About Us: Contributors U-Z

Contributors U-Z

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.




Read the Introduction Literary Mama Home Columns Creative Nonfiction Fiction Literary Reflections Poetry Profiles & Reviews OpEd Blog E-zine About us Submissions Contact Shop Literary Mama Search Search this site: Literary Mama Privacy Policy Powered by Movable Type 3.16	About Us Back to About Us \| Contributors, R-T » Contributors U-Z 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. 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.