Motherhood, for many new parents, is life-changing. Life-sacrificing. Samina Ali’s transformation and surrender are more literal. And violent. “I hadn’t realized that ushering in his life would requir...

By Samantha Ho Irin Carmon was eight months pregnant with her second child when the Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion in June of 2022, per its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s ...

Tiffanie and Amanda chat with Rebecca Morrison, author of The Blue Dress, about beauty standards, creating space for teens to talk about disordered eating, and representing Iranian culture.

They could only schedule thedilation and curettagefor the following Tuesday,so we packed an extra duffel bagfor our previously planned tripcontaining: two rubber gloves one...

Jennifer Jabaley has a knack for creating flawed characters, exploring their fault lines, and driving them all to the edge of ruin. At least, that’s what she’s done within the plot of her latest suspe...

Jennifer Jabaley has a knack for creating flawed characters, exploring their fault lines, and driving them all to the edge of ruin. At least, that’s what she’s done within the plot of her latest suspe...

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Sam Field chat with Lisa Roe, author of Big & Lily, about sisterhood, second acts, and the ways women learn to rewrite the stories they’ve been living.

The urge to sleep tickles my brain as I lie in the semi-darkness of David’s room, fully dressed, atop his yellow bedspread. As usual, my nine-year-old is on the parquet floor with a kaleidoscope of bl...

Jennifer Jabaley has a knack for creating flawed characters, exploring their fault lines, and driving them all to the edge of ruin. At least, that’s what she’s done within the plot of her latest suspe...

The sun draws beads of sweat from my upper lip. I trudge through the uneven sand, arms loaded down with chairs, bags, a cooler, and several towels. I squint in the face of the bright sun and scout the...

Literary Mama

I felt hunted by him, but legally, his routine was treated as a hobby, like birdwatching

The 28 stories in The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe are beyond imaginative in their use of extended metaphors, personification of objects and animals, and storylines that are a mash-up of the re...

Amanda and Tiffanie chat with Whitney French, author of Syncopation: A Novel in Verse, about memory, identity, and what it means to reshape yourself in a fractured world.

They line up in bed thusly:Middle-aged man, soft but still square in shape,like a block of unmolded clay, sleeping.Too thin, too sensitive, nine-year-old boy,air whistling from his snot-caked nose.Mid...

Amanda and Sam chat with Lara Ehrlich, author of Bind Me Tighter Still, about domesticity and wildness in motherhood, the fierce love for our children, and feeling like we’re always falling short.

I just returned from AWP in Baltimore where I met writers, editors, and publishers from all over the country. I connected with writers featured in Literary Mama, including one fiction writer who publi...

Each year on March 31, the world observes Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) to raise awareness about transgender people.

When I became a mother, after wanting to be one for a very long time, I expected to transform into mother: a role that would bring peace, wholeness, and joy to my life. But what I couldn’t predict was...

The 28 stories in The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe are beyond imaginative in their use of extended metaphors, personification of objects and animals, and storylines that are a mash-up of the re...

Literary Mama

My husband and his three children pile in the back door, shaking off wet coats and cheerfully bickering about what pizza toppings we’ll have and which movie we’re going to watch. I hand around mugs of...

Eva and Amanda chat with Rebecca Lehmann, author of The Beheading Game, about rewriting Anne Boleyn through the lens of motherhood and bringing a poetry background to novel-writing.

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 ...

On a sunny day in the Gulf, you can see the curve of the horizon over open water. Look long enough and you can almost feel it spinning: a cosmic egg turning and turning toward birth. When we were t...

Eva and Amanda chat with Chloé Caldwell, author of Trying, about loneliness in infertility, contradictions with IVF in the queer community, and the rawness of writing in the moment.

Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays is composed of 12 long-form essays on modern motherhood viewed through a literary lens. Lipson strikes an interesting b...

Holly and Amanda chat with Maggie Smith, author of Dear Writer, about applying poetic license to writing and beyond, embracing the beginner's mind, and aging in reverse through creativity.

I saw you as a bean on a screen and I knew you were mine. Your father thought you were Albert, like his own father, but I knew that you were Edith, to be named for my much loved grandmother. You we...

Two sets of pounding feet followed by shrieks of laughter. What are the kids doing,” I thought. I shrugged and kept writing. I had a cup of Bustelo, my Golden Era hip-hop at low volume, and a ...

In the introduction to this first-of-its-kind collection, editors and translators Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega explain that the Kazakh word amanat carries multiple interpretations. It c...

Last September I entered a new season of motherhood. My one-year-old suddenly became this eighteen-year-old launching her life halfway across the country. The days leading up were filled with late-nig...

Literary Mama

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 ...

Eva and Amanda chat with Alicia Elliott, author of And Then She Fell, about cultural creation stories, contemporary Indigenous life, and how a psychotic episode led to deeper understanding.

When the large poodle tried to lick her son’s hand, he cried, “It’s warm! Mama! Dog breath is warm! Not cold like yours!” Mama paused. Her son thought she was frozen inside. She smiled awkwardly at...

Literary Mama

Eva Langston, Holly Rizzuto Palker + Amanda Fields chat with Sandra Chwialkowska, author of The Ends of Things, about screenwriting versus novel-writing + surviving a book launch with a newborn baby.

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 ...