is a writer and editor living in Oakland, California with her husband and daughter. She holds a BA from Duke University and an MJ from the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Salon, Attaché, Red Herring, Business 2.0 and PC World, as well as the Travelers’ Tales Greece and The Real Las Vegas: Life Beyond the Strip anthologies. Currently, she is working on a series of essays about a road trip she and her mom took back to the places of her mother’s childhood. Before becoming a parent, Lisa worked as a Content and User Interface Strategist at a now defunct Internet consulting firm. As a mother, she knows job security is no longer an issue. You can read about her journey into motherhood at her weblog.
C. Delia Scarpitti, Columns Department Editor, is a freelance writer, poet and mother of three young children. Her poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including Mothering Magazine, The We’Moon Anthology: Love, SageWoman Magazine, Literary Mama, Mamazine.com, Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, The Apple Valley Review, and Natural Family Magazine, where she served as the Reviews Editor until the magazine’s hiatus. Delia lives with her family in a little white house with a tree swing in the front yard where she writes her novel, dreams of poetry, and maintains her website and blog. Irena Smith, Columns Department Editorial Assistant, emigrated from the former Soviet Union with her parents at the age of nine. In spite of her belief that she would never, not ever, learn to speak English, she has in fact done so, and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and three children, drives a minivan, works as a college consultant, and teaches literature and composition at Notre Dame de Namur University. She has published academic essays on Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov, and her essay, "Failure to Progress," will be appearing in Mama Ph.D. (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Christina Speed, E-Zine Co-Editor, lives in Virgina Beach, Virginia, and is a married mother of two, uber-spirited boys under the age of 6. She has lived in cities abroad and in the US, teaching elementary school in some, and being a mom and homemaker in others. She has written a monthly parenting column in the Lahontan Valley News, has a blog at speedwrites.com, and is an aspiring author on two fronts: children's books and intercultural marriage. Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, Columns Editor, is a poet and essayist who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her husband and two daughters. Her poetry has appeared in various literary magazines, including Ice Floe, The Women’s Review of Books, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Prairie Schooner. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Anchorage Daily News and as commentaries for the Alaska Public Radio Network. With the support of a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation, she’s currently working on a book of persona poems about the life of Sarah Ellen Gibson, who in 1903 decided to start her life over in Fairbanks. She writes about life in Alaska at her blog Subarctic Mama. Shari MacDonald Strong, Senior Editor, ("The Great, Death-Defying Father") writes the "Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance" column. Her essay, "On Wanting a Girl," appears in the anthology, It's a Girl, and she has been published in a number of publications, including Geez magazine. Shari worked as an editor and copywriter in the publishing industry for 15 years. She writes a blog from her home in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband, photojournalist Craig Strong, and their children: grade-schooler Eugenia, born in Russia, and preschool sons Will and Mac, born via gestational surrogacy. Marie Walden, E-Zine Editor, lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado with her husband and six children. After a number of years as a stay-at-home mom and community volunteer, she returned to the workforce as a CPA and found that putting on panty hose and pumps was infinitely less enjoyable than wearing pajama pants and Uggs. She quit her job, turned her living room into a lovely workspace, and took up writing and other soul-nurturing arts with fervor. She currently blogs for Not My Tribe and Wanderlust and Lipstick and is writing a book on financial savvy for newlywed women. Sarah Weld, Profiles Editor, lives in Oakland, California with her husband and two children. She has worked as a daily reporter for The Oakland Tribune and the San Mateo County Times, in marketing for Publishers Group West, taught high school English, and edited the Neighborhood Parents Network newsletter. Her writing has also appeared in Using Our Words: Moms and Dads on Raising Kids in the Modern Neighborhood, The East Bay Monthly, and The Nob Hill Gazette. Contributors, A-CLiz Abrams-Morley ("Mitzraim (Means Tight Spaces, the Rabbi Said") and "Mrs. Allendale") is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Learning to Calculate the Half Life (Zinka Press, 2001), the chapbook What Winter Reveals (also available from Plan B Press), the chapbook, Memory Waltz, and poems and stories that have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her poetry and fiction have been read on NPR and NPR affiliate KUSP. Liz lives in Pennsylvania and serves as an artist-in-residence in schools throughout the state. She is a founding partner of Around the Block Writers Collaborative. Mother to 25 year-old Erica (and about to become a mother-in-law!) and 21 year old Jesse, wife, daughter, sister, girlfriend, cat-mom, teacher and lapsed family therapist, Liz wades knee deep in the flow of everyday neighborhood life, from which she draws her inspiration. Desiré Aguirre ("The Green King") works part time with mentally ill adults and attends Lewis and Clark State College where she is pursuing a bachelor's degree in Communications. She is a single mother of two teenagers and lives in Idaho with her daughter, three cats, two dogs, and one horse. She has been published in Northern Journeys, Five Minutes of Fame, and Equus Spirit, and won second place in the Preservation Foundation's 2005 nonfiction contest. Mary Akers' ("Wild, Wild Horses") humorous articles examining the lighter side of parenting have appeared in ParentLife Magazine. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Awakenings Review, Bellowing Ark, Compass Rose, Ink Pot, Pindeldyboz, Ray's Road Review, RE:AL and Wisconsin Review. Originally trained as a potter, Ms. Akers is a graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program in creative writing and co-founder of the Institute for Tropical Marine Ecology in Dominica, West Indies. Although raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, she currently lives in upstate New York with her husband and three children. Judy Allen ("Coming of Age at the Grand Canyon") is the mother of two teenagers and, following several careers -- as an actress and director, secretary, Internet copywriter and most recently grant writer, she has turned her attention to creative writing. She lives in Putnam Valley, New York with her husband, John, son Cory, daughter Rosie, two dogs, two cats, several chickens and guinea fowl and a Burmese Python. She is currently working on a novel based on her pre-parenting days as a hippie and spiritual seeker. Cynthia Ann Alvarado ("Failure to Thrive") moved with her husband and then-infant son from Los Angeles to Hatfield, Pennsylvania, in search of a "saner" life after working for 11 years in the film and television industry. She is a professional flautist as well as the author of a stage play that has been produced locally and a comedic screenplay currently running the studio circuit. She hopes her ventures into juvenile fiction will entice "typical" children to take notice of the cool kid in the wheelchair sitting next to them. At age five, her youngest daughter, Jessica, broke through the 24.2 pound weight barrier with a sudden growth spurt and is now hungry and thriving. Kimberly Greene Angle ("Forecasts") lives in Columbia, SC where she shares her life with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual, The Chattahoochee Review, South Carolina Wildlife, The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin, and Skirt, among others. She is currently writing a novel for young readers and working on a Robin Antalek ("Bless the Child") is the author of a short story collection titled Angels & Babies and has published fiction in numerous journals. The interior portraits of women in various stages of their lives has always figured prominently in her work and continues to do so in a recently completed novel, Finding Georgia. Robin lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with her husband and two daughters, Hannah and Tessa, who over the years have continued to be a never ending source of inspiration, amazement and joy. Barbara Card Atkinson's fiction ("Camping") was in LiteraryMama's premiere issue and she eventually finagled her way into an editorial assistant position at LitMama. Later, her piece "See You at the Movies" appeared in Literary Mama's Creative Nonfiction department. She has published work in Salon.com, the Christian Science Monitor, both Brain, Child and Skirt! magazines and some numerous (now-defunct) multimedia websites. A screenwriter by training, she has placed in several screenplay contests and plans to start shopping around her first novel, as soon as the kids let her back onto the computer. Noreen Austin ("Tasseeomancy") received her MFA from Antioch University. Her work has appeared in Watershed, The Crimson Crane, and ken*again. She was one of the featured readers in the Literary Salon at the Zebulon Lounge in Petaluma, California. She is currently working on short stories and a novel and lives in Northern California with her wonderful 15-year-old son. She can be reached at: ndgreg@sbcglobal.net. Deborah Bacharach's ("Fire, Aphasia, and The Spirit World") work has appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Calyx, and Poet Lore among others. She lives in Seattle with her partner and two children, Rose (4) and David (1). You can read her blog at Debby My Journal. Gail Konop Baker (Excerpt from Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs) lives with her husband and three children in Madison, Wisconsin. She recently completed her novel, Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs, from which this piece is an excerpt. Her work is published in Talking River Review, The Potomac, The Danforth Review, Madison Magazine, Wisconsin Trails, Mota, Yankee Pot Roast, Xanadu, Womansong, Glass Review, and an anthology funded by the Ohio Arts Council. Visit her website, www.gailkonopbaker.com to read more of her work. Sudha Balagopal ("Garage Sale") was born and raised in India and has lived in the United States for over two decades. She has a graduate degree in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida and has been published both in the United States and in India. Recently, her fiction has appeared in Catamaran magazine, Driftwood, Her Circle and Muse India. She is the proud mother of two teenaged girls who remind her every day how wonderful motherhood is. Cathy Barber ("The Vigil: A Pantoum") is the mother of two daughters. Her work has appeared in many publications including, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Tattoo Highway, bear creek haiku, The Kerfand in the anthologies An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 and nth position’s Times New Roman. She was the second place winner in Gin Bender Poetry Review's 2003 contest. She has an MA from California State University, Hayward, and she lives in San Mateo, CA. Karen Barnett ("Neighbor") has been a social worker, an international lawyer, and a corporate litigator in a diversity of places, including Malawi, Thailand, New York, and San Francisco. She is currently full-time mommy to her three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Originally from Canada, Karen lives in Tacoma, Washington, where her husband is stationed with the U.S. Air Force. She is working on a novel based on her experiences doing asylum law. This is her first publication. Svea Barrett ("Morgans" and "Slipping") lives in Wyckoff, New Jersey with her three sons. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Samsara Quarterly, LIPS, The Paterson Literary Review and the Journal of NJ Poets. She also teaches Creative Writing in Allendale, New Jersey. Deborah Bauer ("Day Care Lady") lives and writes in Tempe, Arizona. She has work forthcoming in Carve and Poetry Midwest and was a recent finalist at the Tucson Poetry Festival. She still tends to over-parent her children, even though they are 23 and 25 years old and fully capable of making their own decisions. Susan Bavaria ("Early Frost") is working on a book, Cuddling the Cactus, about life with her husband, George DeRoos, and daughter Rose, who was adopted when she was six years old after living in eight foster homes. Susan has an M.A. from the University of Colorado and is the Director of Communications for the Arabian Horse Association. Her writing has also been published in the Bellevue Literary Review. Rose is now a sophomore at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, majoring in psychology. Jan Bear ("Call Your Mother") lives in West Linn, Oregon, with her husband, two adopted teen-aged daughters and two dogs. She is news editor for a statewide newspaper based in Portland and writes for The Onion Dome, a satire site. She has had fiction and nonfiction published in a variety of national journals, including The Critic, Catholic Digest and Again magazines. She has two novels in process and blogs at A World of Speculation. Jessica Berger Gross is the editor of the award-winning anthology About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. Her column about international adoption, Passport to Parenting, appeared regularly on Literary Mama. Her writing has also appeared in Salon, Yoga Journal, Yoga International and Healing Lifestyles & Spas, in the anthology It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters, and is forthcoming in Rebecca Walker's anthology One Big Happy Family. She's performed her bad teenage poetry in the comedy show Mortified. Jessica has taught memoir writing at the Harvard Extension School and will be teaching a creative non-fiction workshop in the BFA program at the University of British Columbia. She and her husband and son recently moved to Vancouver, Canada. Marian Berges ("The Children's Park") worked after college in local theatre and film, then turned to writing. At the moment she is completing two novels, and is a member of the Motherlode Writing Group in Berkeley. She lives around the corner from Totland, and is relieved that her two children have outgrown it. She can be reached at marianberges@earthlink.net Gina Binole ("Baby's No Friend of Mine") lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in magazines like Organic Style, Sunset, and Parenting. When she's not writing, she loves hiking in the mountains, riding bikes, and exploring other splendors of the Northwest with her husband and three-year-old daughter. Sheila Black ("Ghost Season") lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband, Duncan, and three children, Annabelle (10), Walker (5), and Eliza (3). She received her MFA in poetry in 1998 from the University of Montana. In 2000, she was the U.S. co-winner of the Frost-Pellicer Frontera Prize sponsored by the Ford Foundation and awarded to a U.S. and a Mexican poet living along the Emily Bloch ("The Velocity of Babies") lives in Amherst, MA, and is the mother of Sylvia, age 2. She is a freelance writer for magazines and websites. She has received the Colorado Review's Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, and was recently awarded an Artist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. And she holds on very tightly to Sylvia, every chance she gets. Hildie S. Block ("Sun Salute") lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband and two daughters, ages one and five. She teaches writing at American University and the Writer's Center. Her fiction has appeared in Gargoyle, Cortland Review, E2K, Strata and elsewhere. She's also had essays in Pop Matters and In the Fray. Her novel Oh, and She Has a Dog is looking for a good publisher. Jenny Block is a full-time professor at Strayer University where she teaches writing, speech, and humanities. She also works as a consultant for the Newsweek Magazine Education Program (NEP). Jenny writes and edits, as well as presents at academic conferences throughout the year for NEP. She resides in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, Pete, and their five-year-old daughter, Hannah. Madeline Bodin ("Thirteen Ways of Looking at Elmo") lives in Vermont with her husband; four-year-old son, Josh; and eight-year-old daughter, Leah, who is also a writer. ("But I don't want to write for newspapers like you, Mom.") Primarily an environmental journalist (Northern Woodlands, Newsday), her work has also appeared in publications including, Publishers Weekly, Call Center Magazine and Ski Magazine. She is working on a book, but it is not a novel. Leslie Bonner ("Screaming Mornings: Living With Autism") is a freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her two sons. Since the morning detailed in this piece, Leslie's older son has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, or high-functioning autism, and is responding beautifully to the treatment and attentions of many dedicated professionals. Leslie is currently at work on a project detailing her family's life in the autism spectrum. Rebecca Boucher ("The Golf Cart Incident") lives in Brooklyn with her husband and four children. Her work has appeared in FamilyFun Magazine and two anthologies, Toddler and I Wanna Be Sedated, both published by Seal Press. Marguerite Guzman Bouvard ("Eclipse") is the mother of a daughter and a son, and she is a grandmother to two granddaughters. She has published four books and two chapbooks of poetry, and several books on women and human rights including Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She is a resident scholar with the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and a member of the American Society for Reserach on Mothering. Anne Boyer ("Keeping House" and "Tenuous") lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with her four year old daughter Hazel. Her work can be found in print journals like New Letters and 13th Moon, and online at Identity Theory, Retort, and Mothers Movement. You can read more of her writing in her online journal. She is also the editor of the print magazine Crock: A Journal of Domestic Bliss. Michelle Brafman ("You're Next") lives in Glen Echo, Maryland with her husband, seven-year-old daughter, and five-year-old son. An award-winning documentary filmmaker and writer, she won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest and was nominated for Best New American Voices 2009. Her stories have been published in Pedestal, Lilith Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Potomac Review, and other journals and anthologies. "You're Next" appears in her recently completed novel in stories entitled Shhh . . . Secrets and Stories. She can be contacted at: michellebrafman@gmail.com. Rebecca Brams ("Letter to My Niece") grew up in California's Mojave Desert. She has a B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from St. Mary's College of California. Currently she lives with her husband in Cuzco, Peru, where she has a Fulbright Fellowship to research a historical novel-in-progress. She is looking forward to motherhood someday, but for now is concentrating on birthing her book. She is constantly amazed by the strength and dynamic love of her sister Laura, to whom this piece is dedicated. Gayle Brandeis ("Eyes in the Back of Her Head" and "A Long Time") is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco) and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (HarperCollins), which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change established by Barbara Kingsolver. She lives in Riverside, California with her husband and two kids. Please visit her at her website. Pamela Brandt ("Don't") lives in the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband and 13 year old daughter. Parenting an adolescent has proved to be thrilling, frightening, and all too familiar, since she so keenly remembers her own teenage angst. She loves writing about adolescents, and many of her stories, as well as her novel, deal with teenagers. Her stories have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, StoryQuarterly, The Edinburgh Review, The Ontario Review, and other magazines. Her novel, Becoming the Butlers, was published by Bantam Books in 1990. She currently teaches English as a Second Language to new immigrants. Susie Bright ("My Mommy's Job") is the author/editor of more than 20 books on sexuality, erotic literature, and sexual politics. She has a 13-year-old daughter, lives in Santa Cruz, CA, and can be found, in much greater detail, at www.susiebright.com. Jennifer Brisendine ("A Good Sense of Timing") works as a freelance writer and high school English teacher. She has written feature articles for the fiction database Novelist and is currently contributing test prep materials to a small educational publishing company. She and her husband live in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania, and their son Aidan Carter recently celebrated his second birthday. Though life seems to grow only busier, Jennifer insists on time for beach trips with her family, reading picture books at bedtime, and conducting frog searches after rainstorms with Aidan Carter. Ronda Broatch ("Perennial" and "Greasping at Ghosts") lives in Kingston, Washington, with her husband. They have two children, Fiona, 11, and Duncan, 9, both of whom are writers of poetry and short stories. Her work has been published in The Atlanta Review, Exhibition Magazine, Pontoon 6: An Anthology of Washington State Poets, Raven Chronicles, Literary Mama, and Poetry on Buses, in Seattle. Other pieces are forthcoming in Calyx, and the anthology The Human Growth Experiment. Ronda was a winner in the 2003 Pacific Northwest Writer's Association Literary Contest, and was awarded a residency for 2004 to the Soapstone Writer's Retreat for Women. Her poem "Grace Baking" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2003). Jennifer Brown ("Boyish Dreams of Manhood") is a stay-at-home mother of three, a freelance writer, and the editor of a literary ezine, Applecart Magazine. Her fiction and poetry have won awards in magazines such as Writer's Journal and Byline, and have appeared in a number of magazines and ezines such as Long Story Short, The Dead Mule, The Storyteller, and The Liberty Tribune. You may contact Jennifer at http://applecartmag.com Randall Brown ("The Mattress King") teaches at Saint Joseph's University. He holds an MFA from Vermont College. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, Saint Ann's Review, Evansville Review, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, upstreet, and others. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live (Flume Press, 2008) and will have an essay on (very) short fiction in the forthcoming anthology The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field (Rose Metal Press, 2009). Leah Browning ("The Ballet Recital") is the author of Babysitting Basics and Babysitting Rules, both forthcoming from Capstone Press. Her stories, poems, essays, and articles have appeared in a variety of publications including The Saint Ann’s Review, Arable: A Literary Journal, MotherVerse, Mothering Magazine, and the anthology Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage. Samples of her published work are available at www.leahbrowning.com. In addition to writing, she serves as editor of the Apple Valley Review, an online literary journal, and spends time with her husband and children. Andrea J. Buchanan ("On Becoming A Writer," "The Plant," the Literary Mama column Mother Shock), Founding Editor of Literary Mama, is a writer living in Philadelphia. She is the author of Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It (Seal Press 2003) and the editor of three anthologies: It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons (Seal Press, Nov. 2005); Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press, Jan. 2006); and It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (Seal Press, May 2006). Her work has been featured in The Christian Science Monitor, Parents and Nick Jr. magazines, and in the collections Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers (Seal Press, 2001), Your Children Will Raise You: The Joys, Challenges, and Life Lessons of Motherhood (Trumpeter, 2005), The Imperfect Mom: Candid Confessions of Mothers Living in the Real World (Broadway, 2006), and About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage (Plume, 2006). Her syndicated column runs on various websites. Before becoming a mother, Andrea was a classical pianist; she studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music, where she earned her bachelor of music degree, and continued her graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory, earning a master's degree in piano performance. Her last recital was at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, back before she knew how to play the theme from "Elmo's World." You can read more about her adventures in motherland in her blog. Bobbi Buchanan ("French Toast and Freedom") is editor-publisher of the online journal New Southerner, which focuses on helping people live more self-sufficient, earth-friendly lives. Her work has been published in The New York Times, GreenPrints, Arable, Kentuckiana Parent, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Bobbi is a mother of three and grandmother of six. L. K. Buchanan ("Judgment Day")'s prose is forthcoming or has appeared in Mid-American Review, Natural Bridge, Quick Fiction and other literary magazines. Honors include awards from Glimmer Train, Carve, and Moment, plus a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is a stepmom and has a stepmom, had an adoptive mom and a mother-in-law, and also has a birthmom who is both a stepmom and adoptive mom. Susan Bumps ("Perilous") is the mom of of a five-year-old son, Alex. Her work has appeared in The Santa Barbara Review and in the anthologies Bite to Eat Place and A Ghost at Heart's Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. She is actually a less anxious Mom than she thought she'd be. Amy Burditt ("Albion Street") is a voracious reader and fledgling writer living in Oakland, CA with her husband and one-and-a-half-year-old son. She is a freelance photography producer, which is really like mothering adults for money. She has given up her inclination for living in unsavory neighborhoods. Literary Mama is her first publication. Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser ("Wedding, Dress, Boy, Pretty", "Interview with Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels") is a graduate of Hampshire College and Warren Wilson College's MFA Program in fiction. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as the Georgia Review, Story Quarterly, and the Southwest Review, and various parenting publications including Brain, Child, Hip Mama, and Mothering. One of her essays appears in the anthology My Heart's First Steps. She lives with her husband and three sons in Northampton, Massachusetts. Susan Buttenwieser's fiction ("Prom Night") has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared or is forthcoming in Lost, Storyglossia, Failbetter, Nth Position, and 3am. She's received several fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative and Arts and teaches writing in the youth program of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center and at a homeless shelter for LGBT youth in New York City. She has two daughters. Ann Marie Byrd, Ph.D., ("He's Home") lives in Jacksonville, FL, with her husband, David; a Japanese exchange student, Kyoko; and two dogs and a cat. Her son Michael is away at college. Her email is abyrd9@bellsouth.net. Sara Campos ("Like Water Spilling Through Her Fingers") is a lawyer and a writer living in Berkeley. She has published fiction and poetry in St. Ann’s Review, Penwomanship, LongStoryShort, The Womanist, NewversesNews, and Crux. She has also published essays in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Daily Journal and, The Recorder and her book reviews have appeared in Waterbridge Reviews and www.beyond chron.org. She has two daughters, 9 and 13, a 26-year-old step-daughter, and a dog. Writer, musician and performer Phyllis Capello (Hospital Quartet) lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction and a prizewinner in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her work appears in many anthologies and literary magazines, including, most recently, the Italian feminist journal Legendaria, Families: A Journal of Representation, Kolkata, The Milk of Almonds, and Reading, Writing and Reacting, a college textbook. She teaches poetry and music and entertains hospitalized children in the Big Apple Circus' Clown Care program. She has a grown daughter and son. Bella Mahaya Carter ("After the Bath") is looking for a publisher for her motherhood memoir, Secrets of My Sex: One Woman's Struggle to Give Life Without Surrendering Her Own. Her work has been published in Bandicoot, CALYX: A Journal of Art & Literature by Women, Earth's Daughters, The LA Reader, ONTHEBUS, and Tsunami and has been anthologized in Writing Our Way Out of the Dark. Bella lives in Studio City, CA with her husband and their six-year-old daughter. Patricia Caspers ("The Beginning") is the mother of a soon-to-be seven-year-old daughter. They live in Alameda, California, where Patricia writes for a local newspaper and teaches English composition at a community college. She earned an MFA in poetry from Mills College, and her poems have been published in The Comstock Review, Milvia Street, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women's Writing, The Wash, and Watershed. Shannon L.C. Cate ("Dare Not Speak: On Not Being the Other Mother" and "Crossing the Lines of Sex and Race") is a freelance writer and a teacher of writing and American literature. She and her partner are currently waiting for their first child together through domestic infant adoption. They divide their time between Illinois and Washington, DC. Jean Cavrell ("Erev Mother's Day") is a former actress, university English instructor, and retired university executive assistant. Her stories have been published in Redbook, Galaxy, Spectrum, Star Dancer, Peralta Press, Central PA Magazine (which gave her an award). This past year she has received awards from the Soul-Making Literary Competition, White Country Creative Writers, Heritage Writers' Guild, and publication in Spanish Moss. She has two witty daughters (one in Brazil) and three grandchildren -- two girls and a boy. She writes, "Grandchildren are easier, just as the cliché says." Wendy Pinkston Cebula ("What She Needs") lives in New York City and is the mother of two girls, Naomi and Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine and Six Sentences. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and is currently working on her first novel. Kim Chinquee ("Child Protection") lives with her 15-year-old son. She's been a single mother for 14 years, and began writing after her son's seventh birthday. Her recent work has appeared in Noon, elimae, Quick Fiction, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Xavier Review, Cottonwood, Mississippi Review, Phantasmagoria, and several other journals. Her webpage is www.kimchinquee.blogspot.com. Kimberly Chisholm ("Withstanding") is the mother of Will, Aidan, and Quentin, who are six, four, and almost two. After receving a doctorate in Spanish and French literature in 2001, she began writing fiction and has had short stories published in Bellowing Ark, Spindrift and Moxie online. She lives near San Francisco and is currently at work on a novel. Feel free to contact her. Jill Christman ("Bringing On Baby") is the author of the memoir Darkroom: A Family Exposure, which won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. Recent essays have appeared or are forthcoming in River Teeth, Mississippi Review, Fourth River, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, poet Mark Neely, and their three-year-old daughter, Ella. Jane Ciabattari ("Hiding Out") is the author of the short-story collection Stealing the Fire and the mother of one son, Scott. Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Blueline, Caprice, Hampton Shorts, The East Hampton Star and Redbook, and she has been awarded fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction has been honored with an Editors' Choice Stubby award by Hampton Shorts and nominated for a National Magazine Award and an O'Henry award. She and her husband, Mark, also a writer, divide their time between New York, Sag Harbor and Windham, NY. Visit her at her website, www.janeciabattari.com. Christi Clancy ("Home I Hope") is the mother of two healthy children; Olivia, 9, and Tim, 6. Her short fiction will appear in a future issue of Glimmer Train Stories. Her writing has been nominated for inclusion in Best New American Voices, and has been published in The Cream City Review, The Capitol Times, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Minnesota Daily, and on whimsplace.com. She is working towards a masters degree in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Raejean Clark ("Mom Vs. Black Death")lives and writes in Texas. She has stories forthcoming in Country Roads 2006 Annual Fiction Issue and the Fall 2007 Louisiana Literature. Raejean is working on a short story collection about families in transition. Her son, Hunter (18), and daughter, Lacy (15), are sometimes pleased, but usually mortified to see likenesses of themselves in her stories. J. Anderson Coats ("The Cost of Living")is a writer, historian, librarian, soon-to-be grad student and mama to a feisty school-aged boychild. Her work has appeared on Girlmom.com, in off our backs and in KerryAnn Cochrane ("Matermorphosis") is a writer, freelance translator and the mother of Simon (4) and Kira (22 months). KerryAnn lives in Montreal, Quebec (Canada). She is a member of the Caravan Collective, a group of seven Montreal-based writers, and some of her stories can be read on the group's website at www.caravancollective.com Rachel Elizabeth Cole ("Caring for Lily") lives just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and their two sons. Her stories have appeared in Gator Springs Gazette, Flashquake, Write Away and are forthcoming in Penwomanship, Canadian Stories and cahoots. Currently, she’s at work on her second novel. Visit her website: www.rachelelizabethcole.com.
Christina Conrad ("Fan") lives in New Zealand. She is a poet, playwright and painter & sculptor. She is listed in the Bloomsbury Book of Women Writers (U.K.) and her poems have been anthologized in Kiwi & Emu (ed. by Barbara Petrie),The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Verse (ed. by Ian Wedde) and The Oxford Book of Modern New Zealand Poetry (ed. by Vincent Sullivan). In June, 2000, the University of Auckland Press published a selection of Conrad's poems in Big Smoke, their definitive anthology of New Zealand poetry in the 1960s and 70s. She is the mother of four. Nicole Cooley's("Thirteen Ways of Looking at Being a Mother and a Poet")first book of poetry, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her second book of poetry, The Afflicted Girls, was published by LSU Press in 2004. Her novel, Judy Garland, Ginger Love, was published by Harper Collins in 1998. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young daughters. Arianne Cope ("Stowaway")is the mother of two children, Samuel and Sophia. She is the author of the novel The Coming of Elijah, winner of the 2005 Marilyn Brown Award. She has written for Utah Spirit, Imperfect Parent, the New Era, the Friend, the Ensign, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and is former managing editor of the Tremonton Leader. She and her husband, Jared, live in Cedar City, Utah. Carol Cronin ("Embarrassment of Riches") lives in Champaign, Illinois, with her husband and six children. She majored in music education and currently works as a marketing systems specialist for a technical computing company. This is her first attempt at writing. Carol may be reached at: carol_cronin100@yahoo.com. Barbara Crooker ("The Blue Snake Lies Curled in my Bowl...", "Blowing Soap Bubbles" and "My Middle Daughter...") lives in Fogelsville Pennsylvania. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies such as, The Christian Science Monitor, Poetry International, The Atlanta Review and Boomer Girls. She is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won numerous poetry awards and fellowships. She is also the author of ten chapbooks of poetry, including Ordinary Life which won the ByLine press chapbook competition in 2000. She is the mother of two daughters and a son. For more information or to read more of her work, you can access her website at http://www.barbaracrooker.com When she’s not creating hand-made books, Linda Lee Crosfield (Packing the Car) writes poetry and prose in Castlegar, BC. Her writing appears in The Fed Anthology: Brand New Fiction and Poetry from the Federation of BC Writers (edited by Susan Musgrave Anvil Press 2003), Room of One's Own, Word Works, Horsefly, Words Journal, The Nelson Quarterly, and Turning Points. In 2004 she published Ways to Get to Here, a chapbook of selected poems, through her imprint, NIB (Nose-in-Book)Publishing. She is one of four writers who collaborated on The Noslen Enigma, a serialized satirical sci-fi soap opera romance that appeared online from September 1998 to September 1999; she also helped record it for broadcast on Kootenay Co-op Radio. Her son, Jesse, is the single child of a single mother, now 23, and a father himself. Somehow, he knows what to do. Tracy Crow ("Kyoko's Mirror") received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, and Puerto del Sol, among others. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and teaches journalism and creative writing at The University of Tampa in Florida. KD Cunningham ("Bloodlines") is currently a counselor and parenting educator for the US Navy. She holds a MFA from Queens University. She and her family live near Seattle, Washington on Vashon Island. Karen DeBrulye Cruze ("Crossing") holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. A librarian in the north suburban Chicago area, she spent many years as a newspaper journalist and currently writes children’s audio reviews for Booklist and young adult book reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her daughter, 20, is a college film major in California. Contributors, D-FRuth Daigon ("To the Woman Who Left..." and "Mother of Alphabets") was founder and editor of POETS ON for twenty years. Her poems have been widely published in e-magazines, print magazines and anthologies. Her poetry awards include The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California Anthology, 1997) and the Greensboro Poetry Award (Greensboro Arts Council, 2000). The latest of her seven books are Payday At The Triangle (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series 2001)and Handfuls of Time (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series 2002). Her poetry was published by the State Department in their literary exchange with Thailand and their translation program has just issued the first book of Modern American poets in English and Thai in which she appears. Cindy Dale ("Snake Eyes")'s short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals including Orchid, The South Carolina Review, Reed, The Amherst Review, Literary Potpourri, The Potomac Review, Zoetrope: All-Story Extra, among others. Her work has also been included in two anthologies and she has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of these days she will finish her novel! Cindy is the mother of nine year old twins, Lyla and Jedidiah. She lives with her husband, children, and a menagerie of pets on a barrier beach on Long Island. Kristin Darguzas ("Rearview Mirror") is a freelance writer and blog consultant living in Calgary, Canada. Her daily highlights include studiously avoiding her neighbours, changing out of her pyjamas, and losing power struggles with her 16-month-old son. Kristin is lead blogger at the popular parenting website Blogging Baby. M. H. Davis ("All The Pretty Little Horses" and "Heartbreaker To Root For," A Review of Shout Down the Moon) is a mother of one who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also an editor of the Literary Mama eZine. Deborah Diemont ("Verses for the Early Child") lives with her husband and their precocious two-year-old daughter, Eva, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Deborah earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing/Poetry from The Ohio State University in June 2004. She is currently translating poems for a bilingual anthology of poetry by writers from Chiapas. Her poems have previously appeared in The Texas Review. Liz Dolan ("Playthings of the Gods and "Sepia Photo--One-Room Schoolhouse") is the mother of two girls and grandmother of five. All of her grandchildren live on the next block. She is a member of the Rehoboth Art League Writer's Group and the organizer of its annual Writer's Day. Her poems and short stories have been published in Dreamstreets, Rattle, and The Writer's Publishing (Canada). She also received a grant for the Delaware Poet Laureate Weekend. Asha Dornfest("Exposure") lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter. Her work has appeared in Hip Mama and Organic Family magazines, ImperfectParent.com, and Mamazine.com. She is also the editor of ParentHacks.com. For a look at what she's up to, visit her at ashaland.com. Peggy Duffy ("The Girl at the Side of the Road" and "To See the World in a Grain of Sand") writes fiction and essays which have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Main Street Rag, Brevity, Octavo, Drexel Online Journal, Smokelong Quarterly, So To Speak, and Tattoo Highway, where this story first appeared. Two of her short stories were selected by storySouth for the Million Writers Award, Notable Online Short Stories for 2003. She is the mother of two adult daughters and one teenage son, and maintains a website at http://www.authorsden.com/peggyduffy. Cindy Dyson's first novel is And She Was (HarperCollins Feb. 2006). In her book's acknowledgments she writes this thank you: Simon, my son, for bringing to me an understanding of the power -- the vicious, all-consuming power -- that is motherhood. Contact Cindy at www.cindydyson.com Sara Epstein ("Moods (14 years old)"), mother of three children (ages 10, 12, and 15), is a writer and clinical psychologist living in the Boston area. She can be reached at omduffy@comcast.net Elrena Evans ("Birthing: A Process in Vignettes" and "The Journey Home") is the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Literary Mama, and writes the column Me and My House. She holds an MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, and together with Literary Mama Senior Editor Caroline Grant is co-editor of Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008). Her writing appears in the anthologies Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House 2006) and How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel (Seal Press 2008), as well as in Brain, Child, Episcopal Life, Hip Mama, Relief, and Literary Mama. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family, and blogs at her website.
Penny Feeny("Sand in Her Shoes" and "Emily, Leaving") is a British short fiction writer, widely published in literary magazines and anthologies and broadcast by the BBC. Online publication credits include The Arabesque Review, The Summerset Review, Carve, Megaera, Small Spiral Notebook, Collected Stories, eastoftheweb and Atlantic Monthly Unbound. She is the mother of two sons and three daughters, now almost all grown up. She can be contacted at feeny@blueyonder.co.uk. Audrey Ferber's ("The New American Family Cookbook") short stories have been widely anthologized; her essays and book reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News. She teaches writing at UC Extension in San Francisco, and is at work at a novel about the Shakers. She has three step-grandchildren. Monique Fields ("The Indecent Question") is a visiting assistant professor of journalism at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She has been writing essays for 10 years and is working on a memoir. Read more about her at www.moniquefields.com. Lizbeth Finn-Arnold("Out of the Woods: Or, How I Found My Muse at Walden Pond")is a mother, freelance writer, and independent filmmaker who lives and works in suburban New Jersey. Besides contributing a regular column to Literary Mama, her work has appeared in The Independent (Film & Video Monthly), Brain,Child, Pregnancy Magazine, Welcome Home, and Nurturing Magazine. She publishes the monthly webzine The Philosophical Mother and records an almost daily account of motherhood on her weblog. She is currently working with producing partner, Sandy Longo, to develop a cable TV series about motherhood called "Breeding Ground," based on Andi Buchanan's Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It. Gretchen Fletcher ("And Still I Have Loved")'s poems have been published in journals such as The Chattahoochee Review, Pacific Coast Journal, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, and in anthologies including Full Circle, A Summer's Reading, and Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge. She leads poetry and creative nonfiction workshops for the Council for Florida Libraries and for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. She is the mother of two sons, ages 40 and 29. Her website Open Art Space features her poetry paired with paintings and photographs. Hilary Flower (A Review of Departures) is the mother of six-year-old Nora Jade and three-year-old Miles, and is incubating a third. Her first book, Adventures in Tandem Nursing: Breastfeeding during Pregnancy and Beyond, came out in July 2003 from La Leche League International, and she is at work on her next. Her work has been published for various print and online magazines, including Mothering Magazine, Austinmama, and Salon. Brittany Fonte (Condensation Hearts) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. She occasionally teaches English at the local college, if classes don’t interfere with playdates with her two-year-old son, Jonas. She has been published at www.42opus.com; she is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Prize in fiction with Best New Writer’s Magazine. All literary comments and applause can be sent to: BKAPhilosophy@Hotmail.com. Dionne Ford ("Five Minutes") was a newspaper and television journalist before turning her focus to creative writing. She was recently awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where she worked on her first novel, Picking. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Dennis and her daughters, Desiree and Devany. Vicki Forman ("Dear Friend", and the monthly column, "Special Needs Mama") teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and has appeared in the Seneca Review and the Santa Monica Review, as well as the anthologies, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child With Special Needs, This Day: Dairies From American Women, The Spirit of Pregnancy and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two children, one of whom is multiply-disabled. You can contact her at vickiforman(@)gmail.com or visit her blog. Connie Foster, ("Open Adoption") first grade teacher by day and writer by night, lives in Tennessee with her husband and son and enjoys spending time with her two step-daughters. She writes short fiction, creative nonfiction, and is completing her first novel. Connie's work has appeared in Muscadine Lines, A Southern Journal and the forthcoming Muscadine Lines, A Southern Anthology. She may be reached at: foster_connie@yahoo.com. Meagan Francis ("How to Be a CyberMom", "Blueberries for Mom") is a writer and mother of three sons living in Michigan. Her work has appeared in Brain,Child, Salon, Organic Style, Skirt!, and ePregnancy, among others. She writes a parenting humor column, which currently runs in the Lansing NOISE and the Upstate LINK. Meagan also works very part-time for a freestanding birth center, tending to practicalities like bookkeeping and payroll so the midwives can concentrate on catching babies. When she's not busy taking care of her sons, paying bills, working on book projects, or submitting work to magazines, Meagan writes about her life on her blog. She can be contacted via e-mail at meaganfrancis@yahoo.com. Patry Francis ("LIVE PURE, LIVE TRUE") has published stories in The Ontario Review, Tampa Review, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and has been the recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council twice. An excerpt from her novel, RACE POINT, can be read online at VerbSap. She is the proud mother of Gabriel, Joshua, Nellie and Theo. Emily Franklin ("In the Herd of the Elephants") is the author of the novel Liner Notes, a mother-daughter road trip story, and The Principles of Love, a series forthcoming from Penguin in July 2005. Her work has been published in The Boston Globe, Pindeldyboz, Brevity: Creative Nonfiction, and The Improper Bostonian among others. She is on the staff of National Public Radio's "Car Talk" show and lives near Boston with her husband and three children, ages 5, 3, and 8 months. She writes during nap time. E-mail her or find out more at www.emilyfranklin.com. Miriam Fried’s stories ("The Way Houdini Died") have appeared in Ambit, Crab Creek Review, Watchword, Unbound, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, The Absinthe Literary Review, Cafe Irrealand The Baltimore Review. In June, her work will be featured in InterAct Theatre Company's “Writing Aloud” program in Philadelphia. A Swarthmore College graduate, she lives with her husband and one-year-old daughter in Brooklyn. Miriam can be reached at galeboord@hotmail.com. Stephanie Friedman("I Try to Behave Myself") lives just outside Chicago with her partner and their 4-year-old daughter. She is the program manager for the Writer's Studio, a creative writing program for adult students at the University of Chicago Graham School of General Studies. Her most recent publication was an essay in the parenting 'zine Fertile Ground. Kathleen Furin ("Eleven") lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their two daughters, ages three and eight months. She is working on a novel. "Eleven" is her first published piece. Furin has a MSW and is completing her certification as a childbirth educator, but mostly is a stay-at-home mama. To pay the bills, she is working on a study of pre-term birth, and she writes by typing one-handed whenever she can, which is usually during naptime or the middle of the night. (With her other hand she can hold the nursing baby, fold the laundry, open the mail, and eat the chocolate which she promises to stop buying but which somehow ends up in her cart each shopping trip!) Contributors, G-IJeanne Lyet Gassman ("Healing Arts") is married to Larry and is the mother of two teenagers, Genevieve and Greg. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Her non-fiction and fiction have been published in Sonoran Mirage: An Anthology from the Writers Round Table Phoenix, The Arizona Republic, Bereavement magazine, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is the recipient of a Creative Writing Encouragement Award from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. In addition to work on her own writing, she teaches creative writing classes at libraries and community centers in the Phoenix metro area and plays violin in the Phoenix College Symphony. To learn more about Jeanne, please visit her website. Lisa Gates ("Essential Functions") is raising a son as well as a writing and coaching career, tandem inspirations for her blog Design Your Writing Life. After a 12-year respite from freelance journalism, this story marks her first literary publication anywhere! Gail Gauthier ("Mom Memory") is the author of seven books for children and young adults. The most recent, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat was published in June, 2007 and will be followed by A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers in the summer of 2008. Her earlier books for middle grade students drew heavily on the lives of her two sons, one of whom is still a college student and the other a recent graduate. An earlier essay about her experiences as a martial arts student appeared at VerbSap. She maintains the blog Original Content and lives in Connecticut with her husband and younger son. Wendy H. Gill ("Alterations") is an educational consultant and freelance writer. She is the mother of a 20-year-old daughter, Morgan, and a 17-year-old son, Taylor. Her poems have appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal and Main Street Rag. She has published essays in Writer’s Digest and Skirt! Magazine as well as in the following anthologies: Tis the Season (Novello Press), Hungry for Home (Novello Press), and On Air: Essays from Charlotte’s NPR Station, WFAE 90.7. Edvige Giunta ("The Quickening") is associate professor of English at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors (2002) and co-editor of The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture (2002) and Italian American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 2003). Her essays, memoir, and poetry have been published in many journals and anthologies. She is poetry editor of The Women’s Studies Quarterly and co-editor of Transformations. She is the mother of Emily, fifteen, and Matteo, four and a half. They are sources of love and poetry in her life. Brenda Glasure ("Zen Broccoli"), like most Moms, wears many hats. She and her husband are raising two humans -- a girl and a boy. Brenda spends many hours volunteering her time and talents to the public schools in her town. She has recently been employed as a ghost writer for a children's book project. She has been published in The Better Homes and Gardens New Baby Book and writes poetry, short fiction, and essays for adults and middle-grade readers. Cora Goss-Grubbs ("The Free Range Bionicle") lives across the street from a blueberry farm in Woodinville, Washington with her spouse and two sons. Her essays, poems and interviews have been published in Calyx, StringTown, hipMama, Synapse, Victory Review, Between the Lines, and aired on public radio. Before motherhood, Cora founded RASP, a literary non-profit organization, and wrote two young adult novels (for which she is seeking a publisher). Carol Graser ("The Calor Lawrence School of Dance") is a writer and performer of poetry living in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. She's spent over 19 years intensively and overwhelmingly raising and homeshcooling her three children. She and her husband homeschool two now, ages 13 and 7, her oldest homeschooler having just successfully completed his first year as a film major in college. She's currently the host of a poetry reading series at historic Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs. Her work has appeared in The Lullwater Review, So to Speak, Southern Poetry Review and The Worcester Review, among others. Louise Graves ("The Contents of His Pocket") lives in the North of England and is a mother of two boys and stepmother to a teenage girl. She has travelled over 500 miles to get where she is now and some may say she still has far to go. She has been writing for a while now and has a couple of online as well as paper publications to her name. Louise has been writing with Alex Keegan's Bootcampers on and off for three years, she writes because she wants to, because she enjoys it and because no matter how hard she has tried she just can't stop. Stacey Greenberg("Participant Observation") is the creator of the zine Fertile Ground: For People Who Dig Parenting). She lives in Memphis with her husband and two sons. Her writing has appeared in Hip Mama, Clamor, and Mothering.com. She writes a monthly column for Philosophical Mother and a daily blog for Rescue Magazine. Ona Gritz ("Mothering by Scent", "Boy Child, "Testing the Seams" and "family Bed") is the author of two children's books, Starfish Summer (HarperCollins, 1998) and Tangerines and Tea (Harry N. Abrams, forthcoming 2004). Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Ekphrasis, Moment, Poetry East, Heresies, and online in Literary Mama and The Plum Ruby Review. Her work is also forthcoming in Poetica. Ona lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her son, Ethan. Jennifer Graf Groneberg ("Break") lives and writes in the mountains of northwest Montana with her husband and their three boys, a seven-year-old and twin three-year-olds. Currently, she is working on a book called Roadmap to Holland (New American Library, 2008), about mothering Avery, a fraternal twin born with Down syndrome. You can read more about her and her family at her website. Libby Gruner ("How She Writes It," A Review of I Don't Know How She Does It; "Masks, Chains, and Myths: Analyzing Motherhood," "The Wonder Years: Three writers talk about the time that leaves most of us speechless") writes the column Children's Lit Book Group and teaches English and Women's Studies at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA, where she lives with her family. Her academic writing has appeared in SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Children's Literature, and other journals. Her personal writing has been featured in Brain,Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers and the Seal Press anthology Toddler: Real-Life Stories of those Fickle, Urgent, Irrational, Tiny People We Love, and Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life. Find out more on her blog. Teresa Burns Gunther ("Let Down") holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Lynx Eye, the Berkeley Fiction Review, Mary Online Journal, and the Apprentice Guild's The Mag, where she was a featured writer in the Summer 2004 issue. Her story "Magic Fingers" was a finalist in the 2004 Phoebe Journal Winter Fiction Contest. She is currently completing her first novel, Shadow Lake. Teresa lives with her husband and two amazing, loving sons, Aaron (12) and Sam (15), in Oakland, California, where she leads creative writing workshops through Lakeshore Writers (Contact her at lakeshore49@sbcglobal.net for more information). Kim Haas ("You Are Here") lives in Brighton, Michigan with her husband and their two amazing daughters, Katie (12) and Emily (9). Before relocating to the Midwest, Kim served as co-director of the Writer’s Voice in Phoenix and as an instructor for their MothersWrite program. Her work has appeared in “Swallow the Moon,” “Raising Arizona Kids,” and “Welcome Home.” In addition to being a writer, she is also a graphic designer and collage artist. Her current writing projects include a novel-in-stories, a short story collection and a recent draft of a novel completed in thirty days. Visit her blog, “Creative Fallout” at Alle C. Hall's ("Not Quite Haiku: A Review of Haiku Mama" and "A Conversation with Linda Blachman") nonfiction appears in Creative Nonfiction, BUST, Literary Café Radio, The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger, for which she interviewed Leonard Nimoy. Her structurally accurate comic haiku appear in Swivel: The Nexus of Women and Wit and The Moment of Truth. Pamela Hamilton, ("Overheard at Playgroup") an American now living in Canada, is passionate about her writing, her husband and two daughters, and her work in marketing communications and gymnastics training. Her writing has appeared online in All Things Girl and adultgymnastics.com, and in print in The Word Weaver. She was recently awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2004 Non-fiction Travel Writing Contest held by The Preservation Society, Inc. You may read more of her work at: http://phwrites.blogspot.com. Lisa Hardman ("Wonder Mold Mother") is a stay-at-home mother of five children ranging in age from 18 months to 17 years. Last year, at the age of 38, she decided to take her writing more seriously and return to college. She is currently finishing a degree in English instead of completing the degree she started 19 years ago in Music Performance. She has written 18 resource articles as a nontraditional student columnist for FastWeb, the Internet's leading scholarship search service, detailing her challenges of juggling school and motherhood. Lisa lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with her husband, Bryan, and their children. Her website is www.brainymama.wordpress.com/. Lisa Harper ("Flying Home") received her M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis. She lives with her husband, daughter and son in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is an adjunct professor of writing in the M.F.A. program at the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Switchback, the Irish Times, The Emily Dickinson Journal, Literary Couplings, and Gastronomica. This work is the final chapter of Inside Out (seeking a publisher), which fuses research with personal narrative in order to understand the transformations of motherhood. Leah Harris ("If the Buddha Gave Birth: A Review of Momma Zen") is the mother of a one-year-old little boy Buddha. Her poetry and prose have been published in Off Our Backs: A Feminist Newsjournal, Beltway Poetry, and Mizna. Her memoir-in-progress explores her experiences as an ins |