Reading

Every so often, I get an email from a reader asking me what I like to read when I’m not writing. Right now I’m in the midst of reading submissions for It’s a Girl and getting the Literary Mama anthology ready to go, so I’m not doing much reading for pleasure at the moment. But […]

Writers tend to be readers. So, here is a good book to put on your nightstand. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writing of North America edited by Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird (Norton, 1997). I have read many collections of women’s writing throughout my years as a women’s literary historian. I have, however, […]

Did you know that the first poet published in English in America–male or female–was a mother writer? Anne Bradstreet (ca. 1612/13-1672) raised eight children while also writing the poetry that was published in her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650). Bradstreet wrote on many subjects, including her life as a mother […]