About Us: Contributors, D-F

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!)




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 « Contributors, G-I \| Back to About Us \| Contributors, A-C » 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!)