From the Editor, September 2015
Welcome to the September issue of Literary Mama! We’re back from our summer break, rested and ready to share some inspiring writing with you, along with a fresh new look. That look is thanks to our longtime friend and webmaster extraordinaire Tony Grant. Hopefully, you have the gift of time to stroll through all these beautiful pages.
In her “Imprinting” column, Beth Malone holds a mirror to her own actions and words, in an effort to send a message of self-love to her daughter; under a chuppah, Ona Gritz marries the man she has been with for the past thirty years, and who lives by the motto “Connection, Not Perfection”; and Cassie Premo Steele brings us reader Kelly Digby Peebles’s book review of Marina Warner’s history of fairy tale, demonstrating the tenets of good nonfiction writing.
Creative Nonfiction includes Jennifer Hudak’s haunting and poetic essay, “Absence Makes the Heart,” on waiting for a teen daughter to return; and Susanne Markgren’s “Holding Pattern” depicts another kind of waiting—this time from the perspective of a mother in pre-term labor while in the hospital.
From Fiction, we have “Driving Under the Influence” by Joan Pedzich—an affecting story that will ensure you never look at a chocolate shake from the Golden Arches the same way.
Literary Reflections features two thought-provoking essays—“Raising Readers: A Mother’s Tale from the Trenches” by Miriam Mandel Levi and “She Writes” by Jennie Robertson. There’s also a “Gift of Time” Essential Reading list in which we recommend A Brief History of Time, Seven Cups of Consciousness, The Book of Negroes, A True Novel, Let Me Explain You, and Crocodile on the Sandbank.
In this month’s poems, mothers observe their children from afar, with “Uncharted” by Marietta Brill, “Em-Oh-Em” by Vasiliki Katsarou, “Sofia in the Garden” by Lee Gulyas, and “Call and Response” by Wendy Mnookin.
In Profiles, we have “A Conversation with Candy Schulman” by our very own Social Media Editor Caryn Mohr. Schulman talks with Mohr about the craft of essay writing, making the jump to memoir, and writing about mother-daughter relationships.
There are two fantastic reviews: Caryn Mohr lends her talents again, with “Mothering in the Face of Adversity: A Review of Silent Running by Robyn K. Schneider with Kate Hopper” and Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers offers a detailed analysis with “Radical Compromise as Redress: A Review of Katherine Bode-Lang’s The Reformation.“
And be sure to visit our Blog for up-to-date information on Calls for Submissions; guest posts for our After Page One, Free Write, and Op-Ed series; a Writerly Roundup of articles related to craft and the writing life; and Announcements.
We are always grateful for your comments, and hope you can share all this good writing with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Goodreads.
Until next time,
Maria