Only As Good As Your Word

Only As Good As Your Word: Writing Lessons From My Favorite Literary Gurus by Susan Shapiro.

From Publishers Weekly: Since moving to New York in 1981 at age 20, Shapiro has realized her dream: she has written articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon.com and Glamour, and three memoirs. In this lively, inspiring and dishy memoir/advice book, she shares the secrets of her success, some learned the hard way, others gleaned from her stellar array of mentors, including Ian Frazier and Howard Fast (who was married to her mother's cousin). Fast's wife, Bette, also provided young Susan with advice: get your own career and money, so the men can't control you.... But cooking and wearing a dress won't make you a Barbie doll. Fast himself cautioned her against self-indulgence: just get to work. Remember, a plumber never gets plumber's block. Shapiro made other connections on her own as a grad student at NYU, which led to a job as a researcher at the New Yorker, which led to more connections. Not everybody's going to have a bestselling relative, but everybody has a high school English teacher—that was Shapiro's first guru—and she makes it clear that she learned as much from him as she did from her high-profile mentors.

Who We Are

Maria Scala, one of LM's Columns Editors, is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Descant, PoetryReviews.ca, mamazine, Literary Mama, Between O and V, among others. You can find Maria blogging on August Avenue.

Who We Are

In continuation of the Who We Are section, this week we are highlighting LM's Literary Reflections Editorial Assistant, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, is a Spanish-American poet and writer. Her poetry has appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cicada and Soleado, and her book reviews regularly appear in RainbowKids Magazine. Violeta posts Bluestocking columns and Bookshelf recommendations on her website, Turn People Purple, and writes about food, family, and the writing life at her blog, Feed Your Loves. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, their toddler son and daughter, both adopted as infants from Guatemala, and their two incorrigible dogs.

Making it Pop

MAKING IT POP: Translating Your Ideas for Trade, with Deborah Siegel
Tuesdays 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 11/27, 12/4, 12/11, 12/18
8:00 - 9:15 pm ET
Format: Online forum + weekly conference call
Fee: $250

Public debate lacks a sensitive discussion of the complex forces shaping the lives of women and girls. Researchers, nonprofit workers, and savvy writers everywhere have the opportunity to frame public debate about these issues. Too often, however, important work fails to reach an audience outside the academic and advocacy worlds. Writing a trade book is one way to join the debate. To sell a book in today's competitive publishing climate, one must be able to write engaging, accessible prose that will appeal to a wide audience. These skills can be learned.

Participants will learn from exchanges with New York City-based agents and editors why it's essential to think about audience and market in a different way, and why you need a book proposal. We'll explore the differences between popular and academic writing, why a dissertation or a monograph is not a trade book, and how to write an effective book proposal-meaning one that has the best chance of being sold. We'll also consider the latest aspects of book publicity, focusing in particular on new media.

Brain, Child

Congratulations to Kate Haas, LM co-editor of creative non-fiction and Dawn Friedman, LM columns editor for their essays published in this month's issue of Brain, Child, the magazine for thinking mothers. Dawn writes about racism and styling her daughter's hair in "Textured" and Kate writes about being a "bookish" mom raising a natural born athlete in "Mad About Sports".

WHY (Work, Home, You)

We discovered the following contest thanks to Erika Dreifus and her newsletter, The Practicing Writer.

*WHY* (Work. Home. You.) Writing Contest
PO Box 337
Massapequa Park, NY 11762
(or submit entry and fee electronically via the Web
site; electronic entries preferred)
http://www.workhomeyou.com/contest
Deadline: December 31, 2007
Entry fee: $10
Judge: *WHY* editor Dina Santorelli
NEW CONTEST!!!

"We envision this contest as a fun way to get all of
our readers thinking about the trials and tribulations
of working from home, and all of us have different
stories to tell, no matter what we do for a living, so
we encourage everyone to enter." Open to short fiction
or creative nonfiction entries (under 1000 words) only
(no poetry), and working from home should be the main
theme. Winning entries will be published in WHY's
May/June 2008 issue, which goes live on May 1, 2008;
the winning writer will receive $500; cash prizes will
also be awarded for the second- and third-place
winners. There will be five honorable mentions.
Writers must be 18 years of age or older, and
previously published work is eligible. Visit the Web
site for more information.

Two Angry Moms

Are you sick and tired of packing your kids’ lunch box everyday because the cafeteria food is unfit for human consumption? Do you feel guilty when your kids “buy”? Are you annoyed at all the junk being handed out and sold at school? Are you angry enough to do something about it? We are!

Two Angry Moms is a documentary that asks the question: What happens when two “fed-up” moms try to change the school lunch program? Learn how to host a "sneak preview" at angrymoms.org.

blogs about mothers

In a twist on the "Who We Are" section, we want to include an anonymous blog we think is important that focuses on the challenges of child sexual abuse.

Please take a look at, "Protective Mother".

toyless play enhances child's imagination

The recall of millions of toys made in China because of safety concerns is a scandal so big that the head of one manufacturer hanged himself last month in a warehouse. Now, hoping to restore confidence, the Chinese government is inviting foreign journalists to visit select factories.

Of course toy safety is a concern of every parent, but LM columnist, Jennifer Margulis learned this past year that kids don't need toys.

Read her story, Toyless play enhances child's imagination in Newsday.

Dispatches from Reviews

Literary Mama's Reviews desk is in the enviable position of receiving far more books than we can ever hope to review. While we are giddy that so many authors are writing books about mothering, and so many mother writers are writing books about, well, everything, we cannot review more than a handful of titles each year. We feel that many of these books deserve mention and we want to showcase some of these titles in a semi-regular Dispatches from Reviews feature on the Literary Mama blog.

In Writing Motherhood: Tapping into Your Creativity as a Mother and a Writer, author Lisa Garrigues posits that writing is not something we need to try to fit in around our mothering, but can, in fact, be an integral part of our mothering. Using the idea of a Mother's Notebook -- a sort of writer's journal/baby book/to do list -- she demonstrates how even the most mundane maternal tasks can become proseworthy events. She shows not only how the process of mothering can help your writing, but how the process of writing can help you be a better parent.

Over the summer, I devoured Gwendolen Gross's novel, The Other Mother. I adored this book and would love to see it get as much buzz as, say, Tom Perotta's Little Children. Billed as fictional account of the "Mommy Wars," the book is both richly layered and highly readable. On one one level, the book is about the divide between working mothers and those who remain at home, the guilt mother's feel whatever "choice" they make, and the fact that it is not really a choice at all. On another level, the book is an exploration of judgement, and the validity of the so-called truths on which we base our views of others and of ourselves. I loved it and will be writing more about it at some point.

Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood, edited by Cori Howard is available for pre-order (currently, it is available in Canada but will not be released in the US until February). This anthogy is particularly close to my heart as it includes my essay "Unhinged" (originally subtitled 'How the pressure to breastfeed made me lose my mind). Contributors include writers Joy Kogawa, Chandra Mayor, Christy Ann Conlin, Ami McKay (the LM review of her acclaimed novel The Birth House, can be found here), and Rachel Rose, as well as by award winning journalists, celebrities such as Carrie-Ann Moss and Chantal Kreviazuk, and other writer mothers. (When I saw the list of author names on the book's cover, an my name among them, I couldn't get that old Sesame Street Song "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" out of my head for about a week. I wouldn't so self-promoting if I weren't just so darned stunned about the whole thing.)

I have received a few other books across my desk that I have not had a chance to fully sink my teeth into but have piqued my interest.

Author Terra Trevor wrote her memoir, Pushing up the Sky, about the period following the adoption of their oldest daughter from Korea. Trevor waded into uncharted territory as not only was the adoption transracial (Trevor is American Indian and her husband is Caucasian), but they adopted an older child changing the birth order within their family (they had a birth daughter who now became the 'middle child' as well as a son, also adopted from Korea). As Trevor writes, "All at once, we discovered there would not be a honeymoon. Our amalgamated life together began immediately, and it hit us full force. Once again I had that same sense as when company or the cousins came for an overnight stay. When the children had overnight guests, the activity level peaked, and my emotions rode on air currents as I paced my way through the visit. Yet with company or cousins I knew it would eventually end, and once they left I could settle my children down and we'd go back to our regular lives. Only I couldn't because these were all my kids."

Deliver Me: True Confessions of Motherhood, edited by Laura Diamond, is a collection of personal essays, stories and poems collection from 20 members of Jack Grapes' L.A. Poets and Writers' Collective. A number of the writers are screenwriters who give the book a punchy, vibrant feel. Lisa Becker's poem Postpartum Depression was heartstopping in its honesty. I look forward to reading this book in more depth.

Finally, I wanted to draw attention to the fabulous work of Demeter Press, brainchild of The Association for Research on Mothering's inimitable Andrea O'Reilly. Demeter is the first book publisher focused specifically on the topic of motherhood/mothering. The recently released Maternal Theory: Essential Readings is a collection of 50 groundbreaking texts about mothering from Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Daphne de Marneffe, Ariel Gore, Ann Crittenden, Judith Warner, and many others.

"Who We Are"

To continue our Who We Are section, the next on the list is Caroline Grant, Literary Reflections Editor, who writes the column Mama at the Movies for Literary Mama. She is also co-editor, with Elrena Evans, of the anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught classes on film, women's studies, American literature, and writing; she has also taught at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons, a life she writes about on her blog, food for thought.