We're always scouring the maternal blogosphere for writing opportunities, announcements, links, and events that might interest our readers. Send your tips to lmblog (at) literarymama (dot) com
Due to budget constraints, the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) will close on May 1, 2010. The Toronto, Canada-based organization -- and the first international feminist organization devoted to mothering/motherhood -- has been affiliated with York University's Women's Studies program since its inception in 1998.
In 1999, ARM launched the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (JARM), and in 2006, created Demeter Press, a peer-reviewed scholarly press devoted specifically to the topics of mothering and motherhood. At this writing, Demeter Press will continue operations. Click here to visit the new website and view the latest catalog.
Have you been meaning to write about your mother, your father or yourself as a parent? Is there some one in your life who has been like a mother or father to you? It's on our minds as Mother's Day and Father's Day approach and Sheila Bender's Writing It Real, an online magazine for those who write from personal experience, announces a poetry and essay contest on the topic.
Guidelines
We are seeking creative non-fiction essays and poems about mothers and fathers and our own mothering and fathering. Work that honors parents, meditates on memories and losses, and/or examines successes and failures in parenting as well as the ways in which we find alternative parents is welcome. Essays and poems submitted must be previously unpublished. Send an essay up to six pages, double-spaced or up to three poems by June 15, 2010. We'll announce our list of winners by the end of July.
Cash Prizes and More!
First Place: $100
Second Place: $50
Third Place: $25
In addition to the prize money, the top three prizewinners will also win their choice of:
free admission to one of Sheila's Writing It Real online classes OR
a half-hour email or phone consultation with Sheila.
10 Honorable Mentions will receive a detailed written response from Sheila Bender.
Three winners will be published in a summer issue of Writing It Real with the author's permission.
Entry Fees
If you are a current subscriber, your entry fee is $15. If you'd like to renew your subscription the fee is $45 dollars, which includes your next year's subscription to Writing It Real. If you are not yet a subscriber, your entry fee of $45 includes a year's subscription as well as the reading fee. Your subscription begins as soon as the entry arrives. To read more about Writing It Real please visit our magazine page.
Mailed Essays
Mailed submissions must be accompanied by a check for US$45 for new or lapsed subscribers or US$15 for current subscribers. Checks should be made payable to "Writing It Real". The submitted essay or poems must be accompanied by a cover sheet that contains the author's name, title of the essay or poems, phone number, address and email. Don't worry; the cover sheet won't be counted toward length. Mailed submissions will NOT be returned -- NO SASE's please. Mail to:
Writing It Real Contest
394 Colman Drive
Port Townsend, WA 98368
Our friends at Pen Parentis are offering a writing fellowship:
In addition to a full year of promotion, a $1000 prize will be presented to the Pen Parentis Writing Fellow at a public reading of the winning work of fiction in a stunning literary location on September 14, 2010 in Manhattan. Entrants must be the parent of at least one child under 10 years of age, but there are no style or genre limitations on the fiction submitted for consideration.
For complete details on how to enter, visit Pen Parentis.
I invite you to explore the psychological depth that fairy tales can reveal by writing a personal essay that retells a fairy tale in contemporary terms and reveals lessons for mothers today. Please email your submission of 1000 words or less to birthingmotherwriter[AT]gmail[dot]com by March 7th. Be sure to put "Birthing the Mother Writer: 4" in the subject line, and place the text of your essay in the body of the email. By sending in your submission, you agree that your piece, if chosen for publication, may receive suggestions for revision, and you also agree to revise and submit a new version for publication within two weeks.
It's a great opportunity to exercise those creative muscles, and to receive feedback from a stellar writer and editor. Check out some of the earlier columns and reader responses to see how it's been done. Deadline for submissions is March 7th!
Have you read our Essential Reading List of read-aloud choices and now want more? Here are the books editor-in-chief Caroline Grant shared recently on San Francisco's View from the Bay:
New from All Things That Matter Press -- Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages, compiled and edited by Carol Smallwood and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent. This unique collection includes over fifty articles by more than thirty-five diverse American women who revisit, celebrate, and share defining moments in their lives. Readers will see the universal in milestones of body, mind, family, career, and personal empowerment -- whether joyous or difficult, chosen or unexpected, common or rare.
Join Caroline Grant, Lisa Harper, and Nicki Richesin in a bedtime story reading for kids of all ages. We'll be reading some new titles, including Cynthia Rylant's All in a Day; Peter Brown's The Curious Garden; and Liz Garton Scanlon's All the World, plus some old favorites! Bring the kids in their pajamas for a fun evening outing.
Caroline Grant is the Editor in Chief of Literary Mama and co-editor of the anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Her essays about mothering have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons, a life she writes about on her blogs, Food for Thought and Learning to Eat.
Lisa Catherine Harper is Adjunct Professor of Writing in the University of San Francisco's Masters of Fine Arts in Writing program, as well as a freelance writer. Her writing about food and motherhood has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She maintains a website where she blogs about writing and motherhood at www.lisacatherineharper.com
Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies including What I Would Tell Her (available in May 2010); Crush (forthcoming in summer 2011); Because I Love Her; and The May Queen. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Daily Candy, and Babble. She lives in San Rafael with her husband and daughter. For more information, visit her online at www.nickirichesin.com
The National Education Association is engaged in an ambitious project to produce an important new book on the past, present, and future of the American teaching profession and currently seeks contributions from classroom teachers across the nation.
Surveys and statistical reports are often used to tell stories about America's public school teachers, and the forthcoming book will make extensive use of these sources. But even the best surveys can shed light on only certain aspects of teachers' experiences. The full breadth and depth of teachers' lives--especially the demands, challenges, and expectations they encounter daily--is best represented through the voices of teachers themselves.
To capture the range of teacher voices across the country, NEA is seeking active and retired teachers to write short (no more than 1,000 words) vignettes illustrating the key challenges they face(d) daily as part of educating their students. The book's editors are looking for teachers to draw on their personal experiences to craft anecdotes about their lives as teachers--involving their successes and setbacks, inside and outside of the classroom, and including both instructional and extra-curricular activities.
We invite you to submit your vignette by March 19, 2010.
The second annual SC Artists' Commission Retreat will be held in Columbia, SC and it promises to be even better than last year! No matter your level of creativity, this retreat will engage, inspire, and kickstart you to go where you are dreaming of going. And it's only $45, meals included!
at Think Coffee (1 Bleecker at Bowery, 6 train to Bleeker or BDFV to Broadway/Lafayette)
In Honor of World Read Aloud Day
March 3rd, 8pm
Free of charge
On Wednesday, March 3 at 8:00 pm, Literal Latte will be have four wonderful writers reading aloud at Think Coffee.
The reading coincides with World Read Aloud Day, a program highlighting the joys of reading to children around the world. What better way to do so than to show them that adults enjoy being read to as well. In the spirit of the day, we have invited a class of second graders to listen. We expect they will be our toughest critics yet.
The reading will feature Ben Miller, Anne Pierson Wiese, Luke Fiske and Maria Terrone.
Luke Fiske has published in Connecticut Review, Georgetown Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, New Contrast, and in A City Imagined: Cape Town and the Meanings of a Place. He won first prize in the Georgetown Review Contest, and 3rd-place in the Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest. He is finishing a collection of short stories, titled The Vanishing Point, and a novel.
Ben Miller's work can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Raritan and The Antioch Review. His nonfiction has appeared in the Best American Essays anthology, and awards include a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Maria Terrone is author of two poetry collections: A Secret Room in Full (Ashland Poetry Press), winner of the McGovern Prize and The Bodies We Were Loaned (The Word Works). She has had work in Poetry, The Hudson Review, Poetry International and more.
Anne Pierson Wiese's first collection, Floating City (Louisiana State University Press) received the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award. Honors include a Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a "Discovery"/The Nation poetry prize. Poems have been anthologized in Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (New York University Press, 2007), Poem in Your Pocket (Harry N. Abrams, 2009), and Token Entry: Poems of the New York City Subway (Smalls Press, 2011).
Founded in 1994, Literal Latte remains devoted to keeping free thought free. From 1994-2004, every other month 30,000 copies graced the tables of New York coffeehouses, bookstores and arts organizations. Now it is free online to the world for consumption on laptops in coffeehouses and homes worldwide.
Literal Latte's fifteenth anniversary anthology will be available at the event at a steep discount.
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