"Best of" Editor's blogs

Parting From LM Columns Editor, Alissa McElreath's blog, World Of One Thousand Different Things

There's a beautiful, old cemetery I pass every day on my way in and out of work. It's sprawling, and green, and dotted with the mottled gray and, now and again, sharp white, of the tombstones and graveside monuments. It has that hunched-over beautiful, sad, and eerie quality older cemeteries have--none of that sterile quality of the newer modern and always well-tended ones. Tucked under a drooping bush by the end of the fence closest to the road is a stone angel. You can only see her when you hit a certain curve in the road, and only then for a few seconds. She peeks out from under the branches, hands folded delicately, head bowed towards the dead before her.

This morning I looked for the angel, as I always do, then my car whizzed past, on and up towards the entrance to school. To my right suddenly, directly across the street from the cemetery and the angel and past a corner where prostitutes and drug dealers hang out as early as 5:00 p.m. on a weekday, I passed a large, leafy tree. In the fork of its lowest two, thick branches sat a woman. The image would have been picturesque: a young woman in a floral skirt, barefoot, wild curly hair blowing in the chilly morning air. It could have been picturesque, only it wasn't. Her face turned to me as I passed by--a face much older than her years, and her eyes were vacant and drugged. Her hair was wild because it was unwashed and uncombed, her feet bare because she didn't have any shoes, her skirt torn, her ankles tattoed with scabs.

I wondered if she knew about that angel across from her; the one separated by a chain link face, the one with her back turned, hands folded, praying for the dead.

Spend Mother’s Day Month with Literary Mama!

For immediate release
Contact: Caroline Grant
cmgrant@speakeasy.org

Spend Mother’s Day Month with Literary Mama!
Writer’s Digest pick: One of 101 Best Web Sites for Writers
Forbes pick: Best of the Web 2006

Literary Mama celebrates Mother’s Day all month long with fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, essays, author profiles, and book reviews. This month, we’re also adding two timely new columns to our roster:

“Multi-Culti Mami,” by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, will revisit the author’s tangled loyalties from a bilingual and bicultural childhood and motherhood. Born to an American mother and a Spanish father and raised between Spain and the US, Violeta went on to marry an American, English-speaking man and settle in Pennsylvania, where she and her husband are raising three Guatemalan-born children in a multicultural American family. “Multi-Culti Mami” will offer the perspective of one member of the growing bilingual, bicultural presence in this county, and give a behind-the-scenes look at how one family, particularly, is making that look and work in their home. It will speak to any mother who struggles with what it’s like to come to terms with her own history and difference as the head of a family.

“Great Green Room,” by Stephanie Hunt, will focus on ecology and family. Moms everywhere can recite it by heart: “In the great green room, there was a telephone, and a red balloon, and a picture of….” Ah yes, this litany of stuff, this innocuously sweet, sing-songy consumer mantra that we feed our kids from the earliest board book get-go. But what about the other Great Green Room, the one chock full of natural wonder and an increasingly at-risk eco-system? How do we as parents, as providers and protectors of the next generation, respond to a threatened environment before we, indeed, are saying “Goodnight Moon?” The column is not a how-to with recycled go-green tips, but personal reflections on the struggles, challenges and what’s at stake, from a mom who is committed but conflicted.

Literary Mama publishes new work every week by mothers, about motherhood, for everyone. May also brings columnists Ericka Lutz writing on family food; Libby Gruner on graphic novels for teens; Caroline Grant on Autism: The Musical; 12-Step Mama taking the 10th step, Ona Gritz realizing that she's become the kind of writer her mother loved to read, and the final installment of Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance. Finally, look for a profile of Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, authors of I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids and Dirty Little Secrets From Otherwise Perfect Moms and an essay by Jessica Smartt Gullion about writing through family interruptions.

Literary Reflection Selected Short: April

Literary Reflections is pleased to announce April's featured writing prompt Selected Shorts. We had a record 11 prompt submissions to our April question, which was "Do you write "in your head" as you go about your daily tasks? If so, describe your thought process. If not, reflect on how you generate writing ideas and fit writing into your daily routine."

Heidi Scrimgeour wrote,

I write in the shower.

For me, writing is less a physical act with pen and paper and more about stolen moments of mental space. They're few and far between but guaranteed; as soon as I set foot in the shower the wispy ideas and snatched threads of dialogue rain down as fast and free as the water.

It replenishes me, my daily writing shower. Sometimes it happens while small fists bang devilishly on the shower door. Sometimes my wet writing reverie is brought to an all-too abrupt end by the need to issue time-out sanctions and resolve small boys' disputes.

I long for the shower space. Proverbs says that hope deferred makes the heart sick, while a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Most of the time, I carry a kind of heart-sickness with me: a longing for a time when I can write uninterrupted, without the chaos of these ever-present tiny budding souls whose seemingly endless needs tear me from myself and from my words.

I couple that with the knowledge that one day I'll miss these small days that seem so purposeless and yet are infused with teaching them how to be -- a task as purposeful as they come. I know one day I will berate myself for all the ways I wished this time away; I'll wish to be able to repay all the times that I lingered in the shower in return for one more chance to drink in the delicious undiluted joy of mothering two small, fuzzy headed boys.

But now, juggling my need to write with the needs of my children is like constantly deferring hope. Even as I write this I know naptime must be coming to an end any minute now. I try not to resent the abrupt conclusion of this stolen moment. But even as I wrench myself from here and ascend the stairs to greet the urgent cries of Mama! I am torn in pieces.

I tempt them into silence with the TV while Mama finishes her words. They squeeze in beside me, struggling to navigate the way Mama slips from song-singing playmate to distracted scribbler on scraps of paper. I fight the urge to pull away, to clutch frenziedly at the words before they float away, consigned to a place of darkness where forgotten-ideas taunt me while I sleep.

As I move from this to Mama, dizzy at the shift in gear, I feel as guilty as an adulteress slipping back beneath the sheets. My loyalties are divided, and it feels as if I must sacrifice a part of me to let the other flourish.

But I write like this. Guiltily, desperately, with a heartsick longing. Yet when I give myself to this, to this wrangling of desires, I find that elusive fulfilment; my tree of life. And my daily shower makes that happen. It's water to my writer's soul, and when that part of me is watered, I'm a better Mama and a better me.

You can contact Heidi at heidi@giftofthegab.net and www.onefeistymama.vox.com.

Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years

Suzanne Edison's, The Moth-Eaten World, originally published in Literary Mama, will be included in the anthology, Online Writing:
The Best of the First Ten Years.

The Moth-Eaten World
by Suzanne Edison

(for my daughter, at four)

If your eyes were like tea leaves
instead of roasted coffee beans, oily brown,
thick with residue, or like grains of corn pollen
Native Americans used as blessings,
silken light — I might read them.

I might know where
you were those first few days
after knobby midwife palms
caught your crinkled body, after
your birth mother’s unshakeable hands
held you.

I search the adoption papers for clues.
Translated from Spanish spaces grow
between words, words lose
sense, the way glitter flakes
from your fairy princess wand, trailing
no discernible pattern.

And when your body quivers, sensing
a faint felt memory, traceable as
Braille, the raised bumps circling
a mother’s aureole, or lips filled with warm
milk, the almost unendurable sweetness—

I want to shake loose a story,
rattle my stick of bones
and teeth, and return from the Other World
with a cloth monkey, a bag of herbs,
something without holes.

Suzanne Edison’s work has appeared in a recent anthology titled Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism and Awakening, Seattle Woman magazine and with the King County Arts Program, Poetry on Buses 2004. She lives with her husband and daughter in Seattle, Washington.

Best Of......editor's blogging

Nicole O'Donnell blogs about driving with her family and a pony...and being tailgated by a "hog" at Subartic Mama.

Love You To Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs

LM Fiction editor Suzanne Kamata and Special Needs Mama columnist Vicki Forman will appear on the KPFK Radio show Bibliocracy on Monday, April 28 to discuss Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. This breakthrough anthology features poetry, short fiction and essays by established and emerging writers. To listen in or to find out more, go to:

http://bibliocracyradio.blogspot.com/

Spoonfuls of Stories®

A Storybook Ending for Prospective Children's Book Authors
Cheerios® Launches Next Spoonfuls of Stories® Children's Book Contest
to Give Would-Be Authors the Chance for
Cash Prizes and Publisher Review!

Once upon a time, there was a writer with an idea for the greatest children's book in all the land. She had worked on the story, and dreamed of getting it published for children and families to enjoy. But the publisher lived on an island (Manhattan) far, far away and the waters surrounding the island were filled with many unknowns. So she hid away her children's book idea…until now.

Starting April 16, 2008 and going through July 15, 2008, Cheerios invites previously unpublished adult authors to submit their children's book manuscripts in the second Cheerios® Spoonfuls of Stories® Children's Book Contest. The book should be suitable for children who are 4 to 8 years old. For a complete list of rules and to submit an entry online, go to www.SpoonfulsofStoriesContest.com. Cheerios will provide cash prizes to up to three winners, and the top winner will have their book evaluated by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing for a potential book deal. A book deal is not guaranteed.

Last year, Cheerios received close to 1,000 entries in the Children's Book Contest, and Shellie Braeuner of Nashville, Tenn., was named the grand prize winner. In addition to her $5,000 prize from Cheerios, Braeuner received a book deal from Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. Her winning story, The Great Dog Wash, is being published and will be printed and available in Cheerios boxes in the spring of 2009. The book also will be available in hardcover on bookshelves in the summer of 2009. Two first prize winners, Alison Anderson of Cumberland, Wisc., and Kate Heilman of Chicago, each received $1,000 from Cheerios, and their stories (The Sleepy Song and Theo the T-Rex, respectively) are featured on www.SpoonfulsofStories.com.
"Winning the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories Children's Book Contest has opened up a whole new world for me," said Braeuner. "I've been writing for many years, working on children's stories and novels alike. The publisher piece of the puzzle has always been a bit of a mystery to me, so I was excited to learn about the contest and enter my story. But it was nothing compared to the excitement when I was told I had won and my story got to a publisher's desk. I am honored to have gotten a book deal, and I can't wait to see my words in print and my book in Cheerios boxes and on bookshelves! The whole experience has been wonderful every step of the way.

"Kids need books; the more books — and the more kinds of books — the better," said Ricardo Fernandez, marketing manager for Cheerios. "Supporting up-and-coming authors goes hand-in-hand with our efforts to get high quality books to kids through our Spoonfuls of Stories program. We hope we can help encourage more new children's book authors each year through this contest."

Literary Reflections Selected Short: March

Literary Reflections is pleased to announce this month's featured writing prompt Selected Short. Each month we will choose one submission to appear as a short on our blog. Check out our section for more information on how to be considered for future Selected Shorts.

In March's prompt, we asked readers "What do you imagine your most conducive writing situation would look like? In what environment do you feel like you've done your best and/or most creative writing?"

Loida Casares Ruiz wrote,

"Virginia Woolf’s famous quote is: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I thought of this quote when I read Terri G. Scullen’s essay, “Green Means Go.”

I believe Virginia Woolf whole-heartedly and since I already have the money part (I work full-time) I figured the room part wouldn’t be too hard, especially now that my kids aren’t babies anymore. I set up a desk in my upstairs guest room and told my husband that once a week I was going to retreat into my room to write. I surrounded myself with some Maya Angelou quotes and a print of the Three Graces by Peter Paul Rubens. I pictured myself sitting in this room writing a great novel. It didn’t quite work out that way.

First there were the children. No matter how much we told them it was my writing time, they chose to ignore it and they insisted on coming upstairs, breaking my concentration. It’s hard to reason with a five and two year old, the ages they were at the time.

Next I tried to get away once a week to write, but that was short lived. By the time I drove out somewhere, or dropped the kids off and picked them up, I felt like the process took too long. I might as well stay at home and write, I reasoned. I would actually get more writing time on a good day when the children kept busy.

Finally I gave up and started writing in my kitchen. Far away enough from the television in the living room, but close enough when needed. This is how I finally finished writing my novel. I clicked away on my laptop, while listening to the sounds of the children and my husband in the background. Sometimes my little one would wander in and would climb on my lap or would stand on my chair behind me and would pat me on my shoulders. But when I was in the zone it didn’t matter. I kept right on writing.

In my dreams my room upstairs is a perfect oasis. It’s decorated with prints from all of my favorite artists and quotes by writers. Patchouli candles are burning and the lighting is just right. I lock myself in for one hour every night with my laptop to weave my words. No one comes in to bother me and I have a whole glorious hour to myself. This would be my perfect writing environment.

The truth is, now I write at my desk top computer almost every night for one hour, in the middle of the house. I write almost every day. Because when you have that fire burning in your belly you can’t help but write. I read about a new author in Book Magazine who wrote her first novel while rocking her newborn in a baby swing. It can be done."

By Loida Casares Ruiz
http://houston.skirt.com/blog/2201
www.shoegirlcorner.blogspot.com

Seeking Submissions

Seeking Submissions from U.S. Women Writers for 3 Proposed Books*

Guidelines also on: encirclepub.com

1.

Women & Poetry: Tips on Writing, Publishing and Teaching
from American Women Poets

Foreword by Robin Merrill, Maine Poets Society President 2006-2007. M.F.A. Stonecoast. With hundreds of poems published, some from her chapbook Laundry & Stories (Moon Pie Press) were featured on Garrison Keillor's “Writers' Almanac.” http://www.robinmerrill.com

Afterword by the editors of Iris Magazine, an award-winning publication of 27 years celebrating and empowering young women through provocative articles, essays, and fiction pieces that are uplifting, inclusive, and literate. http://womenscenter.virginia.edu/coreprograms/iris.html

Markets for women, why women write, time management, using life experience, women's magazines, critique groups, networking, blogs, unique issues women must overcome, lesbian and bisexual writing, formal education, queries and proposals, conference participation, family scheduling, feminist writing, self-publishing, teaching tips, are just a few areas women poets are interested.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful. Please avoid writing about “me” and concentrate on what will most help the reader.

2.

Milestones for American Women: Our Defining Passages

Foreword by Carolyn Lesser, Webster University, St. Louis, MO, nonfiction writing faculty; natural science children's books published by Harcourt, Alfred A. Knopf; essayist, poet, photographer, keynote speaker, artist.

Afterword by Dr. Loriene Roy, 2007-2008 President of the American Library Association. Professor, University of Texas at Austin, founder of "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything," a national reading club for Native American children.

Please consider sharing the important milestones, life changing events, transitions in your life--material that would broadly fit the “Women's Studies” genre that is highly readable, moving and relatable. There are the passages that occur to us (for example, losing a loved one, having to relocate) and then the passages we choose (such as getting a degree in mid-life, adopting a child). Please focus on those pivotal moments and why they were milestones for you.

This book celebrates our passages as women, from one moment into another, from one door to the next. Often it is after the navigation, that in reflection, we see that some of the most difficult are the ones we have learned the most and have had lasting effects as well on those around us.

Guidelines for Women and Poetry and/or Milestones for American Women:

Step 1: send your proposed topics before writing articles to avoid duplication; proposed topics must be accompanied by a 65-70 word bio with your present position, location, relevant publications, career highlights for the contributor page; please use POETS or MILESTONES as the subject line to smallwood@tm.net

Step 2:(if your topics are approved): deadline for submissions (by e-mail only) is May 30, 2008. Again, please use POETS or MILESTONES in the subject line; send to either Cynthia at brackett-vincent@encirclepub.com; or Carol at smallwood@tm.net in a Word document (.doc format only) using 12-point font.

Article specifics: word total for 1-2 articles based on your experience: 1,900 minimum; maximum 2,100. Two articles preferred. If submitting two articles, please break them up fairly evenly in word count.

No previously published or simultaneously submitted material. Contributors must be reside in the U.S. Books such as this can typically take up to a year to compile. Contributors receive a complimentary copy and contributor's discount on additional copies.

Co-editor Cynthia Brackett-Vincent is publisher/editor of the esteemed Aurorean poetry journal; poetry instructor; award-winning poet; author of The 95 Poems chapbook (2005) and contributor to Educators as Writers: Publishing for Personal and Professional Development. In 2007, her poems received a citation, honorable mention and second place in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, New England Writers and Maine Poets Society competitions.

Co-editor, Carol Smallwood has written, co-authored, and edited 19 books such as Educators as Writers for Scarecrow, Libraries Unlimited. An award-winning writer, her work has appeared in English Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Iris, The Writer's Chronicle, and several others including anthologies; chapbook, Pudding House 2008; Educators as Writers, Peter Lang 2006.

3.

Women Writing on Family: Writing, Publishing, and Teaching Tips by US Women Writers

Foreword: Robbi Hess, Journalist, co-author, Complete Idiot's Guide to 30,000 Baby Names (Penguin Books); Editor, Byline Magazine

Afterword: Suzanne Bunkers, Professor of English, Minnesota State University, editor of Diaries of Girls and Women: a Midwestern American Sampler (University of Wisconsin Press).

This is a book not just on writing but tips for women writing about family. Possible subject areas you might address include: markets; why women write about family; using life experience; critique groups; networking; blogs; unique issues women must overcome; formal education; queries and proposals; conference participation; family scheduling; self-publishing; teaching tips; family in creative nonfiction, poetry, short stories, novels.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful to readers. Please avoid writing about “me” and concentrate on what will help the reader.

Word total for 1-2 articles based on your experience:
1,900 minimum; maximum 2,100. Two articles preferred.
If submitting 2, please break them up fairly evenly in word count.

No previously published or simultaneously submitted material, please; no co-authored.

Deadline: May 30, 2008

Contributors receive a complimentary copy and contributor's discount on additional copies. It is common for compilation of an anthology to take upwards of a year, but we will be in touch with updates on securing a publisher.

Editor Carol Smallwood has written, co-authored, and edited 19 books such as Educators as Writers for Peter Lang, Scarecrow, Libraries Unlimited. Her work has appeared in English Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Michigan Feminist Studies, The Detroit News, several others including anthologies; On the Way to Wendy's Pudding House 2008; a co-edited anthology is with an agent.

Please send your topics first before writing (to avoid possible duplication) along with brief descriptions and 65-70 word bio with your present position, relevant publications, awards or honors. Use FAMILY for the subject line and submit to Carol at smallwood@tm.net

*In our experience, most publishers return rights to individual contributors variously after publication. However, because we are still seeking a publisher, we cannot speak to those rights specifically at this time. Contributors will be asked to sign a release form from the publisher and therefore will be have the opportunity to agree to the details of the contract or withdraw one's work at that time.

Out and About with Kids: From Getting Across Town to Traveling Around

Ericka Lutz: Primer for City Parents: Out and About with Kids: From Getting Across Town to Traveling Around

Tuesday, May 6, 10:30-12

DETAILS:
Presentation by author Ericka Lutz, with testimonials from seasoned parent travelers!
Ericka is the author of On the Go with Baby: A Stress-Free Guide for Getting across Town or Around the World.

Whether packing the diaper bag, camping in the wilderness, or flying to Asia, traveling with a small child can be wonderful and it doesn't have to be a hassle!

Co-sponsored by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library & the San Francisco Public Library.

LOCATION:
Glen Park Branch Library
2525 Diamond Street (near Arbor St.)
(415) 355-2858

Newark Arts Alliance

C. Delia Scarpitti, LM Columns Editor, will read from her work, Migration Summer and talk about the writing process at 2 p.m.,June 1 at the Newark Arts Alliance, 276 E. Main Street, Suite 102, Newark.

"I believe that my background as a poet has only enriched my fiction process. Unlike the contract between a writer and the reader in most prose, where sentences march politely one after another, poetry allows for wild leaps, for experimental magic, for divergent ideas to all bleed together in just one compact phrase. That transcendent magic of poetry is one I seek to carry over into the fiction genre. Just as a poem insists that we slow down and bring mindful attention to each line, so, too, can fiction writing at its best. This is what I
endeavor to do in my writing." — C.D.S.

PMS literary Journal

Deesha Philyaw, LM contributor, has a story in "PMS poemmemoirstory is a 140-page, perfect-bound, all-women's literary journal published annually by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. While we proudly publish the best work of the best women writers in the nation (i.e., Maxine Chernoff, Elaine Equi, Amy Gerstler, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Molly Peacock, Lucia Perillo, Sonia Sanchez, Ruth Stone, and Natasha Trethewey, among others) we also solicit a memoir for each issue written by a woman who may not be a writer, but who has experienced something of historic significance. Emily Lyons, the nurse who survived the 1998 New Woman All Women Birmingham clinic bombing by Eric Rudolph, wrote the first of these; women who experienced the World Trade Center on September 11th, the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, the war in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina have also lent us their stories.

"A very special issue of all African American women writers guest edited by writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, PMS 8 features such figures as Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Edwidge Danticat, Nikky Finney, Nikki Giovanni, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tayari Jones, Allison Joseph, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, and an interview by Remica L. Bingham with Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Each issue of PMS includes a memoir written by a woman who is not necessarily a writer but who has experienced something of historic import; PMS 8 features the memoir "From the Old Slave Shack" by the guest editor's mother, Trellie James Jeffers, Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at Talledega College."

Deesha's story is also featured in......

Just Like A Girl: A Manifesta! is a rough-and-tumble, sassy, kick-ass travelogue through the bumpy, action-packed world of GIRL. A world where women and girls know how to pick themselves up and brush themselves off. These are the clever girls. The funny girls. The girls who know there is no sin in being born one.

"Brewing up more Cup of Comforts"

A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers

Few experiences bring forth as many anxieties, blessings, challenges, wonders, and changes as having a baby whether it's your first child or fifth, your birth child or adopted child. And nothing is as miraculous as giving birth to or witnessing the birth of your baby. This heartwarming anthology will be filled with birth stories and newborn homecoming stories as well as a wide range of stories about the various experiences, emotions, and concerns involved in adding a new baby to one's life and family. Potential topics include but are not limited to: nursing (or not), caring for a newborn, bonding/falling in love with infant, lack of sleep, relationship with spouse, how siblings respond, returning to work, balancing responsibilities, post-partum depression, self transformation, unexpected joys, life lessons, small miracles, etc. The majority of the stories will be about birth children, but the book will likely include a couple adoptive stories as well. Likewise, most of the stories will be written from the new mother's perspective, but we are open to including a few stories written from the spouse's or a very close family member's perspective. All stories will be uplifting and positive, no matter how difficult the situation portrayed in the story might be. We do not want stories that simply recount misfortunes and sorrows and that do not clearly reveal a positive outcome or redeeming result (silver lining).

New Mothers submission deadline: May 15, 2008 (last call)

A Cup of Comfort for Adoptive Families

The primary purpose of this book is to celebrate adoptive families and to recognize the extraordinary and challenging experiences unique to chosen children and their adoptive families. We are most interested in stories written by adult adopted children and their adoptive parents and siblings, but the book will likely include some stories written by members of the extended adoptive family (i.e. grandparent) and birth family members. Virtually any topic relevant to adopted children and their adoptive parents is acceptable as long as it is authentic, positive, insightful, and uplifting or inspiring. We do not want heartbreaking stories about adoptive or birth families that regret the adoption. All of the stories in this collection must reveal a positive aspect of adoption and must bring comfort, joy, or inspiration to those who have been adopted and/or to the families who adopted them no matter how difficult the experience and emotions portrayed in the story might be.

Adoptive Families submission deadline: June 15, 2008

A Cup of Comfort for Parents of Special Needs

For this very special collection, we seek uplifting true stories about the ins and outs, ups and downs, blessing and challenges of parenting children with special needs. The stories will cover children of all ages (birth to adult) and a wide range of developmental, physical, and mental delays/disabilities. No matter how difficult the experiences/emotions conveyed in a story might be (we want them to be authentic, after all), the story must reveal a positive aspect, resolution, or outcome and must be of comfort to parents of children with special needs. Stories may be serious, humorous, insightful, heartwarming, or inspiring. The majority of the stories will be written by parents of children with special needs; we will also consider stories written by adult children with special needs. (No articles or commentaries by clinicians, please.)

Special Needs Children submission deadline: September 15, 2008