Literary Mama is an all-volunteer organization that brings mamas and mama supporters together through literature. Over the years, our staff has included mamas of all sorts, reaching across identities ...

The girl I love says oh no, please wake up and flips the light on and for the third time in a year there’s a gush of blood soaking into the mattress, but this time she’s miscarried a tiny foal, legs l...

Julie Swendsen Young describes herself as a short story writer at heart. That is, until she wrote her debut novel: Rules for Mothers. Her journey on the page—from short-form to full-length project—too...

Recent findings suggest that detection models for artificial intelligence (AI) cannot accurately identify AI-generated text and may exhibit bias against certain minority groups. In the present...

Sam Field and Tiffanie Drayton chat with Mac Crane, author of Perverts, about challenging the definition of perversion, finding connection, and exploring how parenthood affects the creative process.

Like a widow, I walk around off-kilter,a ship tilting in the narrow.On the banks, people discuss how I am listing.The leaning is greater than they understand. My ship tilts in the narrow.Sometimes I c...

In addition to providing an opportunity for mama writers to publish with us, Literary Mama also periodically contributes nominations for other prizes and publications. The staff is delighted to share ...

From the Burnerverse to Cornell to Clavicular, our society is all too happy to shift the cost and burden of sexual violence and male onto victims to protect men

Literary Mama is an all-volunteer organization that brings mamas and mama supporters together through literature. Over the years, our staff has included mamas of all sorts, reaching across identities ...

The hospital room in Nigeria had white walls and fluorescent lights that never softened, even at night. The sharp smell of antiseptic clung to everything: the coarse sheets, the humid air, my sweat-da...

by Jan Stinchcomb...After the rupture your parents become great storytellers, but they only want to talk about each other. As you get older, the stories mutate into tall tales.

Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel, Yesteryear, scrutinizes and satirizes the phenomenon of the tradwife influencer—a married woman who shares her chosen traditional wife lifestyle online. The novel’s po...

Ecuador had a magnetic pull on author Lindsey Goldstein since her first gap year abroad as a high school graduate. The small country in northwestern South America, with its legendary volcanoes, lush r...

My period is latethe week I acquire a pair of spring rabbits for my children.Sisters, I am assured. There will not be more. Not from their quarter, at least.For me, it is one of those worried-not-worr...

How I’m easing my anxiety during the polycrisis — and making a difference

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Leila Farjami, author of Daughter of Salt, about breaking the chain of familial obligations and healing from being a child of war.

Nearly 2,400 women were killed by men in 2024, according to a recent Violence Policy Center report. Nearly nine out of 10 knew their killer, and firearms were used in 63.4 percent of these homicides. ...

Every time my nurse Danny opens the door to my so-called apartment, stepping in whisper-quiet on those foamy shoes he wears, it’s like a little widening of the world. And today, with Junie holding ont...

Fady Joudah’s Exhibit G is among the first of its kind. The multimedia poetry collection—assembled in the diaspora, and yet, across form, content, and voice, never anywhere but Gaza—charts Palestin…

For the seventeenth year: Welcome to autumn, fuckheads.

tight in their tin like girlsat a sleepover, pillows touchinglike nights in Kate’s basementwhen I wanted to be homebut I shoved that down,drowned in a game of pretendingto be both feather and board,be...

It is all but impossible to avoid AI these days, even if you try really, really hard. I recently switched to using DuckDuckGo as my phone’s browser in order to avoid the instantaneous and automatic AI...

The Noemi Press Book Award winner will be announced by September 15, 2026. The 2026 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and 2026 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize submissions will be open from September 1-30, 2026.Plea...

By Ruth Behar | When I called myself a vulnerable observer twenty-five years ago, most other scholars looked at me askance. The word “vulnerable” wasn’t on everyone’s lips then, so it always took a mo...

It’s 2:42 a.m., and I’m mesmerized by the way your head, a little skull wrapped in thin skin and wispy hairs, fits so naturally in the crook of my elbow. It shouldn’t—my crook is angled, and your head...

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash Berrr! Here we are. We’ve made it through to the ninth month of 2026, even though you should know we have been misled. If, like me, you hadn’t made the connectio...

Fall has been my favorite season for as long as I can remember. I love the shiny newness of it. Like January, it holds so much anticipation and possibility, only with less pressure and more apple pie....

The AAUP ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions developed the following toolkit resources to fight against the top-down adoption of technology by colleges and universitie...

Fifty Mothers, Preeti Vangani’s debut collection, opens with a photograph of the first page of the diary her mother kept while in college in Mumbai. Her mother’s maiden name is scratched out, replaced...

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Leila Farjami, author of Daughter of Salt, about breaking the chain of familial obligations and healing from being a child of war.

Literary Mama

there is no getting over thisthe cats keep on disappearing into the night& my small hands can’t holdyour brown coat floating downthe aisles of Woolworth’s downtownmother, say sycamore, foxglove, princ...

Literary Mama

Literary Mama

I. before and after another unhelpfulbinary / the event an unimportant boundary weren’t we both alivebefore / during / and / after? every passing minute / time is neither linear nor circular / butlivi...

My piano student should have been picked up by fiveShe’s moved past adagios and on to Paw PatrolHer mother’s phone was ringing, but now it’s switched offI’m dividing my dinner in two when mine calls S...

How long until I fit into my old clothes againBaby pain cry sounds likeWhen to get IUD after babyHow long should one-week-old sleepPap smear before IUD?Why does sugar make me tired?Calculate BMIHow mu...