Literary Mama Blog

Real Life and Liars

Avon Harper Collins will publish Kristina Riggle's debut novel, Real Life and Liars, in the summer of 2009. It's about a fading flower child who has her own idea about how to treat her breast cancer -- which doesn't include surgery -- much to the dismay of her three grown children whose personal crises just might shake her resolve.

The new Our Bodies, Ourselves

Former LM columnists and editors Andrea Buchanan and Heidi Raykeil have contributed chapters to the new Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth (March, 2008). Andi, author of Mothershock and coauthor of The Daring Book for Girls, wrote the chapter on adjusting to new motherhood; Heidi, aka The Naughty Mommy, wrote a chapter on getting your groove back after childbirth.

"Backstory: Emily Listfield on her novel, Waiting to Surface."

Though Waiting to Surface is a novel, it is based very closely on a my real event in my life – my husband’s disappearance. Though writing it was cathartic for me, as a mother, I was concerned the entire time I was working, about what the effect on my daughter would be. Writers are often faced with the dilemma of how to balance their creative needs versus the desire not to hurt the people in their lives … but when children are involved it is even more difficult.

At the time the events described in the novel occurred, I was the features director of Self Magazine. My husband, George Dudding, was a sculptor whose work had been bought by everyone from Si Newhouse to the Metropolitan Museum. We had been married for ten years and our daughter, Sasha, was six. My husband had gone down to Florida to visit a friend. He was depressed and we were going through a rocky period.

I was sitting in my office on an August morning when the police in Florida called to tell me my husband had disappeared essentially without a trace. At the time, they thought he had probably drowned. There were indications that he was suicidal. But… they couldn’t find his body. The coast guard had scoured the shore by helicopter and found nothing.

Within a couple of days, the police changed their minds. They believed a body would have washed up and that my husband was alive someplace. The coast guard totally disagreed and said that because of the tides that night, if he had gone out just 100 yards, his body would have been washed out to sea. I hired a private detective who after weeks of work came to believe that George had died either accidentally or intentionally, but that his body would never be found.

To me the hardest part was coming to accept that I would never really know what happened that night. Every night Sasha would ask what the detectives found out that day. I do believe he died that night, and that’s eventually what I told her. She was young enough to accept it without question.

Waiting to Surface is about that first year, from the initial phone call to learning how to live with that uncertainty and find love again. I waited a number of years to begin writing, and when I did, I promised Sasha that she could read it when it was published. This October, when it came out, she was thirteen. The time had come. I was incredibly anxious as I explained to her that this was my version of what happened but she had every right to form her own narrative. She told me she was very proud of me for writing it and couldn’t wait to read it. When we got home that day, I asked her if she would like to read it now. I had worried about this day for years, imagining every outcome. But Sasha turned to me and said,

“You know, Mom, I think I’m going to read Harry Potter instead.”

I had to smile. She will read the book when she is ready. As a mother and a writer, that is the best possible outcome.

By Emily Listfield.

Selected Shorts Writing Contest

Taken from Yahoo Groups CRWROPPS

2008 Selected Shorts Writing Contest

http://www.symphonyspace.org/shorts/writing_contest

The 2008 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize
with guest judge Amy Hempel

The winning submission, selected by Amy Hempel, will be read as part of the Selected Shorts performance at Symphony Space on May 21, 2008. The story will be recorded for possible later broadcast as part of the public radio series. The winner will receive $1000.

Story requirements:
Submit a single short story that addresses the question or the general theme, Are We There Yet? You may interpret this question however you please.

Note that the other stories in the Selected Shorts program on May 21, 2008 are all stories that take place in transit - in cars on road trips, on planes and trains, or walking from one place to another - but we also welcome submissions that use the theme of the evening, "are we there yet?," as a diving board into other literary territory. Your story must have a title.

Make sure your name and contact information appear on the first page of your story. If you are submitting by email, this information needs to appear on the first page of the attached Word document. Include page numbers.

Your story must be no more than 4 double-spaced typed pages in length
(we recommend 12 pt, Times New Roman font).

Deadline
All submissions must be received by March 14, 2008. To be specific, email submissions must be received by 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Mailed submissions must arrive with the day's mail.

Where to submit your story:
Email your submission as a Word attachment, with "CONTEST" in the subject line of the email, to
shorts(at)symphonyspace.org (replace (at) with @)

Mail to
CONTEST, Selected Shorts
Symphony Space
2537 Broadway
New York, NY 10025.

The Baby I Turned Away

Jessica Berger Gross writes about infertility, adoption and making difficult choices in, The Baby I Turned Away. Read her essay in the Life section of Salon.com

Literary Mama Authors!

Several Literary Mama editors and columnists have books coming out this Spring that are now available for pre-order on Amazon.

CNF editor Sonya Huber's memoir, Opa Nobody, is coming out this spring from University of Nebraska Press.

Senior Editor and columnist Shari MacDonald Strong's anthology, The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change (featuring essays by several Literary Mamas) will be published in May by Seal Press

Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs by Suzanne Kamata will be published in June by Beacon Press.

And finally, columnist Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant also edited an anthology featuring several Literary Mama writers, Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life. It comes out this summer from Rutgers University Press

Lovely Lady Lumps

Read Elrena Evans' column, "Lovely Lady Lumps" in the "Nutshell" section from the Winter 2008 issue of Brain, Child magazine. Elrena, LM's Me and My House columnist, writes about our culture's current fascination with the sexiness of pregnancy, and the increasing rates of postpartum plastic surgery. Why isn't postpartum sexy too? Read on...

Mamazine

LM's Literary Reflections co-editor, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza has a poem featured in the latest Mamazine installment titled, Mis Ojalas.

White Ink

White Ink:
Poems on Mothers and Motherhood
edited by Rishma Dunlop, published by Demeter Press

http://www.yorku.ca/arm/whiteink.html
For ordering details contact Renée Knapp, 416-736-2100 Ext. 60366

Edited by poet Rishma Dunlop, White Ink is a unique collection of poems on mothers and motherhood, by some of the finest poets of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Unsentimental, unflinching, and edgy, White Ink registers the social and political changes, as well as the imaginative pulse, of recent history through the figure of the mother: a powerful, recurring, and central symbol in contemporary poetry. Spanning multiple cultures, ethnicities, genders, and languages, White Ink is a landmark anthology. Poets include Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Alicia Ostriker, Joy Harjo, Sharon Olds, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gwendolyn McEwan, Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier, Allen Ginsberg, Irving Layton, Priscila Uppal, Bronwen Wallace, Maxine Kumin, Sandra Gilbert, Grace Paley, Brenda Hillman, John Barton, Samuel Menashe, Richard Teleky, Margo Berdeshevsky, Marilyn Hacker, Steven Heighton, John Terpstra, John Barton, C.D. Wright, Cherrie Moraga, Natasha Trethewey, Rita Dove, Adrienne Rich, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Nicole Brossard, Annie Finch, Marie Ponsot, Mahmoud Darwish, Fady Joudah, Naomi Shihab Nye, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Deema Shehabi, Claudia Rankine, Ingrid de Kok, Gabeba Baderoon, Carolyn Forché, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Mary Karr, Philip Levine, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Rosemary Sullivan, Jean Valentine, Meena Alexander, Goran Simic, and many others.

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

Join us in congratulating Suzanne Kamata, Literary Mama's fiction co-editor, on the publication of Love You To Pieces, Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, the first literary collection—fiction, essays, and poetry—on raising special-needs children. Available for pe-order at Amazon.com.

Responding to a dearth of literary writing on disability, Suzanne Kamata gathers parents' perspectives at various stages in the lives of children with mental or physical difficulties. In these real and fictional stories, families cope with autism, deafness, retardation, muscular dystrophy, and more, laying bare the moments of rage, disappointment, and guilt that can color their relationships. Parent/child communication is a challenge at the best of times, but here we see the epic struggles and triumphs of those who speak their own language—or don't speak at all—and those who love them.

Together, the authors—including Michael Bérubé, Jayne Anne Phillips, Penny Wolfson, Carol Zapata-Whelan, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bret Lott—paint a beautiful, wrenchingly honest portrait of what it means to care for a child who does not experience the world as we do. The book serves as a site of quiet contemplation amid the swirling issues of medical research and disability rights, and the writers come clean about the complications of even the deepest love.

Reproductive Rights

Congratulations to LM's own Susan Ito (Life in the Sandwich) whose essay is featured in the anthology, Choice:True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood and Adoption edited by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont. In today's Huffington Post, Karen E. Bender writes about the ongoing battle over reproductive rights and the limitless meaning of the word choice. Ms. Bender uses quotes from Susan's essay about her personal struggle and I for one am looking forward to reading these stories!

Summer Reading

Caroline Grant is LM's Literary reflections editor and writes, Mama at the Movies.
Caroline has an essay called, "Summer Reading" in the latest issue of Motherverse.

I don't see Ben working to read, although he's been interested in
books and letters since he was a baby. We used to leave a couple
boardbooks along with the stuffed otter and doggie in his crib,
waking some mornings to the sound of him chattering and turning the
thick pages. We called it his morning book group. When he was two,
he got interested in what Tony and I did at our laptops hour after
hour, and he'd asked to type words, too; I still have some of these
files, long lists of his favorite words in giant blue font: "Mama!
Dada! Ben! Cookie!"

Wondertime Magazine

Looking for something new to do with your family that doesn't involve spending a lot of money? Or would you like to find a way to get everyone outside...together?

Check out the November issue of Wondertime Magazine to read Deesha Philyaw's article on geocaching, (complete with photos of her family!) Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt. You find hidden "caches" by going to www.geocaching.com and entering your zip code (or the zip code or wherever you want to geocache). You pick a cache--which is hidden somewhere, usually in a waterproof container--and the listing on the website will give you waypoints, longitude and latitude coordinates you enter into a handheld GPS. The GPS directs you to the hidden cache--but only within 30 feet or so, so you really have to search. The caches are filled with small treasures, and if you take something, you leave something for someone else to take.

Deesha writes The Girl is Mine for LM and you can find her website at, The Last Word.

Wondertime magazine can be found at Barnes & Noble bookstores.

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.

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".

Cup of Comfort

LM blog editor Amy Mercer has an essay titled, "What Makes me Whole" in the latest A Cup of Comfort for Writers. Amy's essay is about the struggle to balance writing and motherhood.

Cimarron Review

LM copyeditor and contributor Kristina Riggle's short story "Connection Lost" is featured in the current issue of Cimarron Review. In the story, a father wonders where he went wrong with his younger daughter, and thinks a particular college freshman might hold the answer, if he can only track her down. Look for it in bookstores, or you could order a copy (or a subscription) by going here

Weaning the Babies -- New Chapbook by Literary Mama Contributor

Weaning the Babies, a new collection of poetry by Literary Mama contributor Ann Neuser Lederer, has just come out from Pudding House. Related metaphorically to weaning, the book also integrates snippets of emails from Lederer's now 26-year-old son as codas, creating a shadow narrative.

Lederer's poem "Seeing Babies" can also be found in her Pudding House chapbook, The Undifferentiated (poems of illness and healing).

New Poetry from Julia Lisella

Literary Mama contributor Julia Lisella has published a new poetry collection, Terrain, a book "suffused with quiet rhythms: of birth and death, of pain and healing, of turbulence and calm. She maps a wide terrain indeed, and her haunting music touches both the ear and the heart."
Lisella teaches at Regis College, and is also a contributor to the forthcoming anthology, Mama, Ph.D., co-edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans.

Bloggers Needed!

MotherTalk is looking for mama bloggers who would like to review books that appeal to women and mothers who love to read. They're currently looking for people to review James Patterson's latest YA novel, Maximum Ride 3, as well as Susan O'Doherty's Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity ... with lots more great books coming!

Bloggers are paid for their reviews. If you'd like to sign up, go to http://mother-talk.com/wp/?page_id=5 to read the FAQs and subscribe.

A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers

We are proud to announce the publication of 3 LM writers in A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers (Adams Media, April 2008). The Grand-Prize Winner is LM's Editor-in-chief Amy Hudock with her essay, "Altars of Sacrifice." Columnists Rachel Sarah Single Mom Seeking and Ona Gritz Doing it Different will also have essays about single motherhood in the latest Cup of Comfort book.

Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and the Academy

LM's Caroline Grant is proud to announce the publication of her book, Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and the Academy (Rutgers University Press 2008), edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant, will be released in the fall of 2008.

Mama, Ph.D. is a literary anthology of deeply-felt personal narratives by smart, interesting women both in and out of the academy, writing about their experiences attempting to reconcile bodies with brains. This anthology voices stories of academic women choosing to have, not have, or delay children. The essays in this anthology will speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, and will make recommendations on how to make the academy a more family-friendly workplace.

We decided to assemble this collection because it’s the book we needed when we entered graduate school and the academic job market. We wanted to know that blending family life with life in the ivory tower might be possible; we needed to know that other women were attempting this balancing act. Those women were invisible to us then, but as we began to seek out their stories, we discovered so many women living out this very challenge. We want their stories to be told, so that other women who face these difficult choices will know that they are not alone. We hope this book will encourage and inspire these women, as they try to decide if, when, and how to balance motherhood and academic work.

"The Daring Book For Girls" by LM's Andi Buchanan

A companion book to “The Dangerous Book For Boys,” Miriam and Andi are thrilled to announce that HarperCollins will be publishing The Daring Book for Girls", a book for any girl with an eye for adventure and a nose for trouble.

Among the contents will be chapters on: what you need for an essential toolkit; five karate moves every girl should know; important women of the last century; ghost stories and rainy day games; famous women spies; how to change a tire; campfire songs; stocks and bonds; making a zip line in your backyard; and more! From HarperCollins: “Amid all of the success of The Dangerous Book for Boys we would occasionally hear ‘where is the Dangerous Book for Girls?” says Margot Schupf, Group SVP & Associate Publisher. “We are thrilled to be partnering with these authors to fill this obvious void in the marketplace and to encourage girls to find fun, adventure and learning in their lives as well.”

The book is due to be out just in time for Christmas — the perfect gift for daring girls of any age (if we do say so ourselves!).

Andi Buchanan on Writers Revealed Radio

Andi Buchanan, pioneer of the book blog tour and founder of MotherTalk (among other things) and three other writers will appear on this week's Writer's Revealed podcast to talk about marketing books via the Internet. Tune in live this Sunday 7PM EST/4PM PST.

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.

Book Deal: Congratulations to Sophia Raday!

Fans of former LM editor Sophia Raday's column Mommy Athens, Daddy Sparta will be delighted to hear that Sophia has recently signed a contract with Beacon Press for a memoir about her "red state, blue state" marriage. Look for the book in Spring 2009.

Crazyhorse/Tupelo Press Publishing Institute

The first annual Crazyhorse/Tupelo Press Publishing Institute will be held June 4-30, 2007. The institute offers hands-on opportunities for graduate students and emerging writers to learn about literary publishing. At the institute, students will work with Crazyhorse Editors Carol Ann Davis and Garrett Doherty in classroom and real-world settings; Jeffrey Levine, Tupelo Press Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, will offer guest lectures as well. Over the course of 4 weeks, students will participate in the process of choosing 25 finalists for the 8th annual Tupelo Press First book Prize, and receive a behind the scenes look at how a first book in poetry becomes successful. For more information please visit http://crazyhorse.cofc.edu/pubinstitute or contact Carol Ann Davis at davisca@cofc.edu.

Single State of the Union

Editor-in-Chief Amy Hudock and columnist Rachel Sarah have essays appearing in Single State of the Union, which has just been published by Seal Press. Way to go!

Rachel Sarah Appears in NYC

Oh, you lucky New Yorkers!

If you're in New York City, please come out and hear Single Mom Seeking LITERARY MAMA columnist Rachel Sarah at one of these events:

In The Flesh Reading Series "Erotic Memoir Night"
Wednesday, January 17th
8 p.m.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel

Rachel Sarah will get hot on the page with the likes of:

Susan Shapiro,(Secrets of a Fix-Up Fanatic: How To Meet & Marry Your Match)
Ron Geraci, (The Bachelor Chronicles),
Grant Stoddard, (Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert),
Virginia Vitzthum (I Love You, Let's Meet: Adventures in Online Dating)

Free refreshments will be served.

Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street, NYC
Tel: (212) 334-9676
How to get there: B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey

~~~

On Thursday, January 18th, Rachel Sarah will be reading from Single Mom Seeking at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side

Thursday, January 18th
7 p.m.
2289 Broadway @ 82nd Street
New York, NY 10024
Tel: (212) 362-8835

Missive from Rachel Sarah

Our intrepid columnist Rachel Sarah reports from the front lines of the book biz:

Single Mom Seeking Live on Channel 4 Bay Area News!

KRON TV host says: "Probably the hottest single mom dating book out there."

Henry Tenenbaum was a sweetheart. I thought that were off air when the anchor Ysabel Duron asked me about a matchmaker -- and I essentially gave away the end of the book. Oh, poop.

Anyway, I had a ball.

xo,
Rachel

P.S. And I'm THRILLED that in the calendar for my book launch party here in Berkeley, they put Literary Mama in my bio. Yippee!! Hopefully, this will bring lots of readers to the site. You can see it here: http://www.blackoakbooks.com/calendar.html#11

Andi Buchanan on "The Escalation of Cool"

Literary Mama's own Andi Buchanan recently appeared at the Association for Research on Mothering conference in Toronto, Canada talking about trends in mother-literature. The full text of her speech appears on her own blog, Mother Shock, but you can get a flavor of it here:

It used to be transgressive to write about "the dark side" of motherhood. I still remember when a friend read one of my essays from Mother Shock -- "Loving Every Other Minute of It" -- where I concluded by admitting that I didn't love every single minute of being a mother. Now, in this climate, in 2006, that seems almost quaint. But when that piece was first published, in 2001, my friend called and said she'd been positively shaking when she read it. She told me, "I love it. But I'm so glad it was you who wrote it, and not me."

I'd like to think that books like mine and others helped give people the courage to voice their dissatisfaction, or their worry, or their difficulty, or give voice to their own dark side. But now that it is becoming no longer transgressive to admit that motherhood isn't all Hallmark moments and peak experiences, the pendulum has swung. And suddenly, at least when it comes to what publishers are thinking about what makes books and newspapers sell, if you aren't a bored mother, a depressed mother, an I-could-care-less mother, a mother who drinks, you are not a mother who is having an authentic experience.

And here:

The fact is, the hallmark of the parenting experience is vulnerability. You are never more a part of the messy, hot, sticky, sometimes boring, sometimes disgusting, sometimes painful reality of life than when you become a parent. You are plunged into the reality of biology, of life, of the heart of human existence -- the emergence of self. And you are plunged into this often as ill-prepared as a newborn is for life out in the world. And it is harrowing and punishing and exhilarating and incredible, and sometimes it brings you to your knees.

Cool is an armor against that.

Sometimes when we don it, it is protective gear against a world that is cruel or difficult or that we can't face without a mask. Sometimes we take it on to protect us from our experience. But sometimes we take it on to prevent us from being fully where we are. And in literature, that prevents us from really getting to the raw truth of our experience. We become ironic, painfully self-aware narrators of our own lives whose endless chatter never allows the unmediated thought to emerge. We fall in love with our own edge, but we don't allow ourselves to look at how it cuts both ways.

Read Andi's full speech and report back -- we'd love to know your thoughts!

Call for Submissions: Mothering and Mental Health Mega-Zine

One of the fun things about being an editor here at Literary Mama is hearing about so many interesting writermama projects. Here's a Call for Submissions for a zine on Mothering and Mental Health.

Disclaimer: I'm passing this along to you with the usual disclaimer -- we're simply sharing information but we can't verify anything about the call or the person organizing it.

-----

It's a mega-zine, a ONE TIME issue on Mothering and Mental Health:
-How do you do it?
-Making it
-Meds/No Meds
-Support
-Alternatives
-Getting through the day
-Deep corners of depression/Embarrasing the kids with your mania
-Comfort food/shopping therapy etc...
-Sleep/insomnia
-On being "normal"
-Recipies for destruction/creativity
-Dealing with mentally ill parents
-Crisis management
-The back up plan/Emergencies
-Hospitalization
-One day at a time
-Coping with you for partners/coping with partners/family
-Activism
-PPDS
-Pregnacy: meds or no meds? what was your experience?

Get it off your chest (I'll even publish anonymous submissions).
Deadline December 15 2006
Email submissions and queries to Lindsey at chocobotkid at hotmail dot
com

Call for Submissions - Women and War

A Call for Submissions for a Special Issue of Kalliope

Throughout the course of history, women have worked and fought on the front lines of war, whether it be the war to end slavery, the war to end all wars, the war against discrimination and injustice, the war on drugs, the war against the exploitation of children, all wars in which the United States has deployed its military. In remembrance and celebration of the countless wars in which women have dedicated themselves, the Fall 2007 edition of Kalliope will be a special themed issue:

Women and War

We invite submissions of poetry and short fiction for this special issue that relate to the theme of women involved in or responding to war in its broadest or most specific context. We are pleased to announce that for this issue we will consider all submissions, regardless of the gender of the writer, provided the submission is grounded in the theme of women and war. All submissions should comply with Kalliope’s general submission guidelines and should be sent by April 1, 2007 to:

Dr. Margaret L. Clark, Editor-in-Chief
Women and War Issue
Kalliope
Florida Community College at Jacksonville
11901 Beach Blvd.
Jacksonville, FL 32256

Book Deal: Congratulations to LM's Sybil Lockhart

Literary Mama Reviews Co-Editor Sybil Lockhart recently sold her memoir, Early Stages, to Simon and Schuster. Loosely based on the Mama in the Middle column she wrote for Literary Mama, Early Stages will tell the story of raising small children and caring for her mother who had Alzheimer's disease, from a neurobiologist's perspective.

Congratulations, Sybil!

Literary Mama Editor in Skirt!

Literary Mama Editor-in-Chief Amy Hudock's essay, "Transformations" appears in Skirt! magazine. This touching piece deals with how Amy's mother dealt with losing her hair while undergoing chemotherary. Amy's current writing can also be found in her Literary Mama column, Mother Writing: Our Storied Past.

Literary Reflections Contributor in Random House Anthology

Pushing her red-haired daughter into the world was, Elrena Evans realizes, the coolest thing she had ever done. Now they nurse, watch Star Trek, read The Baby Goes Beep, navigate graduate school meetings, and nurse a whole lot more. Together, they are Birthing: A Process in Vignettes. You read it here first; read it again in the new anthology Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: On New Jobs, Old Loves, Fighting the Man, Having a Kid, Saving the World, and Everything in Between.

Book Release: Ghost in the House

Tomorrow marks the release of Tracy Thompson's much anticipated book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression. In this book, award-winning former Washington Post journalist Tracy Thompson (author of The Beast: A Journey Through Depression) explores the topic of maternal depression. She intertwines her research findings, quotes from her interviews and surveys with hundreds of mothers, and her own story of both mothering through depression and being mothered by a women suffering from the illness to create a text that is part medical journal, part self-help guide for depression sufferers and part biography. While Thompson's is not the first book on the subject (Anne Sheffield's Sorrow's Web is a very solid text about maternal depression), Thompson's up to date research and gorgeous writing style make her book one well worth reading.

The book will be of particular interest to mother writers who have struggled with depression as Thompson's experience will be familiar:

There is no end to [children's]. . . demands, and for mothers there is no end to the guilty sense that at any given moment, some need of theirs is not being met. As I write these words, it is night and I am stealing work time from what should be my daughter's bedtime ritual. She comes into my study: "Mom, you promised." My work needs me; she needs me. She needs to talk right now; I am fighting the daily battle of carving out hours to write. But do I need to be a writer? You're selfish; if your work is not somehow providing for your children's necessities or their life enrichment, you're just massaging your ego, says a voice in my head. Then comes another: No! Women are more than mommies; don't you want your daughters to know this? This mental point and counterpoint takes a tenth of a second and is of no interest to my eight-year-old; she is literally getting in my face. "You promised."

Even if you have not suffered from maternal depression a number of things she points out about the intense stress and guilt which seem to be part and parcel of mothering these days rings true.

MotherTalk is facilitating a blog tour for the book and on my personal blog, MUBAR, I take a look at the book and ask author Tracy Thompson what role society can play in helping women suffering from maternal depression. Other blogs on the tour include Woulda Coulda Shoulda, Three Kid Circus, Parent Hacks, Sweetney.com, and Dooce's Heather Armstrong at Alpha Mom.

Book Release: When the Cows Got Loose

Literary Reflections contributor Carol Weis has published a picture book, When the Cows Got Loose (Simon & Schuster). Kirkus gave a starred review to the raucous story of one determined girl and twenty-six alphabetically-named cows.

Book Release: Finding Magic Mountain

Literary Mama columnist Carol Zapata-Whelan's book Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP was released today.

In the book, Carol describes her son's struggle with the rare genetic disease Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), focusing on the time of diagnosis at age nine to his first year in college (he matriculated as a pre-med student at the University of California, Berkeley, in September 2004). She illustrates how this struggle with FOP has shaped and strengthened her family, and how, as a mother, the experience has taught her to put her trust in the universe, and live life one day at a time. Through her son's remarkable grace and strength in dealing with his disease, she has learned that an unexpected encounter with suffering can be a blessing as well.

A portion of author proceeds will go to FOP research at the University of Pennsylvania, Children's Hospital, Central California, and FOP patient needs.

LM Update

Ericka Lutz and Marjorie Osterhout have taken on Senior Editor roles at Literary Mama. Ericka is responsible for the content side, bringing to the page the same fresh and bold content you've come to expect from Literary Mama. Marjorie will be making the very complicated technical side of running a web site look effortless. Amy Hudock continues to act as Editor-in-Chief. Andrea Buchanan, Managing Editor, is on hiatus for the summer but you can catch up with her on her blog.

Ericka Lutz will be teaching a four-week course through mediabistro.com on Writing and Reading Your Short Fiction in San Francisco (July 17-August 7). Ericka recently read one of her short stories at the Boston Fiction Festival.

DotMoms recently featured an interview with Managing Editor, Andrea Buchanan where she discussed Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined .

If you've ever thought about submitting something to Literary Mama, you might want to check out the LM Editors' column, Mama Sez. Creative Non-Fiction Writers might want to read Editor Jennifer Margulis's tips for getting published in her two-part essay On Rejection. And those who like to end their pieces about mothering with "but it was all worth it" might want to read Shari MacDonald Strong's Pat Is a Name, Not an Ending.

Suzanne Kamata, Fiction Co-Editor will have an essay published in the upcoming anthology about mothering, Not What I Expected.

Poetry Editor Rachel Iverson has been accepted into the fiction program at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is starting the workshop this week and we look forward to hearing about her experiences at one of the country's most well-regarded writing programs.

It's a Girl!

Andrea Buchanan (Literary Mama's Managing Editor who is currently on hiatus) is winding up her blog book tour for It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters. Highlights from the blog tour can be found on Andi's personal blog.

Learning to Write, her essay from the book, is excerpted in her current Mother Shock column on Literary Mama.

Some more good news

Literary Mama Commentary Editor Dawn Friedman's moving essay, Open Adoption, Broken Heart, has been published on Salon.com.

Wondertime, a new magazine by the editors of FamilyFun, has bought exclusive serial rights to Creative Non-Fiction Editor Jennifer Margulis's book, Why Babies Do That. She will be kicking off a blog book tour in May in honor of Mother's Day and el dia de los ninos.

Literary Mama Managing Editor Andi Buchanan has an essay in the April issue of Child magazine, a Mother's Day feature on moms making community online and in real-life in Nick Jr. magazine, and is celebrating the release of her latest book, It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters, featuring essays by Jacquelyn Mitchard, Katharine Weber, Joyce Maynard, Jennifer Lauck, and more.

You can listen to Andi and Miriam Peskowitz on NPR as they talk about "the truth behind the mommy wars" as part of their series of events at last weekend's Virginia Festival of the Book. And soon you'll be able to watch them in action, when CSPAN's BookTV airs their panel discussion with Barbara Ehrenreich, taped on March 24.

Readings, Appearances, and Other Events

Tuesday, 3.21, 1 p.m. (EST) LM creative nonfiction editor Jennifer Margulis chats online at pregnancy.org about her new book Why Babies Do That.

Thursday, 3.23, 7 p.m. LM managing editor Andi Buchanan will be speaking at a Mother Talk salon with Miriam Peskowitz, hosted by the publishers of Brain,Child magazine, in Charlottesville. (If you're in the area and interested in coming, check out the evite.)

Friday, 3.24, 3 p.m. Andi and Miriam will be on NPR's Insight show in Charlottesville, VA.

Friday, 3.24, 8 p.m. Andi and Miriam will be speaking on a panel titled "Women, Family and Work: A Candid Discussion," with Barbara Ehrenreich at the UVA Bookstore, Charlottesville, VA.

Saturday, 3.25, 10 a.m. Andi be moderating a panel on motherhood & literary fiction, featuring Mary Guterson, Sharon Baldacci, and Melanie Lynne Hauser, at the New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville.

Thursday, April 20, 7:30 p.m. Mother Talk salon in Philadelphia celebrating the release of It's a Girl and featuring Andi Buchanan and several local contributors to the anthology.

Sunday, 4.23, 4 p.m. LiteraryMama contributors to the NPN anthology Using Our Words, will be reading at Mrs. Dalloway's, 2904 College Avenue in Berkeley, (510) 704-8222.

Saturday 4.29, 7:30 p.m. Mother Talk Salon in Washington, DC, featuring Andi Buchanan, Marion Winik, and Miriam Peskowtiz.

Monday, 5.1, 7:30 p.m. LiteraryMama contributors to the NPN anthology Using Our Words, will be reading at Black Oak Books, Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, (510) 486-0698.

Literary Mama Book Reviewed in Washington Post

Check out the lastest review of Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press 2006) entitled Literary Mama: Mothers of Invention by Evelyn Small.

Here is an excerpt

Literary Mamas includes memoirs, fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry by contributors who are long-time and first-time writers, scholars and grandmothers, all focused on motherhood in its infinite varieties. Here are women "writing through the distractions" and the "domestic chaos"; women dealing with the oft-repeated theme of balancing, doing the "devastating dance" of working and mothering; mothers who go crazy and others who just go; mothers who have tantrums -- "there is something to be said for a tantrum"; a woman who "thought having a baby would not change my life"; a poet with only "a handful of poems to show," but a "poemchild, whose smile is all my sonnets." Fit and unfit mothers, all imperfect in their separate ways.

Here, too, is all the busy work of mothers -- women engaged continually in those active gerunds that have been on mothers' to-do lists through the centuries: nursing, weaning, caring, cleaning, teaching, fixing, helping, healing, hoping, fearing. Among my favorites are Megeen R. Mulholland's poem "Miscarriage of an English Teacher" and Heidi Raykeil's excerpt from her memoir about the death of her baby, "Johnny."

Read the entire review here.

LM Blog tour: Blog posts and more questions answered

Thanks to Suburban Turmoil and Miss Cellania, who wrote great posts about their impressions of the book (Miss Cellania even provided photographic proof that she read it!). Suzanne at Mother in Chief writes today about her take on the Literary Mama anthology, and later on look for blog tour posts from Dawn and Megan. And now, answers to some more questions from Jody:

Is mother-writing different from father-writing?

Yes, I think so – mostly because mothers' experiences are so different than fathers' experiences, as parents and as writers.

Now I know this is not indicative of all male writers who are also fathers, but I can't help remembering the panel I was on a few years ago with Faulkner Fox at the Virginia Festival of the Book. We were there to speak about mother-writing, and how we balance creativity with parenthood. Included on the panel was a guy who had self-published a book about being a father. He was an animated conversationalist, and a real marketing hound who had sold his books to specialty shops up and down the eastern seaboard, making a nice profit for himself along the way. But it was clear whenever he answered any of the questions that his experience as a father-writer could not have been more different from ours as mother-writers.

For him there was no question of "balancing" creative work and parenting – it wasn't his job to do that; that fell to his wife. At first Faulkner and I tried to be polite, but after a while even the audience turned on him. Someone asked us how we managed our time – how we wrote books and took care of our young children – and I talked about how I wrote Mother Shock on a tight deadline because the only childcare I had was Emi's eight-week, three-hour a day summer school class, how I work during naptime and after I put the kids to sleep, how I learned to work in short spurts of stolen moments rather than precisely scheduled blocks of time. And then the dad guy jumped in and shared how when he was writing his book, it was so crazy, he just left the kids with his wife and checked into a hotel for a week to write around the clock!

I tell you, he barely made it out of there alive.

Why do so many mothers seem to have a real need to read literature about mothering?

Well, as I said in my answer to Miriam's question, I think literature both takes us out of and gives us a deeper look into our own lives. Mothering, especially in the early years, can be so isolating. Reading someone else's words, in black and white on the page (or even flickering on the computer screen), can be so comforting. I still remember being astonished, crying grateful tears of relief to find myself discovered on the pages of Child of Mine, an anthology of women writers on pregnancy, childbirth, and the early years of motherhood. Literature inspires us and makes us recognize ourselves. As new motherhood is a time when many women feel "invisible," I'm not surprised at all that women are eager to connect with this kind of work.

Do you think that literature about mothering is taken seriously by the literary world?

The glib answer: No. Unless it's written by a man.

The more serious answer: not seriously enough. Mothering as a daily act is unremarkable – billions of people and even animals accomplish this every day – but the experience of it is not. Good writing about that experience isn't either. I think too often it's easy to dismiss writing about motherhood as less important than writing about other subjects because of the prejudice against the subject matter. And in some ways I agree – I mean, we've all done this mothering thing, we all know how boring and repetitive it can be. Wiping butts, cleaning dishes, picking up toys, singing "The Wheels on the Bus" – it's not exactly the stuff of great literature. And it's also true that culturally writing mothers have been constricted by a small range of allowable topics for exploration, and by certain acceptable modes of framing those topics. We have in the past been allowed to be light-hearted, sentimental, humorous, and precious; more recently, we have been allowed to be dark, flip, angry, and personal. I think to have literature about mothering taken seriously, we need to write well about mothering (which certainly can be the stuff of great literature, and we need to cast off the notion that mothers can only write in certain ways and in certain modes about our experiences.

Do you think that literature about mothering could be interesting to people who don't have children?

I would like to say yes. After all, we have all been children; we have all had a parent in some form or another, whether that figure is biological, adopted, or chosen, an actual mother/father or a mentor. It should be interesting to us, even if we don't have children. And yet I know from personal experience that the character I identified with in stories before I had children was the child; the character I identify with now that I have children of my own is the mother. I don't know if people can find stories about mothers all that interesting if they are not mothers themselves. Which is why it is so important to me that literature about mothering be more than just "stories about being a mother." It has to be, primarily, compelling writing.

LM Blog Book Tour: More reader questions answered

Thanks to Caroline, This Mom, Melanie Lynne Hauser, and Gayle Brandeis for blogging about the book this week! And Susan reflects more on her earlier post about the book, which brought up feelings for her around motherhood, creativity, and the need for solitude. There's a great essay up at Literary Mama right now that touches on this. Today, Wonder Mom writes about the book and promises a copy of the book to some lucky commenter, and Asha talks about her favorite pieces. Look for a blog book tour post from Kelly later today!

And now a question from a reader -- in this case, also a writer. Jody Mace asks:

How did your own writing change when you had children? Or is parenting just one more thing to write about?

My writing changed completely when I had children. For one thing, it came out of the closet. I'd worked as an editor for about eight years by the time my daughter was born, and I was quite content to hide behind other people's words. I was too afraid to put my own work out there – and as long as I didn't, I'd never have to answer the troubling question that nagged at me: what if I tried to publish my work and it was rejected? What if I discovered that although I'd always secretly thought of myself as a writer my whole life, I wasn't one? Once I had my first child, though, I had a story I couldn't stop telling. So I started writing for publication, and I found, to my surprise, that rejection is a hell of a lot less painful than giving birth without an epidural.

To answer your second question, it's true that as I move away from those intense early years of motherhood (my oldest child is now nearly 7), I am less compelled to write about parenting the way I did in the beginning. Now, maybe, it is becoming "one more thing" to write about, instead of the only thing. Before I was published, back when I wrote secret things in computer files with passwords so oblique and obscure that even I forgot them, I had this notion that the reason why I wasn't writing to be published right then was that I didn't have my One Big Story. I reasoned that when I finally had my One Big Story, the words would flow, I'd know exactly what to say, I'd have my Big Story to tell, and I'd push past my fear of rejection, because my Big Story would be even bigger than that. Once I found myself on "the dark side" of motherhood, and once I began writing about it, I realized with no small amount of trepidation: my god – here's my One Big Story, my thing that I can't shut up about. And I did write, and the words did flow, and I did figure out what to say, and I did face my fear of rejection (and continue to to this day, thanks to the lovely one-star reviewers at Amazon). But what I realized was that this notion of my One Big Story was a lie. I didn't have only one story to tell; I have a million stories, a ton of stories, I could spend the rest of my life gladly writing down stories. My concept of that One Big Story was a way to protect myself from actually writing one – a way to hold myself back from having to hold myself up to public scrutiny and finally have my writing in the world instead of in my head, or in that password-protected computer file. In the end, I realized, I didn't have only one big story; I just needed that one big story to get me started.

Tomorrow on the blog tour: IRaiseMyKids, Suburban Turmoil, and Miss Cellania. And I'll answer another good question from Jody : is mother-writing different from father-writing?

LM Blog Tour: Questions answered!

Welcome to week two of the Blog Book Tour for the Literary Mama anthology! Look for posts today from This Mom, Gayle Brandeis, Martha Brockenbrough, and Melanie Lynne Hauser.

In the meantime, today I'm answering the first of my reader-submitted questions about Literary Mama and the LM anthology. These questions come from fellow Seal Press author and good friend Miriam Peskowitz.

Why should mothers read literature? Isn't nuts-and-bolts, how-to parent writing enough?

Good question! But to me, in a way, that's like asking, "Why eat fruit? Isn't eating grains and vegetables and protein enough?" As an avid reader, I can't imagine a life without reading, and even though motherhood has compressed my available "free time" to an incredible degree, I find myself needing good literature now more than ever. And when I say "good," I don't mean lofty, or Important, or boring, or academic, or literary, or whatever adjectives people like to use to describe books that seem more like assignments than enjoyments; I just mean works that lift me out of my own life. As a mother, alternately plunged into the most mundane and most vital aspects of existence, reading books is a window out of and into my busy, complicated, boring (and when you think about it pretty incredible) life.

As to the question of nuts-and-bolts, how-to writing about parenting – sure, that is good to read. It's always enlightening to see how other people accomplish the practical aspects of motherhood. (For a great recent entry into the "-hacker.com" Web 2.0 fray, see ParentHacks, a compilation of quirky, practical, creative, and sometimes hilarious tips from random parents.) But that kind of glossy magazine stuff can be addictive for me – in a bad way. I find myself too easily getting sucked into the idea that there is some kind of definitive solution to whatever problem is facing me, and that if I could JUST. TRY. HARD ENOUGH. I could be the best parent ever. Of course, this is designed to fail. And for me, that kind of "quest to be the best" is very toxic. It makes me anxious, it makes me feel bad about myself, and it makes me rigid. When in reality, parenting is dynamic and fluid and ever-changing. So I like to balance out the advice writing – which certainly has its place, and which is very comforting to me in small doses on certain subjects – with the kind of writing I find in literature.


What's the literary in Literary Mama?

The "literary" in Literary Mama is just what I described above: the willingness to explore more than just the prescriptive, to imagine a multitude of ways to approach a subject, and to engage that subject in writing. Do you have to be a writer to enjoy Literary Mama? No – but I'm guessing you probably have to be a reader. Or at the very least, someone who is interested in reading. "Literary," I know, sometimes scares people off – what, are these a bunch of smartypants, high-falutin' snobs who would sooner die than read a book with a pair of stiletto heels on the front? I can assure you that we at Literary Mama are equal opportunity readers who enjoy everything from chick lit to memoir to screenplay to literary fiction and everything in between. The Literary in Literary Mama is about making mother-writing count as "real writing," as writing that matters. And if you care about that -- and about reading that kind of writing -- then you're a literary mama.

Literary Mama's editor-in-chief, Amy Hudock, also chimes in with an answer to Miriam's first question about why literature about motherhood is important:

All literature is about story-telling, about sharing what is inside with the outside world. Traditionally, people would share what they were feeling and experiencing through stories so that they would not feel so alone. The tribe would gather, and stories would be sung, performed, acted out or spoken so that all could know what was going on in the hearts and minds of the people they lived with. Now that we have the printed word so readily available, we can still engage in that kind of sharing -- but through reading that reveals more than how to do something. When I became a mother, I wanted to read what other mothers felt, how their lives had changed, what they had learned about the world and themselves through motherhood. I wanted to know what was going on in the inside of other mothers so I could better understand what was going on in me. That is why I read literature about motherhood. That may be why other mothers do, too.

Literary Mama Blog Book Tour: Blogger in the Spotlight

The blog book tour for the Literary Mama anthology kicked off this week with seven bloggers writing about the book. I'd like to shine the spotlight on one of the bloggers, who has also been published on Literary Mama and has a piece in It's a Boy: Susan Ito. Susan was at our January reading in Oakland and writes a wonderful entry about her reaction to the book:

Ever since attending a dynamic, amazing, standing-room only reading for the Literary Mama anthology a few weeks ago, I've been devouring the book. It's really an extraodinary collection, and one that belongs on every mother's bookshelf. These mothers are real. Their voices are authentic, they are weary and joyful and irritable and awestruck and honest. They tell the real story about motherhood in a way that so many parenting books just don't. They go places that we've all gone and yet few have been willing to tell about in a voice louder than a whisper.

But they're not all gloom and doom and despair. Some of the pieces are hysterically funny, like Jennifer Eyre White's "Analyzing Ben." (at Diesel Books, she read this piece using a visual aid poster that depicted the vast differences between her son and her daughter) While incidences of her daughter "eating dirt" at 16 months was "none," for Ben it was "uncountable."

Linda Lee Crosfield's short but powerful poem, Packing the Car, provided one of the most poignant moments in the book for me, as she helps her son prepare for his final departure away from his childhood home.

I stand aside
watch helplessly
as books stream from shelves
into boxes, out the door
and I envy them their invitation
to accompany him on this journey
to the rest of his life

Sob!

The writing in this book is solid and gorgeous. None of the contributors come across as mothers who happen to have a writing hobby; these are writers who happen to be mothers. Ericka Lutz's essay, Why My Garden, about her journey to Auschwitz is both lyrically beautiful and appropriately solemn.

Rachel Sarah is a bold young mama with a great, fresh writing style. Her short piece, "Coming," is about exactly what your dirty little mind thinks it's about. She wants to date a guy who seems perfect father material, but his fatal flaw is leaving her orgasmless while he snores on the pillow. It's funny, it's true, and it's also an important voice that isn't afraid to ask, "What about me?" It made me want to cheer.

When I read Sybil Lockhart's essay, "Gray," I felt as if she had entered my own home and family. She writes so poignantly, lovingly and honestly in her Mama in the Middle columnabout her mother's life with Alzheimer's - with appropriate doses of fear, frustration, disgust, humor and affection. Her essay is the one that prompted me to write my first fan letter to Literary Mama.

Only one of the pieces in the book evoked a strong negative response, but I think this speaks to its power. When I began reading Lizbeth Finn-Arnold's Out of the Woods: Or How I Found My Muse at Walden Pond,, I was thrilled to read these words:

I am a solitary person. Where others may seek out company, I seek out secluded places of thoughtfulness and self-discovery.

I felt a shiver of recognition. Yes! I thought. That's me! I dove into the essay, thrilled to be reading a piece by a mother who also apparently loved solitude. But as I read, my heart sank. This was not about a mother who managed to champion for her own solitude, but one who resigned herself to never being able to really have it. She ends the essay saying that she writes in "snippets" in the midst of the chaos.

I try only to "Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each."

Maybe she's right. Maybe Thoreau and Ecclesiastes and the Byrds have a point about every time having a season, every thing having its time and all that. But personally, I want more. This piece is a great one because it's wonderfully written and because it caused me to sit up and scream, "No!"

Hardly any of the pieces in this book will evoke a neutral response. Readers will scream, and cringe, and laugh until they pee as they read this book. They will wipe away more than a few tears. And more than anything they'll feel not alone.

Susan is a wonderful writer, and her blog is always excellent reading. Thanks, Susan, for your thoughtful review of the book!

It's a Boy - the blog book tour

To kick off the publication of my latest book It's a Boy, I'm launching a web-based book tour: the Blog Book Tour. With 50 bloggers participating, it looks to be a new and enjoyable alternative to hanging out in bookstores in random cities hoping to entice people to let me sign their books. Which is something I'll still be doing -- an actual physical book tour in January, to promote both Boy and the Literary Mama anthology, is in the works. But for now, I'm just touring the blogosphere, thanks to the interest and generosity of the excellent parenting bloggers who have agreed to participate.

Today Tertia at So Close blogged about her thoughts on the book and on raising her boy and girl twins; Katie Granju, a contributor to the Boy book, blogged about the book at her blog The Pop Culturephile and her personal blog as well. And I wrote about it a bit at Mother Shock and included the Introduction.

Tomorrow Jay Allen at The Zero Boss and Blogging Baby will be writing about the book, and at my own blog I'll be blogging about the first essay in the book, "Expectations," by Stephany Aulenback, late of this blog. The word on the street is that she'll be returning to blogging for Literary Mama soon! Until then, you'll have to content yourselves with the very small excerpt and Q&A that will appear on my site tomorrow.

Meet the Author

Today was "Meet the Author" day at Emi's school, and the kindergarten parents were treated to hearing all the kids read from books they'd written over the past few months. The kids had to write both fiction and nonfiction, and many of the books were thinly disguised memoirs ("Once there was a princess named... Emi"). Emi had a four-book deal, evidently -- she wrote "The Number Book," "The Rainbow Rock," "The One Fashion Girl Who Got New Clothes," and "The Princess Who Wanted a Cat." The kids sat at tables and had their author bios on display (my favorite was Emi's friend Riley's, which said "Riley enjoys exercising and eating sweets. The exercising makes him a little bit stronger and the sweets make him a little bit weaker." I want that in my next author bio!) and took questions from the audience -- it was really cute.

Most of the kids' books were the usual third-person "Once upon a time there was a girl/boy who was a princess in a castle/liked to kill monsters," but I think my favorite story was a three-page, first-person "ghost story" from a six-year-old boy. Now I know there's some controversy over first-person, present-tense narration, but this one really worked for me. It was called "The Ghost," and it went like this: "(Page One) I am a ghost. (Page Two) You might think that I am made up. (Page Three) But I am not." Awesome!

Many of the kids dedicated their books to "all my friends and family" (nice), "mommy and daddy, who love me" (also nice), or "mommy and daddy, who I love very much" (can't get much nicer than that). Three of Emi's books bore dedications to Nate, which was very sweet, considering that she spends most of her time annoyed that he exists. And the end of her bio said that her next book might be about princesses. So we have that to look forward to.

The kids were very excited about being "real authors" and presenting their work publicly. It was kind of timely, since I was just commiserating with Miriam yesterday about touring and bookstore readings and how hit-and-miss they can be, and whether or not they actually help sell books anyway. Really, to make this kindergarten "Meet the Author" day more true to life, like an actual bookstore reading, next year they should have only two parents show up, and there should be at least one homeless schizophrenic asking questions about governmental tracking devices.

Mother Talk and Word of Mouth

I'm off to Portland and Seattle for Mother Talk events, and I'm looking forward to meeting some writers I've only encountered virtually or telephonically thus far, and to speaking with the groups we'll be meeting over the next five days.

In the meantime, if you haven't already heard the news, an association of women authors called Word of Mouth has written a letter to Oprah appealing to her to bring back her famous book club. (Full disclosure: I have signed the letter, and I am a brand-new member of Word of Mouth.) The reaction has been interesting to follow. Jennifer Weiner puts the snark in her blog "SnarkSpot" with her surprisingly ungenerous take on the letter campaign (she suggests that instead of waiting for Oprah to save them, these women writers should write "more accesible books"), and MJ Rose counters by pointing out, "There is a correlation between TV exposure time and copies sold. There is a correlation between books being part of the conversation when they get a lot of media time and when they don't. I don't think the letter was saying anything more complicated than the club had an impact that is missing in our culture and that's a good thing to point out and that's why I, for one, was proud to sign it."

Tales from the (Mother) Hood

Jennifer Niesslein and Stephanie Wilkinson, the editors of Brain, Child magazine, wonder why publishers seem to be backing off literary offerings by, for, and about mothers -- when sixty-eight percent of books are purchased by women.

At one point though -- say, around 2003 -- around we started getting discouraging notes from writers we know. How's the book coming? we'd ask. Not always so good. Agents were saying that they couldn't sell memoirs about motherhood anymore. Editors were telling agents that the field was saturated. One writer, whose then-agent shopped her manuscript around in 2003, told us, "One by one . . . the ‘pass letters' came rolling in. A couple editors said that it took them a long time to decide against the book because they liked it so much, which was some comfort, but a cold comfort."

When Miriam Peskowitz began shopping her part-memoir, part-feminist analysis of motherhood book around about eighteen months ago, she found an agent in a surpisingly short amount of time. A New York agent, no less, a father of three who said he thought her book would sell quickly. They took it to the big New York publishing houses--and promptly got shot down. "While I loved Ms. Peskowitz's ideas," said one, "I'm afraid the platform seems a bit too small for us." (Translation: we can't take a chance on an unknown writer who doesn't already have celebrity or a built-in readership on her side.) Said another, "I've enjoyed reading the intelligent and extremely well-written proposal . . . but our last foray into the field of intelligent, culturally informed, somewhat complex mothering books wasn't a great success."

New York literary agent Elizabeth Kaplan puts it more bluntly: "Publishers are done with momoir."

Now that's the sort of talk that makes people who assign motherhood-themed book reviews nervous. We started digging.