sarah m. wells – an interview

I was startled awake this morning by the incessant beeping of my old-school alarm. We’ve grown lazy—all of us—sleeping in until 8 a.m. many of these last 17 days. But once I got over the affront of the 6 a.m. wake-up, I jumped out of bed, ready to get back into a routine—my routine. Donny…

Read More

Women Writing on Family

It’s not always easy to write about the people in your life, but as a memoirist, it’s part of my job. When I first began to write, I struggled to get accurate portrayals of my family members onto the page. I worried what my mom and dad will say when they read certain essays or…

Read More

my memoir dress

Well, I started my full-time job yesterday—thank you for all your good wishes—and I think I’ll really like the job. My co-workers are lovely and interesting, and the work is important. But wow, I haven’t had a 40-hour week desk job for over ten years, and it’s an adjustment. By 3:30 I was missing my…

Read More

and the winner is….

Thank you all so much for your wonderful haiku! It has been such a relief to be able to step out of my book-induced stress haze and read your poetry! Thank you for your words! Now I’m turning it over to the talented and fabulous Caroline Grant, Editor-in-Chief of Literary Mama, co-editor of Mama PhD and the judge…

Read More

its time, again

(I posted this yesterday, but it vanished. I’ve no idea why.) Spring has been slow in coming to Minnesota this year, but finally, it’s here. The plants in the garden have begun to fill out, the grass is green, and even our spindly Maple in the front yard has sprouted leaves. All of this means…

Read More

it’s time

Spring has been slow in coming to Minnesota this year, but finally, it’s here. The plants in the garden have begun to fill out, the grass is green, and even our spindly Maple in the front yard has sprouted leaves. All of this means that it is time, yet again, for the annual Mother Words…

Read More

and the winner is…

Thank you, again, to everyone for submitting their wonderful haiku. I’m turning it over to Judge Laura to announce the winner: Wow! As a past contestant in and fan of the previous two Mother Words Haiku contests, I was awed by this year’s entries. They were funny, touching, puzzling (let’s be honest, the genre DOES…

Read More

marie howe

Back in 2007, when I was pregnant with Zoë and deathly afraid of losing the pregnancy, I spent weeks on the couch with my feet up, willing my uterus to hold tight to that little bean. I lay there, wishing I could read, wishing I could focus, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t follow any kind…

Read More

porous

Last week I was reading Elizabeth Alexander’s The Antebellum Dream Book, a stunning collection of poems about race and gender and identity and motherhood. Alexander is really brilliant—she’s brilliant in her poetry, but she’s also clearly brilliant in person, in interviews. (You can visit her website if you’re interested in reading some of them.) On…

Read More

the top seven

Thank you to everyone who submitted a toddler haiku for the annual Mother Words Haiku Contest. You can read all the entries here and here. This year, my dear friend Jess agreed to judge the contest, so I’m turning it over to Jess, who says: I’m a little troubled by the prevalence of excretion in…

Read More