When Nina Sankovitch lost her older sister Anne-Marie to cancer, her life went into a tailspin. Three years later, Sankovitch's grief and pain were as acute as ever. That's when she turned to books. She committed to reading a book a day for a year, hoping to find the solace and answers she was looking for through the written word. Sankovitch recounts her experience in the recently published Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. Literary Mama Profiles Editor Lisa Moskowitz Sadikman interviewed Sankovitch about how she managed to read a book a day, how reading informed her motherhood and the connective power of books.
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Marisa de Los Santos is a New York Times bestselling author of three novels -- Love Walked in, Belong to Me, and Falling Together -- as well as a collection of poetry, From the Bones Out (James Dickey Contemporary Poetry). She lives in Delaware with her husband, David Teague (a children's book author), and their son and daughter. Author Julianna Baggott spoke with de Los Santos about her characters, her words, her process, her husband, her home away from home, and her balancing act with her two children.
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Ellen Meeropol is a mother to two, grandmother to one, and a nurse practitioner by training. She graduated from Stonecoast's MFA program in 2005, and took early retirement from full-time nursing to devote herself to writing fiction. Her first novel, House Arrest, was published in February 2011 by Red Hen Books.
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Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies: The May Queen, a collection of essays by women about life in their thirties; Because I Love Her, essays by women on the mother-daughter bond; What Would I Tell Her, a collection of essays by men about the father-daughter bond; and this spring's Crush, essays about first love. She lives with her husband and daughter in northern California. Literary Mama editor-in-chief Caroline M. Grant spoke to Nicki about writing, editing, mothering and imagining Anais Nin's Twitter feed.
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Cassie Premo Steele is the author of seven books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize twice. Her most recent books are the novel, Shamrock and Lotus, and a book of poetry, This is how honey runs. Premo Steele also authors a Literary Mama column, Birthing the Mother Writer, to encourage our readers in their own creative paths. Amy Hudock recently sat down with the writer to discuss teaching, writing, and motherhood.
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Clare Vanderpool won the 2011 John Newbery Medal for her historical novel Moon Over Manifest. A first-time author and mother of four, Vanderpool wrote the book over six years while "making lunches, driving to field trips, folding laundry, and saying, 'Hurry up, you'll be late.'" She is the first Newbery-winning writer from Kansas and sets her story in a small town based on Frontenac. The heroine, a tomboy named Abilene, arrives in 1936 and solves mysteries dating to 1918. Vanderpool talked with Avery Fischer Udagawa about the challenges of first-time authorship, writing while parenting, and setting and composing a story in a place under-represented in children's literature.
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On writing in a walk-in closet: I needed a sensory deprivation pod. I had two long interruptions during the writing of Water for Elephants, and after the second one, I was having real trouble getting my head back into my characters and storyline. It was either take to the closet or give up the book -- and I had a ton of money and time invested in the book at that point, so I took to the closet.
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