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.

Judy Allen ("Coming of Age at the Grand Canyon") is the mother of two teenagers and, following several careers -- as an actress and director, secretary, Internet copywriter and most recently grant writer, she has turned her attention to creative writing. She lives in Putnam Valley, New York with her husband, John, son Cory, daughter Rosie, two dogs, two cats, several chickens and guinea fowl and a Burmese Python. She is currently working on a novel based on her pre-parenting days as a hippie and spiritual seeker.

Cynthia Ann Alvarado ("Failure to Thrive") moved with her husband and then-infant son from Los Angeles to Hatfield, Pennsylvania, in search of a "saner" life after working for 11 years in the film and television industry. She is a professional flautist as well as the author of a stage play that has been produced locally and a comedic screenplay currently running the studio circuit. She hopes her ventures into juvenile fiction will entice "typical" children to take notice of the cool kid in the wheelchair sitting next to them. At age five, her youngest daughter, Jessica, broke through the 24.2 pound weight barrier with a sudden growth spurt and is now hungry and thriving.

Kimberly Greene Angle ("Forecasts") lives in Columbia, SC where she shares her life with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual, The Chattahoochee Review, South Carolina Wildlife, The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin, and Skirt, among others. She is currently writing a novel for young readers and working on a
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.

Barbara Card Atkinson's fiction ("Camping") was in LiteraryMama's premiere issue and she eventually finagled her way into an editorial assistant position at LitMama. Later, her piece "See You at the Movies" appeared in Literary Mama's Creative Nonfiction department. She has published work in Salon.com, the Christian Science Monitor, both Brain, Child and Skirt! magazines and some numerous (now-defunct) multimedia websites. A screenwriter by training, she has placed in several screenplay contests and plans to start shopping around her first novel, as soon as the kids let her back onto the computer.

Noreen Austin ("Tasseeomancy") received her MFA from Antioch University. Her work has appeared in Watershed, The Crimson Crane, and ken*again. She was one of the featured readers in the Literary Salon at the Zebulon Lounge in Petaluma, California. She is currently working on short stories and a novel and lives in Northern California with her wonderful 15-year-old son. She can be reached at: ndgreg@sbcglobal.net.

Deborah Bacharach's ("Fire, Aphasia, and The Spirit World") work has appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Calyx, and Poet Lore among others. She lives in Seattle with her partner and two children, Rose (4) and David (1). You can read her blog at Debby My Journal.

Gail Konop Baker (Excerpt from Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs) lives with her husband and three children in Madison, Wisconsin. She recently completed her novel, Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs, from which this piece is an excerpt. Her work is published in Talking River Review, The Potomac, The Danforth Review, Madison Magazine, Wisconsin Trails, Mota, Yankee Pot Roast, Xanadu, Womansong, Glass Review, and an anthology funded by the Ohio Arts Council. Visit her website, www.gailkonopbaker.com to read more of her work.

Sudha Balagopal ("Garage Sale") was born and raised in India and has lived in the United States for over two decades. She has a graduate degree in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida and has been published both in the United States and in India. Recently, her fiction has appeared in Catamaran magazine, Driftwood, Her Circle and Muse India. She is the proud mother of two teenaged girls who remind her every day how wonderful motherhood is.

Cathy Barber ("The Vigil: A Pantoum") is the mother of two daughters. Her work has appeared in many publications including, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Tattoo Highway, bear creek haiku, The Kerfand in the anthologies An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 and nth position’s Times New Roman. She was the second place winner in Gin Bender Poetry Review's 2003 contest. She has an MA from California State University, Hayward, and she lives in San Mateo, CA.

Karen Barnett ("Neighbor") has been a social worker, an international lawyer, and a corporate litigator in a diversity of places, including Malawi, Thailand, New York, and San Francisco. She is currently full-time mommy to her three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Originally from Canada, Karen lives in Tacoma, Washington, where her husband is stationed with the U.S. Air Force. She is working on a novel based on her experiences doing asylum law. This is her first publication.

Svea Barrett ("Morgans" and "Slipping") lives in Wyckoff, New Jersey with her three sons. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Samsara Quarterly, LIPS, The Paterson Literary Review and the Journal of NJ Poets. She also teaches Creative Writing in Allendale, New Jersey.

Deborah Bauer ("Day Care Lady") lives and writes in Tempe, Arizona. She has work forthcoming in Carve and Poetry Midwest and was a recent finalist at the Tucson Poetry Festival. She still tends to over-parent her children, even though they are 23 and 25 years old and fully capable of making their own decisions.

Susan Bavaria ("Early Frost") is working on a book, Cuddling the Cactus, about life with her husband, George DeRoos, and daughter Rose, who was adopted when she was six years old after living in eight foster homes. Susan has an M.A. from the University of Colorado and is the Director of Communications for the Arabian Horse Association. Her writing has also been published in the Bellevue Literary Review. Rose is now a sophomore at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, majoring in psychology.

Jan Bear ("Call Your Mother") lives in West Linn, Oregon, with her husband, two adopted teen-aged daughters and two dogs. She is news editor for a statewide newspaper based in Portland and writes for The Onion Dome, a satire site. She has had fiction and nonfiction published in a variety of national journals, including The Critic, Catholic Digest and Again magazines. She has two novels in process and blogs at A World of Speculation.

Jessica Berger Gross is the editor of the award-winning anthology About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. Her column about international adoption, Passport to Parenting, appeared regularly on Literary Mama. Her writing has also appeared in Salon, Yoga Journal, Yoga International and Healing Lifestyles & Spas, in the anthology It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters, and is forthcoming in Rebecca Walker's anthology One Big Happy Family. She's performed her bad teenage poetry in the comedy show Mortified. Jessica has taught memoir writing at the Harvard Extension School and will be teaching a creative non-fiction workshop in the BFA program at the University of British Columbia. She and her husband and son recently moved to Vancouver, Canada.

Marian Berges ("The Children's Park") worked after college in local theatre and film, then turned to writing. At the moment she is completing two novels, and is a member of the Motherlode Writing Group in Berkeley. She lives around the corner from Totland, and is relieved that her two children have outgrown it. She can be reached at marianberges@earthlink.net

Gina Binole ("Baby's No Friend of Mine") lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in magazines like Organic Style, Sunset, and Parenting. When she's not writing, she loves hiking in the mountains, riding bikes, and exploring other splendors of the Northwest with her husband and three-year-old daughter.

Sheila Black ("Ghost Season") lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband, Duncan, and three children, Annabelle (10), Walker (5), and Eliza (3). She received her MFA in poetry in 1998 from the University of Montana. In 2000, she was the U.S. co-winner of the Frost-Pellicer Frontera Prize sponsored by the Ford Foundation and awarded to a U.S. and a Mexican poet living along the
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.

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.

Amy Burditt ("Albion Street") is a voracious reader and fledgling writer living in Oakland, CA with her husband and one-and-a-half-year-old son. She is a freelance photography producer, which is really like mothering adults for money. She has given up her inclination for living in unsavory neighborhoods. Literary Mama is her first publication.

Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser ("Wedding, Dress, Boy, Pretty", "Interview with Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels") is a graduate of Hampshire College and Warren Wilson College's MFA Program in fiction. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as the Georgia Review, Story Quarterly, and the Southwest Review, and various parenting publications including Brain, Child, Hip Mama, and Mothering. One of her essays appears in the anthology My Heart's First Steps. She lives with her husband and three sons in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Susan Buttenwieser's fiction ("Prom Night") has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared or is forthcoming in Lost, Storyglossia, Failbetter, Nth Position, and 3am. She's received several fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative and Arts and teaches writing in the youth program of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center and at a homeless shelter for LGBT youth in New York City. She has two daughters.

Ann Marie Byrd, Ph.D., ("He's Home") lives in Jacksonville, FL, with her husband, David; a Japanese exchange student, Kyoko; and two dogs and a cat. Her son Michael is away at college. Her email is abyrd9@bellsouth.net.

Sara Campos ("Like Water Spilling Through Her Fingers") is a lawyer and a writer living in Berkeley. She has published fiction and poetry in St. Ann’s Review, Penwomanship, LongStoryShort, The Womanist, NewversesNews, and Crux. She has also published essays in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Daily Journal and, The Recorder and her book reviews have appeared in Waterbridge Reviews and www.beyond chron.org. She has two daughters, 9 and 13, a 26-year-old step-daughter, and a dog.

Writer, musician and performer Phyllis Capello (Hospital Quartet) lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction and a prizewinner in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her work appears in many anthologies and literary magazines, including, most recently, the Italian feminist journal Legendaria, Families: A Journal of Representation, Kolkata, The Milk of Almonds, and Reading, Writing and Reacting, a college textbook. She teaches poetry and music and entertains hospitalized children in the Big Apple Circus' Clown Care program. She has a grown daughter and son.

Bella Mahaya Carter ("After the Bath") is looking for a publisher for her motherhood memoir, Secrets of My Sex: One Woman's Struggle to Give Life Without Surrendering Her Own. Her work has been published in Bandicoot, CALYX: A Journal of Art & Literature by Women, Earth's Daughters, The LA Reader, ONTHEBUS, and Tsunami and has been anthologized in Writing Our Way Out of the Dark. Bella lives in Studio City, CA with her husband and their six-year-old daughter.

Patricia Caspers ("The Beginning") is the mother of a soon-to-be seven-year-old daughter. They live in Alameda, California, where Patricia writes for a local newspaper and teaches English composition at a community college. She earned an MFA in poetry from Mills College, and her poems have been published in The Comstock Review, Milvia Street, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women's Writing, The Wash, and Watershed.

Shannon L.C. Cate ("Dare Not Speak: On Not Being the Other Mother" and "Crossing the Lines of Sex and Race") is a freelance writer and a teacher of writing and American literature. She and her partner are currently waiting for their first child together through domestic infant adoption. They divide their time between Illinois and Washington, DC.

Jean Cavrell ("Erev Mother's Day") is a former actress, university English instructor, and retired university executive assistant. Her stories have been published in Redbook, Galaxy, Spectrum, Star Dancer, Peralta Press, Central PA Magazine (which gave her an award). This past year she has received awards from the Soul-Making Literary Competition, White Country Creative Writers, Heritage Writers' Guild, and publication in Spanish Moss. She has two witty daughters (one in Brazil) and three grandchildren -- two girls and a boy. She writes, "Grandchildren are easier, just as the cliché says."

Wendy Pinkston Cebula ("What She Needs") lives in New York City and is the mother of two girls, Naomi and Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine and Six Sentences. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and is currently working on her first novel.

Kim Chinquee ("Child Protection") lives with her 15-year-old son. She's been a single mother for 14 years, and began writing after her son's seventh birthday. Her recent work has appeared in Noon, elimae, Quick Fiction, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Xavier Review, Cottonwood, Mississippi Review, Phantasmagoria, and several other journals. Her webpage is www.kimchinquee.blogspot.com.

Kimberly Chisholm ("Withstanding") is the mother of Will, Aidan, and Quentin, who are six, four, and almost two. After receving a doctorate in Spanish and French literature in 2001, she began writing fiction and has had short stories published in Bellowing Ark, Spindrift and Moxie online. She lives near San Francisco and is currently at work on a novel. Feel free to contact her.

Jill Christman ("Bringing On Baby") is the author of the memoir Darkroom: A Family Exposure, which won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. Recent essays have appeared or are forthcoming in River Teeth, Mississippi Review, Fourth River, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, poet Mark Neely, and their three-year-old daughter, Ella.

Jane Ciabattari ("Hiding Out") is the author of the short-story collection Stealing the Fire and the mother of one son, Scott. Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Blueline, Caprice, Hampton Shorts, The East Hampton Star and Redbook, and she has been awarded fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction has been honored with an Editors' Choice Stubby award by Hampton Shorts and nominated for a National Magazine Award and an O'Henry award. She and her husband, Mark, also a writer, divide their time between New York, Sag Harbor and Windham, NY. Visit her at her website, www.janeciabattari.com.

Christi Clancy ("Home I Hope") is the mother of two healthy children; Olivia, 9, and Tim, 6. Her short fiction will appear in a future issue of Glimmer Train Stories. Her writing has been nominated for inclusion in Best New American Voices, and has been published in The Cream City Review, The Capitol Times, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Minnesota Daily, and on whimsplace.com. She is working towards a masters degree in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Raejean Clark ("Mom Vs. Black Death")lives and writes in Texas. She has stories forthcoming in Country Roads 2006 Annual Fiction Issue and the Fall 2007 Louisiana Literature. Raejean is working on a short story collection about families in transition. Her son, Hunter (18), and daughter, Lacy (15), are sometimes pleased, but usually mortified to see likenesses of themselves in her stories.

J. Anderson Coats ("The Cost of Living")is a writer, historian, librarian, soon-to-be grad student and mama to a feisty school-aged boychild. Her work has appeared on Girlmom.com, in off our backs and in
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.

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.