"Bad" Mothers discussed on Writers Revealed Radio

Last week, writer Felicia Sullivan launched her new radio show, Writers Revealed. This week's edition was all about family, particularly the notion of the “bad mother.” Felicia led a lively discussion with authors Elissa Schappell (Use Me), Liesel Litzenburger (Now You Love Me), Sabina Murray (A Carnivore’s Inquiry) and Victoria Redel (Loveryboy). Topics included the authors' books and the mother characters in each, "good" mothers, Dina Lohan and raising children in this age of influence (internet, tv, movies) and influential marketing.

Calling All Mama-Poets!

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, LM's Literary Reflections Editorial Assistant, is pleased to announce her 10 week workshop for beginner mama poets. If you're an expecting, new, birth, step, adoptive or grandmama wanting to learn more about the joys of poetry, as well as create and present your own poems in an encouraging and inspiring workshop format, this is the place for you!

Among others, topics will include: reading & writing as a poet, poetry of remembering & remembrance, forms and how to make them relevant, and the rigors and rewards of revision.

The workshop will run from July 1st to September 9th. Cost is $250. Class size is limited. For more information or to register, please write violeta724@earthlink.net.

1.) Go to Amazon.com and purchase Karen Rizzo's memoir

Los Angeles writer, playwright, and performer Karen Rizzo wrote the book Things to Bring, S#!t to Do . . . and other inventories of anxiety made entirely out of lists she's saved since she was a child.

1) The memoir was a 2006 Book Sense Highlight for ‘Fascinating Lives’
2) Our interview with her is now up in Profiles
3) Find out what she thinks list-making really tells us about ourselves
4) She just wrote to tell us that she's now working on a novel
5) She says it scares her
6) We wonder if there are any lists in her novel
7) You can watch her here, reading some lists from her book

Suzanne Kamata's "Losing Kei" Now Available

Fiction Co-Editor Suzanne Kamata's debut novel Losing Kei can now be pre-ordered at Amazon.com.

Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she’s settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her luck changes when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill’s duty is that of servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction from Yusuke's mother in the proper womanly arts and even the long anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.

Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of Japanese family life Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice.

Author Terry Ryan passes away.

Terry Ryan, author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, passed away on Wednesday, May 16th at her home in San Francisco after a battle with cancer. Ryan's mother daughter memoir tells the story of a woman who, "raised ten kids on twenty-five words or less." The memoir was made into a movie staring Julianne Moore and recently reviewed by LM's Caroline Grant in Mama At The Movies. Read a local story about Terry Ryan at,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/17/BAGP0P3U2E115.DTL

In The Motherhood Scriptwriting Contest

In The MotherHood is the first scripted Web series by moms, for moms and about moms. Conceived by Suave and Sprint, the story will be written in part by YOU, based on your funny, comical and no-holds-barred experiences of motherhood.

Colicky babies, toppling toddlers, terrible-two tantrums, kindergartners uttering obscenities (during parent-teacher conferences, of course) — the comedies of motherhood never seem to end!

What can you do, except laugh and then write about it at In The MotherHood?

It's easy to take the next step, and here's a little secret: Behind the Sign Up Now link lies a haven for harried mothers, a paradise for pooped parents — a really fun event where you'll get to tell your best motherhood tales, win prizes and see your work turned into a series of video webisodes starring the fabulously funny Leah Remini.

We need moms of all kinds to become a part of this new community — you are welcome whether you want to write your own script or just want to read others' stories and vote on them. So what are you waiting for? Sign Up Now before your kids figure out that you're on the computer.

"Mother's Day" Monday Night Blues, May 14th

Editors, contributors, and friends of LiteraryMama.com will be reading poetry, fiction, and memoir in honor of mothers at the East Bay Meeting House (coffee shop next to East End Brewery) this Monday night, May 14th, 8:00-9:00. Mama writers are welcome to join us to read their own work during the open mic that starts at 9:00. Sign up for the open mic begins at 7:30.

Write ahudock@sc.rr.com to contact Amy Hudock, Editor-in-Chief of the
award-winning on-line literary magazine LiteraryMama.com, profiled in
April's SKIRT! at
http://charleston.skirtmag.com/stories/040107/chs_s_20061101016.shtml

The Mommy War Machine

Journalist E.J. Graff asks the question, do The Mommy Wars really exist? In the Sunday, April 29, 2007 issue of The Washington Post. Graff says,

"The ballyhooed Mommy Wars exist mainly in the minds -- and marketing machines -- of the media and publishing industry, which have been churning out mom vs. mom news flashes since, believe it or not, the 1950's. All the while the number of working mothers has been rising."

Graff says that 75 percent of mothers with school age children work "because they have to. And most stay-at-home peers don't hold it against them."

Have we been pushed by the media, (The Oprah show, Dr. Phil, book publishers and even The New York Times) to believe we're fighting a war that doesn't exist? Read The Mommy War Machine.

Berkeley, CA Mother's Day Reading

"Celebrating Motherhood as Muse: A Mother's Day Reading wih the Motherlode Writers" Sunday, May 13th from 4-6pm at Nomad Cafe 6500 Shattuck Ave. Oakland, CA 94609, (510) 595-5344. The Motherlode Writers is a Berkeley-based community of mother-writers who work in a variety of genres, including essay, memoir, poetry, and fiction. For more information, please visit their website: http://motherlodewriters.blogspot.com/

Motherlode is a writing group that originated from LM's editor-in-chief, founder and columnist, Amy Huduck's original, Books and Babies group. Several current and former LM editors and columnists will be there, many with kids in tow.