Most of us retain powerful stories about our mothers/stepmothers/female legal guardians. Your mother might have gotten you the lead in all the school plays, been a shoulder to cry on during hard times, been the inspiration for your current career, or instilled in you values you still hold dear. Or she might have had trouble resisting the bottle or the whip and been the cause of more years of counseling than Woody Allen has had. Most likely you have both good and bad memories, and we would love to see your most compelling stories based upon those memories. You can also tell stories about other mothers you have known, as well as your own experience with motherhood.
Typical payment is between $100 and $200 and in some cases, can reach up to $1,000. Stories should be between 750 and 3,000 words.
LM Senior Editor and Red Diaper Dharma columnist, Ericka Lutz, wrote a column, "Truth. Parenting. Sex. Ouch." several months ago about talking with her daughter about sex. Ericka and her daughter Annie's interview with the American Public Media Show "The Story with Dick Gordon" produced by WUNC, will be broadcast Friday, April 27 at 1:00 p.m. (EST). Ericka spent an hour taking about sex ed with her daughter and the interviewer. Of the experience, Ericka explained it was, "Exhausting. Nervewracking. Really wonderful."
There are lots of ways to listen:
LIVE... if you live in an area that gets "The Story."
STREAMING ... on the Internet from the WUNC website at 1:00 p.m. (EST) www.wunc.org. ONLY in North Carolina Fridays, 1:00 p.m. (EST). CLICK the red LISTEN NOW category and choose a program to listen on your desktop.
PODCAST... using the player of choice (iPod, MP3, SanDisk, PubCatcher, etc...) by entering this link: http://thestoryonline.org/archive/podcast.xml
XM SATELLITE RADIO... Wednesday-Saturday at 2:00 a.m. (EST) on Channel 133
ARCHIVE... of the show at: http://thestory.org/archive/
Glimmer Train Press is looking for short stories (12,000 word limit)about family matters. The dates are April 1-30 and October 1-31. The editors at Glimmer Train want "stories to READ like fiction."
http://www.glimmertrain.com/familymatters.html
Read Under The Saharan Sun columnist Jennifer Margulis's latest story in The Christian Science Monitor: A crusading publisher pushes Niger's limits, Maman Abou's anti-corruption scoops are profitable, but dangerous to report.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0417/p20s01-woaf.htm
Abou, a free speech crusader who owns Niger's biggest publishing house tells Margulis, "I'm human like everyone else. We're always scared that something bad will happen to us, but I'm not scared enough to give up the struggle or my convictions."
The first ever large scale Choice Moms Expo (a single mother by choice) will be held in the San Francisco/Berkeley area on Saturday April 28. This event will feature more than 14 expert speakers on fertility, financial planning, how to adopt, parenting advice, dating and answering the daddy question. Even if you can't make it to the expo, the Choosing Single Motherhood website (http://www.choosingsinglemotherhood.com) includes a discussion group, newsletter, resource links and the award winning book, Choosing Single Motherhood.
Fans of former LM editor Sophia Raday's column Mommy Athens, Daddy Sparta will be delighted to hear that Sophia has recently signed a contract with Beacon Press for a memoir about her "red state, blue state" marriage. Look for the book in Spring 2009.
Notes from the Underbelly is getting decidedly mixed reviews, but read one Literary Mama's take on it. Former LM columnist Liz Finn-Arnold reviews the new sitcom over on TV Squad.
I was a fan of Don Imus' morning show. It was an edgy alternative to the banal network morning shows where hosts spend half their time mingling with sign-waving fans. For me, watching the Imus show was like walking into a locker room where five crude-mouthed men didn't stop talking when they saw me. I was both repulsed and intrigued by the lack of couth displayed in their banter, peppered as it was with racist and sexist slurs. But just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Imus would conduct a smart interview with a brilliant historian or a savvy, inside-the-beltway political reporter. It was a schizophrenic experience. How could Imus be so good and so bad, so smart and so ignorant, all within one 10-minute segment?
I know I'll miss that crazy quality of the show, but at the same time, I'm glad it's gone. It had to go. And I like to think every one of us has something to learn from that amazing week in American broadcasting and cultural history. I know I do.
I wonder why it took me so long to understand why Imus deserved to be fired after his deplorable slur against those innocent Rutgers basketball players? I, in particular, should have gotten it right away. Just three weeks before, I had faced a rare occurrence -- a racial slur that hurt me, because it demeaned my family.
A member of an on-line group I belong to threw an anti-Asian slur into a message he'd written. It wasn't related to the topic he was discussing, just a back-handed, bonus insult. I noticed. I'm married to a Japanese American man. And my husband and I have adopted two girls from China. To me, blonde-haired, green-eyed me, it was personal.
I waited for a backlash against the member's comment, but it never came. So I wrote the group and lightly suggested I didn't appreciate reading the racist remark there.
Sure enough, other members rallied around him. He was a good guy. He wasn't a racist. I was wrong.
I told my husband about it. As if talking to a naïve child, he told me not to waste too much energy on it. He'd been there before. "You're not going to change any minds," he said. "Why bother?" I told him that while he was probably right, I owed it to my kids to try.
I wrote the man privately. He was willing to hear me out for a few rounds, but he finally told me to "Go after people who intentionally hurt others, next time." But even if it's not intentional, doesn't it still hurt? Isn't it still racist?
Yet somehow, even I was willing to give Imus a pass. That is, until I saw the girls he'd referred to as "Hos." They are smart, successful young women who have achieved a great deal in their 20 years. And of course, they are someone's children.
How could I not have seen that? How could I have secretly hoped he'd keep his job so I wouldn't have to go back to the Today Show? Why did I think some old, offensive white guy's career was more important than the innocent African American girls he had smeared?
I think the Imus scandal has presented all Americans with an opportunity to do a little soul-searching about the comments and actions of others that we routinely let slide, as long as they don't hurt us.
Because if we don't stand up and defend other people's children, who will defend ours?
The first annual Crazyhorse/Tupelo Press Publishing Institute will be held June 4-30, 2007. The institute offers hands-on opportunities for graduate students and emerging writers to learn about literary publishing. At the institute, students will work with Crazyhorse Editors Carol Ann Davis and Garrett Doherty in classroom and real-world settings; Jeffrey Levine, Tupelo Press Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, will offer guest lectures as well. Over the course of 4 weeks, students will participate in the process of choosing 25 finalists for the 8th annual Tupelo Press First book Prize, and receive a behind the scenes look at how a first book in poetry becomes successful. For more information please visit http://crazyhorse.cofc.edu/pubinstitute or contact Carol Ann Davis at davisca@cofc.edu.
Would you give a newborn baby a sugar cookie? Even if you were desperate? Read about that first cookie in Caroline Grant's essay on Hip Mama. Caroline edits Literary Reflections and writes the column Mama at the Movies.
Join Literary Reflections editor Caroline Grant and British writer Santa Montefiore on Sunday, April 22nd at 7:30 p.m.,for a reading and conversation about Montefiore's new novel, The Gypsy Madonna:
Elegant Anouk, a dealer in American antiques, dies leaving the Metropolitan museum an uncatalogued, multimillion dollar painting by Titian. Her son, Mischa, never even knew she owned it. This mystery sends him on the trail of his own history, back to that French village of his childhood. He expects to uncover the origins of the Gypsy Madonna; he never expects to find himself.
As with all MotherTalks, there's no need to read the book first, just come for good food, conversation, and pick up a signed copy at the event.
For more information, email Caroline Grant at reflections (at) literarymama (dot) com
Philly area moms won't want to miss Literary Mama co-founder Andi Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, both of MotherTalk Inc., in a conversation with Maribeth Fischer, author of the novel The Life You Longed For.
"Mother Talk" is an old-fashioned literary salon with good food, good company, and good conversation. And you don't have to read the book first -- just come for the wine and conversation and pick up a signed copy from the author while you're there.
Location: 2200 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, PA
Friday, April 20, 7:00pm
This month, Literary Mama profiles our brilliant Editor-in-Chief, Amy Hudock. Read about the birth of our magazine and get an insight into the woman who got us all started and keeps us all going.
Amy is also currently featured in SKIRT! magazine's "she'ssoskirt" section. "Motherhood is how I found my voice," Amy says.