Beyond FANTASTIC: Literary Mama

I’m very pleased to be an official contributor to the dynamic Literary Mama site, which has just posted my profile of fellow novelist and blogger Patry Francis. Patry is author of The Liar’s Diary and her blog Simply Wait is one of my favorites. Patry writes from the heart and her sincerity shines through whether she’s writing fiction, poetry, or one of her insightful blog entries.

If you’re looking for a diverse collection of writings by women, Literary Mama is a site to check out. The writers whose works grace this site travel varied paths on their parenting journeys, and none of them can be called typical. I enjoy the personal essays most (especially The Girl is Mine columns by Deesha Philyaw); Literary Mama offers an extensive array of non-fiction takes on everything from caring for elderly parents while parenting children, step-parenting, and raising children with special needs to single parenting and dating, adoption, miscarriage and grief recovery, and yes, the mixed-race family experience. Archived columns have titles like “Mothering in the Ivory Tower,” “Mother Shock,” and “Mothering Abroad.” And then there’s the poetry, fiction, and opinion pieces that reveal even more about the diversity of American families today and the many creative, energetic ways mothers-who-write and writers-who-mother strive to do both extremely well.

Kudos to Literary Mama Editor-in-Chief and co-founder Amy Hudock, who also co-edited (with Andrea Buchanan, another LM co-founder) the first Literary Mama collection, Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, yet another title for my ever-growing list of anticipated reads.