Emprise Review

...is a new literary journal. We accept e-mailed submissions of poetry (please visit the samples on our site for an idea of where our interests lie), fiction, photography, and nonfiction. Nonfiction can include memoir, essays, articles, extended reporting, critical pieces, book reviews and more.

Guidelines: http://www.muttsbane.com

Spots still available!

The MotherVerse Online workshops (Writing Motherhood & Publishing A Blog) have been moved back to September 15 and will be running until October 20th. There are plenty of spots still available! This is such a fabulous resource and way to connect with writing peers and mothers!

Workshop descriptions below:

Writing Motherhood Workshop
--workshop focused on developing your current writing (creative
nonfiction, fiction, poetry and blogging) or finding your voice in
developing new writing. Gain the support and feedback of fellow mother writers and experienced mentors in this supportive environment. This is a 5 week workshop. Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

Publishing a Blog Workshop
--learn how to begin and follow through on a successful mother
writer's blog with the help of experienced mother bloggers. This
workshop will cover both the technical aspects of starting a blog as
well as the development of blog writing. This is a 5 week workshop.
Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

For more information on cost, etc., please visit the site . Payment is based on a sliding scale basis and there are scholarships available for those who qualify.

Any questions, please email MotherVerse Magazine-editor (at)
motherverse (dot) com

LM Reading at Blue Bicycle Books!

Yesterday afternoon was our LM reading at Blue Bicycle Books in downtown Charleston, SC and it was great! Thanks to Suzanne Kamata for organizing the afternoon and the gathering of smart, wonderful women. It was a true Literary Mama event as various children ate cookies, drank lemonade and ran back and forth in front of and around their mothers reading. Amy's daughter acted out a range of poses to reflect her mother's story and I tried to stifle a smile....Suzanne was there with her twins, promoting her books, “Losing Kei” and “Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a child with Special Needs” as well as Sonya Huber with her memoir, “Opa Nobody", and LM’s Editor in Chief, Amy Huduck who read from “A Cup of Comort for Single Mothers,” and LM’s fiction copy editor, Melinda Copp who read a great few pages from her memoir in progress about living with alligators, Stephanie Hunt read her latest column from, “The Great Green Room” and me! (Chronic Mama)

How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel: And Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580052428/literarymama-20Elrena Evans, LM's Me and My House columnist, will be reading my piece from the anthology How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel: And Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids (Sarah Franklin, Seal Press) along with contributor Leesa Gehman, tomorrow in Bethlehem PA at the Moravian Book Shop at 11:00. The reading will be followed by a children's activity, featuring a make-your-own-book craft and a camel coloring page filled with fun facts about camels!

So if you live near Bethlehem, come and bring the whole family. :)

Mothers Creating/Writing Lives: Motherhood Memoirs

As memoir continues to expand in popularity, motherhood memoir has become an increasingly prominent and lucrative subgenre for contemporary authors. As Michelle Herman points out in The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood, if forced to choose between her daughter and her writing, she would choose her daughter, but this would be an impossible and profoundly sad decision. Instead, her writing life is woven into her mothering life, and she finds that she can write in conditions she would have previously thought impossible. It is clear that writers who are also mothers must write their stories. How do they do it, why are so many readers interested in what they have to say, and what can we learn from them? Women have been writing about motherhood as long as they have been writing, but the contemporary shift to tell-all memoirs has changed the rules of writing about mothering, and perhaps, of mothering itself.

We are seeking proposals for a collection that will interrogate and critique the motherhood memoir. In addition to a new collection entitled Mama Ph.D.: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, there are several very recent motherhood memoirs that demand critical attention, works such as: Adrienne Martini's, Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood; Susan Johnson's, A Better Woman; Ayun Halliday's, The Big Rumpus; and Anne Roiphe's,Living Contradictions: A Memoir of Modern Motherhood. What are these and other writing mothers saying about the experience of mothering today? What, if any, universals are present in motherhood memoirs? What societal critiques and suggestions provide the bedrock for potential revolutionary parenting practices? This collection will strive to bridge the distance between writing mothers who are critics and writing mothers who are authors by privileging academic work that seeks to discuss and contextualize motherhood memoirs beside authors’ own experiences of mothering, academic life, and writing. Autotheoretical works are encouraged, as are works that seek to meaningfully compare contemporary motherhood memoirs with those written in other eras, or works which thematically explore a grouping of memoirs. For example, one might discuss the role of fathers, special needs children, mothering and mental illness, etc. in several volumes, particularly if these topics inform the author’s own experiences. Other possible topics include the range of issues related to choice (the choice of whether/when/how to mother, etc.), mothering and socioeconomic class, mothering and race, mothering at different ages, mothering and prose/poetic form, mothering and sexuality, and other topical themes.

Please send one to two page proposals and a curriculum vitae to Justine Dymond, jdymond@spfldcol.edu, and Nicole Willey, nwilley@kent.edu, by December 15, 2008.

The American Satellite

...is seeking submissions. The Satellite is a magazine of opinion, essay, & Satire. We accept submissions on a rolling basis. We do not accept fiction, poetry, etc… Please note: articles should be timely (i.e. relevant). The American Satellite rarely publishes anything over 1500 words.

All possible contributors should include their name, phone number, a biography of 50 words or less (written in the third person), and a brief synopsis of the piece to be considered. You can also include a simple headshot if you wish.

Please submit no more than two articles per month. All work should be pasted in the body of an e-mail. The subject line of your submission should read “submission – your name”. Submissions received with attachments will be unopened and deleted. All properly formatted submissions will receive an editorial response within one month.

The American Satellite accepts simultaneous submissions as well as previously published material.

To view further submission guidelines, including sought after topics, please follow the link below.

http://www.americansatellite.org/2008/08/american-satellite.html

Berkeley Writing Class

The next session of "The Mindful Writer: Cultivating Your Fearless Writing Voice," begins Thursday, September 18th. Classes meet in North Berkeley from 7:00 — 9:30 p.m. and run for nine weeks; the cost is $250 for the entire session. Below is a description of the class as well as comments from former students. If you are interested in this or future sessions, please contact cwmalcombAThotmailDOTcom or 510-559-9076.

About the class:

Mindfulness is full attention on the present moment. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to use this practice to discover and write our deep stories. We’ll write from personal experience, using exercises to generate and hone topics, address “writing blocks,” respond to others’ work, and craft finished products. Students will “publish” and share two finished pieces, and receive individualized feedback from the teacher. Suitable for experienced and beginning writers alike, this workshop provides a fun, safe place to coax forth our inner writer.

About the teacher:

Chris Malcomb has practiced mindfulness meditation for six years. He has taught private writing classes and facilitated workshops for the California Association of Independent Schools, the Bay Area Teacher Training Institute, and the Prison University Project at San Quentin. His essays have appeared in San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Common Ground, Teachers & Writers, and KQED Perspectives. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco.

MotherVerse Online workshops

The MotherVerse Online workshops (Writing Motherhood & Publishing A Blog) have been moved back to September 15 and will be running until October 20th. There are plenty of spots still available! This is such a fabulous resource and way to connect with writing peers and mothers! Workshop descriptions below:

Writing Motherhood Workshop--workshop focused on developing your current writing (creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and blogging) or finding your voice in developing new writing. Gain the support and feedback of fellow mother writers and experienced mentors in this supportive environment. This is a 5 week workshop. Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

Publishing a Blog Workshop--learn how to begin and follow through on a successful mother writer's blog with the help of experienced mother bloggers. This workshop will cover both the technical aspects of starting a blog as well as the development of blog writing. This is a 5 week workshop. Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

For more information on cost, etc, please visit the site . Payment is based on a sliding scale basis and there are scholarships available for those who qualify.

Any questions, please email MotherVerse Magazine-editor (at) motherverse (dot) com.

Momma writers and bloggers for anthology!

(Posted by, "Mommy Weirdest" on craigslist)

I'm working on putting together an anthology of essays entitled "The Girl Least Likely..." These will all center around a general theme of woman who have stumbled into motherhood after working in academia, as artists or writers, or in the corporate world. We look for writers that aren't ashamed to breast feed in public, who are homeschooling, or found themselves as teen moms who came ahead.

700-3,000 words, queries welcome (and encouraged!)
Compensation: Payment upon publication (could take 6-9 months)

M/othering and a Bodied Curriculum

Call for submissions: M/othering and a Bodied Curriculum

Co-edited by Stephanie Springgay and Debra Freedman

A bodied curriculum attends to the relational, social, and ethical implications of “being-with” other bodies differently and to the different knowledges such bodily encounters produce. It is a practice of being oriented to others, to touch, to reflect, and to dwell with others relationally. Re-conceptualize m/othering as a bodied curriculum opens up maternity to the in-between of corporeality, materiality, and difference.

While much of Western thought has celebrated the splitting of women’s identity into “mother” or “other”—the perception that women cannot be both—re-thinking mothering from the perspective of “performativity” recognizes the relationality between mother and other. When mothering is conceived of as performative it becomes an active practice de-centering the notion that motherhood is passive and static. Perforamtivity shifts our attention from motherhood as biological, selfless, and existing prior to culture, to a practice that is always incomplete, indeterminable, and vulnerable. A relational understanding of m/othering opens up the possibility of an ethical form of exchange between self and other and allows us to understand the maternal subject as engaged in a relational process which is never complete and which demands reiteration. M/othering as performance contains the potential for a disruption of dominant discourses on maternity and thereby makes room for maternal agency. This re-conceptualization of m/othering refuses to be split, while also remaining ambivalent.

Submissions are sought from scholars interested in the intersections between mothering, educational scholarship, and identities of difference. The following topics among others are encouraged: readings of the maternal body in teaching and learning; mothering as curriculum; historical examinations of teacher-mothers; understandings, experiences, and practices of mothering that de-centre the western norms of motherhood; artistic documentation of aspects of motherhood; mothering and popular culture; the embrace of motherhood in education; the problematics of motherhood as a theme; the challenges of maintaining a balance between motherhood and teaching/research; making motherhood a "legitimate" topic for research; issues of motherhood and family leave in the workplace; mothering "success stories" in the face of adversity.

If you are interested in submitting to this co-edited collection please send an abstract by October 15, 2008.

Submit to Stephanie Springgay, sss23@psu.edu.
Subject line: M/othering.

Deadline for initial abstract: October 15, 2008. Include: Include: Title, Abstract (500-800 words), Name, Institutional Affiliation, Address, Phone, Email Address, and Brief Bio (50 words). Arts-based submissions are also welcome.

Stephanie Springgay and Debra Freedman are co-editors of the book Curriculum and the Cultural Body, Peter Lang 2007. Dr. Springgay is an Assistant professor of Art Education and Women’s Studies, Penn State University and Dr. Freedman is an Associate Professor at Ball State University.
Stephanie Springgay, Ph.D

Demeter Press

is seeking submissions for an edited collection on Latina/Chicana Mothering.

Publication Date: Spring 2011
Editors: Dorsía Smith Silva and Janine Santiago

We are very excited to edit an interdisciplinary book on mothering in the Latina and Chicana communities. We seek papers that examine the narratives, histories, practices, and theories of Latina and Chicana mothering as they reflect the realities and complexities of diverse perspectives. Latina and Chicana mothering is a rich experience, which engenders a sense of identity, multiple viewpoints, and cultural orientations. Here, the Latina/Chicana mothering experience seeks to provide a site for inquiry of those life histories and legacies, which have been marked by undergoing childbirth, raising children, or becoming mothers, as well as transatlantic mothers. One of the main goals of this text will be to examine the complex representations of Latina and Chicana mothering and to address the space where Latina and Chicana perspectives are in many cases rendered invisible.

We encourage varied approaches from across the humanities and social sciences including, but not limited to topics as the following: theoretical, historical, cultural,feminist, maternal, transgender, and gender studies; personal and reflective essays; ethnographies; oral histories, cultural studies; literary representation; mother activists and activism perspectives; constructions and hybridity theories of identity and changes in identity; constructions of ethnicity and changes in ethnicity; Latina and Chicana/mothering in global and transnational contexts; issues of immigration, diaspora, citizenship, national identity, embodiment theories; feminist philosophies of mothers and mothering; film and media representations; mothering conflicts; ideological and social debates and tensions within discussions of Latina and Chicana mothering; mothering critiques; issues of Latina and Chicana mothering, especially as they intersect with categories of race, discrimination, class, gender, economics, nation, family, community, education, and language; law, political, or scientific issues; politics and public policies; poverty; health, health care, reproduction,and reproductive rights; the role of web communities and technology; spiritual, cultural, emotional, communal, or social influences; support services for Latina and Chicana mothers; self-sponsored Latina and Chicana mothering communities and institutions; ideologies in Latino and Chicano communities

Abstracts/Proposals (250-400 words) due October 31, 2008

Acceptances made by December 1, 2008

Accepted and completed papers (15-20 pp. double-spaced, MLA format) due: March 31, 2009

Please send inquiries and papers, along with a brief biography, to:
Editors, Dorsía Smith Silva and Janine Santiago at latinachicanamothering@yahoo.com
About the Editors:

Dorsía Smith Silva teaches English in the College of General Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her research and teaching focus on Ethnic and Caribbean Literature, the Latino community and the Diaspora, and feminism. She is the author of several articles and is the co-editor of The Caribbean without Borders: Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Janine Santiago is an Assistant Professor of English at University of Puerto Rico, College of General Studies. Santiago was granted a Ph.D. in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2003. Her research interests are in the areas of Gender Studies, Oral History, Caribbean Women Writers, and Hispanic and Latino/a Literature and Popular Culture. She has published several articles, including her work in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006).

MotherVerse Online Workshops

The MotherVerse Online workshops (Writing Motherhood & Publishing A Blog) have been moved back to September 15 and will be running until October 20th. There are plenty of spots still available! This is such a fabulous resource and way to connect with writing peers and mothers! Workshop descriptions below:

Writing Motherhood Workshop
--workshop focused on developing your current writing (creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and blogging) or finding your voice in developing new writing. Gain the support and feedback of fellow mother writers and experienced mentors in this supportive environment. This is a 5 week workshop. Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

Publishing a Blog Workshop
--learn how to begin and follow through on a successful mother writer's blog with the help of experienced mother bloggers. This workshop will cover both the technical aspects of starting a blog as well as the development of blog writing. This is a 5 week workshop. Limit 20 attendees.

Sept 15 - Oct 20, 2008

For more information on cost, etc., please visit the site . Payment is based on a sliding scale basis and there are scholarships available for those who qualify.

Any questions, please email MotherVerse Magazine: editor (at) motherverse (dot) com

Online Creative Nonfition Writing Class for Fall

Creative Nonfiction Writing Class
September 8th- October 29th, 2008

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza, Literary Mama Columnist and Literary Reflections Co-editor, will be offering a 7-week online workshop for beginning to intermediate creative nonfiction writers. If you want to explore creative nonfiction writing, develop your voice, and go deeper into your craft, this encouraging and inspiring workshop is the place for you!

This online workshop will give you the opportunity to explore and escape into creative nonfiction writing from anywhere in the world with internet access, according to your own schedule.

Lecture topics will include…

* Selecting literary influences
* Mining obsessions
* Turning fleeting moments into lasting writing
* Exploring the tension of tenses
* Fiction techniques for creative nonfiction
* Finding your voice through editing
* Tips for placing your pieces

Cost is $200. Class size is limited. For more information, or to register, please contact Violeta at violeta724 AT earthlink DOT com , or through her website.

About the Instructor: Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, writer, and teacher. She received her B.A. in Spanish Literature from Duquesne University, where she also received minors in English Literature and Education. Her creative nonfiction has most recently appeared in Literary Mama, where she is an Editor and Columnist, and in the anthology The Maternal is Political (Seal Press 2008). Her website is www.TurnPeoplePurple.com . She lives with her husband, children and dogs in Pennsylvania.

Upcoming Literary Mama Events

Mark your calendars for these upcoming events featuring Literary Mama editors and columnists:

Book Passage (San Francisco); Thursday, August 7th
6:00 pm
San Francisco Ferry Building
Senior Editor Shari MacDonald Strong (The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood & Social Change) and other contributors read from the new anthology.

Book Passage (Corte Madera); Saturday, August 9th 1:00pm
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA;
Senior Editor Caroline Grant (Mama PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life) and Fiction Co-editor Suzanne Kamata (Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs), will be reading from and discussing their new books. Also on hand will be Creative Non-Fiction Co-editor Susan Ito and Catherine Brady, a contributor to Love You to Pieces.

The Open Book; Saturday, August 16th, 2:00pm
110 South Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC
Suzanne Kamata will sign copies of Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs.

The Blue Bicycle; Saturday, August 23rd; 2:00-4:00 PM
420 King St., Charleston, SC
Join Amy Hudock, Sonya Huber, Stephanie Hunt, Amy Mercer, Melinda Copp, and Suzanne Kamata for a reading, discussion, and signing.

The Happy Bookseller, Tuesday, August 19th, 7pm
4525 Forest Dr., Columbia, SC
Suzanne Kamata will sign copies of Love You to Pieces.

Decatur Book Festival, August 29-31
Decatur, Georgia

Sonya Huber, Creative Non-Fiction Co-editor of Literary Mama, will discuss her new book Opa Nobody, and Suzanne Kamata will talk about her books Losing Kei and Love You to Pieces.