Three times a month, I'll post a writing prompt. Open a notebook and write for 10 minutes. Don't worry about grammar or punctuation - just write. Then let the writing simmer and your mind wander for awhile.
And who knows? Maybe you'll discover a character for your next short story or a theme for a narrative essay. Or maybe you'll use the idea to create a special holiday card or photo album for someone in your family. However you decide to use your journal entry, I know you'll enjoy re-reading it months--and years--down the road
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karen, Mary, and I moved to a small community in northwest Iowa within two years of each other. Each of us had young families, but none of us worked outside the home. Yet, we knew there would be times we'd want to participate in an older child's school activity, work out at the gym, work on a project, or run errands by ourselves, without the company of our preschool-aged children. We didn't realize how challenging it would be to find a babysitter.
Daycare providers weren't interested in "drop ins" and college students' schedules never seemed to match our time slots. So, we formed a babysitting cooperative and decided to "popsicle stick" with each other and five other stay-at-home moms.
For a $3.00 membership fee, co-op members received 30 Popsicle sticks and a membership list. When daycare was needed, we made the necessary arrangements using Popsicle sticks for currency: one Popsicle stick for ½ hour of childcare for one child. Two children cost 1 ½ sticks per ½ hour; three children, two sticks per ½ hour. Babysitting services were completely voluntary and members always had the opportunity to accept or refuse a request.
I was part of the co-op for three years and never felt imposed upon, nor felt that I imposed on others when I called for a babysitting favor. My preschoolers enjoyed playtime, I had an hour or so to myself, and my money stayed in my pocket.
But the best thing? I knew my children were being cared for by another mom who was in the same child-rearing stage as I and who held similar values. We "popsicle sticked" so many times that a couple of those women became surrogate moms to my children -- and have remained so during my kids' elementary, middle, and high school years.
Journal Entry: Do your kids have a surrogate mom? Are you one? How did you develop the relationship? Write about a time your child relied on another mom--maybe it was for advice, for getting into a locked house, or for an overnight stay--and describe the circumstances that led up to the incident.
San Francisco, CA, October 20, 2010 -- SOMArts Cultural Center presents Feast of Words: A Storytelling Potluck, a monthly event that is part social, part reading series, and part inspiration for writers and foodies alike. Co-hosted by Irina Zadov and Lex Leifheit, Feast of Words takes place on the first Tuesday of each month. Guests are invited to bring a potluck dish and/or a six- minute themed reading. Each month features short writing exercises, shared food and featured culinary and literary guests.
November's writing theme is "Home Away From Home" and features literary and culinary guests Andrew Lam, and Blair Warsham (of graffEats Guerilla Dining), respectively. Feast of Words starts at 7:00pm on Tuesday, November 2. Admission is $10 or free with a potluck dish, tickets are available online at http://feastofwords.eventbrite.com. Open mic signup is limited to six spots, six minutes each and begins at 6:30pm. Writers should choose a work that fits in with the theme.
Listing Info:
What: Feast of Words: A Writers Potluck
Where: SOMArts Cultural Center (934 Brannan St, between 8th and 9th)
When: 7:00pm to 9:00pm, doors open at 6:30pm
What else: $10, free admission with potluck dish.
For more information visit http://feastofwords.eventbrite.com or write feastofwords@somarts.org
2,000-4,000 words
Editors: Audrey Bilger and Michele Kort. Audrey Bilger is the Faculty Director of the Writing Center and Associate Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College. Michele Kort is Senior Editor at Ms. magazine, a freelance writer, and author of three books (including Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro).
Same-sex marriage is obviously a hot topic these days, and we want to look specifically at the lesbian side of the equation. Given the secondary status of women throughout much of the globe, bonds between women--particularly intimate connections--can redefine the political landscape as well as the domestic realm. Anna and Eve don't get as much press as Adam and Steve, but they're potentially more threatening to the status quo.
Here Come the Brides will primarily cover legal marriages, but also lesbian commitment ceremonies in locales where the legal status of gay marriage is still up for grabs. We hope the book will be able to represent a diversity of points of view in terms of race, class, ethnicity and geography, and incorporate transgender perspectives. Although the book will be generally upbeat about lesbian marriage, we'd also like viewpoints from those who are opposed to either being married themselves or who have issues with the institution or the politics of same-sex marriage.
We're looking for a variety of material: primarily first-person essays, but also secondhand observations, bridesmaid/mother-of-the-bride/etc. stories, and even analytical pieces (as long as they're written in an accessible style). We're open to graphic essays/cartoons as well, and we're eager to see lesbian wedding ephemera: great photos, invitations, newspaper wedding announcements, vows, guest favors.
Needless to say, we're looking for terrific writing--colorful, moving, funny, surprising, insightful. We can imagine essays that cover a lesbian marriage from soup to nuts, but we think it's more likely, given the word limitation, that it might be best to focus on a certain aspect of lesbian marriage or of your particular wedding--at least as an organizing principle. Here are some questions to think about; perhaps one or more will inspire a resonant tale:
What made you decide to get married? How significant was legalization in your state/country in your decision? How/who popped the question? What trepidations did you have about marriage? What does marriage mean to you/what doubts do you have about the institution? How is marriage the same/different for a lesbian couple? How did your families handle the news? Was there any particular joy or heartbreak about someone who did or did not support your wedding? What was the planning process for your wedding? Was it a fancy affair, or just a trip to the courthouse? Did you have a best man/woman or bridesmaids/bridesmen? Do you have children, and were they involved in the wedding? Do you have a good story about your wedding outfits? About the ceremony/reception? Who did you invite? If you're an interracial couple, did that bring out issues beyond your lesbian connection? Same question if one or both of you is transgender. Was your wedding traditional--or did you purposefully try to "queer" it? Did you write your vows? Did you put out an announcement in the newspaper? Did you go on a honeymoon? What do you call your spouse? How has lesbian wedded life met/exceeded/confounded your expectations? Does your relationship feel different since you married? Has marriage made you more/less radical about LGBT issues?
Deadline for submissions: January 30, 2011. Please consider running your ideas past us before you plunge into writing. We also encourage early submissions.
For more information, see our blog at http://micheleandaudrey.wordpress.com/. Please email submissions and inquiries to: abilger@cmc.edu.
Literary Reflections is pleased to present our featured writing prompt response from October. Earlier this month, we asked, "When have you felt consumed or trapped by the daily demands of your world? How do you free yourself so you have space, time, and energy to write?"
Kristal Murphy wrote:
The Early Morning
I'm awake. It's early -- 4am to be exact. A dream foggily teases the corners of my mind. While I slept, the dream played like a blockbuster movie and all I needed was popcorn. It had such a fantastic climax that it had woken me. I struggled to replay the key parts of the dream so I could memorize them. This would make a good story; maybe exciting enough to be the breakout story that finally gets my name "out there" in the writing world. I enjoy momentary delusions of grandeur before I decide to take action. I have to write the dream down before I forget it.
I am thirsty, and need caffeine. I am not a coffee drinker--but I am a soda addict. I tiptoe past the children's rooms closing the little ones' door so the kitchen light will not disturb them. My Lexi is not a sound sleeper, and if she knew Mommy was awake, she'd be up to give me "company."
The sun is starting to peak in the Carolina gleaming outside my window. I know that it's only a matter of time before Lexi wakes up. I go into the den, and ,with a tap of the power button the PC roars to life.
"Maybe she won't hear it," I tell myself. I sit down and try to recall the dream. It's fading. I remember something about a car chase, and something about apples? Were they throwing apples at each other? That doesn't make sense! Okay, now focus on the dream... It was cold. Raining if I recall... that would make the roads slick for a car chase. Who was chasing whom, and why?
"Mommy! You're awake!" chirps a happy voice behind me.
My Lexi is my "Sunshine Girl," up with the sun and twice as bright. She has been since she was a baby. She now stands in the doorway, her blonde hair hanging in tangles, wearing her favorite pajamas and pink flamingo slippers. Her blue eyes are shining with pure joy at finding me awake.
"I am. I am working on a story." I answer.
"Oh, that's good, Mommy." She continues to smile expectantly. "Am I in the story?"
"No, it's about a car chase."
"Ooh, that sounds wonderful!" She gushes, before changing the subject back to her. "I thought that, since you were up, we'd make blueberry muffins!
My first instinct was to explain that I needed to put down an outline of the dream so I could return to it later. I fought the urge to fill her head with visions of ponies I could give her if she'd just let Mommy write!
"Okay, princess." I smiled and stood up from my computer. It was a lost cause. Besides, the dream no longer made sense and I had been presented with a better offer by my little angel. I hugged my daughter and went off in search for the muffin tin.
###
Kristal can be reached at KristalRMurphy(at)gmail(dot)com.
A new Literary Reflections writing prompt is published the first weekend of every month. Responses are accepted until the 15th, and I promise to comment shortly after that. Look for it - we'd love to hear from you.
Call for Papers
Demeter Press
is seeking submissions for an edited collection on
Laboring On: Testimony, Theory & Transgressions of Black Mothering
in Academia
Editors: Sekile Nzinga-Johnson & Karen Craddock Pub Date: 2012/2013
This book aims to interrogate the intersecting forms of oppression that are experienced by Black female faculty and scholars who "labor" and "mother" within the academy. The context in which Black female academics occupy is an important starting point to consider given the longstanding history of the patriarchal, racially biased, and anti-family environment of academia. Post civil rights and women rights colleges and universities continue to be sites of struggle and resistance for African American women despite higher education achievements. This anthology will offer a particularly nuanced discussion on the emergent literature on parenting and work that explores academic institutions that largely mark black women's bodies as deviant and pathological.
We encourage submissions that explore various constructions of "mothering" and "being mothered" which contribute to the experiences of Black women academics. For the purposes of this book we have broadened our conceptualization of "mothering" to include care work. Thus "mothering" may include the expectations or practice of providing formal and informal support to students of color and/or students that are alienated within the academy, as well as the mentoring of junior faculty, faculty of color, female faculty, caregiving/parenting faculty, and those outside the academy. The term "labor" theoretically extends this volume to include the voices of Black academic women who often occupy the lowest echelons of the academic class structure. We also invite contributions that encompass the strains between work and home/community life for Black academic mothers.
The goal of this volume is to further the discussion of work and family from a critical and interdisciplinary lens that illuminates the complex realities of Black women who mother and labor within the academy.
Suggested topics may include but are not limited to:
Academic climate; Research & policy on African American mothering in the academy; Resistance to marginalization within the academy; Work-life strains; Embodying multiple marginalities in the academy; Intersectionality; Constructions of black mothering/motherhood; Explorations of various constructions of "mothering" and "being mothered"; Parallels and confounds of mothering and mentoring; Gender roles and responsibilities; Black mothers and the "maternal wall"; Analysis of Black mothers in the academy as laborers; Embodiment; Identity; Black maternal theory and activism; Black mother- academics, stress and health; Experiences of adjunct and part time professors; Students as academic mothers; Tenure and promotion; Early, mid & late career mothering decisions; Single parenting; Dual careers; Black foster and adoptive mother academics; Black women scholars as intellectual mothers; Black grandmothers as academics; Black mothering and laboring in different academic settings; Teaching Black Motherhood; Pedagogy; Bias avoidance/choosing not to parent as an academic; Black mother-academics and community; Black academic mothers "having it all"; Biographies; Narratives and Autobiographies.
Submission guidelines:
Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography (50 words).
Deadline for abstracts Nov 1, 2010
Accepted papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) will be due June 1, 2011 and
should conform to the Modern Language Association style.
Please send submissions directly to:
Sekile Nzinga-Johnson snzinga3@naz.edu
and Karen T. Craddock kcrad@brandeis.edu
Do you keep a journal - or wish you could get one started?
Literary Mama wants to help.
Three times a month, I'll post a writing prompt. Open a notebook and write for 10 minutes. Don't worry about grammar or punctuation - just write. Then let the writing simmer and your mind wander for awhile.
And who knows? Maybe you'll discover a character for your next short story or a theme for a narrative essay. Or maybe you'll use the idea to create a special holiday card or photo album for someone in your family. However you decide to use your journal entry, I know you'll enjoy re-reading it months--and years--down the road.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why I should have a pet:I'll clean her cage. I'll care for her myself. I'll pay for the food and the toys. It will live in MY room. I'll even get her from a shelter. I'll read about the animal. I'll take a pad of paper and pencil when we get her so I'll know if there's anything special I need to know about my pet!
Love, your pet loving daughter, Ellen
My daughter wrote this letter when she was about 9 years old - and I said "no." We already had a cat and, to be honest, I'm not a dog person. But I promised that we'd do what I thought was the next best thing: volunteer at the local dog shelter. For the past three summers, we've made weekly visits. Even though she's not getting the full experience of caring for a dog, she's learning what it means to be a responsible pet owner. She's horrified by what she's learned about puppy mills and is becoming an advocate for spaying and neutering.
Best of all, she's willing to ask herself these questions from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals before adopting a pet.
Journal Entry: Write about a childhood pet and the role it had (or has) in your family. What is the real reason you added a pet to your family?
Congrats to these LM Staffers!
Erika Lutz, Columnist: "I'm thrilled that my novel, now titled The Edge of Maybe, will be published in 2012 by Last Light Studio Books. The publisher, Armand Inezian, calls me a Renaissance scribe, which is beyond flattering. Read the full announcement here."
Kate Haas, Creative Nonfiction Editor: "On October 10th, I read at Wordstock, Portland's literary arts festival. I'm one of the writers in Time Out Comedy, a group of mothers who perform stand-up and read essays at various venues around town. I read the story of how what I was afraid was cancer turned out to be a tooth...on my ovary (from the summer issue of Brain, Child). Before I read this to 150 people at a comedy club, I had no idea how funny an ovarian tooth really was."
Maria Scala, Column Editor: "I recently had poems published in Thunderclap! Magazine's Femme Fatale issue -- an issue that celebrates female writers from North America. The poems reflect on small moments with my daughter, from driving in the car to sitting in Ikea enjoying frozen yogurt."
Christina Speed, Literary Reflections Editor: "My personal essay, Work in Progress, was selected for Mother Words week on the Minneapolis Star Tribune's parenting blog, Cribsheet. Each year, Cribsheet celebrates the power of women's writing about motherhood by featuring essays from Kate Hopper's Mother Words students."
Do you keep a journal - or wish you could get one started? Literary Mama wants to help.
Three times a month, I'll post a writing prompt. Open a notebook and write for 10 minutes. Don't worry about grammar or punctuation - just write. Then let the writing simmer and your mind wander for awhile.
And who knows? Maybe you'll discover a character for your next short story or a theme for a narrative essay. Or maybe you'll use the idea to create a special holiday card or photo album for someone in your family. However you decide to use your journal entry, I know you'll enjoy re-reading it months--and years--down the road
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DATE: Tuesday, October 12
TIME: 6:30-8:30 (new time!)
LOCATION: The Libertine Library at Gild Hall,15 Gold Street, NYC
FREE ADMISSION
Jennifer Belle
nationally best-selling author of The Seven Year Bitch, Going down, and Little Stalker
Marcy Dermansky
author of Bad Marie, a Barnes and Noble Fall 2010 Discover Great New Writers pick, and Twins
With Special Guest
Pang-Mei Chang
Author of the best-selling memoir
Bound Feet and Western Dress
Join the conversation...
Celebrate contemporary literature and cutting-edge parenting with like-minded readers and writers.
Don't miss our literary-themed
cocktail specials!
http://www.penparentis.org
International Conference on Motherhood Activism, Advocacy, Agency
May 13-15, 2011, Toronto, ON, Canada
EXTENDED DEADLINE: OCTOBER 15, 2010!
Grounded in a long history, in which women activists, writers, and feminists focused much effort on strengthening the social, personal, and political power of mothers, current motherhood research and activism makes maternal empowerment one of the major goals of its work. Contemporary examinations and deployments of women's power as mothers-and mothers' power as women-seek to grant women greater authority, resources, and status so that they can adequately care for their children while living full and purposeful lives. The aim of this conference is to explore activism, advocacy, and agency by and on behalf of mothers from a variety of perspectives and in a multitude of contexts. These include (but are not limited to): the motherhood movement, community activism and engagement, politics, law, public policy, education, mental and physical health, maternal practice, family, workplace, personal identity, cultural expression, arts, the media and popular culture. We are particularly interested in presenters whose work examines ways in which issues of race, class, nationality, sexuality, age, religion, or ethnicity affect (positively or negatively) the ability of mothers to advocate for and/or achieve authority, agency, respect, and empowerment.
Topics include but not limited to:
the relationship between maternal agency and institutional constraints; personal agency; social agency; intersectionality and maternal agency; maternal agency and social justice; empowerment and family-life responsibilities; maternal agency and legal norms/practices; public policy and the public/private split; neoliberalism and public policy for mothers; healthism and maternal agency; navigating cultural expressions of "good" and "bad" mothering; second and third shift responsibility and agency; online advocacy and empowered mothering; maternal advocacy as theorized or practiced by women of a particular race, class, religion, or culture; empowered caregiving versus non-empowered caregiving; workplace norms and maternal advocacy or agency; motherhood and politics; "having it all" and maternal empowerment; challenging the maternal wall; challenging the "price of motherhood"; pregnancy and maternal agency; empowered mothering and disability; co-parenting and maternal empowerment; social change potential of memoir, narrative, autobiography, or blogging; maternal empowerment through artistic expression, film, music, literature, pop culture, or other arts; maternal agency through 'experts' or resistance to them; maternal empowerment by being resistant to or rooted in traditions, histories, or generational knowledges; navigating multiple identities as a mother; motherhood movements; advocacy for new family forms and relations; feminist mothering; queer and/or transgendered mothering; gender equity in home and work place; redefining fathering; othermothering; activism by young and/or low-income mothers; maternal activists' allies.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Deborah Byrd, Lafayette College, co-editor of Teaching Against the Isms: Feminist Pedagogy Across the Disciplines
Robbie Davis-Floyd, University of Texas, Austin, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage, co-editor, Birth Models that Work
Ariel Gore, founding editor of Hip Mama, author of Whatever, Mom: Hip Mama's Guide to Raising a Teenager
Pat Gowens, founder of Welfare Warriors, editor of Mother Warriors Voice.
Amber Kinser, East Tennessee State University, author of Motherhood and Feminism, editor of Mothering in the Third Wave
D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein, Boston University, author of White Feminists and Contemporary Maternity: Purging Matrophobia and co-editor with Sara Hayden, Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choices: Explorations Into Discourses of Reproduction.
Andrea O'Reilly, York University, author of Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering and editor of 21st Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency
*Other keynotes: TBC
Please send 250 word abstract and 50 word bio to aoreilly@yorku.ca by October 15, 2010
One must a 2011 member of MIRCI to present at this conference.
Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)
140 Holland St. West, PO Box 13022
Bradford, ON, L3Z 2Y5 (tel) 905-775-5215
Motherhood Initiative.org
Imagine your most frustrating, most irritating day at home with the kids. The girls joust with cuttings from your favorite fern, the boys paint Spiderman with mascara, the casserole smoulders in the oven, the baby wails in the rocker. You want to sleep, or scream, or run. It's hard.
But now imagine how much harder it could be. You pause to scan the hills outside your window, and they are as scorched and blackened as dinner. Your baby wails in perfect pitch with distant falling bombs. And instead of gruffly shooing the kids outside, you must caution:
...go play outside,
but don't throw balls near the soldiers.
When a jeep goes past
keep your eyes on the ground.
And don't pick up stones,
not even for hopscotch.
These lines open "What She Said," one of the many exquisite, incisive poems in Lisa Suhair Majaj's new collection.
Geographies of Light takes us to a place both shockingly foreign and familiar as a heartbeat, a place of breastfeeding babies, childhood afternoons on the riverbank, family homes crushed into dust, body parts strewn across rubble. We recognize it and we cannot fathom it:
Love is in the details.
I want to know what that man,
twenty-five years old,
killed at his window
cradling his daughter in his arms,
ate for breakfast.
Lisa Suhair Majaj is Palestinian-American. She grew up in Jordan, was educated in Lebanon and in the US and now lives in Cyprus with her family. Her poems bridge these geographic boundaries with the universal theme of loss. She writes of slow, agonizing departure and of frantic fleeing, of relationships born into and torn apart by senseless, endless war.
This alone would make for a memorable collection, but Geographies of Light is more than memorable. It is intimate. A thread of humanness winds through the poems - a reminder of that which ties us together - and the middle section of the book contains seven poems on mothering. It is fitting that these should form the core of the book. Motherhood endures.
In "Penguin Parents" Mujaj writes:
I tuck my child beneath my breasts, ready
to face any danger in his defense, endure icescapes
of hunger, tundras of broken nights -
till my mate returns, scoops up the child,
and sends me staggering to the sea of sleep.
Geographies of Light recounts parenting through adversity, through atrocity, mother to son as well as father to daughter. The collection also tells of mothering across generations - grandmother to granddaughter - and across cultures, as in the poem "First Year."
in her face
three countries speak:
inflection
of olive
wheat
oregano
already she finds the cat
in two languages
knows the name of love
in three tongues
soon syllables will fall from her lips
the first rain
Lisa Suhair Majaj's poetry is unflinching, tender and beautiful. Geographies of Light won the Del Sol Poetry Prize in 2008 and includes the poem "Answers," first published by Literary Mama in 2004.
"Novelist and Los Angeles Times Television Critic Mary McNamara offers tips on how to write the book you've had in your head while not losing your mind or forgetting your family's needs." From the September 26th issue of the Los Angeles Times.