I’m so delighted to have an essay out in this gorgeous edition of Calyx.

I wrote the piece two years ago, and it was accepted for publication a year and a half ago, so reading it now is like a reunion with someone I used to spend a lot of time with and haven’t seen in ages—a feeling I think we’re all having a lot these days.

If you’d like to support a small press giving a platform to women writers and artists, you can purchase this volume of the journal (and back issues) at Calyx.

You can download the PDF to read it below.

The essay’s about grief, food, family (my usual topics) and now, chronic pain. But I don’t think it’s too sad—I hope not, anyway. I’m glad it’s out in the world.

[cross-posted from the Literary Mama blog]

I am writing to announce that it is time for me to leave Literary Mama. Both my family life (caring both for my children and elderly parents) and work life (directing the Sustainable Arts Foundation with my husband) have grown much fuller these days and I no longer have the time I need or want to give to Literary Mama.

Literary Mama has given me a reliable structure, a supportive community, and a broad platform for my entire writing life as a mother: I started as an editorial assistant in Literary Reflections ten years ago, wrote a column for five years, and have now served as editor-in-chief for five years. Both of my books developed directly out of editorial conversations with contributors. It is hard for me to imagine life without Literary Mama as part of my days! I will miss the editorial staff and the broader LM network of readers and contributors profoundly, but I am looking forward to focusing more closely on fewer responsibilities.

Luckily, we have a deep editorial board, and women with the vision, energy, and commitment to lead LM. I have asked Katherine Barrett, Maria Scala, and Karna Converse to step up and I’m thrilled that they have agreed to serve in these positions: Maria will be LM’s new Editor-in-Chief, Karna will be the Managing Editor, and Katherine will define a new role as the site’s Publisher. They will maintain the same high standards Literary Mama has always been known for, and have plans for some great new improvements to the site. I am confident in their ability to lead LM, and am excited to see how the site will develop under their direction.

Thank you, readers and contributors, for your support over the years. Whether you’ve read an essay, shared a poem, or commented on a column: you are a key part of Literary Mama and you help make it the best writing community on the web. It’s been a privilege to lead the way these past five years, and I look forward to my new role as avid reader.

I’m grateful to the lovely Kate Hopper for inviting me to participate in the Next Big Thing, a blog meme for writers. I met Kate a few years ago at AWP, and now work with her on LiteraryMama. She’s written a wonderful writing guide for mothers, Use Your Words, and her memoir, Ready For Air, is coming out next fall.

What is the title of your book?

The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Stories of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Cassoulet is an anthology of original essays about how we learn–and re-learn—to eat, and why our eating habits matter to our lives beyond the table.

What genre does your book fall under?

Creative Nonfiction/Food

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The book was my co-editor, Lisa Harper’s, idea, and I’m so glad she invited me to work on it with her! We’d met through Literary Mama, and then she contributed an essay to my first book, Mama, PhD. Not long after I delivered the final manuscript for Mama, PhD, Lisa and I were hanging out in the park with our kids, watching them play and feeding them snacks, when — as I recall it — she said, “So this is probably terrible timing for you, but I had this idea for a book…”

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Well, it’s an anthology, so we didn’t write the full manuscript but solicited essays from writers whose work we know and love. We started doing that in 2007, and sent out our first proposal in 2008. When that didn’t sell, we retooled the proposal quite a bit and then set it out again in 2011, at which point it was acquired by Shambhala Publications.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The original idea, as I noted above, was Lisa’s; we’re both deeply interested in food and family, cooking with our kids, preserving old family food traditions and creating new ones. Our kids are a continual source of inspiration, education, and frustration!

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Cassoulet is represented by Elizabeth Evans, of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, and will be published by Roost Books, an imprint of Shambhala Press.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?

The range of food stories in Cassoulet mirrors what you’d find in the annual Best Food Writing collections; a book like Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant , a collection of literary essays about solitary eating, offers the tight focus of Cassoulet, while Kate Moses’ beautiful memoir Cakewalk, offers the book-length reflection on food and family that our writers offer in their individual essays.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I have no idea! The main players in my essay my kids, the chef at our elementary school and me. I’ll leave this one up to Hollywood.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

We hear a lot these days about how we should eat; we’ve heard that “local, organic, sustainable” refrain so much it’s barely meaningful anymore. The essays in Cassoulet are just not contributing to that conversation. Our essays are reflective, not prescriptive. All of our writers are saying, “This is what food means in our family,” and Lisa and I ask you, “What does food mean in yours?”

Now I get to tag some writers whom I think you should know about! So naturally, I’m tagging my co-editor, Lisa Catherine Harper, who has also published a smart, thoughtful memoir of her first year of motherhood, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood ; Suzanne Kamata, one of LiteraryMama’s fiction editors and the author and editor of several books; Jen Larsen, one of the Cassoulet contributors, whose memoir, Stranger Here How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head , is also coming out this spring; and finally journalist Jennifer Margulis, whose new book, The Business of Baby is going to change the way we think about pregnancy and childbirth . Check out their books.

It was a pleasure to be invited to write about my favorite picture books for the Children’s Book Review, and fun to focus the theme with my favorite food picture books. The list is long, but I narrowed it down to these fun books by well-known writers and illustrators: Bread and Jam for Frances; The Seven Silly Eaters; Yum, Yum, Yum; Pancakes! Pancakes!; and In the Night Kitchen. Click on over to the Children’s Book Review to read my post, and then tell me, what are your favorite food stories?

Inspired by Smith Magazine’s Six Word Story project, Literary Mama blog editor Karna Converse came up with the idea of the Six Word Summer blog post to capture some of summer’s moments, and I’m going to try to play along.

Today we took the boys to a baseball game in Golden Gate Park in which the players follow 1886 rules; we watched the San Francisco Pacifics play the Oakland Colonels. The fielders wore gloves barely bigger than their own hands, and when they got a runner out, they’d remind each other how many “hands down” (outs) they had. But really, this picture and these six words capture it well, I think:

In vintage baseball, players say “Sir.”

I’m really pleased that my essay about earthquakes, real and metaphorical, has been published in Salon. Here’s an excerpt:

An earthquake struck tonight.

I registered the sound before I felt it, a sense that bypassed my ears and telegraphed across my skin. I listened optimistically for the N-Judah streetcar that rumbles our house on its runs, but I also saw the light fixture swaying in the next room.

Sound, then sight, and finally feeling. I didn’t let myself think “earthquake” until I felt the couch shrug beneath me. I caught my husband Tony’s eye, but neither of us spoke, and before we’d finished absorbing the event it was gone, like a gust of wind that blows open a door but doesn’t ruffle the newspaper.

Please click on over to Salon to read the rest!

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