Search Results for ‘ten years’

M.N. Altenderfer’s work has appeared in Ms., YAWP, The Taproot Literary Review, The Carlow Journal, Pittsburgh City Paper, Water-Stone Review, The New Yinzer, Gastronomica, and in the anthologies September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond and Dirt. She was the Reading Series Coordinator for the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh for seven years before receiving her […]

Open the pages of The Four Ugliest Children in Christendom and enter another world. In this intriguing, provocative poetry collection, Welsch confronts societal expectations, the ethics of research, the pressures and complications of parenting and adoption, and shifting definitions of truth and beauty.

That sentence I wrote, to announce the end, said it all. Yes, it was surrounded by other words–accomplishments, family lineage, hobbies–but that one sentence was truest. I’d never written anything better, never will.

Silence sanctioned with bird’s song. / Sandalwood smoke oscillates snake-like / from altar into air. // Gong resounds, a break! A break! / Stealthily, I check my phone, the screen / displays: Car totalled.
I am ok.

This is the first family reunion since one of my daughters changed genders. How will the relatives react to him?

A guest post to motivate, encourage, and inspire ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After Chapter Twenty   Twenty years ago I was home with two young sons. I ran a small organic farm, taught prepared childbirth classes, worked as a doula, read cozy murder mysteries, and did freelance writing and editing. It was a good life, except for my […]

In 2006, Andrea O’Reilly founded Demeter Press, the first press devoted to scholarly and literary works on mothering and motherhood. Since that time, Demeter has published an extraordinary diversity of titles: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, essays, and academic studies on topics that include incarcerated mothers, feminist economics, gender fluid parenting practices, indigenous motherhood and many, many more.

A guest post from Shannon Lell.

Last month’s “Birthing the Mother Writer” column asked readers to submit essays about mothering during a child’s adolescence. In this essay, Sarah Marxer writes about how, since she adopted a daughter who was five years old, this is the first such transformation she has witnessed.

My daughter is twelve. Sometimes I wake at dawn, from a dream that she is gone, and my heart pounds for her.

I remember being twelve. Getting so warm, chasing each other at recess, that we took off our coats. The girls took them off, hot from running. The boys took them off, I see now, so we couldn’t touch their coat tails and make them it.

I. Put one-month old on potty. Take her off when she cries.
II. Try again. …