News and Announcements

Vicki Forman, LM’s Special Needs Mama columnist has won the 2008 Bakeless Prize in Creative Nonfiction for her memoir, “This Lovely Life.” The book will be published in the summer of 2009 by Houghton Mifflin and she will be a fellow at Bread Loaf that summer as well.

C. Delia Scarpitti, Columns Co-Editor has a new poem, “The Lament of the Bearded Lady” that just went live at the flash-literature pioneer magazine, Flashquake. She was also recently awarded a grant from her home state as an Emerging Artist in Fiction for 2008 based on her novel manuscript, Migration Summer. More info about that […]

Dear MomsRising Member, NEW YEAR’S POP QUIZ: What’s Maternal Profiling? a. The practice of selling stiff undergarments that promise a return to one’s pre-pregnancy profile. b. How the Oprah Show executives determine their prime demographic. c. Employment discrimination against a woman who has, or will have, children. d. Routine stop and searches of swerving minivans […]

Are you sick and tired of packing your kids’ lunch box everyday because the cafeteria food is unfit for human consumption? Do you feel guilty when your kids “buy”? Are you annoyed at all the junk being handed out and sold at school? Are you angry enough to do something about it? We are! Two […]

The recall of millions of toys made in China because of safety concerns is a scandal so big that the head of one manufacturer hanged himself last month in a warehouse. Now, hoping to restore confidence, the Chinese government is inviting foreign journalists to visit select factories. Of course toy safety is a concern of […]

“I’m not writing a history of famous people,” she said. “I am interested in a history of everyday life.” Grace Paley, the celebrated writer and social activist whose short stories explored in precise, pungent and tragicomic style the struggles of ordinary women muddling through everyday lives, died on Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, […]

If you don’t already know about MomsRising, here is a great opportunity to see what they are all about: School hasn’t started yet, but… it’s already time to start getting our collective ducks in a row about afterschool programs. Did you know that each school day 40,000 kindergartners are home alone after school, and a […]

Hi all– I wanted to announce the (second) launch of Open Adoption Support, a social networking site and resource site for families and individuals interested in or living open adoptions. The site is for all triad members including those who are in closed adoptions but support openess, those who are in reunion, and those whose […]

Terry Ryan, author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, passed away on Wednesday, May 16th at her home in San Francisco after a battle with cancer. Ryan’s mother daughter memoir tells the story of a woman who, “raised ten kids on twenty-five words or less.” The memoir was made into a movie staring Julianne […]

Journalist E.J. Graff asks the question, do The Mommy Wars really exist? In the Sunday, April 29, 2007 issue of The Washington Post. Graff says, “The ballyhooed Mommy Wars exist mainly in the minds — and marketing machines — of the media and publishing industry, which have been churning out mom vs. mom news flashes […]

Read Under The Saharan Sun columnist Jennifer Margulis’s latest story in The Christian Science Monitor: A crusading publisher pushes Niger’s limits, Maman Abou’s anti-corruption scoops are profitable, but dangerous to report. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0417/p20s01-woaf.htm Abou, a free speech crusader who owns Niger’s biggest publishing house tells Margulis, “I’m human like everyone else. We’re always scared that something […]