Literary Reflections

My family didn’t have much money growing up, but I always knew I could mark an “X” next to as many books as I wanted in the Scholastic catalogue. I…

When literary mama begets literary mama, the resulting journey is bound to make an interesting story. My own has been. As an adolescent, being the daughter of a well-known writer…

Two things grew in me all fall. One was coiled head to toe like a shrimp, developing hair, fingernails, and lungs. The other was Prose — words, phrases, sentences —…

I’m in the car with my son, headed home from Oregon to Montana. I’m thinking about my second novel, the one I’m working on, the story of a woman who…

The idea first came to me when Maggie was 15. We were in the midst of the struggle that many moms experience with their teenage daughters — trying to renegotiate…

Suffused with an almost sugary nostalgia, I settled down with my four-year-old daughter to read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. This was my favorite book when I…

It really was too good to pass up — a staff-writing job on a TV show shooting in New York, the latest creation from Zeitgeist master Darren Star, famous for…

I could hardly contain my smug little grin as I burst into my husband’s home office. I tossed the latest draft of my essay on his desk, obscuring his computer…

The baby suddenly pulls away from the breast, tossing her arm back. The stealth mama waits, breathing steadily and deeply in the hope that the baby picks up the pattern…

I When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see. The light was harsh after the self-imposed darkness I had plunged myself into for all of the five minutes it took…

I get most inspired when I am being held down on a bed by my nipples with no pen in sight. Pardon the pun, but nursing really gets my juices…