updates

I love my class at the Loft, which started last week. What an amazing group of women! I love teaching online, but there is nothing like being in a physical space with a group of mother writers. I leave class elated and inspired. Thank you, ladies!


Also, I wanted to let you know that the Parenting Express 2012 short story (memoir) contest guidelines are posted. Submissions open November 30, and there are a ton of prizes for the winner and runners-up. Parenting Express is an online monthly journal based out of Australia. Submit. Submit. Submit.


I'm still getting up by 5 am, but so far these mornings have been full of class prep and grant writing. Still, I'm working on it.


Lastly, don't forget about the 5th Annual Mother Words reading at Open Book next week:


Thursday, October 13 - 7 p.m.


A reading and reception with the wonderful and talented Jill Christman and Sonya Huber! Join us!

kudos and upcoming classes

I finally feel like I can breathe again since finishing my manuscript. I hadn’t realized how much energy that last push had taken. In the last two weeks I knew I needed to turn my attention back to the work I had ignored in May, but I just couldn’t do it. I kept sneaking back to bed whenever possible and falling sound asleep. But today I woke up and stretched and thought, oh, I feel like myself again. Let’s hope it sticks.

And I'm excited to report that my fall Mother Words class at the Loft will be a ten-week class on Tuesday mornings, 10 am - noon, Sept 26 - Dec 5 (no class Nov 22).

Mother Words

Whether you are a new mom or a veteran, whether you gave birth to or adopted your child, in this 10-week class you’ll learn how to take birth and motherhood stories and turn them into art. Weekly lectures, reading assignments and writing exercises will focus on telling details, character development, emotional distance, strengthening your reflective voice, and revision. You can expect to generate a number of short creative nonfiction pieces and one long piece. You will receive feedback from your peers and from me in workshops.

I’ll let you know when registration is open. 


I’ll also be teaching Blogging: A Tool for Writers at the Loft on Saturday, October 29, 9 am – noon. More details on that workshop forthcoming.

Also, mark your calendar's for the 5th annual Mother Words reading at the Loft on Thursday, October 13th. I will be joined by the amazing writers Jill Christman and Sonya Huber! I can't wait. 

And as I’m thinking about teaching again, I want to share a couple of recent publications by former students. The multi-talented Andrea Lani has a wonderful review of Cassie Premo Steele’s Shamrock and Lotus and Kristina Riggle’s The Life You’ve Imagined over at Literary Mama. And Stacy Chase’s essay, “Exiled,” is now in Hyperlexia Journal. Stacy started writing this essay a few years ago in my Mother Words class, and I’m so proud of her for getting it out into the world. Congratulations to both Andrea and Stacy!

mother words podcast!

I'm excited to announce that the Good Enough Moms podcast of the 4th Annual Mother Words Reading is now available. Check it out!

A huge thank you to Marti, Erin, Luke, and Stacy at Good Enough Moms for all their work getting this ready!

the reading, the reading

I have been meaning to post about the Mother Words Reading for a week now. But the days have been vanishing before my eyes. I have been busier this last week than I have been in a long time (and of course it's not as if I'm usually lolling around the house eating bonbons). I've been jumping from class prep to teaching to the book, the book, the book. I keep stealing away when the girls are occupied for a moment to sit down in front of my computer. And of course this busyness is compounded by the fact I'm exhausted because my dear toddler has been waking up in the middle of the night every night. Once she is situated in our bed, it often takes her an hour to fall back asleep. (It’s lots of fun.)

But I do have to write about the reading, which was wonderful. There is nothing like standing in front of a room of both familiar and unfamiliar faces, describing the work that is closest to your heart. That’s what I had the opportunity to do on Thursday in the lovely Target Performance Hall at the Open Book in Minneapolis. Thank you to all of you who made it down to the event!

Also, a huge thank you to The Loft Literary Center for hosting the event and to my friends and family who contributed appetizers (and amazing shortbread bars!) for the reception. I am also incredibly grateful to Hope Edelman and Bonnie J. Rough for flying to Minneapolis for the event. I know they both had long flights, and I’m honored that they made the trip in order to be a part of the 4th Annual Mother Words Reading. Thank you, Bonnie and Hope!!

I also have some great news: for the first time, the reading was recorded and it will be available as a podcast through Good Enough Moms! Thanks to Marti, Erin, Luke, and my dad (who helped cover the recording costs) for making this possible. I’ll link to Good Enough Moms, of course, when the podcast is available.

Now on to a few photos from the event:

I love this photo (except for the fact that it was the 4th—not 3rd—Annual Mother Words Reading. (It was the third one held at the Loft, though, so I’m sure that’s where the confusion arose.)

Me and Bonnie (center) and Hope (right) before the reading.




The wonderful opening act! I was thrilled to have Maria Asp, Darcey Engen, and Nanci Olesen perform a song from their new act, I'm Telling, an hour-long show featuring song and real life stories of motherhood, to kick off the evening. I'm sure many of you remember Nanci from her MOMbo show. And now, with the help and Maria and Darcey, Nanci is continuing to be an important voice for mothers in the arts. (I'm going to interview Nanci in the coming month here at Mother Words, but in the meantime please check out the group's website for upcoming performances.)

So it was a wonderful evening, and I'm looking forward to next year's event. I already have the readers lined up, and I will let you know more as soon as dates and details have been confirmed.

Thank you, as always, to all of you out there reading and promoting motherhood literature. You are making a difference!!

tonight!

Please come down to The Loft Literary Center at the Open Book in Minneapolis tonight for the 4th Annual Mother Words Reading featuring the wonderful Hope Edelman and Bonnie J. Rough.

Where: Target Performance Hall, Open Book

When: 7 - 9 p.m.

There will also be a special opening act by Darcey Engen, Maria Asp, and Nanci Olesen -- a brief sneak peak of their new show, I'm Telling.

It's free, so bring your friends and stay for the reception following the reading. I hope to see you there!

blogging is writing

I mentioned in my last post that I spent Saturday at the MN Blogger Conference, and I need to do a recap of the day here because it was such an amazing event. The space—CoCo MSP—was lovely and intimate (which was perfect for the conference, though I know many people who wanted to be there couldn’t because attendance was capped at 150.)

I took away something from each of the sessions, but one of the highlights of the conference for me was the opening keynote, in which a panel of Minnesota’s pioneering bloggers—Nancy Lyons, James Lieks, Teresa Boardman and Patrick Rhone—talked about how they got started and why blogging is an important part of their lives. Many of them have been blogging since before “blogging” was a term. Nancy mentioned that she loves the humanity of blogs, how they “connect us to one another.” Patrick mentioned how writing a blog can help you develop your unique writer’s voice. He also said that he prefers be called an “online writer” rather than a blogger because the term blogger “reduces the respect and credibility of those who write and publish online.” I couldn’t agree more.

My break-out session was “Growing as Writers: Taking Your Blog Posts to the Next Level,” which was basically a mini crash course in creative nonfiction. Echoing what Patrick Rhone said, I talked about how important it is to think about blogging as writing.

**I have to interrupt myself here and admit that I’m a Neanderthal. During my session, people were snapping photos and typing away, and I kept thinking, Are they bored? Are they texting their friends? What’s going on here? It was only after the session that I realized they were tweeting. I was probably one of three people at the conference who isn’t on twitter. (Thank you, Monika, for your patience and graciousness in showing me how it works!)

I was also one of the only people there who was taking notes throughout the day using an actual pen and paper. (At one point I pulled out my phone to check the time, and I was thoroughly embarrassed to be holding such an antiqued piece of equipment in my hands. It takes me about forty minutes to send one text message.) Note to self: Get up to speed.**

So I learned a ton about the business of blogging. (Though I wish I had been able to attend the sessions on analytics and SEO—I’ve no idea what SEO even is.)

But the biggest message I left the conference with was the way blogging can effect incredible change in people’s lives.

Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary was amazing as she talked about finding one’s authentic blogging voice. You must read her story if you don’t already follow her. And her blog even looks great. What a lovely banner. (Note to self: Get up to speed.)

And of course, the final keynote of the day was delivered by Matt Logelin, who started to blog when his wife, Liz, was on bed rest awaiting the birth of their daughter. I’m sure many of you have been dedicated readers of Matt’s blog, where he’s written about his grief in the wake of Liz’s death, the day after their daughter, Maddy, was born, and where he continues to write about raising Maddy as a single dad. Even if you don’t read his blog, you’ll be moved to tears by his keynote, which is funny, heartbreaking, and down-to-earth. (And he swears a lot, which I love.) You can listen to it and a few other sessions from the conference at The Uptake.

You can also meet Matt this weekend if you’re in the Twin Cities. He’s doing fundraising for The Liz Logelin Foundation, which provides financial and material assistance to grief-stricken young families. A Celebration of Hope will take place Friday night, September 17th at 6:30 pm at Solera in Minneapolis. And walk run hope, the foundation 5K, will take place on Saturday the 18th at 6 pm at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. You can register the day of the event, so don’t worry if you haven’t signed up yet.

Thanks so much to Missy, Arik, Suzi, Katie, and Lindsey for making this such an incredible day. Now I better get my a** over to twitter and Get Up To Speed.

mother words reading -- a recap

I want to thank everyone who came out on Thursday night to the 3rd Annual Mother Words reading. There were about a hundred people there, and it was so incredible to look out at and see all those familiar—and unfamiliar—faces. If you weren’t able to make this year, don’t worry. I will inundate you with details as the “who” and “when” become clear for next year's reading.

The Loft, for those of you who don’t know, is situated in the Open Book, a wonderful space with a lovely auditorium—wood floors, brick walls and warm lighting. I can’t imagine a better place for a reading, and I’m grateful to the Loft for allowing us to use it. And, as I said in my opening comments on Thursday night, I am also very grateful to the Loft for taking a chance on me in 2006, when they first approved my Mother Words class. As many of you know, I developed Mother Words to create a place where women could come and have their writing about motherhood supported and critiqued and taken seriously as art. And it’s really from that class that this blog and the annual Mother Words reading were born. So I feel I owe a great debt to the Loft Literary Center.

After a warm welcome on Thursday from Jocelyn Hale, the executive director of the Loft, I introduced the reading and kicked it off with a section from Ready for Air. I went back and forth that afternoon, trying to decide whether I should read a chapter from the book or read a more recent and more intense essay. In the end, I went with the excerpt from the book, and I’m glad I did. People laughed, and I’d rather look up and see smiling faces than faces that are totally freaked out. (There will be a time for this essay, though; I promise you.)

Kate St. Vincent Vogl read second, and she read from the beginning of Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers, beginning with the phone call she received from her birth mother late one night, a few months after her mother died of cancer. Vicki Forman read third, and she read a section late in This Lovely Life, the heartbreaking and also very funny scene in which she and her husband are searching for a gravesite for Ellie’s ashes. Kate and Vicki were wonderful, and I felt honored to share the stage with them. And it was amazing to finally meet Vicki in person!

One of the questions asked during the Q & A had to do with humor and how Vicki and I both used humor in situations of crisis. I think it’s true that when you are in the midst of crisis, sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh. But as a writer, it’s also our jobs to give the reader a break sometimes. Vicki said that if you are working with particularly intense material, you need to be on the lookout for situations/moment/scenes that will bring levity to your writing.
I’m curious how other mother-writers incorporate humor into their writing. Does it come naturally or do you feel you have to craft it?

Here are a couple of photos from the night:

Thanks, again, to everyone who was there and to everyone who wished they could be there!!

Thursday, September 24 - 7 pm

Don't forget that this Thursday at 7 p.m. is the 3rd Annual Mother Words reading!

Where: The Loft Literary Center, Open Book, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis

I will be reading with Kate St. Vincent Vogl (Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers, North Star Press, 2009) and Vicki Forman (This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

Free. Refreshments will be served after the event. Please bring your friends! You don't want to miss these wonderful writers!

on the radio

I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be a guest on the Good Enough Moms show on FM107.1 tomorrow, Sunday September 6th. I'll be going on about 1:30 p.m. and talking about teaching and the upcoming Mother Words reading. Listen if you can. (It will be streaming online, as well.)