Our Mission Statement

Literary 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 Are

Sarah 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.

Lisa Chiu, Marketing and Publicity Manager, is the communications director for the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She has a BA in English from Case Western Reserve and an MA in journalism from The Ohio State University. Her news articles and feature stories have appeared in People, the San Jose Mercury News, ePregnancy, and Ohio Magazine, among others. Her essays appear in Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women and the forthcoming anthology Who's Your Mama?: The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers. Lisa lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with her husband and two sons. She writes about the work-life unbalance on her blog, Rants, Ravings and Ruminations.

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.

Vicki Forman, Reviews Editor, ("Dear Friend", and the archived 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 daughter. You can contact her at vickiforman(@)gmail.com or visit her blog.

Caroline Grant (A Conversation with Pamela Tanner Boll; A Conversation with Gail Baker; Mama Sez: Literary Reflections), Editor-in-Chief, writes the column Mama at the Movies for Literary Mama. She is also co-editor, with Elrena Evans, of the anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught classes on film, women's studies, American literature, and writing; she has also taught at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her essays have been published in MotherVerse, HipMama, The Ultimate Christmas and A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons, a life she writes about on her blog, food for thought.

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 ("Evolution of a Muse"), Profiles Editor, lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. She wrote the column "Mother Angst" for Literary Mama and was also 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.

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 A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers, 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’s also published here at Literary Mama: Single Mom Fantasy, The River, A Journey to the Past, Down into the Mine, Father Writing: Floundering or Flourishing?, Happy Birthday to Literary Mama, Why Start a Pregnancy Journal?, and How to Publish a Book. You can read her LM interview and discussions about mothering in her archived column Mothering in the Ivory Tower, and at Single Mothering Southern Style.

Merle Huerta ("Tuesday Mornings"), Literary Reflections Editorial Assistant, 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. She holds a Certificate in Nonfiction from The Writers Institute 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, and blogs regularly at Skirt!.

Stephanie Hunt, Columns Editor, lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband and three daughters. Stephanie is a contributing editor to Skirt Magazine, Charleston Magazine, and SOMA Review. A graduate of Duke University and Vanderbilt Divinity School, she specializes in personal essays and profiles, and has published Peeking Under My Skirt, an essay collection. Learn more at her website.

Susan Ito, Creative Nonfiction Editor, lives in Oakland with her husband, two daughters, and mother and writes the column Life in the Sandwich for Literary Mama. 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.

Ginny Kaczmarek ("Intimate Connections: Barbara Crooker's Line Dance"), Assistant Editor in Poetry, is a poet, essayist, and critic with a background in copyediting. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans, and her writing has appeared in The Oxford American, Measure, Rattle, Umbrella, and others. She lives in New Orleans with her spouse and their preschooler son, and she tries to maintain blogs at Ginny's Tonic and Broadsided.

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, 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.

Sarah Raleigh Kilts, Literary Reflections Editor, lives with her daughter and husband in the San Francisco Bay Area. A member of the Berkeley-based Motherlode Writers group, her work has been published in Common Ties and Literary Mama. In addition to teaching music at a public elementary school, Sarah also plucks the bass and sings alongside her husband, Thom, in their Alternative-Celtic band, Diablo’s Dust.

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.

Shireen Advani Lee, Creative Nonfiction Copyeditor, lives in Singapore with her husband and daughter. Shireen is an attorney who practiced in-house corporate law in California before moving to Singapore in 2006. Shireen has been published in Singapore American Newspaper and One Magazine. Shireen maintains a blog, Beansprout Chronicle, about her adventures as an expatriate mom.

Sybil Lockhart ("Grey"), 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 ("Alice"), 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," appears in Mama Ph.D. (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

Amy S. Mercer ("Solitaire", "The Birth of Readers", "Not Alone" and Chronic Mama), Blog Editor, is a freelance writer who lives in Charleston, SC with her husband Dale and sons, Will and Miles. She writes creative nonfiction and short stories; her personal essays have been published in Skirt! Magazine, 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.

Kristina Riggle ("What Kind of Mother") is a former newspaper reporter and mother to a preschool son and baby daughter. Her short fiction has also appeared in Espresso Fiction, Net Author's E2K, and the Cimarron Review. Her debut novel, Real Life and Liars, will be published by Avon Harper Collins in the summer of 2009. She is co-editor for fiction here at Literary Mama. She can be reached through her website, www.kristinariggle.net.

Jessica DeVoe Riley, E-zine Editor, grew up in the South, and then moved to Southern California, where she lives and writes in the company of her husband and two children. Her short stories have won the South West Writers competition and placed in several others. She is published in Thema, has an essay forthcoming in Marginalia, and her blog posts have been featured in 5 Minutes for Parenting. You can contact her at her blog, All Rileyed Up.

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.

Maria Scala, Columns Editor (Vigil at Four Months), is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Descant, PoetryReviews.ca, mamazine, Between O and V, among others. You can find Maria blogging on August Avenue.

C. Delia Scarpitti, Columns Department Editor (Mothering Left to Write), 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 Marie Speed, Literary Reflections Assistant 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.

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 ("An Interview with Rachel Sarah"), 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-C

Liz 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.

Malaika King Albrecht ("Sweat Test for Cystic Fibrosis") is the grateful mother of two daughters. Her poems have recently been or are forthcoming in Kakalak: an Anthology of Carolina Poets, The Pedestal Magazine, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel—Second Floor, and Poetry Southeast. Examples of her poems can be found online in Shampoo Poetry and on the North Carolina Arts Council website. She is the co-editor of Redheaded Stepchild.

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.

Marci Ameluxen’s ("Iron") poems have appeared in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Tattoos on Cedar (Washington Poetry Association anthology), and A Shimmering Field (anthology). She received third prize in the 2005 Hackney Literary Awards. She lives on an island in Puget Sound with her husband and two sons. When not writing poetry or taming her garden Marci works as a pediatric occupational therapist.

Stephanie Bryant Anderson ("A Bag of Green Apples") is the mother of three-year-old son, Jude, and son, Cash, who is days away from being born. Her poetry has been published in Eclectica Magazine, The Rose and Thorn Literary E-zine, Poetic Hours, Decanto Magazine, and elsewhere, and has work forthcoming in AdmitTwo, Right Hand Pointing, Decompression, and other journals. She co-edits Up the Staircase, an online venue for confessional poetry. Leaving the Paper-House is her first collection of poems and may be purchased by contacting the author at stephaniebryantanderson@gmail.com.

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
Ph. D. at the University of South Carolina.

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.

Tricia Asklar ("Upon Discovering My Wife Curled on a Dog Towel in the Downstairs Bathroom During My Fifth Month of Pregnancy") lives in Rochester, New York, and teaches writing at Nazareth College. Asklar and her wife are expecting their first child in July. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plain Spoke, Boxcar Poetry Review, Juked, Cold Mountain Review, Verse Daily, So to Speak, and Chronogram, among other journals.

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.

Maija Barnett ("Mom Art") lives with her husband, two small daughters, and dog in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The Blind Man’s Press and Desert Exposure. She is a former English teacher turned stay-at-home mom who squeezes writing into the spare seconds of her life.

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.

larry bauer ("holding my son at 2 a.m.") makes his home in Helena, Montana, with an incredible fiction writer and two beautiful children. Sandra Alcosser, Montana’s first Poet Laureate, invited him to read at the opening of Montana’s 2007 legislative session. As well, FootHills Publishing has released his first volume of poems, health insurance and other matters of death, and his second: family and other seasons of change. His poetry and short stories have also appeared in Literary Mama, Poemeleon, Colors, Wild Roses in Spring, and many others. You may reach him at lbauer@mt.net. The gift of marriage and fatherhood is almost beyond poetic, but occasionally he tries to capture it on paper.

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.

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.

Ralph Black’s ("Apiarial") poems have appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, West Branch, and the Georgia and Gettysburg Reviews, among other journals. His first book, Turning Over the Earth, was published by Milkweed Editions. He teaches at SUNY Brockport, where he is Co-Director of the Brockport Writers Forum.

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
U.S.-Mexico Border. She has also had poems published in Willow Springs, Ellipsis, Heliotrope, Blackbird, Stirring and other journals.

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.

Sarah Gardner Borden("Witch") teaches writing at the Yale English Language Institute and the University of New Haven. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Open City, Willow Springs, Controlled Burn, North Carolina Literary Review, Other Voices, Bayou Magazine, Waiting Room, Beloit Fiction Journal, Chicago Reader,and Backwards City Review. She lives with her two daughters in New Haven and is working on a novel. You may visit her at Sarah Gardner Borden.

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.

Elizabeth Bruno ("Kitchen Daffodils") is due to give birth to a daughter, Willa, in late September; she also has an eight-year-old son named Uriah. She is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and she will begin graduate work in 2009. Her poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, Stirring, Eclectica Magazine, wicked alice, The Pedestal Magazine, Shakespeare’s Monkeys, and elsewhere.

Andrea J. Buchanan ("On Becoming A Writer," "The Plant," the Literary Mama column Mother Shock), founding co-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.

Rachel Bunting ("Reading SkippyJon Jones at Bedtime Is Suddenly Not Enough") is a born-and-bred South Jersey girl, where she lives with her son, her partner, and two fat cats between the Delaware River and the Pine Barrens. Her poems can be found in Wicked Alice, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Barefoot Muse, and Apple Valley Review. Her chapbook Ripe Again was published in early 2008 by Finishing Line Press.

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.

Sarah Byck ("Poem to Myself," "Individuation") is a mother of two, a psychotherapist, and a writer living in Toronto. Her prose and poetry have been published in Mamaphonic and Wascana Review. She is at work on a novel and a collection of humorous, real-life vignettes that interlace parenting and psychoanalytic theory.

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.

Melisa "Misha" Cahnmann-Taylor ("Mother Less, Mother More") is Mama to Oren Ben, born May 2007, with a new baby on the way Fall 2009! She is joyfully challenged, sharing motherhood and work as Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. She has won several prizes, including the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. A list of her journal and book publications can be found at her website, where one can also hear a recorded poetry podcast reading of "Mother Less, Mother More."

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
Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts. She lives near the Puget Sound and on the web at www.jandersoncoats.com

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.

Catherine Collins ("Waiting for Me") is a one-time bureaucrat, a some-time professional librarian, and a full-time mother. A transplanted Texan, she currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband, toddler, and newborn.

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.

Heather Cori (Perfectly Normal) teaches writers and teachers of young writers in the Pacific Northwest where she lives with her husband and three children. Her published writing career began eight years ago when her husband dared her to try to publish her work with Mothering Magazine. When her first article was retained and later went to print she admitted he was right and then set out to continue to tell her stories. Her personal writing has been featured in Living Without, Midwifery Today and The Sun. Archives of her column So… are available at Mamazine.

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-F

Ruth 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.

Lily Dayton's("Writing Between the Cracks" work has appeared in Monterey Poetry Review,
Insite Magazine, and the anthologies A Mile in Her Boots: Women Who Work in the Wild and The Back Road to Crazy: Stories from the Field. She lives in Moss Landing, California with her husband and two daughters.

Heather Derr-Smith ("At the End of the Day") was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She earned her BA in Art History from the University of Virginia, where she also took creative writing workshops with Rita Dove, Charles Wright, and Greg Orr. She went on to earn her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first book, Each End of the World, poems about the war in Bosnia in the 1990s and chronicles the lives of refugees, most of them women and children who experienced terrible trauma. Her second book is called The Bride Minaret and is about motherhood, identity, and displacement and includes stories from Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Damascus. She has three children, ages 10, 7, and 5.

Wendy Levine DeVito ("Never Done") lives in Hartsdale, New York, with her husband and two young children. She teaches English and creative writing at Pelham Memorial High School. She has degrees in English from The University at Albany and Queens College. This is her first publication.

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.

Sharon Dornberg-Lee ("Winter Bath") is a geriatric social worker in Chicago. She has a nine-year-old daughter. Her poetry has recently appeared in Earth's Daughters. Her essay "Cold Turkey on Big Bird" was featured on the Chicago Public Radio program Eight Forty-Eight.

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.

Diana Duke ("Golden") is a writer, wife, and mother of two in San Diego, California. After receiving her MFA in Creative Writing, she became a stay-at-home-mom who writes when her kids aren’t looking. Her work has appeared in red. and Mamaphonic, and she blogs at http://miscellaneoustitlex.blogspot.com..

Cheryl Dumesnil’s ("Teaching Luca Mr. Potato Head") poetry has appeared in Calyx, Many Mountains Moving, and Nimrod, among other literary magazines. Her books are Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Warner 2002), edited with Kim Addonizio, and Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall (Thunder’s Mouth 2005). She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their two sons.

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

David Harris Ebenbach ("Shavuot (First Fruits)"), father of a three-year-old boy named Reuben, has had his poetry published in, among other places, Artful Dodge, Phoebe , Mudfish, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. His first book of short stories, Between Camelots (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the GLCA New Writer's Award. Recently awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Ebenbach teaches Creative Writing at Earlham College.

Suzanne Edison ("Lulled By") was recently awarded two grants to complete a chapbook of poems dealing with living with a child with a chronic illness. Two other poems were chosen for new choreography by Bellingham Repertory Dancers in ’08. She lives with her daughter and husband in Seattle, Washington. Other work has appeared in Cascade, The Washington Poets Association anthology; Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism and Awakening; whispers & [shouts]; and Literary Mama, and is forthcoming in Pearl.

Lois Parker Edstrom ("Cookie Bakers") has authored two nonfiction books for children, published in the 1980s. Her poetry appears in the Washington Poets Association anthology Tattoos on Cedar, and in literary journals including the Birmingham Arts Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and Cascade. In 2007 she was awarded the Hackney National Literary Award for poetry, third place, and in 2006 received the Benefactor's Award from the Whidbey Island Writer's Conference. She is a mother, a grandmother, and retired nurse who lives on an island in Puget Sound.

Leah Odze Epstein ("The Cardinal") is a mother of three (two girls and a boy). She lives in Larchmont, New York, where she is working on her first middle-grade novel. Her poem, Short Tantrum on a Long Afternoon, was previously published on Literary Mama, and an excerpt from her novel in progress, “Glen Echo,” was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Family Matters competition.

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.

Anna Evans ("To My Daughter, After a Fight") is raising two daughters, now aged 10 and 8. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Measure. She is the editor of the Barefoot Muse and gained her MFA from Bennington College. Her chapbook “Swimming” is available from Maverick Duck Press.

Elrena Evans ("Birthing: A Process in Vignettes" and "The Journey Home") holds an MFA from The Pennsylvania State University and writes the column Me and My House. She is co-editor, along with Literary Mama Editor-in-Chief Caroline Grant, of Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008) and the author of a short story collection, This Crowded Night, forthcoming from DreamSeeker Books. She writes for Her.meneutics, the the Christianity Today blog for women, and lives with her husband and three children in Pennsylvania. Her website is elrenaevans.com.

Shara Faskowitz (Mesozoic Mama) is a writer and editor living in Maine. She has proudly survived almost 18 years of parenting Victor, age 17, and Rachael, age 13. They are both geniuses and gorgeous, and are also the owners of many obsolete soon-to-be collectibles, including 42,000 plastic dinosaurs. Shara moonlights as a starving poet, and her work has appeared on the web and in print publications such as Exquisite Corpse, A Small Garlic Press, Erosha, and Thieves Jargon.

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.

Katie Fesuk ("To Two Teenage Girls Playing with One Another’s Hair in the Back of My Classroom") was a 2006 Georgia Author of the Year Award nominee for her chapbook, If Not an Apple (La Vita Poetica Press). She is a teacher and Poet in Residence at The Walker School. She lives with her husband, Damian, and son, Sawyer, born February 19, 2008. Poems can be found online in Stirring, Kennesaw Review, The Apple Valley Review, and Sea Stories and in print journals such as Slant, The Chattahoochee Review, Water~Stone, Rock & Sling, No Tell Motel, Atlanta Review, and wicked alice.

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.

B. K. Fischer ("Fabrication") is a mother of three living in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Hopkins Review, Ekphrasis, Southwest Review, and other journals, and she is a frequent contributor of essays to Boston Review. She is the author of a scholarly study, Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry, and teaches at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center and the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Kathy Fish ("Spin") is a mother of four. Her stories are published or forthcoming in Smokelong Quarterly, Quick Fiction, Indiana Review, The Denver Quarterly, New South, Storyglossia, Night Train, and elsewhere. Her collection of 17 short shorts is featured in a book published by Rose Metal Press entitled A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: 4 Chapbooks of Short Fiction by 4 Women. She may be reached at mrsfish1960@yahoo.com

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.

Vanessa Fogg ("Storm") is a former research biologist turned scientific writer and editor. She lives in western Michigan with her husband and two daughters. "Storm" is her first publication in a non-scientific journal.

Brittany Fonte (Condensation Hearts and Grace) 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.

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.

Lori Freshwater ("In the path of Mary") is the mother of two, including an adopted son with special needs who teaches her every day. She is currently a student of English and Creative Writing at Rhode Island College. Her work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Red Wheelbarrow, and will be forthcoming in The Shoreline.

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-I

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, Multi-Culti Mami columnist (Wanting, Waiting), 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.

Jeanne 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.

Joan Rene Goldberg ("Childhood Curiosity") is a graduate of Brooklyn College. Her poems can be read in Snakeskin, Eclectica, Hudson View Poetry Digest (summer 2008), and miller’s pond. Her daughter, Erica, is a Stanford Law School graduate volunteering in Cambodia and her son, Brian, attends the University of California. She shares her life with a fantastic man named Steven.

Rebekah Goode-Peoples ("My turn") lives in Savannah, Georgia, with five cool dudes — husband, five-year-old son, two cats, and one dog — and therefore eagerly anticipates the birth of her daughter in March. She runs a high school writing center and writes lyrics and plays electronic drums for the band Oryx and Crake. This is her first published poem.

Holly Goodman ("Close to the Air") is a freelance writer in Portland, Ore., where she lives with her husband, Scott, and their two daughters. Her work has appeared The Journal, Ohio State University's Literary Magaine, where it was named the 2007 flash fiction writing contest winner. She regularly contributes non-fiction to The Oregonian and online webzines among other publications.

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.

KJ Hannah Greenberg ("Natural Balance") is blessed to be the mom of two boys and two girls. She writes about her teens and almost-teen in her Jerusalem Post blog, “Old/New World Discourse,” and in her Type-A Moms blog, “Teens.” Also, Hannah has recently published the creative nonfiction parenting pieces “Afar and Beyond: Another Time, Another Place,” in MidCentury Modern Moms; “The Goat Yoghurt Story,” in The Shiur Times (June, 2007); “I Can Almost,” in Hamodia (April 12, 2008); and the short fiction, “Popcorn” in Doorknobs and Bodypaint. Her creative nonfiction piece “Some Bits Sometimes: Well Parenting” is forthcoming in The Mother Magazine as will be her poems “The Zebra Hoofbeats of Buttercup Boys” and “There’s a Seam.”

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.

Jessica Berger Gross is the editor of the award-winning anthology About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope (Plume, 2006). Her new book, enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), is available in bookstores now. Jessica lives with her husband and son in Vancouver, British Columbia. She teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

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.

Jessica Smartt Gullion, PhD ("A Vinyl Batgirl Notebook") and her husband parent two amazing children in a tiny town in north Texas. Her writings on motherhood have appeared in Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life ,The Mother's Movement Online , and the Journal for the Association for Research on Mothering . She is currently finishing her first novel.

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).

Essayist, poet, and short story writer, Rachel Gurevich’s work ("Five Seeds") has appeared in a variety of publications, including Pregnancy Magazine, The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness (Jossey-Bass, 2006), Common Ties, and many others. She’s the author of two books, including the FabJob Guide to Become a Doula (FabJob, 2006) and The Doula Advantage (Three Rivers Press, 2003), which received endorsements from Dr. William Sears and author Ann Douglas. Rachel writes about infertility for About.com, a New York Times Company. She’s the happy mother of two boys, and despite a diagnosis of secondary infertility, and her three angels in heaven, she’s still trying to grow her garden.

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
http://kimhaasdesign.blogspot.com.

Barbara G.S. Hagerty ("Mother") is a Charleston, South Carolina, mother of four and career freelance writer who has in recent years turned her focus to poetry. Her first chapbook, entitled The Guest House (after a favorite Rumi poem), is forthcoming from Finishing Line Books in 2009. She is also the author of two nonfiction books (Purse Universe; Handbags) that examine the metaphors and cultural meanings inherent in the bags we carry.

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 institutionalized adolescent. She works in the field of mental health advocacy and lives in Washington, D.C. You can read her blog Mama Dharma and reach her at leah_ida@hotmail.com.

Cindi Harrison ("Grounding"), a writer from San Francisco, is a lesbian co-parent to two really fab teenagers, Alex and Lee. Three of her poems are forthcoming in Gertrude. Recent publications include pieces published in This Day: Diaries from American Women and Annie Finch's and Katherine Varnes'sAn Exaltation of Forms. She's currently working on her first novel.

Kim Harrison ("Mother-Sister") is a social work professor and clinical social work consultant from Lawrence, Kansas. She has a patient husband, six great kids, and family who visits on a daily basis.

Cheryl Hart ("Behind the Pretty Pictures") is a dedicated reader and writer, active in a local writer's circle and two book clubs. She graduated from Emory Law School and after a few years of practice, embarked on a new career as a stay-at-home mom. Her poetry has appeared in Subtle Tea and is forthcoming in Café del Soul. She lives in Georgia with her husband and their six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.

Amy Hassinger ("Getting Books") is the author of two novels, The Priest's Madonna and Nina: Adolescence. She teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program through the University of Nebraska, and lives in Illinois with her husband and two children. You can find her online at www(dot)amyhassinger(dot)com.

Tova Hassler ("Eleven") is the mother of two children and writes widely about family life. She is not using her real name because she would like her daughter, who is very Internet savvy, to continue to give her hugs.

Aeron Haynie ("Books and Dust") is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She lives in Green Bay with her husband, Mark Anderson, and their cherubic 14-month old daughter, Sophie Lyda.

Esther Altshul Helfgott ("Mouth") is a poet, writing teacher, and mother of three adult children and of four grandchildren. Her writing has appeared in The Dakota House Journal, Spindrift, Switched-on-Gutenberg, Moondance, The American Psychoanalyst, The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review, Mentress Moon, historylink, and other periodicals. She has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington (which took her 16 years to complete) and is the author of The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices (Kota Press, 2000). Esther edits the on-line literary journal: The Psychoanalytic Experience: Analysands Speak and she is the founding coordinator of Seattle's "It's About Time" Writers' Reading Series, now in its 15th year.

Anne Helmstadter ("The Boys and Baby") is a former film industry executive who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two young daughters, and two ageing Siamese cats. She completed an MFA in creative writing at St. Mary’s College in 2004 and is currently writing her first novel. This is her first published piece.

Shu-Huei Henrickson ("China Boy") is a writer from Taiwan who lives and teaches in Rockford, Illinois. Her work has appeared in Fiction International; Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love; Susie Bright's The Best American Erotica 2005; and elsewhere. Prone to frequent attacks of wanderlust, she has traveled to Morocco, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey, Norway, England, and dozens of other countries.

Liz Henry ("Dream of the Night Key" and Diary of a Young Mother) lives in Redwood City, California with her partner and 3 year old child. Her poems, fiction, and translations from Spanish have been published most recently in Two Lines, Transfer, Strange Horizons, and Fantastic Metropolis. She is currently working on translating the poems of Juana de Ibarbourou, and is looking for feminist science fiction stories written in Spanish to translate into English.

Michelle Herman ("Hope Against Hope") writes both fiction and nonfiction, and teaches in the MFA program at the Ohio State University. She is the author of the collection A New and Glorious Life; the novel Missing (which was awarded the Harold U. Ribalow Prize for "best Jewish fiction" and selected as one of the 25 Best Books of the Year by VLS, the literary supplement of The Village Voice); the novella Dog (due out in 2005 from MacAdam/Cage); and the forthcoming memoir, The Middle of Everything (also due in March 2005, from the University of Nebraska Press), from which this piece has been excerpted. Her stories, novellas, and essays have appeared in such journals as the North American Review, Story Quarterly, and American Scholar, and have been anthologized in such collections as Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America's New Young Writers and Jewish-American Fiction: A Century of Stories.

Sarah Hilary ("The Swimming Pool and the Sea", "A Thistle Harvest") won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with "Fall River, August 1892," and has two stories in the Fish Anthology 2008. She was a highly commended runner-up in the Biscuit Short Story Contest 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, "One Last Pick-Up." Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah blogs at sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com.

Cindy Hill ("Daughter") is, first and foremost, mother to Evelyn Mae Hill, an 11-year-old soccer-playing, horse-riding, chicken-raising embodiment of joy; and stepmother to two witty, warm, and wonderful young teens. Cindy, her husband Chris, and the girls live in Middlebury, Vermont. A recovering criminal defense attorney, Cindy now works as a freelance writer, zoning administrator, and fiddle and lace-knitting instructor, because life's too short to do one thing at a time. Her poetry has been published in PanGaia Magazine, Maps and Voyages (anthology of the Otter Creek Poets), and Vermont Life. Her narrative poem Land For Sale won the 2002 Ralph Nading Hill, Jr. award. She can be reached at wordwomanvt@yahoo.com.

Ann Hite ("White Clouds on Blue Sky") spent her formative years in Atlanta, Georgia during the sixties with her extended family, who believed the south was a country of its own. From this lethal combination was born a writer, who to this day finds the characters from her family's past creeping into her prose. Ann is the mother of four daughters, ranging from 30 to 5 years old, and has the privilege to be stepmother to her seventeen-year-old stepson. Ann has completed her first novel, Sleeping Above Chaos, writes short stories and poems. Ann has published short stories and essays both online and in print with publications including Skyline Magazine, Wild Violet, Long Story, The Dead Mule, and Fiction Warehouse. To read more, visit her website, The Painted Door.

Hannah Holborn's ("We Danced Without Strings") teenage sons have fun while she writes. "We Danced Without Strings" placed first in Surrey Writer's Festival Writing Contest. Her fiction has or will appear in Room of One’s Own, edifice WRECKED, The Quarterly Staple, The Avatar Review, Front & Centre, Words literary journal and Sights Unseen: New Writing From British Columbia. Her fiction can be read online at The Danforth Review, Identity Theory, Girls with Insurance, and Cautionary Tales.

Peggy Hong ("Woman Fables" and "Sanctuary") was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Hawaii and New York. She is the author of a poetry collection, Three Truths and a Lie(Water Press and Media), poetry chapbooks Lies and Fables and The Sister Who Swallows the Ocean (CrowLadies Press), and a fine art letterpress book, Hoofbeats (Gokiburi Press). She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and their three children, ages 20, 18, and 16. She teaches at Alverno College, Woodland Pattern Book Center, and Riverwest Yogashala. She is a certified Iyengar yoga instructor and helps direct Riverwest Yogashala, a nonprofit yoga center. She serves as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate for 2006 and 2007.

Sonya Huber (Dad, In Red, In Media Res) 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 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 son, Ivan, in Statesboro, Georgia. More info at www.sonyahuber.com.

Janis Hubschman ("Family Vacation" and "Lost Again") is the mother of two daughters, ages 16 and 18. She lives and writes in New Jersey. Her works have appeared in The New York Times, New York Runner, MSS, US Industry Today, and several local newspapers. She is currently completing an M.A. in English at Montclair State University. "Family Vacation" is her first published fiction. With the help of her agent, she is looking for a home for her completed novel about mothers and daughters. She may be reached at Janishub@aol.com.

Lockie Hunter("Your Toddler: Socrates in Training Pants") is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston where she lives with her toddler Pascale and infant Graham. Her fiction and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the Emerson Review, The Morning News, Southern Hum, Seattle Writergrrls, Muscadine Lines, ken* again, and Wild Violet. Lockie's also writes a humor column for The Mad Hatter Review titled "Lockie Confidential" and is working on a Southern novel that she hopes will help to preserve some of the eccentricities and joy of her family and hometown. You may find more of her work at Lockie Hunter.

Debbie Ann Ice ("A Brief Visit") is the mother of two boys and one female English Bulldog (her daughter). She and her husband manage all of them in Connecticut. Her work has appeared in various online and small print publications such as Salome Magazine, 3AM magazine, Pindeldyboz, , Word Riot, Barbaric Yawp, and others. She is thrilled to be a part of Literary Mama.

Cammy Iverson ("Children Dancing") is a mother of two daughters and grandmother of four. Recently, Cammy realized her lifelong dream of earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spirituality and Holistic Studies from Vermont College, where she focused on women's spirituality at midlife as well as the theory of generativity and the leaving of a lasting legacy to future generations. Cammy's work includes conducting seminars to encourage women in their life journeys at and after midlife and writing children's stories about the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents. Cammy lives with her husband in Wisconsin.

Rachel Iverson ( "An Interview with Kate Moses" ) is the Poetry Editor of Literary Mama. She lives in Malibu with her husband, son and daughter. She earned a BA in English literature and journalism from Valparaiso University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota. She writes a column, Mother and Other, for Literary Mama. Her poems and prose have appeared in publications including, Illume, a Journal of Universal Ideas, The MFC Forum Magazine, edifice WRECKED, Books and Babies, Onthebus, and The Philosophical Mother. She is also the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Glimpse Over the Edge (2002) and Mother & Other (2003), and is a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of essays. You can read some of her previously published work at www.racheliverson.com.

Contributors, J-L

Gwen A. Jadwin ("Not Mom") is a mother of one and step-mother of four -- all girls. She received her MA in English, and Certification in Creative Writing, from Binghamton University, and she currently teaches Basic Language Skills and College Writing at Broome Community College. This is her first published poem, though it originally appeared in her Master's thesis. She can be reached at jadwinga@aol.com.

Trish Lindsey Jaggers ("Scottie" and "Passage")'s poems appear or are forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, Red Rock Review, Earth's Daughters, WordWrights! Magazine, The Tobacco Anthology, Zephyrus, Red River Review, and in the books Blue Moon Rising: Kentucky Women in Transition, edited by Jennie L. Brown (Turner Publishing, 2001), and Writing Who We Are: Poems by Kentucky Feminists by Elizabeth Oakes and Jane Olmsted (WKU, 1999). She was an editor for Zephyrus, Western Kentucky University's annual literary publication, for three years. She recently won the WKU Jim Wayne Miller Poetry Award for 2002. She belongs to the International Women's Writing Guild. Currently, she assists the director of the Women's Studies Program at Western Kentucky University. She's married with two children -- a son, Scott and a daughter, Bridgette.

Jennifer James ("Unsung Motherhood") is a stay-at-home, freelancing mother of two living in North Carolina. The founder and director of the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance, Jennifer has appeared on BET Nightly News and the Korean Broadcasting System and has been interviewed by Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, and The Boston Globe. Jennifer is also the publisher of Mommy Too! Magazine, an online magazine for at-home mothers of color. She hopes to one day see it in print.

Leanna James ("Written in the Body") lives with her husband and eight year-old daughter in Easthampton, Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Mills College in Oakland, California, and has been published in literary journals, national parenting magazines, and literary anthologies. A contributor to Brain, Child, the Magazine for Thinking Mothers, she most recently appeared in Toddler: Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love. Currently at work on a novel, she also writes for Amherst Magazine, and she recently won a full fellowship in fiction from the Vermont Studio Center.

Maria Jerinic ("Talking to Ourselves and Other Necessities of Adult Life") is the mother of three children. She also teaches in the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Honors College, and is an editor for Topics for Victorian Literature and Culture(Cambridge University Press). Her personal essays have appeared in KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns, in Mom-Writers Literary Magazine, and on Mamazine.com.

Jocelyn Johnson ("Our Boy, Powhatan") has published fiction and essays in Salome magazine, Rumble, and Antithesis Common. Her fiction has placed first in the Writer's Eye story contest, and received honorable mention in the E.M. Koeppel and Piedmont Writer's Institute's fiction contests. For more information, check out her blog, JOCELYN'S STORIES: fiction and prose about motherhood and more, at her Web site, www.jocelynjohnson.com.

DeAnna Jones ("Weaning") lives in Frisco, Texas with her husband and 11-month old son, and she is expecting her second child in September. Her work has appeared in IIlya's Honey, Venue, Zillah, Palpable and Mute: An anthology by the Dallas Poets Community and Courier: An anthology of Women Poets. Her work is forthcoming in Rattle and TCU's literary journal, Descant.

Vivian Morrow Jones ("An Inheritance from My Mother: Emily Dickinson") is working on her Masters Degree in Humanities at the University of Texas/Dallas. Concentrating on Creative Writing, Vivian is a former journalist and teacher who enjoys writing about small towns in Far West Texas, where life is never as simple as it seems. She is a full-time caregiver for her mother, who still dreams that she will make her grandsons a quilt if and when they get married.

Louise Kantro ("Union" and "Reclamation") has been serious about her writing for 20 years and holds an MFA from Goddard College. She has combined full-time high school teaching with the raising of youngsters, teens, and now "boomerangs" -- adult children with school loans who need to be back "home" for a while to save money. She was lucky in her choice of life-mate. As she tells her students, she's still on husband number one. Read more on her website.

Katie Kaput ("Things You Can't Teach") is a twenty-two-year-old Irish/Italian–American Midwesterner living in Palo Alto, California , with her partner and her son.

Food-and-travel writer Jen Karetnick's (Rules for New Parents) poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Georgetown Review, Blue Unicorn, River Styx, Black River Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Nebraska Review, and The Greensboro Review, among others. The author of Around Miami with Kids (RandomHouse) and co-author of Raw Food in the Real World (ReganBooks, July 2005), she is the editor of the anthology-in-progress, Enopoetica: A Collection of Poems Inspired by Wine. (E-mail submissions to Kavetchnik@aol.com.) She is the features editor for The Wine News; the "Kitsch'n" columinst for the Drexel Online Journal and the "Sexy Tastes" columnist for Citizen Culture. Jen lives in Miami Shores with her husband, Jon; her children Zoe (6) and Remy (4); four cats of various ages and pedigree; and 14 mango trees of indeterminate age.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf ("Fine: On Maternity and Mortality") is the mother of a young daughter. She has published two collections of poetry, a collection of essays, and a biography. Most recently, she co-edited with Michael Tyrell an anthology, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, from NYU press. She is associate professor of English and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University where she teaches creative writing. "Fine" was previously published in Central PA Magazine.

Annie Kassof's ("Plumbing Problems: A Love Story") essays and articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times Magazine, Adoptive Families Magazine, KQED FM's Perspectives, and more. She's currently at work on a memoir called Kaleidoscope Family, about her experiences as a foster and adoptive parent. A "veteran" single parent, she lives in Northern California with her son, daughter, and foster baby. "Plumbing Problems: A Love Story" is her first published work of fiction.

Ashley Kaufman (At Second Sight) lives in kid time with her two sons, a precocious third grader and a wild and wooly preschooler. She steals minutes to write. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rosebud, susurrus, Mad Hatter's Review, flashquake, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Pearl, among other venues.

Wendi Kaufman ("Intimate Landscape") holds an MFA in English/Fiction Writing from George Mason University. Her fiction has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, Fiction, New York Stories, and Other Voices. Her stories have been anthologized in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops, Elements of Literature and most recently, Faultlines: Stories of Divorce. Wendi is a recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the winner of a Mary Roberts Rhinehart award for short fiction, and a 2000 Breadloaf Writer's Conference David Sokolov Scholar in Fiction. She is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post. She is the mother of two energetic boys, ages seven and three, who have a more demanding social calendar than she does. She can be reached at kaufs@aol.com.

Gail Kavanagh ("Body Language") is a freelance writer living in Queensland, Australia. Gail has had short stories published in Arabella, For Me (an Australian publication), Fables and Romance Ever After. Her articles have been published in Dollar Stretcher, Every Writer, Women's Independent Press, and Brady Magazine. Her true story "No Place Like Home" will be published by Atriad Press this year. Her ebook The Five Writing Questions and How To Answer Them is available at Lulu.com. Gail is married and the mother of seven children. Her youngest daughter, who inspired the story "Body Language," is now 17. Gail's website is at http://www.geocities.com/gailkav.

Penn Kemp ("Wild Craft") is mother of two and proud grandmother of year-old Ula. Among her publications are twenty-five books of poetry and drama, ten CDs, and six videopoems, including Pendas, Penn Letters , Poem for Peace in many voices, and Muse/News. The League of Canadian Poets proclaimed Penn one of the foremothers of Canadian poetry.

Angela Kenyon ("Humber Takes Over the World") loves her hectic life with her family in British Columbia, but treasures every moment she can spend writing. She has been mother, step-mother, and foster-mother to six children. She currently works in technical and administrative support and is an outspoken advocate in her community on issues of poverty and access to quality public education. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of Internet publications.

Mary Kenyon("The Stealth Mama and the Muse") and her muse live in rural Dyersville, Iowa, with her husband David and six of her eight children. Mary is the author of Home Schooling from Scratch: Simple Living, Super Living (Gazelle, 1996) and has been published in such magazines as The Writer, Home Education, Back Home, Backwoods Home, and Woman's World, among others. One of her essays appears in Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul.

Kathryn Kerr ("Alternation of Generation") is the the mother of Nancy, age 20, and Sarah, age 11. She teaches writing at Illinois State University. Her poems, essays and reviews have been published widely. She earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Currently teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design, Mary Chi-Whi Kim ("Penny Alchemy") has published in The New York Times Magazine and literary journals including Boxcar Poetry Review and others, and won two poem commissions from The Ohio State University's Multicultural Center. Her poetry chapbook, Silken Purse (2005), was published by Pudding House Press; her multi-genre book, Karma Suture, garnered an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Writer's Digest International Self-Published Books Contest.

Kathy Kincade ("50/50") has been a technical journalist for 20 years. She lives and writes in Alameda, CA with her 10-year-old son, Tommy. This is her second published piece of fiction; her story "A Season of Uncertainties" appears in the Winter Solstice edition (December 2006-March 2007) of Cezanne's Carrot.

Sally Rosen Kindred ("Curious George Flees Over the Prison Wall") is a mother of two boys and author of Garnet Lanterns, winner of the 2005 Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest. She received a 2007 Maryland State Arts Council Artist Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Passages North, and Spoon River Poetry Review, and her poem "American Sweetgum" was runner-up for Ruminate’s 2008 Janet McCabe Poetry Prize.

Priscilla Kipp ("Winning My Peace") is a freelance writer living in Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, Canada, mother of four sons, mother-in-law of three, and grandmother of two. Her work has appeared in the online magazines Exceptional Parent and Night Train, and has appeared in print with the Worcester Review, Berkshire Review, and New England Writer's Network. She can be contacted at: pkipp04@yahoo.com

Karen Knowles ("Holiday") is the editor of the anthology Celebrating the Land: Women’s Nature Writings and has broadcast her creative non-fiction on Northeast Public Radio. "Holiday" is her first published fiction. Karen lives in Halfmoon, NY, with her husband and two amazing daughters. She can be reached at kknowles2@nycap.rr.com.

Rebecca Koffman ("The Creature Feature") is a freelance writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Salon, and several other magazines and newspapers. "The Creature Feature" is her first published fiction. She is working, sporadically, on a collection of short stories, based largely in South Africa, where she grew up, and also on a mystery novel. She has two children, a son of ten and a daughter who is seven. She can be reached at rebeccakoffman@yahoo.com.

Leah Korican ("Snow Plant") is a poet and visual artist. She has published chapbooks of poetry and art, and her work has appeared in literary magazines including, West Wind Review and the poetry anthology, Her Words. She is the mother of two.

Miriam N. Kotzin ("Civil Ceremonies") teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University where she directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing. Her fiction and poetry have been published widely in such places as Boulevard for which she is a contributing editor, The Pedestal, Flashquake and Three Candles. Her work has received three nominations for a Pushcart Prize. She is a founding editor of Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas.

Judy Kronenfeld ("Oh Please, Stay!") has seen her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction appear in numerous journals, including Poetry International, The Women's Review of Books, The North American Review, The Crescent Review, Potpourri, and Under the Sun, as well as in several anthologies. She is currently seeking a publisher for her second book of poems. With the other (disconnected) half of her brain, she has also written criticism on Renaissance subjects (including a book on Shakespeare). She teaches in the Department of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside, and lives in Riverside with her anthropologist husband. Both of them dearly want grandchildren. They are the parents of a grown son and daughter (so far not complying) who live and work on the East (alas) Coast.

Formerly a travel magazine editor, Cindy La Ferle ("Fragile Season", "I Wish You'd Quit Writing About Me") has published essays in The Christian Science Monitor, Writer’s Digest, Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion, Reader’s Digest, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Detroit Free Press, and in many online publications, including Just for Mom. A collection of her award-winning essays and newspaper columns was recently published in Writing Home, which is available nationally in bookstores and on amazon.com. Visit her web site at laferle.com or write Cindy LaFerle.

Suzanne LaFetra ("Unmoored," A Review of Swimming With Maya; "Learning Curve," A Review of The House on Beartown Road; "Toddling Toward Community," A review of Toddler) is a Berkeley mom-writer. Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Ladybug Magazine, Skirt! Magazine, and on KQED fm. She also writes a parenting column for GetLocalNews.com.

Tua Laine, ("Au Pair in Alabama, or The Legend of the Dog-Killer") a long-lost Finn, lives in Alabama with her husband and the bulimic cat their kids (2) left behind when they went to college in California. Tua's stories have been published in Absinthe, Pindeldyboz, Rosebud, Snow Monkey and Parents' Press in the US and QWF in Britain. She is currently peddling her first novel and the said (bulimic) cat: take one and she'll throw in the other. Offers to tualaine@yahoo.com!

Lorene Lamothe ("Dead Man’s Float") lives in Massachusetts with her seven-year-old daughter. She has published poems in Blackbird, MiPOesias, Passages North, Seattle Review, and other magazines. Her chapbook, Camera Obscura, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Vera Landry ("Blue") and her partner are moms to two boys, ages 9 and 7. They live in Berkeley, California. Vera has published in Brain, Child magazine, and writes a monthly column for AntiRacist Parent (www.antiracistparent.com).

Kerry Langan (Memphis, Tennessee)'s short stories have appeared in more than two dozen literary journals including Other Voices, StoryQuarterly, Cimarron Review, American Literary Review and The Seattle Review. Selected published stories are available at: oberlin.net/~langan. She is overjoyed to be the mother of two daughters, currently nine and six years old.

Andrea Lani ("Measuring Rain") is a human ecologist and writer who enjoys catching frogs with her three boys around their home in central Maine. She produces the print zine for mamas called "GEMINI" three times a year and blogs at www.remainsofday.blogspot.com.

Bettina Lanyi ("Memo") lives outside Washington, DC with her husband, five-year-old daughter, and two-year-old son. Her essay appeared in the parenting book, Adventures in Gentle Discipline. She has recently completed a novel.

Danielle Lapidoth ("13 More Ways of Looking at a Blackbird") lives with her husband and three children, ages 4, 2 and three months, in Zurich, Switzerland. There she runs an editing business, teaches English, and writes poetry, flash fiction, and essays while her family sits on her lap or sleeps. She has had work published at Flash Quake, Apple Valley Review, Lily Lit Review, Barnwood, Shit Creek Review, Midstream, The Lyric, Ellery Queen, and Mamaphonic.

Julia LaSalle("The Lesson") is a just-engaged writer in Pittsburgh, PA. Her works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in: Storyglossia, The Mississippi Review, Bound off and Drunken Boat. Julia is currently editor of Steel City Review and right now, she can't stop looking at her brand new sparkly ring.

Jennifer Lauck ("Not So Perfect") is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoirs Blackbird and Still Waters. Her new book, Show Me the Way, has just been released in paperback. Read more about her at www.JenniferLauck.com.

Ann Neuser Lederer ("Seeing Babies") is the mother of a 23-year-old son. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Moria, CrossConnect, Kalliope, Adirondack Review, Brevity, Comstock Review and others. Two chapbooks of her work, Approaching Freeze, (Foothills) and The Undifferentiated, (Pudding House) were released in 2003. She has been employed as a hospice visiting nurse for several years.

Meta Lee ("My Mother, My Child") is a retired librarian. Since her retirement, she tells folktales, traditional tales as well as some original stories. She tells to children and adults in south Florida. Her writing, mostly fiction, has appeared in a variety of literary publications. She has won prizes in numerous writing competitions. She is a mother of two and a grandmother of 11.

Monika Lee ("Fertility Restored") is the mother of two daughters, Anna (11) and Natasha (8). They live, cuddle, and read with Monika and her husband in Lobo, Ontario. Monika's book of poetry, slender threads, was published jointly by EBIP (HMS Press) and the Canadian Poetry Association in 2004. Her poems have also appeared in many literary journals.

Tina Laurel Lee("Summer Tantrums") lives with her husband and two children in Minneapolis. She has a MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. This is her first published essay. Her e-mail address is tina.laurel@gmail.com.

Julia Lisella ("Old Body") is the mother of a ten year old daughter and a three year old son. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving, Solo, Pebble Lake Review, Pleiades, Sidelines (a publication for women on pregnancy bedrest) and many other publications. She is a lecturer of history and literature at Harvard University and teaches poetry in the Harvard Extension School. She is at work on a scholarly book dealing with maternity and political poetry of the 1930s.

Erica Maria Litz ("Numina") lives in Arizona with her two-year-old son and five-year-old daughter. Her first collection of poetry, Lightning Forest, Lava Root, will be published in the coming year by Plain View Press. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in the journals Brink Magazine, Moondance, Oranges and Sardines, Americanisado, The Superstition Review, The Caribbean Writer, and quiet Shorts. Of Colombian heritage, her poetry has been influenced by the culture and the musical roots of Latin America.

Laura A. Lopez ("LiLi") lives in Moline, Illinois, with her husband and two daughters. She has received numerous local writing awards. Various works of her writing and/or photography have appeared in Clamor Magazine, Voces Weekly, and Augustana College’s literary magazine, Saga. Laura is happily employed as the marketing/communications and development director at Living Lands & Waters, where there is an ample supply of both subject matter and writing duties.

Tricia Louvar ("An Expectant Mother’s Motion Parallax") has the best of both worlds—a son and a daughter. Her essays and poetry have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Orion, Zyzzyva, XCP: Streetnotes, among other journals, books, and periodicals.

Ericka Lutz ("Red Diaper Dharma", "San Andreas," "Why My Garden," "Abandoning Nature" "Inchworm Turns Three", and "An Interview with Marian Winik") writes fiction (short and long) and non-fiction (creative and commercial). She is the author of seven non-fiction books including On the Go with Baby: A Stress-Free Guide to Getting Across Town or Around The World and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Stepparenting. Her short stories and creative non-fiction essays have appeared in numerous books, anthologies, and journals including Scrivener Creative Review, Green Mountains Review, Kaleidoscope, Sideshow, France, A Love Story, Child of Mine, Toddler, and Big Ugly Review. She is the recipient of two fiction fellowships at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Ericka teaches writing at U.C. Berkeley and through U.C. Berkeley Extension, and consults privately with writers about their writing and the writing process. Visit her personal website or over at Red Room, where she blogs several times a week.

Contributors, M-Q

Cat MacDiarmid ("See That?" and "Something New Under the Moon") has one daughter, Meadow, and a five-year-old grandson, Noah. They are the inspiration of much of her writing which includes poems, short stories, children's books and novels. Cat is currently working on a book titled Step On the Ghost. She is a member of the Acadiana Writing Project and credits this group with helping her to improve her writing over the last ten years. Cat has been teaching English in junior high school for twenty-seven years. She has a BA in English, a Masters in Education, and National Board Certification.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Sharon MacDonell (OpEd)started her career in Tokyo, working for Globe Net Productions and producing segments for a variety of clients, including the PBS/NHK co-production Asia Now. Stateside she's produced for such shows as ABC's World News Tonight, Inside Edition, and Forensic Files (the "Deadly Knowledge" episode). Currently, Sharon's a full-time mom and part-time journalist and essayist. She's been published by Christian Science Monitor, Signature Magazine, MetroParent, Strut, Suburban Lifestyles & Gihon River Review.

Jody Mace ("Bedtime Stories")lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Stan, and her children, Kyla and Charlie. Her essays have appeared in Mothering Magazine, Brain Child Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Mockingbird Journal, and others. She works as a school librarian, where other people's children are often pleased to read books that she recommends.

Margaret MacInnis ("It Could Be Me"), 36 years old, has no children of her own, and is slowly making peace with this fact. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens University of Charlotte, NC and she will be a fellow at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City. Her poetry has appeared in Lyric, and she has a piece forthcoming in Brevity, An Online Journal of Literary Nonfiction. She has written a memoir called Nothing Left to Burn, and is actively searching for an agent.

J. Annie MacLeod ("Meiosis") is an associate professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland where she teaches nineteenth-century literature, women studies, and fiction writing. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her creative work has appeared journals such as The Cream City Review, Briar Cliff Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Mother to seven-year-old Katharine, a devoted reader and writer herself, Kate is J. Annie's most wondrous and humbling creation.

Kate MacVean ( "Mothering Abroad" is no stranger to living abroad. A semester in Spain was soon followed by a summer in the mountains of Mexico, and then a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. Now she is happily settled in a town outside of Madrid, where she lives with her husband and their two sons. She graduated from Binghamton University with a degree in Creative Writing, and her work has appeared in Philosophical Mother and Tattoo Highway. E-mail Kate here.

Dayna Macy ("Raging Mom") is a writer living in Berkeley, CA. She is the proud, joyful mother of Matthew Benjamin and Jack Henry Rosenberg. Her writing has appeared in Self, Tricycle, and other national publications, and she is a frequent contributor to Yoga Journal Magazine, and Salon.com, where this article originally appeared.

Cheryl Maddalena("Mommies") is mother to Andrew aged 19 months. She is almost finished with her doctorate in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and is a frequent competitor at the Berkeley Poetry Slam. If you like to cheer for poets or want folks to cheer for you, find your local poetry slam at www.poetryslam.com.

Heather Magruder ("Shaggy Hair, Sagging Pants and Split Feelings") is a freelance writer and teaching artist who lives in the Piedmont region of South Carolina with her husband, two sons, and daughter. She is on the South Carolina Arts Commission's Artist Roster in fiction and poetry and is pubished in a variety of periodicals. Heather is senior editor of Greenville Magazine and associate editor of SouthCarolina Magazine. She is currently working on a collection of essays about her Scottish and Irish grandmothers and great aunts.

Lisa Suhair Majaj ("Answers") is a Palestinian-American writer, scholar and mother. She has co-edited three collections of critical essays: Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist , and Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels .' Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Worlds in our Words, Contemporary American Women Writers , and Homemaking:Women Writers on the Politics and Poetics of Home. Her essay on balancing parenting and the writing life, "Email to the Muse," is forthcoming in Scheherazade's Legacy: Arab-American Women on Writing. She lives in Cyprus with her husband, her seven year old daughter and her two year old son (who, when not trying to disassemble the computer, frequently helps with typing).

Char Makela ("Seven-year-olds") holds an MA in Communication Management from the University of Southern California and has worked in radio broadcasting and arts administration. Her poetry has appeared in South Dakota Review. She lives in Minnesota with her daughter.

Jo Malin ("Books and Babies") is a Project Director in the School of Education and Human Development and Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is the author of The Voice of the Mother: Embedded Maternal Narratives in Twentieth-Century Women's Autobiographies (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), from which this piece is excerpted, with permission, and co-editor with Victoria Boynton of Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude (The Haworth Press, 2003), and the Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography (Greenwood Press, forthcoming 2005). She is a mother of two and a grandmother of two.

Kate Maloy's ("How to Write a Novel")son is now 21 years old and taking seriously the message she tried to impart: Follow your heart; do what you dream. She's happy that he heard her, but she never anticipated all these sleepless nights. Kate's first novel will be published by Algonquin Books in Fall, 2007. She is also the author of the memoir A Stone Bridge North: Reflections in a New Life and has published or served as ghost writer in fields as diverse as education, women's reproductive choices, art history, and medicine. Please visit Kate's website at Kate Maloy.

Marianne Mansfield ("I Am a Stepmother") is a writer come lately to the craft. After more than 30 years as a public educator in Michigan, she retired and turned her attention to writing. She writes weekly essays for a newspaper in southwest Michigan, and is working on a collection of short stories. She is occasionally overcome by a poem, but not often.

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D. ("Poker Face") is a freelance writer, consultant, and parent educator. She is the editor and co-author of Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love (Seal Press), which won the Independent Publishers Book Association Award. Her writing has been published in Ms. Magazine; Pregnancy; Newsday; Mothering Magazine; Brain, Child; World Pulse; and dozens of other national and local magazines and newspapers. She has eaten fried crickets in Niger, appeared live on prime-time TV in France, and performed the can-can in America. She lives in Ashland, Oregon, with her husband and three small children. Find out more about her at: www.ToddlerTrueStories.com.

Jeannie Marshall ("Love and Money") worked as a features writer at the National Post in Toronto before moving to Italy. She has published articles in the The Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper), as well as in Saturday Night Magazine and The Walrus Magazine, among other Canadian publications, and in Brick. She lives with her family in Rome.

Toni Martin ("If I Were") is a physician and writer who lives in Berkeley, CA. Her book, How to Survive Medical School, is long out of print, but recently her essays have appeared in The Berkeley Monthly, The Threepenny Review and Health Affairs. Her three children, Andrew 24, Chris 21, and Anna 18, saved her from a dry workaholic life.

Nancy Massand ("Dump Trucks") teaches middle school students at an independent school in Queens, New York. She and her husband reside in Queens with their youngest daughter, who will be a college senior in the fall. Their two older daughters are married and living in Queens and the Boston area. Nancy has been writing since she knew how to talk, pretty much, and is currently procrastinating on her second novel.

Jennifer Mattern ("Muse of Fire, Muse of Floss") is a freelance writer, playwright, and underslept mama of Sophie, 3, and Hannah, 9 months. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Fierce and Brain, Child magazines. Jenn can be contacted via her website: www.jennifermattern.com.

Kathleen McCall ("Gullwing," "One True Note") is a freelance writer living in Charleston, SC, with her husband Dale is a daughter, mother of two daughters, math tutor, and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, Eclectica, Skirt! Magazine, Tourist2000, Buzzwords (UK), The Story Garden, and Ink Pot Literary Journal.

Kelly McClymer (Diapers, Dishes, and Demons) has published seven historical romance novels and several short fantasy stories, all of which contain elements inspired by her 25-and-counting years spent raising her three children with her husband in Maine. This story was hatched during a graduate writing class that followed a throat-aching marathon Dr. Seuss reading at home back when all the kids were shorter than their mother. Visit her website at http://kellymcclymer.com

Melanie McGauran ("Peeling Back the Truth")started as a local free-lance writer, publishing over 40 feature articles for a Chicago area newspaper while she stayed home with her son. She eventually took time to compile her own stories about family life with a teenager. With college approaching, she has returned to work, part-time, and now screens content for Legacy.com. She lives with her husband, Dennis, and their son Will, and admits that she still watches too much T.V., but she's quick to change the channel on any cooking shows calling for an onion.

Mona McKinlay ("The Lion in the Garden"), a teacher and psychotherapist, lives in Edinburgh. She has an MPhil in Writing from the University of Glamorgan, and is studying for her PhD at the University of St. Andrews. She has been published in Cutting Teeth, Subtletea, Race Today, and City Limits. Recently highly commended in The New Writer competition, her story, "Sugar Plum Fairy" will shortly be published in The New Writer. Mona is working on her first collection of short stories and novel, The Hypnotist’s House. She has a grown-up son, stepdaughter, and stepson.

Lisa McMann ("When You're Ten") is married to Matt, who sings as much as she writes. She has a ten-year-old son, Kilian, and a seven-year-old daughter, Kennedy. If you asked her today what her favorite ages are, she'd say ten and seven. Lisa forgot all about writing when her kids were younger, but now that they can make their own sandwiches and bake a frozen pizza if necessary, she has more time to devote to her writing. She especially loves it when the kids climb into bed with her and write stories with her. You can find her fiction at various places around the Web like Pindelyboz, The Glut, and MonkeyBicycle. She also has work published in print journals like Sexy Stranger and Gator Springs Gazette, and is forthcoming in Snow Monkey.

Lisa McNamara ("A Daughter Like Me") is a freelance recruiter for computer-animated and visual effects films and is currently working on her MFA in creative writing at the University of San Francisco. Although she has no children, she has one very energetic dog who demonstrates a toddler's predisposition for refusing to take naps and disturbing her whenever she tries to write.

Lisa Meaux ("Acts of Contrition") is the mother of two adult sons and the companion of a chocolate lab. She teaches and lives in southern Louisiana, where she recently joined a writing group that has inspired her to write down the stories she has been babysitting in her head. "Acts of Contrition" is her first publication.

Ellen Meister ("Alone With Cooper") believes that if you scratch the surface of the PTA, you'll uncover enough heartache, joy, and sex to fill a book. She tried it herself and gave it the title George Clooney is Coming to Applewood. Look for it in bookstores from Morrow/Avon in early 2006. Her short work has been published in numerous print and online journals, most of which are easily Googled. She lives, writes and carpools in the suburbs of New York with her husband and three children.

Claire Merle ("Tight Jeans") lives in Paris with her husband and beautiful son, Sean. “Tight Jeans” is her first publication - Yippee! Between changing nappies and singing “Old MacDonald” she is battling to complete her first novel. She may be contacted at: clairemerle@noos.fr

Hilary Meyerson ("Voice: A Study in the Writer's Art") is a writer, mother, and recovering lawyer. She has a BA in English literature from Middlebury College and a JD from the University of Washington. She has been selected for writer's residencies at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island and Caldera Arts in Oregon. She lives in Seattle with her family and can be reached at hilarymeyerson@ hotmail.com. She has recently finished the manuscript of her first novel, Wetwood.

Arlyn Miller ("Presage," "The Things We Do for Love") teaches poetry to young people in schools and the community in the Chicago area through Poetic License, Inc., an organization she founded and directs. She is married to a guy with a good sense of humor and is the mother of three inspirational children who often serve as her muses. Arlyn's poetry has appeared in CALYX, Freefall, Literary Bohemian, Moon Journal, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, and Her Mark Journal 2008.

Karen Maezen Miller ("What to Tell the Children") is a wife, mother, and author of Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood (see Literary Mama review here). In her life as a Zen Buddhist priest, she still cuts the crusts off her daughter's peanut butter sandwiches every day. She lives in Sierra Madre, California, and practices at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. She can always be found at www.mommazen.com.

S.A. Miller ("Motherkind") embraces mothering her own children.

Sandra A. Miller ("Barbara Delinsky Does Not Need Me")writes and publishes prolifically about relationships, often her own. Recently Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, turned Sandra's personal essay about meeting her psychologist husband Mark into a short Hollywood film called WAIT produced by Glamour Magazine. Sandra and Mark help other people's relationships at their website HaveAQuickie dot net.

Sandra Miller ("The Itch") is the mother of Phineas and his little sister Adeline, who does not have eczema. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Modern Bride, Walking, The Hartford Courant Sunday Magazine, Writer's Forum, and more. Since completing her first novel, she has begun a new project with her psychologist husband, writing an irreverent self-help book for couples. She has also started a local organization called Mothers Excelling Together. At night, when she's not sleeping, she dreams of being famous.

Terri Minsky ("The Mother Load") is the creator of several television shows, including "Lizzie McGuire," "Less Than Perfect" and "The Geena Davis Show." She is the executive producer of "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" and has written for "Sex and the City," "Flying Blind," and "Central Park West." She lives in New York City with her husband and two children, and frequently can be found 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. Stay-at-home mom, part-time working mom, 80+ hours-per-week sitcom mom: she's done it all and lived to write about it.

Robert Moore ("Nap, Interrupted") lives in New York with his wife and son. This is his first published poem.

Kathy Moran ("A Kite in November"), former 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.

Liz Abrams-Morley ("Necessary Turns") is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Learning to Calculate the Half Life (Zinka Press, 2001), a chapbook forthcoming from Plan B Press entitled What Winter Reveals, the chapbook Memory Waltz. and poems and stories that have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Liz lives in Pennsylvania. where she is a frequent artist-in-residence in schools throughout the state. She is a co-founder of Around the Block Writers Collaborative and mother of 25-year-old Erica and 22-year-old Jesse (and wil soon become a mother-in-law!).

Molly Moynahan ("How to Be a Stepmother") is the author of three published novels, the most recent Stone Garden, a New York Times Notable Book for 2003. She teaches High School English in Evanston, Ill. and misses New Jersey. She has a thirteen-year-old son, a sixteen-year-old stepdaughter and two grown-up step sons.

J.D. Munro ("The Dogs of Sayulita") is at work on her book about fertility issues, entitled Not Suitable for Children. Her essays about multiple miscarriages have appeared in: They Lied! True Tales Of Pregnancy, Secrets & Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women's Friendships, The Knitter's Gift, Under the Sun, Room Of One's Own, Calyx, Iris, Kalliope. Her fiction has appeared pseudonymously in Best American Erotica 2004, Best Women's Erotica 2003, Ripe Fruit, Shameless, Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica No. 3, and others. Her journey towards motherhood is incomplete (and that's okay). Contact her at ginproductions@hotmail.com.

Karen Murphy spent ten years in the corporate world and twelve more as a stay-at home Waldorf mom to her children before remembering that she had really also been a writer all that time. Karen is the Lead Author at an upcoming green/eco site, and she writes Parenting Without a Manual at Work It, Mom and a column about special-needs parenting in Long Journey on a Short Bus at Imperfect Parent. Karen is also a channel (like a spiritual coach) and she recently moved to the Pacific Northwest. Her children still live in Pennsylvania, and Karen is now blogging her life here.

Joanna Nesbit ("The God Question") lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband, two children, one cat, and a fish. Once a technical writer, she now divides her time between creative writing, parenting, and Ultimate Frisbee. Her work has appeared in Europe from a Backpack, Rhapsody in Writing: An Eclectic Collection, and several regional parenting magazines. She writes regularly for Entertainment News Northwest. This is her first essay published online.

Catherine Newman ("Daddy Lover") has published poetry in Mothering and essays in the anthologies Toddler and The Bitch in the House, among other places. Her book, Waiting for Birdy, about the year she was pregnant her second baby, is due out in March. She writes a weekly column, Bringing Up Ben and Birdy, for BabyCenter and lives in Western Massachusetts with her family.

Ashley Nissler ("Should Have Been") lives in Hillsborough, NC, with her husband and two daughters. Her poetry and stories have appeared at Strange Horizons and in Tar River Poetry, Cricket, and Ladybug.

Susan O'Doherty ("Sluggers") is the mother of an 11-year-old son. Her writing has been featured in Eureka Literary Magazine, Northwest Review, Apalachee Review, Ballyhoo Stories, Eclectica, VerbSap, Carve, Reflection's Edge, Word Riot, Style & Sense, Phoebe, and the anthologies It's a Boy!(Seal Press, 2005), The Best of Carve, Volume VI, and Familiar (The People's Press, 2005). New work is forthcoming in About What Was Lost: Women Writers on Miscarriage (Penguin, 2007). Her book on women and creativity will be published by Seal Press in the spring of 2007. She is also a psychologist specializing in issues affecting writers. Her advice column for writers, "The Doctor is In," appears each Friday on MJ Rose's blog, "Buzz, Balls, and Hype".

Michelle O'Neil ("Infant Absolution") is a former radio news reporter and a registered nurse. She lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, with her husband and two children. Michelle has contributed to the upcoming anthology A Cup of Comfort for Parents of Autistic Children, due out in 2007, and is currently working on a memoir. She blogs at www.michelleoneilwrites.blogspot.com.

Lisa Ortiz ("Matinal") lives, writes, and mothers two daughters ages six and three in rural Northern California. Her poems have appeared in Poesy, Princeton Arts Review, Wolf Head Quarterly, and the anthology Split Verse: Poems to Heal Your Heart. Read more about her and her amazing poet friends at www.saturdaypoets.org.

Eliana Osborn ("Barren") uses her master’s degree to come up with great rhymes for her three-year-old son all day, every day. She and her family live in Yuma, Arizona, where she works part time at Arizona Western College. Her work can be seen in upcoming issues of Budget Travel magazine, as well as The Children’s Friend.

Marjorie Osterhout ("Chick Lit Grows Up: A Review of Sweet Ruin", "In Honor of Tillie Olsen", and "She Makes a Small Sound") 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.

Katherine Ozment ("Our Son, the Ring Bearer") is a freelance writer living in Berkeley, California, with her husband, son, and newborn daughter. Her work has been published in National Geographic magazine, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, Boston magazine, and Brain, Child.

Susannah Elisabeth Pabot (Hope; A Foreign Love: A Review of Losing Kei) holds an MA in Children’s Literature and worked as a London-based journalist specializing in the children’s book market before moving to Paris with her French husband and three-year-old daughter. Now a freelance writer and teacher, she is currently working on her first short story collection.

Brett Paesel ("Red Hurt", "Prenatal Guru to the Stars") lives in Los Angeles and is the mother of two boys. She has developed and written shows for Comedy Central, Oxygen, and The HBO Workspace. Currently, she performs her own material at spoken word venues around town -- most notably, Sit n Spin, The Triangle Room, and Uncaberet's Say the Word. Her short story, "Slow to Warm," appears in the book Toddler: Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love. She has also published essays in Brain,Child and Hip mama. She is currently writing a collection of essays called On Vaginal Heroics.

Polly Pagenhart ("A Whorish Madonna," A Review of Mommy's Little Girl) is a writer, educator, and lesbian dad (a.k.a. "Baba") living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Carol Paik("Little Co-op on the Upper West Side") is a frequent contributor to Brain,Child, and her work will appear in Tin House later this year. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

Susan Parker ("Naked in California") is an aunt who has traveled extensively with her three-year-old nephew, Bryce Sho Parker. She is also mentor to 15-year-old Jernae Lillian Carter, who first appeared on her doorstep in Oakland, California when she was seven years old. Parker's memoir,Tumbling After, Pedaling Like Crazy After Life Goes Downhill, was published by Crown in 2002.

Patricia Parkinson ("Live Band") lives in Langley, British Columbia, with her husband and two children, who make her laugh at herself and other things she once took too seriously. She is very happy.

Janet Paszkowski ("The Goddess of Destiny") is a freelance fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she has lived in Georgia for the past 12 years with her husband and three children. Her works of fiction and poetry have received numerous regional and national awards, and her work has been published in several literary journals and mainstream venues like Words of Wisdom, Vermont Ink, Thresholds Quarterly and numerous on-line publications like The Writer’s Room. She has also conducted memoir and fiction writing workshops in the Atlanta area for Borders Books, Barnes & Noble, Georgia Writer’s and The Pincknyville Arts Center.

Victoria Patterson ("Baby Talk" and "Morphine and Mother's Milk") is the mother of two boys, Cole and Ry Patterson, ages six and three, and lives in South Pasadena, California. Her work has also appeared in HipMama. She is currently at work on her second novel. When not taking care of her kids or writing, she earns money as a waitress at a fine dining establishment. She is known to tip well. Victoria Patterson can be reached at torycole@earthlink.net.

Faith Paulsen ("Varanasi ")lives in Norristown Pennsylvania. Her fiction has appeared in Wild River Review and she has authored a nonfiction book, Fun With the Family in Pennsylvania, published by Globe Pequot Press. She is married to a great guy and is the mom of three very different sons, two entering adulthood and the youngest just on the verge of adolescence.

Patricia R. Payette ("Starving for Affection," A Review of How I Learned to Cook) is a mother and college administrator with a PhD in English. Her book reviews appear at womenwriters.net and in the journal of the Assocation for Research on Mothering, among others. Her essay on her wedding and marriage, "The Feminist Wife?: Notes From a Political Engagement," appears in Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire (Four Walls, Eight Windows Press, 2001) and will be reprinted this year by the Canadian Scholars' Press.

Diane Payne ("What Would Betty Do?") is the mother of twelve-year-old Ania in a dry town in the Bible belt. Her work has appeared in many publications including, Full Circle Journal, Drexel Online Journal, Hip Mama, Sojourners and Monkey Bicycle. Diane teaches at University of Arkansas-Monticello.

Yvonne Pearson ("Eaten Alive") is a freelance writer and mother of three children, now grown but still engaging lots of her energy. Her work has been published in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals.

Day Penaflor ("Born") is a teacher and writer. She is a graduate of Boston University and Columbia Teachers College and has studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a freelance writer with publications in Mommy Too! Magazine, Creativity Portal, and Dream/Girl Magazine. She and her husband live on Long Island with their tortoise and Boston Terrier.

Mary Hilldore Peters ("Twelfth Day") is a former banker turned stay-at-home mom who still has an aversion to olives and unbagged milk jugs. Her work has appeared in The Grand Rapids Press and jugglezine. She and her husband Jay live in Holland, Michigan, with their greatest GIFT, Emma, who was born on New Year's Day eight years ago. Mary can be reached at mhpeters@sbcglobal.net.

Kathryn Petruccelli ("Wish List") holds an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages but has more recently reduced her student roster to one three-year-old boy named Isaac and taken up freelance writing. Her work has appeared in mamazine.com, MotherVerse, the Anthology of Monterey Bay Poetry, the Homestead Review, and other publications. You can read more of Kathryn’s writing at her weblog.

Deesha Philyaw writes a bi-monthly column and occasional book reviews and profiles for Literary Mama. She is also a columnist for Parents' Action For Children. Deesha has written for Essence Magazine, Wondertime magazine (a Disney publication), and reviewed books for The Washington Post. Her fiction has been published in the online literary journals The New Yinzer and Inkburns. She holds a B.A. in economics from Yale University and a Master's degree in education. In her pre-mommy, pre-writing life, she was a management consultant, briefly, and then an elementary school teacher. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Deesha currently lives in Pittsburgh with her two daughters. She can be contacted at deesha@thelastwordllc.com.

Norah Piehl ("Born and Raised in this Dead-End Town," A Review of Growing Up Fast; "The Woman in the Moon," A review of Guarding the Moon; and "Fear of Failing," A Review of A Potent Spell) is a freelance writer and editor whose reviews of children's and adult books have appeared in numerous print and online sources, including The Horn Book Guide and Brain, Child. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and ten-month-old son.

Kelly Lundgren Pietrucha ("so much deepens") is a mother, teacher, and writer (almost always in that order). Her fiction has appeared in Carve, Pindeldyboz and Fiction Attic; this is her first poetry publication. Kelly lives in New Jersey with her husband Mark, two-year-old son Jude, and dog Charley (not always in that order).

Sarah Pinto ("Third Month") is the mother of a two-year-old girl and is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She earned her PhD in anthropology at Princeton University in 2003. Her dissertation on childbearing, infant death, and rural development in northern India received the Sardar Patel Award in 2004. She is currently conducting research on post-partum depression. Her essays and articles on topics related to motherhood, birth, and traditional midwifery have been published in journals and collections in the US and India.

Catherine Platt ("Best Home") is mother to her son Isaac and is pursuing in earnest her life-long ambition to write. After quitting a career in international development, she earned an MA in Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation at Sussex University, England. Catherine, Isaac, and his father, Ethan are about to embark on a new adventure as they are moving to Sichuan Province, China, for two years. This is her first published poem.

Meg Pokrass ("At Chess Camp Picking Up My Daughter") lives in San Francisco. Her poetry and stories have appeared in The Emrys Foundation Journal, Two Twenty Four Poetry Quarterly, Black Buzzard Review, Flutter, The Orange Room Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, 971 MENU, and Toasted Cheese. She has performed with theatre companies throughout the United States and considers writing a natural extension of Sensory work developed as an actor.

Carrie Pomeroy ("Let Down") has published stories in The Baltimore Review and The Laurel Review. More of her work can be seen at www.slowtrains.com and www.wordriot.org. The mother of a three-year-old son and a newborn daughter, she's working on a collection of personal essays about motherhood. She lives with her family in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ann Whitfield Powers ("When the Bough Breaks") lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two sons, Patrick, age 9 and Zachary, age 3. She holds an MFA and has been published in the Oregon Literary Review, Camas, and the Miami Herald, and has a piece forthcoming in Brain, Child. She is currently working on a memoir, tentatively titled Isn’t Forty Kind of Old for That?

Catherine Esposito Prescott ("Meeting the Horizon with Connor at Nine Months") holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. She is a full-time mother and part-time writing professor with Miami-Dade College's Virtual College. Her poems have appeared in various literary magazines, including 5AM and Spoon River Poetry Review. Catherine lives in Miami Beach with her husband, Andrew, and their toddler, Connor Burke.

Jayne Pupek ("Why I Write in the Bathroom Closet") holds an MA in Psychology and lives near Richmond, Virginia. She is the mother of three children by adoption, and also tends a menagerie of parrots and other creatures. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in publications including, SageWoman, Moondance, Prairie Dyke, Eidos, Pulse, Dead Mule and Studio One. Work is forthcoming in Coffeehouse Poetry, and Smokelong Quarterly. She is always open to hear from women who write, and can be reached at JaynePupek@aol.com or WomanInk@aol.com.

Contributors, R-T

Sophia Raday wrote the column "Mommy Athens, Daddy Sparta." A founding editor of Literary Mama, she lives in Berkeley, California, with her soldier/police officer husband, their five-year-old boy, a bipartisan dog,and assorted firearms. Her most recent work appeared in the New York Times. You can contact her through her website, sophiaraday.com.

Heather Rader ("I'm Bored") believes that writing sharpens her mind, brightens her mood and even burns fat. When labels are necessary, she's a mother-writer-teacher (in that order). Her children are 10, 7, and 3 (the only time in their lives when her son will be the sum of her daughters' ages). Her work has been published in Mothering magazine, Living Without, The Sun, Midwifery Today, Teaching K-8, Teacher-Librarian, Library Sparks, and Mamazine. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.

Heidi Raykeil ("Johnny"; "The Milky Way," A Review of Fresh Milk; "Too Cool for Preschool," a review of Breeder) is Columns Editor at Literary Mama. This is an excerpt from a memoir she is writing about her son's brief but miraculous life, and the meaning she has gained from it. Heidi and her husband have since gone on to have a beautiful baby girl. You can contact her at hraykeil@comcast.net .

Mary Rechner ("Four") has published her work in The English Journal, Vermont Times, Upstart, Wollemi, girlzone.com, Parting Gifts, Manila, Asylum Annual and New Frontiers and has work forthcoming in the Kenyon Review. She teaches creative writing in several writers-in-the-schools programs in Portland and has been awarded residencies at Caldera and the Vermont Studio Center. Mary is seeking a publisher for her novel, Blood Test, is the recipient of a 2003 OR Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts, and is completing her MFA at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is the mother of two boys, ages six and four.

Kristin Reed ("Why Mother Pigs Eat Their Young") is the eldest daughter, who helped raise four younger siblings. She
spent her teen years babysitting for neighbors (a mothering job not always given adequate respect) and is now the mother of two grown children, step-mother of a now-grown step-son, and grandmother of two little boys. She was foster mother for many children, mostly teenaged girls and has published seven poems, five short stories and two creative non-fiction essays.

Karen Regen-Tuero ("There He Is") lives on Long Island with her husband and two children, ages 13 and 10. Her stories have appeared in an anthology and almost a dozen literary magazines, including Glimmer Train Stories. A graduate of Duke University and the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, she teaches at Queens College/City University of New York, and freelances for TV and film projects. She recently completed a novel.

Kristen Staby Rembold ("Bear") is the mother of two recently grown daughters and author of a novel, Felicity. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Blueline, Appalachia, and other journals.

Andrea N. Richesin’s ("Turn the Fire Off") writing and poetry have appeared in Identity Theory, The Southeast Review, and The Happy Booker. She is the editor of three anthologies: The May Queen (Tarcher, 2006); a mother-daughter collection tentatively titled What I Would Tell Her (Mira, 2009); and an as-yet-untitled father-daughter anthology (Mira, 2010). Andrea lives with her husband and four-year-old daughter in San Rafael, California.

Michelle Richmond ("The Hero of Queens Boulevard") is the author of the novel Dream of the Blue Room and the story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and their nine-month-old son, Oscar. Their house is very, very bright, as Oscar has recently learned how to sign the word for "light." Michelle is the founding editor of the online literary journal Fiction Attic. Her personal website is www.michellerichmond.com.

Jamaica Ritcher("The Two-Year-Old's Personal Laundress, the Writer and the Mom") is the mother of Maia (now age 6) and Jonah (3) and lives in Canberra, Australia. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Rattlesnake Review, Sacramento News and Review, National Public Radio's Day to Day, and in the anthology, This I Believe. In 2005, she won the Australian Capital Territory Writer's Centre Award for Poetry.

Cinthia Ritchie ("How to Give Birth") lives in Alaska with her 13-year-old son (whom she frequently embarrasses), her hyper dog and two stubborn cats. She is a newspaper reporter by day and writes fiction and poetry by night. Her publications include Slow Trains Literary Journal, Conspire, Sho, Horsethief's Journal, Poems Niederngasse, Stirrings, Retrozine, Ice Floe: International Poetry of the North, Dare Magazine, Clean Sheets, Scarlet Letters, Wicked Alice, Mind Caviar, Moondance, Inside Passages and Girlphoria, with upcoming work in the Water-Stone Review, Gin Bender Poetry Review, International Journal of Erotica, Sunspinner, the Cascadia Review and Working Hard: An Italian Anthology. She was the recent winner of the 2004 Brenda Ueland Prose Prize.

Jennifer Robinson, ("Conversation & Park", "Slipping") lives with her husband and one-year-old daughter in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Writers Monthly, The Readerville Journal, Full Circle: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Long Story Short, The Plum Ruby Review, "Looking Back: Stories of Our Mothers and Fathers in Retrospect" (New Brighton Books, 2003), and "2 Do Before I Die" (Little, Brown & Co., 2005). Her young adult novel, Easily Influenced, is currently being reviewed for publication.

Kate Robinson ("Past the Bone") is the mother of four kids ranging in age from 11 to 29, and a new grandma. She lives with her youngest son and daughter, a parakeet, a sugar glider, and the neighbor's roaming peacock in Chino Valley, Arizona. Her short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, Muse Apprentice Guild, Sandcutters, Drexel Online Journal, Absolute Write, and other websites, small journals, and anthologies. Her middle grade virtual tour of the National Mall was released by Enslow Publishers in February 2005. Her work-in-progress includes children's fiction, retold folktales, and a novel. You can email her at kater@northlink.com.

Terez Rose ("Stay With Me") has published stories and essays in the San Jose Mercury-News, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Writers Journal. Anthology credits include Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food (Seal Press, November 2003) and A Woman's Europe (Travelers' Tales, June 2004). She makes her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her husband and five-year-old son. She has recently completed her first novel.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld ("Urges") is the host of Word by Word, a literary program on NPR-affiliate KRCB radio. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The St. Petersburg Times, Salome Magazine, The Summerset Review, Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Haypenny, InkPot, Skyline Magazine, and JANE, and more is forthcoming at Storyhouse, NFG, Edifice Wrecked, and The St. Petersburg Times. She is the editor of Zebulon Nights: An Anthology of LiveWire Readers (Word Riot Press, 2003). At the moment she is only mother to a very large cat named Figaro, but is doing what all her friends tell her not to do: spending a lot of time thinking about having a child, under the pretense of being able to be "prepared" when it's time. Visit her blog at www.jordansmuse.blogspot.com.

Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld's ("Festival") poems have appeared in Southwest Review, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, Travois: An Anthology of Texas Poetry, The Listening Eye, and Clark Street Review as well as online in Roads Literary Magazine. She taught English for seven years at SMU and the University of Maryland and worked for 13 years as an analyst in the TRIDENT Missile Program for the Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C. She has also done poetry therapy with forensic patients at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Her main activity now, besides writing poetry, is volunteering with JewishGen, for whom she created three Web sites on perished Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.

Bethany Rountree ("Ethan and Lily, After School") is a writer and a stay-at-home mom. Her work has been published in Western North Carolina Woman, Thick With Conviction, and Mothering. She lives with her husband and three children in the Black Mountains of Celo, North Carolina.

Lois Rubin ("We have deeper selves to write from") is Associate Professor of English at Penn State, New Kensington Campus where she teaches composition and multi-cultural and women's literature. She publishes articles about composition research and pedagogy and contemporary Jewish women writers.

Rita Rubin ("Gray Like Me") is a medical reporter for USA TODAY and the author of What If I Have a C-Section? (Rodale Books, 2004). Previously, she covered medicine for U.S. News & World Report and The Dallas Morning News. Her work has appeared in a variety of other newspapers and magazines, including Health, Ladies Home Journal and Weight Watchers Magazine. She holds a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and attended the Harvard School of Public Health on a journalism fellowship. Rita lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and two daughters.

Lisa Rubisch ("How to Make a Meat Pie and Other Tales of the Ambitious Mother") is a TV commercial director and partner of Bob Industries, helming spots for Ikea, Polaroid, Puma, Nike, as well as many others. She lives in New York City with her husband, Ian Kerner, their two-year old son, Owen, and an obese Jack Russell Terrier named Houdini. Lisa's writing was recently published in her husband's book, Be Honest, You're Not That into Him Either. This is her second publication.

Laura Ruby ("Put the Blender on Frappe") is the author of I’m Not Julia Roberts, a collection of interconnected short stories about blended families.

Jennifer Ruden ("This Is Where You Write" and "Bubbles"), after a five year sabbatical which entailed teaching 12 people how to read, initiating and directing a GED program, getting married, losing 50 pounds and gaining back 40, and most importantly, having a most beautiful daughter, has decided to make her way back home to writing, which she should never have left in the first place. Contact Jennifer at JENNYR1975 (at) aol (dot) com

Helen Ruggieri ("A Post Partum Disease Center"), following her children's departure for college, went to Penn State and got an MFA in writing. Other memoirs have appeared in , Quarter After Eight (OSU), The Heartlands, Portraits, and in the anthologies (Tarcher/Penguin), Personal Narratives in the Helping Professions (Haworth Press), and Writing Work: Writers on Working-Class Writing (Bottom Dog Press).

Ann Rushton's writing ("Skin the Color of Canned Peaches") has appeared or is forthcoming in Storyglossia, Julien's Journal, and REAL, The Journal of Liberal Arts. She is the co-editor of Bound Off, a short fiction podcast. While earning her B.A. in English from the University of Iowa, she was a member of the Undergraduate Writers' Workshop. She has worked in the financial and telecommunications industries, and lives in Cedar Rapids, IA with her husband and two daughters. She can be reached at annrushton@gmail.com.

Rachel Sarah, ("Not In Her Footsteps," A review of Mothering Without A Map and "A Look at Life Before Hip Mama-hood," A review of Atlas of the Human Heart) lives and writes in the Bay Area. Her first book, Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World (Avalon/Seal Press) was published in 2007. She is also the author of the Literary Mama column, Single Mom Seeking. Rachel has written for Family Circle, Parenting, Tango, Bay Area Parent, Ms., Hip Mama, and American Baby. A journalist for the past decade, Rachel is also the single mom columnist for LifetimeTV.com. To reach Rachel, click here.

Sara Schley ("A Working Mother's Day") runs an international consulting firm that helps businesses become more sustainable. Her writing has been published in Mothering.com, the Sentient Times, Midwifery Today, and elsewhere. She is currently co-authoring a book about business and sustainability with MIT professor and bestselling author, Peter Senge, to be published by Doubleday in 2007. The mother of twins, she lives with her family in western Massachusetts.

Stephanie Schlitz ("Losing Thomas") is the mother of sons. She’s also an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and English at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Melissa Scholes Young ("Postpartum Exile") grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which she loyally claims as her hometown. When she is not finger painting with Isabelle, her three-year-old daughter, Melissa teaches English and Creative Writing at Lincoln High School. She has been a teacher for the past eight years and has taught at all levels from middle school to high schools, from community college to college and finally, at an international school in Brazil. Her articles have been published in Family Forum, A Cup of Comfort for Teachers, and the nationally syndicated Front Porch. Melissa moved to Tallahassee a few years ago after being persuaded by her Floridian husband that winter is optional. You can contact her at mscholesyoung@yahoo.com.

Wanda Schubmehl ("I Talk with My Friend by Canopic Jars") is a poet and therapist living in Rochester, New York. She and her husband, Bill, have two daughters: Stephanie, who lives in Beijing, China, speaks Mandarin fluently, and works for a Chinese translation company, and Adriana, who is studying for a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution at St. Andrew’s University in Fife, Scotland. Air miles have become very important to her.

Wanda’s work has appeared in Writer Online, Rattle, and Centrifugal Eye, and in the anthologies The Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America and Knocking on the Silence. Her poem “While Eating Outdoors in Beijing” was nominated by Ghoti for a Pushcart prize.

Holly A. Schullo ("All That There Is") received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina (2001) and is completing a PhD in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2005). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Louisiana Literature (as a semi-finalist in the 2003 Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry), Interdisciplinary Humanities, Poems and Plays, Dirty Swamp Poets, and Yemassee. She was a finalist in the 2003 Calyx Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize. She has completed a manuscript of poems titled, A New Year of Thirteen Moons.

Dianne Scott ("Bathroom Floor") is a writer, teacher and mother of two small children living in Toronto, Canada. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been featured in a variety of journals, magazines, websites and radio broadcasts. Her current writing project is a humorous book on new motherhood. Go to diannescott.ca for more information about Dianne Scott and her writing.

Elizabeth Scott ("The Habits of her Face") is a practicing psychologist and fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, New Stone Circle, and Lake Effect among others. She is the unabashedly proud mama to two grown daughters, Ashley and Erica. Elizabeth is currently at work on her first novel.

Heidi Scrimgeour ("A Conversation with Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile" and "I Write in the Shower)is a 30-something former blonde-bombshell PR high-flier turned accidental brunette and Stuck-At-Home-Mum to two boys under the age of four. She hails from England but recently uprooted from ten years in London to a simpler and much colder life in Northern Ireland on the Antrim Coast. Since receiving her first rejection letter from Methuen books at the tender age of seven, she has been possessed with a determination to write a novel. She sets herself to this task daily while her boys nap, and hopes to achieve her goal well before they give up this most auspicious habit. Time is running out. Meanwhile, she blogs at www.onefeistymama.vox.com

Terri G. Scullen ("Boomerang"" and ("Green Means Go") has been published in The Baltimore Review. She is the recipient of a residency fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a special initiative in support of the Virginia Commission for the Arts and their individual artist grants. While her heart is at the beach, she lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband and their 14-year-old son, Jimmy and 10-year-old daughter, Samantha. Readers may drop her a line at TGScullen@aol.com.

Tamara Kaye Sellman ("The Drift" and "Apparent Suicide: A Postpartum Fairy Tale") is editor and publisher of MARGIN: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. Her work has appeared in The North American Review, Raven Chronicles and Suspect Thoughts: A Journal of Subversive Writing. She has also published fiction and poetry in Quarterly West, Other Voices, Rosebud, The Crescent Review, and various theme anthologies, including MOTA: Courage (Triple Tree Publishing: 2002), edited by Karen Joy Fowler. Sellman was a finalist in the James Hearst Poetry Prize competition in 2003 and was the recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination in 1998. She is the mother of two daughters, 11 and 8, who are both published poets. She splits her time between Bainbridge Island and Birch Bay, Washington. Please visit her personal website.

Tomi Shaw ("Me, You, and Eve") gave birth to two beautiful baby girls seven and eight years ago. Two years ago, she became the step-mother to another beautiful girl. She is a woman intent upon raising healthy women. Her work has appeared in Flashquake, Absinthe Literary Review, Snow Monkey, Wild Violet, and elsewhere. She loves rain tat-tattering on a tin roof and races a bittersweet-colored Mustang.

Liz Sheffield ("Broken Mug") lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband, Brad, and their two young sons, Henry and Eli. She mothers, writes, and works as a training and development manager in corporate America. Sheffield received her BA in English Literature from Whitman College. She can be reached at lizsheffield08 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Carolee Sherwood ("How to disappoint your mother") is a painter, mixed media artist, poet and mother of three boys, ages 8, 6, and 4. Her poetry has been published online at qarrtsiluni and women’synergy, and in print: the Winter 2008 edition of Ballard Street Poetry Journal and Issue 5 of Other. In 2006, WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, broadcast a recording of her personal essay about piercing her nose at age 33. Carolee blogs about the creative process in a life crowded with children and cluttered by moods at The Polka-Dot Witch blog. She is a contributor to a number of online poetry projects, including read write poem.

Liese Sherwood-Fabre ("Tough Love") received her PhD from Indiana University and is an award-winning author whose pieces have appeared in Briar Cliff Review, Lynx Eye, and Writers' Journal magazines. Another story appears in the anthology The Girls' Life’s Big Book of Friendship Fiction. Her professional career with the U.S. government has taken to countries throughout the world. The current piece, "Tough Love," was inspired by discussions and presentations on teen problems and solutions at conferences she has attended in her current position with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as a mother of three teens herself. You can view more about her writing at: www.liesesherwoodfabre.com.

Emma Shortt ("He Waits Helplessly") is a local government worker and mom to two girls, aged 14 and 9. By night she writes in a range of genres for a range of audiences, more about her work can be found at www.emmashortt.co.uk

Martha Silano ("Four a.m.") lives, mothers, writes and teaches in Seattle. She is the author of What the Truth Tastes Like (Nightshade 1999). Her work has also appeared widely, in such places as The Paris Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and in the anthology, American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnagie Mellon 2000). You can access her website at http://www.marthasilano.com

Minati Singh ("Lesson from a Poet") was born and raised in India. She came to the U.S. in 1985 and earned a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. After a couple of stints as an Assistant Professor of English, she left academia in 1998. Her daughter, Esther India, was born in 2001 and since then, she has been struggling to find time to write and sometimes resisting, sometimes embracing being transformed by motherhood. She lives with her husband and daughter in Seattle. This is her first published poem. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of poems.

Nancy Slavin ("My Mother Looks Like Sylvia Plath") is a writer and writing instructor on the north Oregon coast where she lives with her husband and with whom she is eagerly expecting their first baby, due about five weeks after her story appears here. Other work of Nancy's has been published in Rain Magazine, Barrelhouse, Avocet, and hipfish. She received her BA from Northwestern University and her MA from Portland State University. You can learn more about Nancy's writing at www.nancyslavin.com.

Prairie Dawn Smallwood ("Arrowhead Hunting") was born and raised in the high deserts of Wyoming. Now she resides in Ashland, Oregon, and recently graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.A. in Literature. Prairie has been published in the West Wind Review, The Beacon, and in the 2005 edition of Voices!, the intercultural poetry e-journal of the Multicultural Pavilion: a multi-dimensional Internet project on multicultural education.

Janice D. Soderling ("Christina") is a mother and grandmother, and a self-employed commercial writer/translator. Her awards include a first-place award at Glimmer Train Stories. Her poetry, fiction, and translations are online and in print journals in several countries.

Alexandra Soiseth ("Baby Fat") earned her B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, her B.A.A. in Journalism from Ryerson University, and her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the Assistant Director of the M.F.A. Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence, where she also teaches. She is a recipient of a Canada Council grant and an Ontario Arts Council grant. She is the former managing editor and communications director for Global City Review, a New York City-based literary magazine, and her stories have appeared in McGill Street Magazine, The Ryersonian, Life Rattle, and on BabyCenter.

Kathryn Lynard Soper ("Bitter, Sweet") is a mother of seven children. She is president of Segullah Group, a non-profit producer of personal writings; editor of Segullah, a literary journal by and for LDS (Mormon) women; and editor of Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives (Woodbine Press, 2007). She is currently writing a memoir about her first year with Thomas. Kathryn lives with her husband Reed and their children in the mountain west. You can learn more about her at www.kathrynlynardsoper.com.

Suzanne Speaker ("The Pirate Queen") has had assorted writing gigs throughout a life of moving, parenting, and moving some more. These have included spells writing advertising copy, church and women's organization newsletters, travel articles, book reviews, fundraising materials, radio commercials, fashion shows, radio commercials, and the odd cookbook. Her work has appeared in the Dallas Times Herald and Country Living magazine. She is the mother of Ben, age 31, and Mary, age 26, and currently lives the spoiled life of the expatriate wife in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Sheila Squillante ("The Eyes Have It") is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in such places as Prairie Schooner, Phoebe, Clackamas Literary Review, and Glamour magazine, as well as online at TYPO and Unpleasant Event Schedule. She is a lecturer in English and the associate director of the MFA program at Penn State. She lives in State College, PA, with her husband Paul Bilger and their 17-month-old son, Rudy.

Elaine Starkman("Under The Chuppah") began writing seriously with the birth of her fourth child in 1970. Much of her early work is related to writing and raising a family. Her later work includes a memoir about her elderly mother-in-law coming to live in California, titled Learning to Sit in the Silence: A Journal of Caretaking. She has co-edited the international collection Here I Am: Contemporary Jewish Stories from Around the World, which won a 1999 Oakland, CA/PEN Award. Some of her additional works appear in Famlly: Views from the Interior, (Graywolf), East Bay Guardian, Hanging Loose, Mothering, and others. She currently teaches memoir writing in Northern California and has just published her 5th chapbook of poems, MOVING: Poems 1992-2002, available by contacting her at estarkma@dvc.edu.

Nicole Collins Starsinic (The Smallest Things) lives in Davis, California with her family. Her greatest gifts are her husband, her stepdaughter (age 14), and her son (age 5). Nicole writes monthly articles on parenting issues for two local publications and uses her writing and web design background to promote sustainable agriculture issues in Yolo County. You can check out her websites at www.slowfoodyolo.com and
www.davisfarmtoschool.org.

Lisa Lowe Stauffer ("The Face in the Mirror") is a freelance writer, oboist, and aspiring children's novelist. At least that's what she claims. In reality, most of her time is spent searching for clean socks, volunteering at her children's schools, and driving carpools. She lives in Roswell, Georgia, with her husband and two children (ages 15 and 12), where every morning the family dog takes her on a squirrel-hunting expedition. Lisa's work has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Chattanooga Times, and too many corporate newsletters to count.

Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D. ("Chocolate" , "My Wild Child") is an award-winning poet and writer living in Columbia, South Carolina. She is author of two books and hundreds of poems and essays on healing women's bodies and spirits, and she is the mother of a four year old daughter and a fifteen year old stepdaughter. Visit her website.

Jill Stegman ("Birdman") lives on the central coast of California, and teaches at an alternative high school. She is married with a son in college, and a daughter in high school. Her work has previously appeared in such literary journals as Del Sol Review, North Atlantic Review, South Dakota Review, and Isotope. She has a story forthcoming in RE:AL.

Sharla A. Stewart ("The Assembly of Godwomen"), a writer and yoga teacher in Chicago, is mother to Michael, two and half, and baby number two, due any day now. Her writing for the University of Chicago Magazine has ranged across academia, covering the rise of behavioral economics, a recent rift in the discipline of political science, and the search for an elusive subatomic particle. "The Assembly of Godwomen" is her first published piece of creative writing.

Christy Stillwell ("Little Finch") has published work in various literary magazines and is the mother of two. She lives in Montana.

Tricia Stirling ("Model Mother") is a writer and mama from Sacramento, California, where she lives with her husband and two beautiful children. She is working on her first novel.

Jeneva Stone ("Meditation on a broken child, var. 2") is the mother of two children, one with multiple disabilities. Her work has appeared online in The New Hampshire Review and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, as well as in many print journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, and Poet Lore. Her blog, Busily Seeking ... Continual Change, discusses poetry and motherhood.

Alison Streit ("Having a Boy? Better Luck Next Time"") is a 35 year-old mother of two sons living in the Boston area. She works in a nonprofit adult education center, where she coordinates the creative writing program. She has written professionally as a researcher on civil rights and educational equity; this is her first published essay.

Tatiana Strelkoff ("Pointed Lessons") is a mother of two teenagers and has lived in Italy since 1980. She has published a book for children entitled The Changer with Rebecca House of San Francisco, and a book for young adults entitled Allison: a Story of First Love with the O’Brien Press of Ireland.

Shari MacDonald Strong ("The Great, Death-Defying Father") writes the "Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance" column and edits the Creative Nonfiction department for Literary Mama. 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.

Nona Martin Stuck ("Transition" and "Getting a Girl") lives with two of her children in Columbia, South Carolina. A nurse and a waitress in previous incarnations, she now devotes most of her time to writing. She has won the South Carolina Fiction Project, and her work has appeared in O, The Oprah magazine; More Magazine; and previously in Literary Mama. She is a student in the MFA program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is finishing a novel.

Kayt Sukel ("Normal") is a freelance consultant living in Hammersbach, Germany, with her husband, Nick, and son, Chet. Her writing has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, American Baby, and National Geographic Traveler, as well as other magazines. Whenever she receives a reprieve from chasing her son all over creation, she can be found holed up in the bathroom furtively reading books not written by Dr. Seuss or featuring Elmo.

Erin Sullivan ("Absolution"), works full time as a software developer and takes on occasional freelance web design and writing work. Her editorial experience includes teaching writing workshops at the University of Denver and Elon University, and her writing has appeared in Salon and The Independent Weekly. She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and three young sons.

Charity Tahmaseb ("Learning to Lie Still") traded BDUs and combat boots for power suits and high heels, then traded those for the dissolute life of a technical writer. She splits her free time between her pee-wee football player and his sister, the aspiring mermaid. On most days she’s reminded that you can take the girl out of the Army, but you can’t always take the Army out of the girl.

Kim Teeple ("I Know a Place in South Dakota Where I Can Bury Your Body") lives by a creek in Minnesota with her 11-year-old daughter who says Kim listens to “weird” music, from the seventies. Kim doesn’t think it’s weird music at all! Some of Kim’s stories can be found online, at Salome Magazine, Edifice Wrecked, Insolent Rudder, Temenos, and Elimae. She also has a story in Duck and Herring Pocket Field Guide, and a story forthcoming, in the anthology: Blink Again Sudden Fiction from the Upper Midwest (Spout Press).

Mary Langer Thompson ("The Last Page") is currently the principal of an elementary school in the high desert of California. She is mother to Matthew, now grown and a successful computer technician.

Suzanne Thompson ("Adventures of a Teenage Super-Mom") lives in New Haven, CT, with her fiance' Greg and toddler Elliott. She is a stay-at-home mom, and is currently working on a novel based on her life story.

Tess Thompson ("Meeting the Train") has published fiction in Seventeen and Rosebud magazines and poetry in ByLine, Calyx, Philadelphia Stories, Tempus, and the Oxford/Cambridge Mays Anthology for Poetry. She has a master’s degree in English Studies from Oxford. She lives with her family in St. Louis, where she works with a nonprofit organization called StudioSTL to promote creative writing for kids.

Suzanne R. Thurman ("Lifeblood") is a writer and musician. She is also the mother of two boys, ages 1 and almost 3, who are the source of inspiration for much of her work. Her poetry, prose, essays, and book reviews have appeared in many places, most recently Aries, Poem, RE:AL, Mobius, Amarillo Bay, and The Square Table.

Kim Todd (Under the Skin: Lessons in Transformation) is the author of Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis and Tinkering with Eden: a Natural History of Exotic Species in America. Her work has appeared in Sierra, Grist, Orion, and Backpacker, among other places. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her husband and 3-year-old twins and can be found on-line at www (dot) kimtodd (dot) net.

Carine Topal ("Dreaming the Meuse Lizard") is mother to a 15-year-old. She is a veteran special education teacher and has taught poetry to children and adults for 15 years. Her work has appeared in The Best of the Prose Poem, Caliban, Pacific Review, Oberon, and many others. She is the recipient of poetry awards from: Spanish Moss Literary Journal, Water-Stone, Americas Review, Embers Magazine, and Half-Tones to Jubilee. Her new manuscript, As When, is looking for a home.

Bethany Torode ("Holy Water") is mama to two boys, Gideon and Rilian, and together with their literary papa Sam, they live in southwestern Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in the Best Christian Writing series (HarperSanFrancisco), as well as Country Almanac and Christianity Today. She is currently dreaming up an agricultural love novel.

Julie Traub ("The Superstitious Route") has taught creative writing to teenagers and has hosted bi-weekly writing critiques for adults. Now she gets her best story ideas from the adventures of her one-year-old boy, Simon. Julie lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and son. Please send feedback or observations to traub@comcast.net.

Judith Stadtman Tucker("Shock Value," A review of Mother Shock), editor of Mothers Movement Online, has been involved in research and advocacy related to mothers' issues since 1999. She served as the senior manager for the Mothers & More Advocacy program from 2000 - 2003, where her work focused on gathering resources and developing consciousness-raising programs for the organization's membership. She currently serves as a special advisor on advocacy issues to Mothers & More and other organizations that are committed to social change on behalf of mothers. She lives in Portsmouth, NH with her husband and two sons (age 6 and 10) and has contributed numerous articles on women's issues to the Seacoast Newspapers and the Portsmouth Herald. She has also been a regular contributor to the national bi-monthly publication of Mothers & More, the Mothers & More Forum. This review originally appeared in the October issue of Mothers Movement Online.

12-Step Mama is a stay-at-home Mom to her five-year-old son and attends a low-residency MFA program. Prior to motherhood, she worked as a technical writer and editor for a mindnumbingly long time. She has been an active member of her recovery program for 20 years. The opinions expressed in her column are hers alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any recovery program. Personal anonymity is any 12-step group's greatest protection -- it saves recovery programs from people like her, writers who just happen to be in recovery and therefore can't help writing about what saves their lives. Visit her blog.

Kim Todd "Under the Skin: Lessons in Transformation" is the author of Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis and Tinkering with Eden: a Natural History of Exotic Species in America. Her work has appeared in Sierra, Grist, Orion, and Backpacker, among other places. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her husband and 3-year-old twins and can be found on-line at www (dot) kimtodd (dot) net.

Contributors U-Z

Kris Underwood ("Swimming (Stretchmarks)") is mama to one little girl. Her poetry has appeared in mamazine.com, Poetry Midwest, and MotherVerse, among others. She can be found ranting at her blog, Writing In The Mountains, about books and motherhood, as well as holding the position of Writer’s Resource Editor at Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine. She also finds time for occasional rants and raves at Moms Speak Up, Green Mom Finds and the MotherVerse Blog.

Cindy Urbanski ("Pinging Rocking and Writing")lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband, her 4- year-old son, her 7-year-old daughter, and her 11-year-old dog. She is Co-director of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project and is pursuing a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Urban Literacy. Urbanski's prior publications about writing, teaching, and learning include her book Using the Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom, a co-authored book, Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning, and articles for NCET Journal. This is her first published piece about writing and mothering.

Shubha Venugopal ("Milk" and "Fingerprints") has two beautiful children-- a toddler daughter and an infant son. She will soon be moving with her children and her husband to Los Angeles to teach at the California State University, Northridge. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan and works as an Assistant Professor of Literature. She is also currently completing her M.F.A. in fiction at Bennington College. Her works have appeared or are upcoming in elimae, Eclectica, Mslexia, Kalliope, Women Writers, and Boston Literary Magazine. Most of her works in these journals appear, or will appear, online.

Karen Vernon ("The Gift") is a writer, a public health researcher, and the mother of two lovely girls. She has published multiple academic papers related HIV prevention, treatment, and policy, injection drug use, and needle exchange. The Gift is Karen's first non-academic publication. Currently she lives in Washington DC and tries to find time to write between the crying, screaming, work, and worry, but generally just goes to the park instead.

Matthew Vetter ("Measurements," "Penny Horse") is a recent graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous regional and national journals including The Louisville Review, The Midwest Quarterly, and the Poetry Foundation's syndicated newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. He is father to Ben and Jonah. You can read and see more of him here.

Pamela Villars ("My Mother's Chest") lives in Austin, Texas, with her neurotic border collie mix. Her 20-year-old daughter (the dog's former owner) is transitioning into adulthood by working full time and moving in and out of the house. Pamela’s work has appeared in Tiny Lights, Drash Pit, and Wanderings magazine; her blog is Musings from the Newly Hatched.

Donna D. Vitucci ("By Heart" and "Knife Trick") lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a grant writer and development associate. She and her husband have raised two sons, Nick, 23, and Mark, 19 -- both of whom, unfortunately, live in other cities at present. Donna's fiction has appeared or forthcoming in Beloit Fiction Journal, Mid-American Review, Southern Indiana Review, Natural Bridge, Faultline, Hawaii Review, The Mochila Review, Re)verb, Zone 3, Kennesaw Review online, Main Street Rag, Stickman Review online, nidus online, Sundry, turnrow, The Hurricane Review, and Meridian.

Nancy Vona ("What Will We Do This Morning") graduated from the University of New Hampshire with an M.A. in Creative Writing in 1989. She has worked as a freelance writer, editor, and teacher of science writing. The birth of her first son Daniel renewed her interest in creative writing, and she self-published a chapbook of poetry and essays, The Book of Daniel, in 2005. She lives with her husband and two sons in Massachusetts.

The mother of two daughters (ages 9 and 2), Virginia Walker ("Dad") teaches high school English in Northern Virginia. She writes a humor column for the Leesburg Today and has published short stories in Literary Vision Magazine, Spoiled Ink, and Temenos (Central Michigan University's Graduate literary journal).

Jessica L. Walsh ("Given") is the mother of Stella Simone, born March 2007. She is a poet and assistant professor of English at Harper College in suburban Chicago. She strayed into literary criticism for a time during graduate studies but has returned to her roots as a poet, prompted in part by her efforts to unravel the many knots and tangles of motherhood through a creative medium. She wrote "Given" as she began to better understand the journey her own mother had taken over the years. Her poem "Ataraxis" won the 2007 Abbie M. Copps Poetry Award and will be published in Garfield Lake Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in artisan: a journal of craft, The Listening Eye, Driftwood, the Furnace Review, Blood and Fire Review, Mobius, and The New Press Literary Quarterly.

Ann Walters ("In the Kitchen") is the stay-at-home mother of two daughters. A physical anthropologist, she put her professional career on hold in order to raise her children and discovered that it is a challenging, sometimes frustrating, and profoundly satisfying job. Her poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Poetry International, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, Literary Mama, and many others.

Colette Ward ("The Bread Man")'s short stories, essays and poems have appeared in The Sector and Threshold. One of her poems was published in an anthology. She recently completed her first novel, Standing By Myself, and is actively seeking an agent. She is the mother of six extraordinary children.

Amy Watkins ("Morning Ride," "Tooth Fairy") is grateful for the many wonderful fathers in her life, in particular her daughter's father, Alex Copeland; her husband's father, Jack Copeland; and her own father, Brent Watkins. Her poems have recently appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, Umbrella, and an anthology of writing about menstruation, Women. Period.

Suellen Wedmore ("Visiting My Daughter, an Exchange Student in Spain") is the Poet Laureate for the seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, and has been published in Phoebe, College English, Green Mountains Review, The Cancer Poetry Project and others. Recently, she won first place in the national Writer's Digest Rhyming Poem Contest, first place in the annual Byline Literary Award contest, and first place in the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum contest.

Carol Weis("The Birthing of a Mother/Daughter Memoir: A Story of Letting Go") has been an actor, teacher, pastry chef, school librarian, sales rep, and professional cook, as well as a single mom to her only child, Maggie, for 15 years. Portions of their memoir have appeared online at Salon, Literary Mama, and Taborri Press and read as commentary on public radio. Carol's chapbook, Divorce Papers, was released in 2002 by Bull Thistle Press, and her children's book, When the Cows Got Loose, is due out from Simon & Schuster in July, 2006. Carol and Maggie can be reached at WakeUPMaggie65@aol.com.

Carla Weiss ("Babes in Brooklyn") has worked in the commercial theater industry for the past 15 years, developing musicals for Broadway and the national and international touring market. She sits on the board of two educational theater companies and has traveled around the world teaching ensemble theater workshops to young people and their teachers. Ms. Weiss is currently taking on any freelance projects that come her way, as she has become addicted to her daughter. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her husband, Peter Jeffrey, who is her collaborator on daily musical productions for the addictive 20-month-old warrior-girl, Kate Laura Jeffrey.

Susan Weissman ("Rain") lives with her husband and two children in New York City. Her work has appeared in Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, Musing Mama, Allergic Living, and Suburban Mama. Currently, she is seeking a publisher for her memoir “Peanuts in Eden.”

Kory Wells ("Hope Universal") lives in Tennessee, where she mothers two teenagers, works in software development, and plays a mean game of nine-ball on the Wii. Her essay "Really Good for a Girl," labeled "standout" by Ladies Home Journal, leads the book She's Such a Geek. Read her short fiction in Pindeldyboz, interview with author Silas House in Muscadine Lines, poetry in New Southerner and Ruminate, and more of her writings at korywells.com.

Monica Wesolowska ("Lenny, My Poet, and I") is the mother of two sons. While one is a lively toddler, the other died as a newborn. "Having experienced so intensely the intermingled grief and joy of motherhood," she reports, "my understanding of creativity has been greatly changed." As well as appearing here, her story "Lenny, My Poet, and I" was a finalist for a Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award. Other work has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Quarter After Eight, Area i, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Best New American Voices 2000, Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea, and The Writing Path II: Poetry and Prose from Writers' Conferences. A former recipient of a fiction fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, currently she lives in Berkeley with her husband and son(s). She teaches fiction writing at U.C. Berkeley Extension and also works privately with students. She may be reached at writer@lefish.com.

Joanna M. Weston (The Juggler" and "Three Sons and a Cow") was born in England. She is married to Robert and has three sons and two cats. She holds an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies such as, Canadian Woman Studies, Dandelion, Endless Mountain Review, Grain and Spin.

Vicki Whicker ("Pushing 7 1/2, Falling Into 8")lives in Pacific Palisades, California with her son. She earned a BA in Psychology from Quincy University. Her poems have appeared in the anthology, Twelve Los Angeles Poets. She is a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective, and she is currently at work on a collection of poems and essays.

Jennifer Duval White ("Things You Don't Know") writes from her home in Massachusetts, where she lives with the love of her life and their four young daughters. Though she spends her days as a stay at home mom and writer, most evenings she can be found conducting a small church choir or performing in regional theatre. Jennifer has been published at Haypenny, and recently won first place in a short fiction contest at Writer Online.

Jennifer Eyre White ("Analyzing Ben"; "Wake Up and Smell the Martinis," A Review of The Three-Martini Playdate) is an engineer turned (mostly) stay-home-mom. She is mother to Riley (8) and Ben (2), and is expecting her third child in May. She can be reached at jennifer_eyre@yahoo.com.

Susan Wickstrom ("The Season of Tiny Yellow Leaves")lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and young son. She is a senior editor at Bear Deluxe magazine and her writing has appeared in such publications as Willamette Week and the Oregonian. She welcomes your comments at suwick@aol.com

Stephanie Williamson ("Brooklyn Bridge") is a photographer and writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two sons. She teaches photography at City College of San Franscisco, and is currently working on a book about her childhood in Greenwich Village. Her writing and photography can be seen on her web site and on her blog.

A native of West Virginia who now lives in South Florida, Gloria Wimberley ("pieces of a liquid puzzle") is an active poet, past college English instructor, and stay-at-home mother of a vivacious two-year-old daughter, her mini-muse, Shea. Gloria’s work has appeared in Tapestry, Southern Ocean Review, The Northern Virginia Review/, and others.
Recently, she read a mamacentric poem on Empowered Motherhood (February 14, 2008), an Internet radio show based in Santa Barbara, California.

Meredith Winn ("I Am from Everywhere") is a writer, photographer, and mother to her three-year-old son, River. She lives in Austin, Texas, but finds herself dreaming of the coast. Meredith’s writing has been published in HipMama, Mamazine, MotherVerse, and the forthcoming anthology Alternative Birth. You can read more of her mind on the~spirit~of~the~river.

Rebecca Wolsk ("What's Coming to You"), a writer from Washington DC, is the mother of two brown-eyed girls: Claire, her three-year-old muse, and Copernica, a five-year-old Labrador retriever. Rebecca's work has appeared in several arts and humanities databases, and in Brain, Child magazine. This year she has articles forthcoming in Glass and in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and she's currently at work on a novel, Food and Worry. She dedicates this story with love to Claire, and also to Sara Schotland and Nancy Coleman Wolsk, for being the grandest of mothers.

Melissa Scholes Young ("Wrestling the Octopus") is a mother, writer, teacher, wife, pathological reader, and professional juggler, in the metaphorical sense. Her essays, fiction and poetry have been published in Mothering, Literary Mama, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, The New Plains Review, Writings from the River, and other journals. Melissa's work has been anthologized in the book A Cup of Comfort for Teachers.

Carol Zapata-Whelan ("Ordinary Time") has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA and teaches Hispanic literature at California State University Fresno. Her fiction has appeared in Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California (Heyday Press 2002) and other works, and her nonfiction has been published in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times News Syndicate, El Andar, The Rotarian, and other international periodicals. She writes to raise awareness about her son's rare condition, FOP, and is currently working on a memoir, Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Children and a Rogue Gene Called FOP. She has five glorious children, ages seven to 20 -- and one glorious husband. For more information on FOP, kindly see: www.ifopa.org.

Carolyn Harris Zukowski ("Some Villanelles Go Nowhere") is first and foremost, a mother to Aidan (11) and Max (6), as well as a surrogate to twenty-five backpackers and travelers who stay at her Hostel Krumlov House in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic. Carolyn has recently given birth to The Literary Bohemian, an online literary journal and directory of writer-friendly accommodations. Her poetry can be found in 14by14, Literary Mama, Perigee, and Umbrella Journal.