Welcome!

Hello. Welcome to my blog! I'm a mama and a writer. I live in Minneapolis, where I'm freezing my tush right now. When I'm not picking up Dora puzzles (or making dinner, or taking my 98-year-old grandpa for errands, or watching something silly on t.v. after the little one is in bed), I write and I teach. I'm finishing my first book, a memoir about the premature birth of my daughter due to severe preeclampsia, and I'm teaching "Mother Words" at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. This is a reading as writers kind of blog. I'll post every week about an essay or poem or story or book by a woman writing about motherhood. Occasionally, I might post about writing that's not about motherhood, but I'll try to stay focused. I hope this will be a place where mamas can exchange ideas about writing and reading and the general (hectic) nature of trying to put words on the page as you try to microwave an organic hot dog. (I probably shouldn't even feed her those, but she loves them.)

I want to post these quotes on my first day as a blogger:

"Mothering is a subtle art whose rhythm we collect and learn, as much from one another as by instinct...

-Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay's Dance

"It takes courage to write about motherhood in a culture that sets women with children on the sidelines, and it takes even greater courage to give voice to the powerful emotions and fears that swirl deep beneath the surface of our daily lives..."

-Kathleen Hirsch and Katrina Kenison, Mothers