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ICYMI: Submissions have reopened in all categories
We may have taken a break earlier this year, but the quality of the writing we’ve received since reopening for submissions last month makes it clear you haven’t!
Literary Mama continues to accept work in all categories: Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, Reviews, and Literary Reflections. Now is a great time to submit since we don’t yet have our typical backlog.
Before pressing send, please review the submission guidelines (including department-specific instructions) and become familiar with previous issues.
We anticipate our next issue landing in January 2025. In the meantime, our senior editors are sharing some of their favorite LM pieces from past issues.
This month, we’re featuring Editor-in-Chief Amanda Fields who says, “As we continue in an era where women's freedoms are somehow up for debate and able to be determined by others, I'm drawn to the themes of reproductive, political, and social freedoms that resonate across most of these pieces.”
Amanda’s Favorites
Glitter Trail
By Elizabeth Kuelbs
Poetry
”I love this magical poem because it so viscerally captures the ludicrous and learned obsession we have with skin, and a mother's need to hide and find a temporary home, alone: ‘My daughters feel sorry for my corrugating/face. Snail mucin, prescribes the younger.’ I'm so often struck by the quality of the poetry in our magazine, and the care our editors have taken with it.”
Brood X: Taking Flight from Academia
By Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh
Literary Reflections
”In this literary reflection, Rajabzadeh juxtaposes her journey through navigating academia as a mother alongside the journey of the 17-year cicada. As Rajabzadeh writes of Brood X, ‘There is a ferocity to their life story. Is there a drive, a thirst, a commitment more earth-shattering than that of making 17 years underground matter in the weeks above and beyond it?’”
Abortion as an Act of Motherhood: A Conversation with Hannah Matthews
By Meghan Flaherty
Profiles
”I'm still intrigued and heartened by this conversation between Meghan Flaherty and Hannah Matthews, author of You or Someone You Love: Reflections From an Abortion Doula. Here's an excerpt: “A lot of people in my life think of me as this hyper-political, outspoken activist, which makes me a little bit sad because I really don't think of myself that way. . . . I feel like it's time to just be getting people the abortion care they want, and figuring out ways to do that. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just going to sit with this one person and figure out what they need, and how I can help them get what they need.”
Shine
By Gina M. Angelone
Fiction
”This is a beautifully crafted story that captures how divorce connects to one woman's performance of social class and dignity. As Angelone writes, ‘Even as our lives turned stewy and uncertain, Mom clung to the luxury of simmering among the well-to-do. In platform sandals, she carried herself with elevated grace as though the pitfalls of divorce were a snag on a pair of silk stockings.’”
The Blue Duffel Bag: A Journey from Beirut to America
By Della Cassia
Creative Nonfiction
”I'm drawn to the way this essay meditates on the weight of objects in war-torn spaces and beyond, and the universality of a packed bag, ready to go. Cassia reflects on the sacrifices her single mother made in Lebanon, and on her own decision to leave her mother and move in with her father, who had gone to the U.S. in search of a job and never returned, having settled and remarried. Cassia lovingly depicts her mother: ‘Our unique relationship was forged by our struggles; by our morning chats while sipping cup after tiny cup of Lebanese coffee; by our friendly games of pinochle in the shelter by candlelight . . .’”
The Messiness of Motherhood: A Review of The Women Could Fly
By Sarah Johnson LaBarbera
Reviews
”We also have many beautiful reviews that have left me eager to pick up new books. The Women Could Fly is one book I discovered through a Literary Mama review, and it didn't disappoint. Of Megan Giddings' novel, Sarah Johnson LaBarbera opens with: ‘We don't talk enough about speculative fiction. . . . And as a mother reader, I find myself excavating and reinterpreting my own path of parenthood through science fiction and fantasy more with each read.’”
This Mama Is Lit!
Catch up on our latest podcast episodes, including interviews with Catherine Newman about her novel Sandwich, Carley Moore on her poetry collection Heart Less, and Ona Gritz on her memoir Everywhere I Look.