Literary Mama is turning 5 and we need a fresh look! We’re soliciting designs for a new logo that includes our name and tagline — Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined — plus, optionally, an image that captures the spirit of the site. The winning entry will become the property of Literary Mama, to be used on our site, and on any and all Literary Mama gear. We’ll give the winning designer credit on our site, of course, plus a t-shirt and a copy of the Literary Mama anthology. Send your entries by January 1st as jpg files (800 pixels wide) to carolinemgrant@gmail.com

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The first I heard about the movie Baby Mama was when our accountant emailed this poster over and said “They stole your cover design!” Well, I don’t think we had a monopoly on the use of alphabet blocks, but still it somehow triggered a teeny sense of totally unreasonable resentment toward the movie, and that, coupled with a busy summer, meant I never got out to see it.

And then Sarah Palin was nominated for VP, and Tina Fey made Saturday Night Live relevant again, and I thought it might be worth checking out her movie. I wrote about it this week for Literary Mama; here’s an excerpt:

I lost sleep over the election. Partly because of my investment in the outcome, certainly, but also because for the first time since I was in my 20s, I regularly stayed up past my bedtime watching Tina Fey’s sharp Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. So when my family planned a relaxing weekend away with another family, I thought Fey’s recent comedy Baby Mama would be a good rental to toss in the bag. After a busy day at the pumpkin patch, we settled the kids into their beds and settled ourselves in front of the TV, prepared to be entertained.

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest! and while you’re there, check out columnist Karen Murphy’s newest installment of Motherhood from Afar; Elrena Evan’s Stepping Stones; Ona Gritz on Getting to Yes; and finally, if your kids are anything like mine, you’re still answering dozens of questions about the election, so check out Libby Gruner’s thoughts on political picture books in Running for Office.

There’s a little something for everyone at Literary Mama this week. Can’t stop thinking about the election? Read Children’s Lit Book Group for some books that will get even the youngest readers involved, and The Maternal Is Political for a thoughtful exploration of one mama’s political journey. Sick of thinking about the election? Then read about how Doing It Differently came to take one big step, or follow as Me and My House takes many steps.

In Literary Reflections, you know you all do it — now read about how Heidi Scrimgeour writes in the shower. And finally, I wanted to learn about how my friend and former LM columnist Gail Konop Baker writes anywhere, in addition to mothering her 3 kids, running, and dealing with cancer. So I interviewed her; read our conversation here.

My new column’s up at Literary Mama; here’s an excerpt:

Ben first became interested in politics last winter, when his kindergarten teacher organized a peace march to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The kids painted posters and made a wandering parade down to the Fillmore district of San Francisco, singing “Happy Birthday” and chanting “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!”

Now, Ben divides politicians into two camps: those who uphold MLK’s principles, and those who don’t. He has decided Obama is his candidate, will argue his opinion with his classmates, and has dedicated his sidewalk lemonade stand to raise money for the campaign. I only wish he could vote.

Instead, we’ve been reading political picture books like Gloria for President, and I’m keeping my eye out for movies about elections that are appropriate for kids. I had high hopes for the documentary I saw recently, What’s Your Point, Honey? (Amy Sewell–writer of Mad Hot Ballroom–and Susan Toffler, 2008), but it’s too talky for my young kids. Still, I think it would make a good conversation-starter to watch with boys and girls about ten and up.

Read the rest over at Literary Mama, where you can also read Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s new column about starting preschool, Multi-Culti Mami, and new fiction, creative nonfiction, and a terrific new reading list, too!

Last spring, when I was visiting Libby in Richmond, I had the chance to sit down with Elrena and Libby’s colleague Terry Dolson for a long talk about mothering, graduate work, and the different paths that brought Elrena and me together to create Mama, PhD. Somehow, Terry managed to whittle the conversation down to a readable couple pages, and the result is at LiteraryMama today.

Terry starts by talking about her experience as a pregnant woman in a graduate program in English, and comments:

Was it naiveté that convinced me then that the complex path to combining motherhood and academia were mapped already? No one told me it was; no one talked about it at all. Not talking about it allows for assumptions about “how it’s always been” to go unquestioned. In a comment on a recent InsideHigherEd.com article, one male academic seriously described academia as “a gentlemanly profession.” Thank goodness that Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant’s book, Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life, begins to outline a new path. This collection of essays by women trying to navigate the “gentlemanly field” of academia may be the first step toward addressing the “ivory ceiling.” I spoke with Caroline and Elrena at a coffee shop near my campus to learn what inspired this essay collection.

Click on over to LiteraryMama to read the rest!

I’m way behind on my “movie minutes” posts, and will update soon, since I’ve seen lots of good (Frozen River) and bad (The Women) lately. But in the meantime, it was nice to get back to writing my column this month with a reminiscence of our trip to Paris this summer. Here’s an excerpt:

When the chance came to spend a week in Paris this summer, my mind filled with visions of Nutella crepes, red wine at sidewalk bistros, and sunset walks along the Seine.

“What Paris, Mama?” three-year-old Eli asked, bringing me back down to earth and replacing my romantic thoughts with more prosaic concerns: getting two kids through a 10-hour flight; finding vegetarian food in the land of steak frites; navigating the Metro. We needed to prepare.

You can read the rest of my column, plus Stephanie Hunt’s gorgeous column, Core Matters, a swan song from 12-Step Mama, and lots of terrific fiction and creative nonfiction, over at Literary Mama.

It’s always gratifying to update Literary Mama on Sundays and see pieces–some of which I first read several months ago–find their broad audience. I try to give each just a quick final read–they’ve all been through a couple rounds of editing and copyediting, but sometimes I might catch a stray typo–still, inevitably I forget myself and get drawn into the essay or story or poem as if for the first time.

This week, there’s Hilary Meyerson’s beautiful Voice: A Study in the Writer’s Art, which begins with a nightmare like one I’ve had myself:

The night before my daughter started kindergarten, I had a nightmare. . .that I was nine months pregnant with a third child. Not just pregnant, but in labor. In typical dream-reality, I had missed the pregnancy signs until labor was imminent. My dream voice broke as I told my husband that this child would be born September third, two days after the crucial September first enrollment cut-off date. Didn’t he understand? It meant that it would be almost six more years before this third child started kindergarten. Six more years before I’d have all the kids in school, before I could finally begin my new life as a writer. I woke in a sweat, grasping my belly, relieved to find it still less firm than I’d like, but not in fact, housing a third child.

In Children’s Lit Book Group, Libby writes about a different transition, as kids finish school and move away from home:

It’s back to school time around here. Four of my friends have packed sons or daughters off to college for the first time and are learning how to reconfigure patterns set over the last eighteen years of parenthood. As my friends face their new version of parenthood, their children have the gift of an extended transition, a prolonged adolescence as they negotiate the four years of college.

This month’s poems focus on a place dear to my heart: the kitchen! In Elizabeth Bruno’s Kitchen Daffodils: “their necks tilt Vincent-gold toward the glass.” In Cookie Bakers, Lois Parker Edstrom listens to “radio tuned to Queen for a Day”. I empathize with Yvonne Pearson who writes, in Eaten Alive, “All day I feed and I feed.” And finally Ann Walters notes, In the Kitchen, “A gingham tablecloth makes a fine parachute.”

And finally, I confess I got as caught up as the next girl in the gossip and hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin’s nomination as VP on the Republican ticket: I was up late reading blogs, looking at pictures, wondering what to make of the story, all the while feeling increasingly queasy about the way she and her family were being portrayed — and all my reading about it. So, since I’m in the fortunate position of knowing lots of good and thoughtful writers, I suggested to LM’s columns editors that we put put out a call for some op-eds on the topic, and I’m delighted with the pieces we received this week.

First, we have our own Subarctic Mama, Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, unpacking “The Sarah Myth:”

I never voted for Sarah Palin. Politically, we don’t get along… But I did like her. I’ve never liked any politician so unlike myself so much. Many of my liberal pro-choice mom friends liked her too. She was an Alaskan after all–a mom like me, bundling babies in snowsuits and dragging them around in sleds. She nursed and governed. She seemed real, someone who, despite our differences, I could talk to. Like everyone else in this giant, small state, I was on a first name basis with her. “Sarah,” I’d say if I ever ran into her at the airport, “Hello.”

And in a terrific complement to her piece, Mama, PhD contributor Rebecca Steinitz writes about “Sarah Palin’s Kids, Our Kids:”

On the third night of the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin finally spoke up. The next morning I woke up to a front-page article in The Boston Globe, announcing that Sarah Palin has reignited the mommy wars.

No kidding. Birth plans, breastfeeding, working moms, teenagers and sex: it’s like the national conversation has become one big mommy kaffeklatsch. Or one big mommy driveby, as women across the country wonder how Palin does it–when they’re not condemning her for doing it.

I couldn’t be prouder of all this writing if I’d written it myself; click on over to Literary Mama to check it out!

Months ago, the lovely and talented Gail Konop Baker, a former Literary Mama columnist, invited Elrena and me to guest blog at The Debutante Ball, a group blog for writers publishing their first book. It was a fun post to write — and I hope a fun post to read! Here’s an excerpt from “3,000 Miles, Two Writers, One Book:”

Meet over email. Of course; you live, after all, 3,000 miles apart, but it helps our relationship get into writing right away. We are literally words on a page (screen) to each other for the first year of our collaboration (we don’t even talk on the phone!) It doesn’t hurt that we meet via Elrena’s submission to the section of Literary Mama that Caroline is editing at the time.

Meet when one of you is pregnant. This helps get the conversation personal, pronto, as Caroline cautions Elrena that she might not get back to her very promptly with edits.

Don’t always stick to the point. We know we are both writers, and mothers, and if we’d stayed on topic it might have stayed at that. Instead, we digress into breastfeeding and parenting and graduate school and ivory tower life — and friendship. And then, ultimately, a book.

Click on over to The Debutante Ball to read the rest!

We’ve published three terrific new columns this week. I’m particularly grateful for the sensitive, sadly timely Me and My House:

As I nurse my son, I think about women as priests, as deacons, and I think about women who lay no claim to such titles, but whose lives show forth the same devotion. Women who gladly give of themselves in the service of others. For the past few weeks I haven’t needed to venture outside of my house to find a community of people to care for me; women have brought the Body of Christ to me.

Click on over to Literary Mama to read more.

One of the unexpected pleasures of moving up the masthead to Senior Editor of Literary Mama has been getting to correspond with all the other department editors about pieces they’re considering for publication. It’s been particularly enlightening for me to work with our poetry editor, Sharon Kraus, since my formal poetry education is limited–aside from the odd 2-week unit on poetry in one class or another–to one college seminar on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, plus reading my dad’s work. I still remember how he responded when I wrote him about an English class in which we were studying e.e. cummings: he wrote me a sonnet about how he would teach poetry!

So when Maria Scala, one of Literary Mama’s columns editors, said she was interested in exchanging reviews of recent publications, I jumped at the chance, though I had to warn her — and now caution you readers –that I can’t write very knowledgeably about the form. I respond to what I like, pause to admire unexpectedly effective word choices, remember images that resonate with me. I read her chapbook, Between O and V, straight through over lunch the other day, which is not at all how one should read poetry, I think, but speaks to the appeal of Maria’s writing. Reading these poems felt rather like sitting down with a beautiful bowl of ripe cherries, not wanting to stop consuming them till they were gone, and then sitting still, satisfied, for a time at the end.

There’s a mood of concern in some of these pieces, a sense of worry about the future, which speaks to me (I’m the one who’s got a fortune which reads “You are worrying about something that is not going to happen” taped to her laptop, remember?). “I’m not long for this world / if I don’t have you” goes one stanza; or in a poem titled “Nonna,” in which a mother tries to busy herself away from thoughts of grief, “I fear for the day / when I have to make myself / forget this way.” Deep sigh.

The perspective in these pieces feels familiar to me; it’s a voice old enough to see her parents clearly, as people apart from being parents, and now starting to reconsider some of the impressions and ideas of her childhood. These are moving poems about relationships and writing, particularly interested in family, but there’s a light touch to them, in pieces like “House Rules,” which begins simply “Stick together.” Or the sweetly funny “Now I Am Married,” in which the narrator, her husband away on business, “awakens[s] in the middle of the night / cold and surprised / heartbroken too: / remembering how good it is / to accidentally elbow you in the head / so that I can kiss it better.” I loved “My Friend Is Left-Handed,” which made me laugh, in the context of these carefully-observed pieces, with its opening line: “After all this time, / I never noticed.”

But my favorite is perhaps “My Literary Uncle,” which ends, “I pare down each experience / hoping to leave / a lovely mess of shavings / behind.” This collection is a lovely mess of shavings indeed, and then some.