So, for those of you still looking for a good book to buy for your loved ones, here are eleven books by Literary Mama editors and two more that I give the Riley stamp of approval to (it’s kind of a big deal on certain small islands):
1. Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood & Academic Life
Edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant
A literary anthology of deeply-felt personal narratives by women both in and out of the academy, writing about their experiences attempting to reconcile bodies with brains. These essays voice stories of academic women choosing to have, not have, or delay children, and make recommendations on how to make the academy a more family-friendly workplace. Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, these essays speak to and offer support for any women attempting to combine work and family.
2. Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined
Edited by Amy Hudock and Andrea J. Buchanan
This unique collection features the best of Literary Mama. It celebrates the voices of the maternally inclined, paves the way for other writer mamas, and honors the difficult and rewarding work women do as they move into motherhood.
3. Peeking Under My Skirt
by Stephanie Hunt
From intimate peeks at marriage to ruminations on candlelight, to an expose of the mayhem surrounding the annual extended family beach trip, Peeking is both lyrical and light-hearted.
4. A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption
Edited by Susan Ito
Fifty short stories and poems reveal the sometimes heartbreaking, often affirming tales of adoption, written by birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees.
6. Losing Kei
by Suzanne Kamata
Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan who must choose between freedom and abandoning her child. Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of Japanese family life; an exceptional expatriate voice.
7. Love You To Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs
Edited by Suzanne Kamata
The first collection of literary writing on raising a child with special needs, Love You to Pieces features families coping with autism, deafness, muscular dystrophy, Down syndrome and more. Here, poets, memoirists, and fiction writers paint beautiful, wrenchingly honest portraits of caring for their children, laying bare the moments of rage, disappointment, and guilt that can color their relationships. Parent-child communication can be a challenge at the best of times, but in this collection we witness the struggles and triumphs of those who speak their own language—or don’t speak at all—and those who love them deeply.
8. Generation
by Sharon Kraus
Generation maps the survival of a traumatic childhood. Kraus masters the toxic fall-out of abusive experiences by rendering them fiercely meaningful, almost as a dance or a biblical drama.
9. Strange Land
by Sharon Kraus
Chronicling the life of a woman embarking on marriage and contemplating motherhood, these poems wrestle with the narrator’s violent childhood and work to reconcile her past with the course of her future.
10. Real Life and Liars
by Kristina Riggle
As a wilted flower child, Mira Zielinski has never been one to follow orders. Not from her husband, not from her boss - not even from her oncologist. Mira has her own idea about handling her newly diagnosed breast cancer, and it does not involve hopping up on the operating table. Her grown children will no doubt object — when she gets around to telling them.
11. The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change
Edited by Shari MacDonald Strong
Exploring the vital connection between motherhood and social change, The Maternal Is Political features forty-four powerful, hard-hitting literary essays by women who are striving to make the world a better place for children and families—both their own and other women’s—in this country and globally.
13. A Thousand Dollars for a Kiss
by Cindy Bokma
Dark chick lit comedy about what happens when a celeb-obsessed gal ignores everyone in her life to pal around with her favorite music star.
With a little help from Random.org, Kristen of Frugality in the Making was declared the winner of my Amazon.com gift card.
Kristen told me “I always have to have a book to read. If I run out, I will read my 12 yr old son’s books.” So naturally, when I told her she was the winner I asked her what book she is reading right now. Mother of Pearl is her current book, though before that she was reading her son’s Alex Rider book, and there you have it — she is a woman of her word. I hope she uses the gift card to buy herself a new slew of books.
In honor of Kristen’s love of books, here is an old post of mine, from way back in 2006:
The Written Word is a Wonderful Thing
Well, I was visiting the lovely Toddled Dredge and saw a meme that I couldn’t pass up.
1. One book that changed your life: Animal Farm by Orson Welles. (EDITED SINCE 2006: I feel the need to leave it as Orson Welles, because that is how I originally typed it. I always mix him and George Orwell up, because, well, I’m an idiot). Because without this book, I would have had no idea that animals could so cruelly mistreat and brainwash one another to unlimited degrees. That’s exactly why we should continue to support the meat industry. Allegory? What’s that?
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I don’t really like the movie, but the book is total horrid fascination.
3. One book you would want on a desert island: The complete comedies of William Shakespeare. Perhaps you think I should go for something more thought provoking, but frankly, if I’m all alone on a desert island, the last thing I’m going to want to ponder is life, the universe, and everything—I AM ALL ALONE ON AN ISLAND. I’m pretty sure my answer would be life sucks, the universe is rotten, and everything is against me. I’d rather have things to laugh about.
4. One book that made you laugh: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Those people know how to throw a mad, swingin’ party, yo.
5. One book that made you cry: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The problem is, I don’t know if I was crying at what we’ve done or what I’m not doing now.
6. One book that you wish had been written: The Greatest Novel of Our Time by Me. I’d settle for A Novel by Me.
7. One book that you wish had never been written: It’s a toss up between Scarlett, the Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and Babywise. Probably Babywise, because nobody ever took Scarlett seriously.
8. The book that you are currently reading: Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman. Fooking hi-larious. Stop what you’re doing and go buy it and read it. No, I’m serious. Do it.
9. One book that you have been meaning to read: What are you doing still reading this????? I just told you to stop! Go read Killing Yourself to Live. Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!
Meet Daniel X, a 15 year old alien hunter ridding the earth of incorrigible aliens. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is book one of a series, and this particular, um, episode gives us a glimpse of Daniel’s life and family history as well as his encounter with Seth Ergent, number six on The List of Alien Outlaws.
According to the Young Adult Library Services Association, boys more often than girls don’t like to read because they find it “boring,” they “like other activities better” and they “can’t get into the stories.” I checked in with Beth Patin, head librarian of The Holy Cross School in New Orleans, an all boys school grades 5-12, who said, “Boys do read. They just don’t associate themselves with the type of books that most English teachers suggest. Teachers often assign classic novels that are perceived as uninteresting. It would liven things up if a teacher would assign a current story, that maybe has an Ipod in it.”
She encourages her students to read by “Finding out what they are interested in and then making a connection with a book in that subject area. Boys love technology: audio-books, the Amazon Kindle, and electronic books are great formats for guys.”
So will Daniel X make the cut?
I asked Patin to help me out in a completely unscientific survey and asked all the students who stopped by her library during lunchtime whether or not they would read this book based on the description above. Out of ten students, seven said yes, one asked for more details, one said he’d read it already (nerd alert) and one, interestingly, repsonded “I don’t read.”
James Patterson, the father of a ten year old boy himself, aims to give boys something they’ll want to read. Seizing on the facts that boys like action and are more inclined to read comics and graphic novels over other forms of fiction, Patterson included in The Dangerous Days of Daniel X all the action, dialogue, drama, aliens, and superpowers one might expect to find in a comic book or graphic novel, replete with jokes and gross-out material (think scum, ooze, earwax, and the word “spaghetti-like”). Surprisingly, no skateboarding, which I had fully expected.
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is quick reading and does feel like I’m reading the thoughts of a boy. Some of the dialogue gets a little silly for me, but then again, I’ve overheard boys’ conversations and they sometimes sound silly too (and yes, I’m sure they think I sound ridiculous). As a mother, I give this the mom-stamp of approval for boys. It’s clean and it follows all the basic elements of novel writing, so it’s a good starter book to interest boys in reading before they move on to heavier stuff. All in all, I’ll pass this copy on to my nephew and I think he’ll enjoy it.
Beth Staples is the managing editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review and Marginalia and was kind of enough to do some Q&A with me about the submissions process for her publications. You can read excerpts from Hayden’s Ferry Review here, the publication’s blog is here, and an LA Times review of Hayden’s Ferry Review can be found here. Enjoy!
1. Approx how many submissions do you receive in a month and what is the process for reading them?
Oh boy. Math on the very first question. I’m not sure how many per month exactly, and that probably varies. (Some journals don’t read in the summer, and even though we do, it seems like people submit less during the summer months.) For each issue of HFR (every six months), we receive about 1300 prose submissions (that’s fiction and nonfiction, though about 90% of that is fiction), and 750 poetry submissions (each submission has usually 3-6 poems). We also accept unsolicited art and translation submissions, though the editors for those areas spend a lot of time researching and courting the work for the issue.
Our editors are MFA students in their third year of the program here at ASU. The associate editors are a combination of graduate students in their first two years, and talented ASU staff and community members. The associate editors are the first line of defense, reading through the slush. They decide whether to reject the work or pass it on to the editors. There are usually two editors per genre, so from the passed-on work, they must come to a consensus about what they will accept. I basically oversee the process, hire and manage the staff, and help out with the reading.
2. Do you try to divide each issue up equally among the different forms of writing, or do you find that your issues tend more towards poetry or fiction or…?
We allot a certain number of pages to each set of editors based on a 180-page issue. But sometimes we find that we’ll have an especially wonderful set of stories, or more poetry, or more black and white photography, etc. and the editors can choose to share some of their pages. The issue is sometimes longer or shorter than 180 pages, based on how much good work we receive. Basically, we wouldn’t publish work we didn’t like just to pad the issue, and we wouldn’t send away work that we wanted to publish. The page allotments are fluid, and the editors work together to decide what goes in.
One thing I’ll mention is that we don’t get many nonfiction submissions. For our “Works of Witness” issue (#39), that theme really lent itself to nonfiction, and we published 4 or 5 essays. In our last issue (#42) the editors didn’t choose any nonfiction because they simply didn’t feel strongly about anything we got. We’d definitely like to see more essay submissions.
3. How much time do you spend on your own writing?
Not enough, is the short answer. I’ve only been editing HFR full time since January. Before that, I was an MFA student at ASU, finishing the first draft of my novel for my thesis. The transition from graduate school to the working world wasn’t the easiest one. My alarm hadn’t been set that early in a while. I was tired a lot. I bought a house, so I was also broke. And the absence of that kind of womb-like community of graduate school left me a little scared, I think. I realized it didn’t matter if I wrote or not, not to anyone but me. I’m only just getting used all of that, getting back into writing regularly again. And by regularly I mean a few stolen hours on maybe two weeknights, and a nice little chunk on a Saturday. I also have to vacuum sometimes, and watch So You Think You Can Dance, and eat, pet my cat, go swimming. It feels like juggling sometimes, trying to find time for all of those things. It’s funny, as a writer you never feel like you have “free” time; whenever I sit down to relax I always think, “You should be using this time to write, dummy.”
4. How much reading do you do outside of the reading you do for the journal?
I’ve been making this more of a priority lately. I find it’s really hard to do both – read for HFR and read for “pleasure” (Not that reading the slush isn’t pleasant; I absolutely enjoy it). It’s weird, the more I was reading for HFR, the more difficult I found it was to read already published stuff. There’s a certain editorial mindset involved with reading submissions, a kind of hopefulness or cheerleading as you read a story or poem, and usually the feeling kind of crashes. That is, you don’t love everything you read no matter how much you want to. It’s hard to relax that tendency. And maybe you shouldn’t, I don’t know. But when a book or story is already published, it doesn’t require the simple yes/no answer that editing ultimately requires. Or, necessarily, the cheerleading. In some ways, editing might be hostile to the act of reading for pleasure. But then again, I’m not sure a writer can read strictly for pleasure. I’m always trying to take apart what I’m reading, to learn from it. Did I answer the question?
5. What other jobs have you held that have enabled you to understand writing/publishing process better?
Well, let’s see. I worked as an editorial assistant my first job after college. Except I was working for a medical publisher. I worked on textbooks about otolaryngology and urology. I actually helped put together a chapter for surgeons about what to do with a penis caught in a zipper. Then I worked for a “publishing services provider” called Xlibris. Basically, we helped people self-publish. A lot of those books were really bad, but I still liked working with the authors. I kept thinking, “all these people can write a book. I can write a book.” So I applied to grad school. In grad school, I worked as a teaching assistant, teaching English 101 and creative writing. My third year, I applied to be one of the fiction editors for HFR. And then I got a graduate assistant position working with Salima Keegan, the Managing Editor of HFR (for over 20 years!). When she was retiring and I was graduating, she really pulled for me to take her place. She knew how much I loved HFR. I owe so much to her. Honestly, I was in the right place at the right time. I feel lucky.
6. Is it okay that I said writing/publishing, or do you feel the two are separate, with two separate paths?
I’m not entirely sure I understand the question, but I’ll give it a go. For me, I pursued publishing after college because it was related to writing. I liked to write, but I knew no one would pay me to write short stories. Publishing sounded exciting. Some people who love to write get jobs as journalists or technical writers, but that never sounded any good to me. I didn’t want to get burnt out on writing with a job that required me to write all the time about (potentially) things I didn’t care for. That argument is just academic, though. I know writers who just write and write (for a living, at home), and the more things they write, the better they feel. I don’t think I’m that person. That said, I’ve been enjoying blogging. I usually write at least one post a day, and I like the rhythm of that. It’s been giving me confidence for my other work, I think, regularly producing an (albeit small) piece of writing.
As for whether writing and publishing are the same for me as a writer, that’s of course no. You have to just write what you believe in. Write and write and don’t think about whether anyone else will like it, last of all a “publisher.” Write the story you have to tell. When you’re done, you send it out. Getting it published doesn’t make it good.
7. How did you first get into writing?
It’s the same kind of corny story a lot of people tell. I wrote as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid, I wrote poems that rhymed and fables about animals. I used to narrate my every-day activities as if I were in a book. That way it felt like someone cared about every little thing that I did. That sensibility has stuck with me – an attention to the little things, a desire to chronicle moments so that they’re not lost, writing as memory.
8. Who are your favorite writers?
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. George Saunders. Nicole Krauss. Jose Saramago. Kelly Link. Vladimir Nabokov. The way Nabokov writes is so amazing to me. You can just see that he has it, The Gift. (Ah! That’s a joke, because that’s the title of one of his novels!) I love the magical and strange, anyone who can make me laugh.
9. Any editor pet peeves that writers should know about, personal or general?
That’s tough, because I think the things that annoy me are highly personal. A few things do get under my skin: I’m always highly suspicious of stories that take place in trailer parks or at religious revivals. They’re a kind of “white trash” story I see a lot, often accompanied by the characters speaking in some strange version of a southern accent. I rarely like stories about writers or teachers of writing: they often seem like a failure of the imagination. And don’t explain your story in your cover letter; always a red flag. I can think of exceptions to all of the above, though. Anything can be done well.
10. Are most of the editors you know also writers?
I don’t really know many other editors. The few I do are writers. Editing is another one of the ways to be employed doing something you really care about. I love my job. I get to work with and in support of writers and artists all day long.
11. I’ve heard the criticism of MFA programs that they focus so much on craft they lose sight of the creative process? Sour grapes, or do you have any thoughts on this, for writers considering an MFA?
I’ve heard tons of bad things about MFA programs. Is it possible that someone could come out of an MFA so wrapped up in the technicalities that s/he has lost sight of the joy? I suppose. Do I think that MFA programs could better prepare writers for the real world? Perhaps. Do I think some are too competitive? I’m sure. Do some encourage group-think? I guess it’s possible. None of that happened to me. This is what I’ll say of my MFA experience: I was given three years to spend most of my time writing. Someone else paid me to do that! ASU gave me a community of people who valued what I did, people to talk about writing with. I worked with brilliant teachers and writers. I learned that I could teach. I traveled to China. And I found my way into a job. All of that is pretty amazing. To be given the time, space, and support to simply write as much as possible – that’s a dream come true for a lot of writers. I feel grateful for the experience.
12. What prompted your decision to create a blog for HFR?
This question actually prompted me to write a blog post. What I said there was that a blog seemed like a good way to supplement the work of our printed issues, a place to talk to our contributors and learn more about their work. It helps us to both deepen our readers’ experiences with what we publish, and broaden the reach of our contributors. And since our mission is to support emerging artists, the blog also gives us a chance to do more of that: to talk about writing and visual art more. The implication is that the reach of the printed copies of HFR is limited. This is, of course, true. We are not only limited by our ability to find our readers out in the world, but also by the number of copies we can afford to print. The blog, ideally, helps us find more readers for our printed issues, and furthers the whole of our mission. And, it’s fun. And, you know, a strong internet presence seems to be kind of important.
13. And just so that all the writers out there can remember that as an editor, you’re also a human, how about your most embarrassing moment?
Okay, here it goes. This is pretty gross. I was on a kind of “date” with this guy I met at a bar. It was my first year at ASU, and I was trying to get to know people. He worked on campus, so we met on a concrete bench next to a palm tree for coffee. I had a cold. We were sitting and talking for a while, and my nose started to get runny. I didn’t want to get up to ruin the moment, so there was a lot of sniffling. As things escalated, I tried to check for drippings by casually running my finger under my nose. All the while, maintaining a witty banter. (In my mind, I replay this like that scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack and that character “Beth” both think they have something in their noses while they’re talking. Except worse.). Obviously, there was something emerging, because when I pulled my hand away, a giant strand of snot – like a tight rope – connected my nostril to my outstretched hand. At this point, I was able to excuse myself. I went to a bathroom in the nearest building to clean up and calm down. When I returned, in typical ‘me’ fashion, I remember saying, “I peed while I was in there, just to make sure I won’t go in my pants.” I thought that was funny. Now that I’ve typed it, I’m not so sure. I’m engaged now, so eat your heart out, fellas!
This concludes the interview. Once again, here are the links: excerpts from Hayden’s Ferry Review here, the publication’s blog is here, and an LA Times review of Hayden’s Ferry Review can be found here.
Okay, so there is NO WAY I am going to actually read all of these book in August. But better have to have too many on the list than not enough, right?
1. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. I saw this title on one of those bookstore emails and loved it immediately. The storyline sounds good too.
2. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I love Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake so much. I had no idea this book had come out until last week when a friend mentioned that she thought she’d heard Lahiri had come out with something new. I went home and ordered it.
3. Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Jatterson’s. His latest YA. Reading this for a Mother-Talk review. Post forthcoming.
4. A Friendship Test by Elizabeth Noble. I have no idea what this book is about, but it’s my book club selection for August and I’m leading the discussion, so best be prepared (see #10).
5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I get that I’m a couple years behind everyone else, but I never got around to it. I recently read A Thousand Splendid Suns and it renewed my interest.
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I bought this book years ago after reading an interview with the author and it has sat on my shelf collecting dust. A friend mentioned she was reading it, and I like to read books with other people are so we can talk about them, so I told her I’d try to read it before the next time we see each other.
7. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Another one of those bought-it-and-shelved-it books. I kind of feel like I’m losing street cred in the writer’s world by admitting I still haven’t read this.
8. Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger. Lawyer Girl loves Salinger and I found all his books at the used book store for cheap and thought, you know, I should finally get around to reading them since she loves so much.
9. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. This has been recommended to me a few friends as and I do like the title.
10. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by David Oliver Relin and Greg Mortenson. Technically, I should have read this for book club last month, but I attended the meeting without having read the book, and participated in the discussion anyway. It was like I was in college, only I said “I have kids” instead of “I was at the bar” as to why I didn’t do my reading.
11. A Gesture Life: A Novel by Chang Rae-Lee. I heard about this through a writing class. WWII, comfort women, Japanese soldiers… it sounds like the book I wanted to write, but set in another country.
12. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Ever since I read an interview with Pema, I’ve been enamored with her. And this is her biggie, but I still haven’t read it.
13. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I bought this book for the title alone. Yes. I am a title junkie.
