@ Literary Mama
Read the most recent pieces at Literary Mama…
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COLUMNS
A New Beginning by Avery Fischer Udagawa from Four Worlds
I imagined big-kid school would be more like Morris’s, more back-to-basics, more like my past. International school in Thailand, public school in Kansas in the eighties—same thing, right? In a new century and hemisphere?
Handling the Rejection by Ona Gritz from Doing it Differently
“What fourteen-year-old doesn’t want to have dinner with her mother?”
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Origination by Samantha Claire Updegrave
From the back of my top drawer I pulled out a pair of old black underwear, and as I stepped into them I caught sight of the tag: Motherhood Maternity. As my son stirred I thought to myself, I’ve got to get rid of this underwear. Irony is fine for jokes, but it can be a real bitch when it kicks you in the gut at 5:30 a.m.
Communion by Gillian Marchenko
When you live in a foreign country long enough, your native home starts to feel like an alternate reality. You are separated from your family by an ocean, removed from their everyday life, yet you know that somewhere they are going about their lives, too. It’s like living with a constant echo.
Tiny Apocalypse by Kelly George
My dad taught me about the birds and the bees at Mom’s Peppermill Diner on Route 33 in New Jersey. I was only eight years old. I have no idea why my dad chose that moment in particular to shed light on the mystery of creation.
FICTION
The Moodie-Traill Correspondence by Laurie Kruk
Cath missed Annie. Of course, there were regular posts on Annie’s social media page, changes to her profile photo—most recently, in March, her newly pregnant abdomen, dramatically draped in stripes—but Cath wanted more from her sister.
Love and Punishment at the Clerk of the County Courts Office by Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes
It just so happens I go to the Clerk of the County Courts branch office on Valentine’s Day—a weird day for civic business but I need to pay our house taxes before the late penalty charge, which would be a big chunk and not something we can afford.
LITERARY REFLECTIONS
Essential Reading: Desiring Motherhood by Libby Maxey
While the recommendations that follow touch on the lucanae left by infant mortality, infertility and even premature birth, they also touch on the challenge of finding one’s footing as a stepmother, or as a maternal figure in a relationship that defies conventional labels.
Advice by Emily H. Freeman
She asks about my writing, and I give her the standard line (delivered in almost apologetic tones) that I give when other writers ask me: how I’m trying to eke out writing time once in a while, how it’s tough to find the time.
POETRY
The Three Babies by Tricia Knoll
Water Children by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta
Objects by Chloe Yelena Miller
Figs by Chloe Yelena Miller
Short Duet/Dualities by Chloe Yelena Miller
Enough by Autumn Konopka
PROFILES
Re/Interview: A Review of The Glass Wives and an Interview with Author Amy Sue Nathan by Christina Gombar
Nathan soon discovered that her story was too sensitive and personal to publish as a memoir. Slowly, like sediment forming a fossil, she replaced details of her real-life story with fictional details, yet kept the basic imprint.
REVIEWS
Review of Barbara Crooker’s Gold by Lois Marie Harrod
In her most recent book, Gold, Barbara Crooker argues with Robert Frost. True, “nature’s first green is gold,” and, true, “nothing gold can stay,” but Crooker sees that nature’s last green is also gold.
Holding On While Letting Go: A Review of Holding Silvan: A Brief Life by Jennifer Massoni Pardini
In my grief, which was layered, unwieldy, and foreign to everyone I knew, I searched for memoirs by other mothers like me. I needed true stories—hard, honest accounts of survival in order to believe that I, too, would survive such a loss, such a choice.