From the Editor: January/February 2025

Nobody really expects an organization to survive after people start using the term “hiatus.” Especially a literary journal. Well, here we are!

We’re publishing our first issue since early 2024. A hiatus wasn’t an easy decision: Literary Mama has been publishing online since 2003. When we hit pause, that news seemed to reverberate more loudly on the literary scene than our actual magazine. Messages poured in: Is Literary Mama done? Please, don’t let it be so! 

I didn’t fully realize the power of this journal until everyone thought it was gone for good. 

I write this on a morning in early January 2025, sitting next to my kid on the couch as we both experience Covid for the second time. With or without this resurfacing illness, I sit on edge. 

I am waiting for the inauguration of money. I am watching the rights I had growing up get stripped away from kids who know and understand and do better than we could ever have done as children. I am lamenting the anxieties we’ve foisted upon them. And I know that all the big and small things we do will matter.

When I was a kid, and my mom would indicate that we did not have the money for things, which we so often did not, I’d ask her why? Why can’t we just all have the things we need? I’m embarrassed to admit that I sit here this morning with the same childish question, but from a single mother’s perspective. I do not know what we can do with all that has been placed in our laps except recognize, and act against, the power we give to others when we don’t need to.

Why did Literary Mama go on hiatus? A difficult question. For a while, we tried to expand our purpose: becoming a nonprofit, bringing on more staff, changing our processes, fundraising, and celebrating our 20 years of publication. But there were tensions. Money created tension—unsurprisingly. The rush of anxiety created tension. The needs of the magazine to grow, develop, speak up and out to our zeitgeist: this created tension. As a group of volunteer mamas, we didn’t have the bandwidth for all of it. Too much labor fell on too few volunteers, even as we were aware that this sort of work is often afforded to the most privileged among us. 

For our magazine, this hiatus meant implementing change, and knowing that we needed to have the actual time and space for the following:

• Developing equitable and culturally conscious editorial approaches 
• Simplifying platforms to make communication and processes more transparent, accessible, and equitable 
• Emphasizing an understanding of the volunteer work of this community
• Organizing archives and updating protocols
• Continuing the podcast, a new branch of LM, as a way of staying on the scene but also adding a new genre and team to our community

We’re doing okay, all things considered. Our world is a shitshow, and we are conscious that we have to do more than replicate its problems. We are conscious that we cannot always perceive our faults. We grow and develop and offer ourselves grace: why? Because we are mamas. And that is the whole point of this journal: to nurture each other in the complicated ways that we nurture our own families and communities.

In 2020, near the beginning of my time at Literary Mama, I experienced the same pandemic as the rest of you. But I was married then, and my marriage ended that year in a more dramatic way than I—ever practical—could have anticipated. I was on the floor for months, aggrieved and betrayed and stunted. When I revealed to my rather new senior editor colleagues at LM what was happening, they were nothing but understanding. They wrote me cards. They sent me fancy chocolate that I was unable to eat. And when I was ready, they welcomed me back with open arms to the work of the journal. In other words, they were the best kind of mamas. 

And that is what we will keep striving to be. During our hiatus, I’ve been so heartened by the way that our community of volunteers has rallied around the vision of Literary Mama. We are here because mamas need not just time and space, but also support.

Despite the inauguration of money, may we never lose sight of that. May we give care to the labor of others. May we reserve grace for ourselves. May we do the hard, often uncomfortable work we need to do. And may you, our readers, enjoy this latest issue. It is both a return, and a gesture of love.