Interview by Diane Gottlieb Sending a child off to college or out on her own is an important life passage for parents. While preparing a child to successfully “leave the nest” is the ultimate goal and at least one of the measures typically used to evaluate one’s effectiveness as a parent, that new stage can be felt as a great loss. Jill Talbot’s The Last Year: Essays, a gorgeous collection based on her 2020 column for The Paris Review, chronicles the year before her daughter Indie leaves for college. Talbot, a single mother who raised Indie on her own…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Review by Teresa Tumminello Brader The Geography of First Kisses, winner of Kallisto Gaia Press’s Acacia Prize, is a collection of fourteen short stories by Karin Cecile Davidson, author of the novel Sybelia Drive. The stories vary in that they are told from different perspectives, span the mid-fifties to today, and are set in locales ranging from Gulf Coast states to Midwest prairies, with a couple of stops outside U.S. borders. The constants are the lyrical and layered prose, and the focus on girls and young women. Whether these characters come down Lucinda Williams’s gravel road of the epigraph…
Review by DeMisty D. Bellinger Chia-Lun Chang’s debut poetry collection, Prescribee, achieves parity of ornate language and critical thought throughout, shining a spotlight on unfair immigration policies and xenophobia, but still allowing herself to be playful at times and depart from the heavier subjects. From beginning to end, Chang adeptly addresses one’s own identity in an aggressively hostile environment, questioning womanhood and personhood in an adaptive country. It is clear why this intricate collection won the Nightboat Poetry Prize. The first poem, “Parents,” works well as an introduction to the ensuing poems in that it acts as an origin…
Review by Joy Gaines Friedler The other day I saw an infant t-shirt for sale that read “I come without instructions.” It made me think even more deeply about Linda Sienkiewicz and her extraordinary book of poetry, Sleepwalker. Having a child is the most life-altering event in our lives that comes without instruction. “Our eldest child is missing from the picture/he will always be missing,” Sienkiewicz writes of her son in “From Our House To Your House.” Derek took his own life in 2011. And later, she addresses Derek directly in “Little Cuts”: “Maybe what I thought/ was sacrifice/…
Jennifer Poteet Mother Comes Back as a Bee When I heard my name as a buzz in my ear, I knew she had come back as a bee. One, I hoped, without its stinger. My mother floated among my garden tomatoes, then rested inside an eggplant blossom. Why a bee? I asked. I didn’t get to choose, she said. Can you make honey? I’m not that kind of bee. Why not come inside, Mom, where there’s air conditioning, to talk? I just wanted to take a look at you, she replied, circling me twice before she flew away. …
New Fiction and Non-Fiction (And an Anthology) On Our Radar Anthology Rachel Neve-Midbar and Jennifer Saunders, Eds., Stained: An Anthology of Writing About Menstruation. Querencia Press 2023. “The writers in Stained offer their menarche stories, sometimes magical, sometimes traumatic; their menopause stories filled with longings and goodbyes. But they are also writing all that comes in between, the stories spoken in whispers: the stains, blood-soaked sex, the babies wanted or not and the bleeding after. Endometriosis, PMDD, birth control, body dysmorphia-and many stories of medical mistreatment. Some of these writers see the blood of their bodies as an…
Watch our 2023 MER vol. 21 Launch Reading on our YouTube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NZUhEtQgII&t=1097s
MER Online Quarterly – June 2023 MER Literary Folios Parent (verb) Mixed genre literary and art folio on parenting in action, curated by MER editors. Words: Ambriel Floyd Bostic, James Callan, Alisa Childress, Hayes Davis, Ashley Espinoza, Jennifer Furner, Mike Gray, Francesca Leader, Elizabeth O’Rourke, Ellen June Wright Art: Sally Brown, Sofia Chapman, Rachael Grad The Little Things Mixed genre literary folio on joy and humor in motherhood, curated by J. L. Scott Featured writers: Annie Marhefka, Ashley Knowlton, Margo DeBiasio, Cassie Mannes-Murray, Alexandria Faulkenbury , Jennifer Hernandez, Bethany Jarmul, Marin Smith, Melanie Faranello, Anjali Vaidya MER Books…
Parent (verb): to be or act as a parent. Words Ambriel Floyd Bostic James Callan Alisa Childress Hayes Davis Ashley Espinoza Jennifer Furner Mike Gray Francesca Leader Elizabeth O’Rourke Ellen June Wright Art Sally Brown Sofia Chapman Rachael Grad Parent (verb) Rachael Grad – “Mommy Mayhem – Elephant and Doll” Sofia Chapman, “Look After Baby” Sally Brown, “Art Time Mama Rainbow” Artist Bios A mom of three, Rachael Grad left practicing law to study painting full-time at the New York Studio School and New York University before transferring to OCAD…
Literary Folio Curated by J.L. Scott The phrase “the joy of motherhood” has become somewhat trite, full of connotations held over from a time when nobody was willing to admit that not all of motherhood is, in fact, joyful. I started to wonder where the joy in being a mother actually is. We all, of course, love our kiddos, but to find true joy in all the muck of school and athletics and doctors’ appointments and diaper changes and meltdowns? That I wondered about. Looking at my own life, I started to see a pattern. Yes, there were the…