Writing

When I was younger, a stubborn fifth-grader schooler, I would dread The RedPen. The Red Pen would come out on every essay I wrote for school, every short story Iconjured, and every poem I playfully typed up. After marking my paper with long swathsof red ballpoint gel, my mom would smile at me earnestly and […]

When I was a kid, our family of four lived in a home with one bathroom, and I recall deciding, whenever my mother was in the bathtub, that I needed to speak with her at that moment about something highly important. I remember sitting on the toilet lid, chatting away to my captive audience. I […]

My youngest, who is almost nine, sits at the kitchen table with her math notebook, working on multiplication tables. I sit beside her, my hands wrapped tightly around a warm mug of tea, waiting for her to ask for help. She can do most of her assignments on her own, but feels more confident with […]

Once upon a time, I wrote for two hours a day. I woke up before the sun and worked on a manuscript while my coffee was hot and my brain was firing on, filling my mornings with my favorite thing to do before heading in for work. These are not those days. Today I still […]

If you’re like me, typing is faster than writing by hand. Often I get stuck staring at a blinking cursor. Recently, I discovered a trick to get the words flowing.  Print the piece you’re working on. Close the computer. Find a notebook and pen. Let your mind wander on the page. Write for ten minutes. Don’t […]

The Literary Reflections Department at Literary Mama is seeking submissions for our July/August 2023 publication. We are looking for original first-person essays about the intersection of parenthood and the creative process, and we welcome perspectives from all genders. For this issue, we’re interested in pieces between 1,500-3,000 words about children’s summer reading. Whether you have a success […]

Welcome to our Calls for Submissions page. Here, we’ll feature new publication opportunities for all our Mama readers. Look for updated posts every other month. If there is a ❤️ next to a call, that means the magazine or press is specifically looking for mother writers. We ❤️ all our Mamas! Literary Mama is always […]

What better month to reignite that creative spark than April? A month of spring, blooming, and renewal – nature is enough to inspire some beautiful writing. Whether you write fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry, we have writing prompts to help you get ink on the page this month. 1.Fiction/CNF: Write a story about a prank […]

In this series, our editors interview past Literary Mama contributors to see what they’ve accomplished since publishing in LM and talk about their writing journeys. This week, Literary Reflections Editor and Senior Editor Andrea Lani catches up with Anne Liu Kellor. The first essay I edited when I came on board as editor of the […]

Where I live in Arizona, March and April make up their own little season. Warmer than spring, way cooler than the triple-digit temps of summer – it’s an unnamed time of absolutely perfect weather. And after daylight savings takes effect in most of the country, the Arizona sun comes up earlier. The mornings become just […]

Congratulations to these Literary Mama staff members! ~~~~~ Senior Editor Rudri Bhatt Patel published the piece, “Pros and Cons of Anchor Clients,” for The Freelance Creative. She also published the piece, ““Why Pickleball Is a Great Sport for Seniors,” for FAR.com. For Apartment Therapy, she published, “How I Used the Two-Minute Rule to Stop Feeling […]