Jessica Smock, Author at The HerStories Project

Jessica Smock

HerStories Voices: The Mommy Inside the Rocks

We’re so happy to present to you the second HerStories Voices column. This week’s essay is from Kathryn Wallingford. In Kathryn’s own words, her essay is about “rocks, remembering why I love Toni Morrison, and teaching my son to put apples in his pocket. How do we allow the continued growth of an imagination when we send our children to a system of order, structure, and real time? This is a mother clinging onto her son.”

For May, in recognition of Mother’s Day, we’re looking for essays about a moment or an experience during early motherhood that changed you. Our upcoming anthologies Mothering Through the Darkness: Women on the Postpartum Experience and So Glad They Told Me: Women on Getting Real About Motherhood both are about these early days, months, and years of new motherhood. Tell us your stories of about a “moment of change” as a new (or new-ish) mother! For more information about submitting to HerStories Voices, read here. Submit your motherhood-themed essays to us by May 1st!

In the beginning, my beginning, I marked time with a rock in my pocket. The smooth glass of the eastern shores. The Bright Angel shale reminded me of the hot Arizona sun. I stole the granite of Wyoming and lined my freshman dorm with pieces of Appalachian quartz.

Eventually the rocks were thrown into one box. Sand, dirt, silt, and clays sifted together. They were the hot desert air, those cool Montana nights, and the Himalayan sunset, bounded and carried from home to home.

Until finally my four-year old found them. One cold, winter day they made their way into his hands.

“Can I paint on them? Can I give them to my friends at school?” he asked.

With no hesitation, I replied, “Of course.”

What else was I saving my memories for? To be thrown on another window sill?

So he pulled the rocks out one by one.

It was his Mommy Before.

Mommy in-love on Roan Mountain.

Mommy scared, almost ready to jump into Crater Lake.

I tried to tell him the life behind each rock so he could be there too. In the 5 years that he has been on this earth I have had two additional children. As a result, I have been pregnant for approximately 550 days, a nursing mother for almost 720. He deserves to know this Mommy.

The Mommy inside the rocks.

As he paints I also remember how much I love these places. But it is hard to describe what he can not see. His Mommy before. I do not have many pictures to correspond to the collection.

He picks up the rocks one by one and his questions multiply.

“How cold was the lake? What did the lake look like? Were you scared? Did you want to jump? What did it feel like? How big was the mountain? You climbed into a canyon? Where was Daddy?”

The questions seem to exhaust him too. Moving away from my stories and the rocks and my geology 101 lesson, he begins to create a picture of his own. He goes into his own world and I migrate to the laundry pile that needs to be folded. But he soon comes to me with his creation. His work is red paper smothered in glue and white dots. I make out my name. I make out his name.

“It is beautiful. What is it?” I ask.

“It is a rocket ship taking us to the moon and people are throwing snowballs at us,” he answers.

“I love it.” And I do.

I am not sure how my rock collection gave away to the artistic expression or how to explain if snow could or could not land on a spaceship.

This was his understanding of our conversation. A new world has came alive.

He has started kindergarten and real time replaces the abstract. School supply list- a plastic, red folder. 24 twistable Crayola crayons. Room- # 223. Rules- three warnings and then time out. “Zero-voice” in halls. 10:45 am- lunch. Curriculum- Science and Math in Spanish. Reading and Writing in English. Estoy contento. There is a correct way to say contento. He will be corrected.

Before his first day he asks me how to open a 3-ring binder. There is a correct way to do this too. By the end of the day he is tired. There seems to be less time to chat and rummage through a box of rocks.

In her poetry collection, Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith writes, “We move in an out of our rooms, leaving our dust, our voices pooled on sills. We hurry from door to door in a downpour.”

I read this and think about how badly I am getting drenched. My forgotten voice, my racing legs. Where am I going? In and out. Drop off kids at school. Change dirty diaper. Nurse the baby. Time to cook, for who else is going to cook? Cook dinner. Stop, snap a picture.

And now he has homework. He knows the bad kids and the good kids. He joins the race. The downpour continues. We both get drenched.

We race for explanations and for the finite moments, to explain and to store memories. When are we left to imagine, believing in what you can not see?

As a teenager I read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon when I heard about Heaven’s Gate cult mass suicide. Thirty-nine individuals from Heaven’s Gate took their lives with the belief they could reach an alien spacecraft following the comet Hale-Bopp. I watched the news coverage from a condo in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was my spring break. I obsessed over the news reports when I was supposed to be snow skiing. I tried to imagine the world was really going to end. It seemed crazy. It seemed unimaginable.

But as I dismissed the cult members as lunatics I read Song of Solomon engrossed with the character of Pilate, the woman born without a navel. “She was a like a large black tree,” Morrison writes.

I tried to imagine such a woman. I remember feeling small and that the world was large. I did not know how 39 people could kill themselves. I did not know if a woman could really be born with a smooth stomach.

I was 18 and and my world was being deconstructed.

And now here I am again. I have a five year-old to remind me to raise my eyes a bit. To look a little farther. He needs to see outside the present moment. He wants to see a dinosaur. He wants to know how you get to heaven. On an airplane? I need to get him there. Life past our five senses.

I pick him up for school and he tells me about the fire drill and sings, “Down by the banks where the watermelon grows…” It is his favorite from preschool. He tells me about the school rules and what he had for lunch. I watch him fasten his seatbelt and we drive in silence.

When we get home I put away the book bag and the homework and we walk outside.We dig at ants, we suck on popsicles. We smell cut grass. The sound of rockets in sky become catalyst for the microcosm of the unknown. He asks if the rocket ship can see us. He asks if I would rather be a bird or a rocket.

What a damn good question! I tell him a bird.

He begins to climb our crab- apple tree.

In two years, he will probably not want me to watch him climb the tree.

In five years, he will have soccer or band or art practice after school.

In ten years, he will have his driving license. He will not want to climb the tree.

In fifteen years, he will will likely be living elsewhere.

He sticks an apple in his pocket. I do not tell him that the apple will not fare well in this pocket. He finds another apple to store away and climbs closer to the sky.

Kathryn lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her three sons and husband. On good days she writes about religion, mothering, and the natural world. You can find more of her work in Brain, Child and Literary Mama. Visit her blog at http://thisisenough.weebly.com/

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MY OTHER EX Chosen as a Finalist for INDIEFAB Book of the Year

Stephanie and I received some exciting news last week! MY OTHER EX: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends was named a finalist in the Anthology Category for Foreword Reviews’ 17th Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards.

From Foreword Reviews:

Each year, Foreword Reviews shines a light on a select group of indie publishers, university presses, and self-published authors whose work stands out from the crowd.

In the next three months, a panel of more than 100 volunteer librarians and booksellers will determine the winners in 63 categories based on their experience with readers and patrons.

Foreword Reviews will celebrate the winners during a program at the American Library Association Annual Conference in San Francisco on Friday, June 26 at 6 p.m. at the Pop Top Stage in the exhibit hall. Everyone is welcome. The Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Foreword Reviews’ 2014 INDIEFAB Publisher of the Year Award will also be announced during the presentation.

About Foreword: Foreword Magazine, Inc is media company featuring a FOLIO: award winning quarterly print magazine Foreword Reviews and a website devoted to independently published books. In the magazine, they feature reviews of the best 160 new titles from independent publishers, university presses, and noteworthy self-published authors. Their website features daily updates: reviews along with in-depth coverage and analysis of independent publishing from a team of more than 100 reviewers, journalists, and bloggers. The print magazine is available at most Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million newsstands or by subscription.

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HerStories Project Voices: Dancing At the Edge of the Spotlight

We at HerStories love personal essays. We love reading them. We love writing them. We love teaching them.

The idea for HerStories Voices came from teaching our personal essay writing class. We were blown away by the quality of the writing from our students, and we wanted a way to recognize in our own small way that kind of writing: stories by women about the moments — big and small — that shape our lives.

We can’t wait to share this first story with you by writer and teacher Rachel Furey. This essay spoke to me (Jessica) as an introvert, as a sibling, and as a romantic. It’s about the discoveries that we can make when we don’t put ourselves in the spotlight. We love Rachel’s clear, self-aware voice.

Don’t forget to check back in two weeks for our next Voices essay and for an announcement about our next HerStories Voices call for submissions… We think — and hope — you’ll like it!

I’ve always been quiet. Not just in the sense of being soft-spoken. I also avoid the spotlight at all costs. Or, if we’re sticking to the light metaphor, I even do my best to stay out from under porch lights.

I’m the sort of person who refrains from taking a ticket for door prizes. If someone insists, I squeeze the ticket in my sweaty palm and pray my number isn’t called. Once, when our birthdays became the numbers through which door prizes were earned, I lied about my birthday to avoid having to standup in front of twenty people and pick a book as a prize. And I’m a writing instructor. I dig books. I know how crazy this all sounds, but instinct kicks in and this is the sort of thing that happens.

In second grade, I threw-up during our morning assembly. Right in the middle of “America the Beautiful.” Vomit was running all down my hand and arm, dripping to the floor. And I still couldn’t say anything. I just stood there like a vomit fountain while everyone around me continued to sing and the kid standing next to me shot me a crooked smile that either meant he was really into the song or he thought I was the most messed up person he had ever seen. I stood there until a teacher finally discovered me and led me off to the nurse.

My life is full of moments like this. I once played three plays of an intramural basketball game with a cut above my eye, blood easing its way down my cheek because I didn’t want to be that person who stopped the game—didn’t want that college kid with the first aid kit taking a good long look at me while everyone on the court watched on. When I came down with shingles in my late twenties, I hopped onto my bike and rode to the doctor because it was easier than calling up a friend and saying, “Hey, I have this weird rash that the internet says may or may not be shingles, so do you think you could give me a ride?”

The biggest fight I ever got into with my sister was over a school assignment that required interviewing a dozen people. Neither of us wanted to do it. We cranked out papers like machines—we went on to graduate first and second in our class—but interviewing people, now that threw us for a loop.

During my freshman year of college, when I felt like I had a dozen older sisters—what I’d dreamt of for so many years—I wrote my own version of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” put the names of my dorm-mates in it and taped it to their doors at four in the morning when no one would be awake. I didn’t sign my name. I wanted them to know they were loved, but I didn’t want them to know that it was me who adored them so much.

In ninth grade, when I read To Kill a Mockingbird, my favorite scene wasn’t one of the courtroom ones or even a moment with Scout. It was that scene toward the end of the book when Mr. Tate tells Atticus he can’t go “draggin’ [Boo Radley] with his shy ways into the limelight.” I had to close the book for a minute. I’d never felt so understood. I couldn’t believe that someone actually got it.

But don’t mistake this to mean that I altogether abhor the spotlight. I’m human. I want to be a part of the big moments. I crave adventure. I even like being noticed on occasion. So when my brother and fiancé asked if I’d get ordained and be the one to perform the ceremony at their wedding, I said ‘yes’ even though it meant a spotlight moment.

Sure, I was nervous as all hell. It was my brother’s big day. It was a bigger life changer than the high school graduation ceremony at which I had to make a speech. If I blew it, I was tarnishing the start of something special. I’d have families on both sides to answer to. I wore a black shrug for a reason: to hide the sweat.

I stood on the edge of a golf course under a wedding arch. The flowers woven into the arch’s frame bobbed in the breeze. My brother stood beside me. We were in front of the audience—on the stage, so to speak—and the beginning was perfect because not a soul looked at us. They were all staring at the bride. My brother threw a shy smile my way and then watched his soon-to-be wife come down the aisle. When the bride arrived and my brother took her hand, the two of them—both taller than me—hid me. In a good way. In the pictures, you can see my head below and behind their chins. I was like the set for the climax of a Tony award-winning play.

My voice cracked at first, and I could tell I wasn’t loud enough. No surprise there. I squeezed the binder that held my script. I kept reading. My tongue started moving more smoothly. As my words found an even pace and cameras flashed, it occurred to me that I was in the spotlight in the very best way. I was dancing at the edge of it. My words were coming out, but they didn’t matter half as much as the people in front of me. So it was easy to keep talking.

At the edge of that spotlight, I got to see things no one else did. I saw tears slip down the bride’s face, saw my brother’s eyes track those tears, heard the bride’s sniffles, my brother’s shoes shifting in the grass beneath us. I handed over the rings, caught the fine tremors in their fingers. I was close enough to smell the flowers above us. I was close enough to hear both of them breathing. At one point, I swore we all locked eyes. All three of us. I know that’s pretty much impossible to do, but that’s what I felt dancing at the edge of the spotlight.

Rachel Furey is a Writing Instructor at Lincoln University of Missouri. She earned her PhD from Texas Tech and her MFA from Southern Illinois University. Her work has appeared in One Teen Story, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Chautauqua, Women’s Basketball Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a winner of Yemassee’s William Richey Short Fiction Award and Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize. Her story “Birth Act” was listed as a Distinguished Story of 2009 in Best American Short Stories.

Want to submit to HerStories Voices? Click here!

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Mothering Through the Darkness: A Call for Submissions and a Writing Contest

Stephanie and I began thinking about the topic for our next anthology as soon as we finished gathering submissions for My Other Ex. We had a lot of ideas, but nothing felt like a topic that we urgently wanted to tackle.

That is, until one of our contributors, Alexandra Rosas, describing her experience with Postpartum Progress and its Climb Out of the Darkness event, suggested postpartum depression. She had been inspired by the stories of the survivors that she met and thought that so many women could benefit from hearing them. As someone who went through my own postpartum struggles, I was immediately drawn to this idea, as was Stephanie.

Today we’re thrilled to tell you about our next anthology, a call for submissions, and our first writing contest, in partnership and in support of Postpartum Progress.

MOTHERING THROUGH THE DARKNESS: Stories of Postpartum Struggle

Approximately 1 in 7 women suffer from postpartum depression after having a baby. Many more may experience depression during pregnancy, postpartum anxiety, OCD, and other mood disorders. Postpartum depression is in fact the most common pregnancy-related complication, more widespread than gestational diabetes, preterm labor, or pre-eclampsia. Yet confusion and misinformation about postpartum depression and anxiety — from their symptoms to timelines to prevalence to treatment — are still widespread. Myths surrounding mothers’ mental health challenges can have devastating effects on women’s well-being as well as their identities as mothers, too often leading to shame and inadequate treatment. Although postpartum and antepartum depression and anxiety are temporary when treated, untreated mood disorders can lead to long-term consequences for both a mother and her child. A mother can feel very alone, ashamed, and hopeless. And keep silent.

Mothering Through the Darkness: Stories of Postpartum Struggles will be a unique anthology with the goal of breaking that silence.

With this collection of essays, we will try to dispel these myths and focus on the diversity of women’s experiences, through the voices of mothers themselves.

We are also thrilled to be partnering with Katherine Stone and Postpartum Progress on this project. Postpartum Progress is a national 501c3 nonprofit organization that is laser-focused on maternal mental health. The organization has three key focus areas: raising awareness, fighting stigma and providing peer support for pregnant and new mothers. Postpartum Progress’ award-winning blog is the most widely read blog in the world on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, with more than 1.1 million page views each year.

10% of the profits from the sales of this book will go toward Postpartum Progress and its mission of supporting maternal mental health. Click here to find out more about Postpartum Progress’s work in raising awareness and supporting mothers.

Call for Submissions: Mothering Through the Darkness

The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

The HerStories Project is seeking unpublished, first-person essays from mothers about their experiences with postpartum depression, anxiety, or other mental health struggles during or after pregnancy.* We’re looking for well-crafted, true accounts that explore and examine aspects of this experience.

Submissions must feature a strong and compelling narrative. We’re looking for well-written prose, rich detail, and a strong, distinctive voice. (For more about what we’re looking for, here is an article that I wrote about personal essay writing with a few more suggestions.)

Guidelines: Previously unpublished and between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Please also submit a short bio of 50-100 words, including previously publications. To submit, see the link at the bottom of this page.

Deadline: January 1, 2015 *recently extended from December 1st

* One of the first questions that we got in talking to women that we knew about this project is whether a woman needs to have been formally diagnosed by a medical professional with postpartum depression or another postpartum mood disorder to submit. The answer is no! Postpartum mood disorders are vastly under-identified and under-treated. Many, many new mothers have symptoms that are not fully addressed or explained.

The symptoms of postpartum depression include: loss of appetite, insomnia, intense irritability and anger, fatigue, loss of joy, mood swings, feelings of guilt and shame. Read more from Postpartum Progress about what PPD feels like, in understandable terms, and see if any of these symptoms matched your own experience.

The Writing Contest

Your submission to Mothering Through the Darkness will be simultaneously entered into the first HerStories Project Writing Contest. (see details below) The HerStories Project will award $500 to one submission for Best Essay and $100 to two runners-up. All three essays will be published in the book, and each winner will receive a paperback copy.

To cover the costs of sponsoring the contest, we are asking for a $10 reading fee. If this fee presents a financial hardship that would otherwise prevent you from submitting an essay, we will waive this fee and this will not affect the status of your entry.

To submit, see the link at the bottom of this page.

Judges: The essays will be judged by the editors of the HerStories Project, as well as several talented writers whose lives as mothers or as clinicians have been affected by postpartum depression and anxiety. These judges will include Lisa Belkin, Kate Hopper, Katrina Alcorn, Julia Fierro, Dr. Jessica Zucker, and Lindsey Mead. Essays will be judged on their emotional power, originality, and quality of their prose.

Judge bios:

Katrina Alcorn is the author of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink. She is a writer and a design consultant. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and documentary filmmaking from UC Berkeley and blogs at WorkingMomsBreak.com.

Lisa Belkin is the Senior National Correspondent for Yahoo News. Previously she has held staff positions at the New York Times and The Huffington Post. She is the author of three books and the editor of two anthologies.

Julia Fierro is the founder of The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she recently published her first novel, Cutting Teeth, an Oprah Pick of the Week.

Kate Hopper is the author of Ready for Air: A Journey through Premature Motherhood and Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers. Kate holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and a Sustainable Arts Grant. She teaches classes and holds retreats for mother writers.

Lindsey Mead is a corporate headhunter with an MBA from Harvard who also writes for her popular blog, A Design So Vast. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies.

Jessica Zucker, PhD is a psychologist specializing in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health. A consultant to PBS’ This Emotional Life and the Every Mother Counts campaign with Christy Turlington, she has been a contributor to NPR and is currently writing her first book for Routledge on maternal attachment.

*************

To submit your essay to the editors of The HerStories Project, please visit here:

If you are entering the HerStories Project Writing Contest, please click here to pay the $10 reading fee. If you would like the fee to be waived, please mention this in your submission.

(Note: If you are submitting only to be considered for publication in the book — not to the contest — after you click the “Submit” button, please select “Mothering Through the Darkness: Stories of Postpartum Struggle.” If you are submitting to the contest — as well as to the book — please select the “HerStories Project Writing Contest.”)

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My Other Ex Contributors Dish About Their Essays and New Projects

It’s been more than a month since My Other Ex released! Recently we asked our contributors to reflect on the experience of writing, editing, and submitting their essays, as well as becoming a part of the HerStories Project community and their future projects.

How long did it take you to write and edit your essay for My Other Ex? Did you receive any feedback on it before you submitted it?

Elline Lipkin: About three weeks. Got great feedback from a local writing group I belong to.

Alyson Herzig: It took me about a month and I worked with a professional editor.

Katrina Willis: I wrote the essay in an afternoon and tweaked it for about a week or so. I didn’t let anyone read it before I submitted, and I didn’t tell anyone that I had submitted — not even my husband.

Jennifer Simon: Maybe 3 months? My husband and two writer friends all read and edited it.

Alethea Kehas: Not too long, since I adapted it from my memoir manuscript. It underwent some editing in the earlier stages.

Did you have any concerns about privacy, about protecting the identity of the characters in your essay, and about your essay affecting your present relationships? If so, how did you deal with your concerns?

Shannan Younger: I did, and while I had a few different friendships in mind to write about, I selected the one that would least impact present relationships. I did feel like I should tell my subject that I wrote about her, but my efforts to find her have been unsuccessful.

Katrina Willis: I wasn’t concerned about privacy. As a blogger, my life is pretty public, anyway. But my former friend and I do have mutual friends, and I was concerned about their reactions. My intent was not to defame, but to present my own feelings, my own viewpoint. I fully understand and respect that she has hers, too.

Estelle Erasmus: No. [My friend] Laura was involved every step of the way. I even changed some of the sentences based on her input.

Alison Lee: Yes, because I reconciled with the friend I wrote about. I asked her first if it was alright if I shared our story (she’d read the blog post I wrote), and she said, yes, go ahead! She also read the final draft before I sent it in for submission. I did change her name.

Other than your own, which essay resonated with you most deeply? Why?

Shannan Younger: Alethea Kehas’ story of tween struggles may have struck a chord with me both because of my experiences and because my daughter is in junior high now and I write about tween issues. She captured the pain that tween girls can cause each other, and it made me think about her mother, too, in terms of both what Althea did and did not share with her and her reaction. It hit home on multiple levels.

Estelle Erasmus: I would say Alexandra Rosas’ because she just wouldn’t get that the woman didn’t want any kind of deep friendship with her. She was lonely and I remember being so lonely in the beginning of motherhood when I hadn’t yet formed any kind of community. It was hard and I could definitely see my feelings leading to that kind of desperation. I actually grabbed a guy who had a baby girl my daughter’s age in the elevator of my building and asked (or was that demanded ) for him to have his wife call me. She was my first mom friend and my story is a happy one. Although she has moved away, we are still friends to this day.

Alyson Herzig: “Girls Interrupted” by Alexis Calabrese touched me deeply. Having a son with autism has taught me that many people don’t know what to say or do. For years others fell by the wayside leaving him and us looking in. I felt her pain when she realized that her friend had diminished her child and his life through the heartless play her husband had put on. Her friend Erika’s lack of understanding and compassion resonated with me, because I have lived that life. I live that life now.

Sandy Ebner: Each of the essays touched me deeply so it’s very difficult to single out just one. However, Alison Lee’s, “The Internet Breakup” really hit home for me because I’m going through something very similar to what she describes in her essay.

Katie Sluiter: Oh gosh. This is a hard choice. I am going to pick Arneyba Herndon’s because I laughed and got angry while I read it. I mean, if I was there, I would have at LEAST saved her sandwich for her!

Lea Grover: I think “Delilah.” The narrator was very much me, at the beginning of middle school. Unlike the Delilah of the story, though, my friend became incredibly abusive, and dominated my life for years. That story broke my heart, because there were so many times I wish I’d just disappeared and broken our friendship instead of sticking around, and the sense of regret in there about doing it kind of healed something in me that’s been broken for a long time.

What have you enjoyed most about being a part of this anthology?

Elline Lipkin: The incredible community online.

Shannan Younger: My favorite part has been hearing the stories from contributors of how they have heard from friends and sometimes reconnected, of being reminded that people change and that there’s hope for some people on whom we have given up.

Estelle Erasmus: The leadership of the editorial team, Jessica and Stephanie. They have gracefully and graciously navigated us through the publishing journey with them and in the process we have met and befriended each other.

Alison Lee: Everything. The thrill of seeing my name in print, of being part of the project alongside 34 other amazing writers and two incredible editors. Reading the reviews has been wonderful, learning about the reviewer’s stories and their thoughts about friendship. I’m just so proud to be part of this anthology.

Alexandra Rosas: Being able to no longer carry my story inside of me. I felt freed.

Sue Fagalde Lick: The sisterhood that has developed among the writers.

Alyson Herzig: The interaction with so many wonderful and amazing ladies that are outside my normal genre. I have been humbled by the credentials of the others. I have also been enjoying the camaraderie.

Lea Grover: Realizing that there is a much higher standard I should be holding myself to as a writer, and aspiring to do that.

Katie Sluiter: Other than the fact that I now have my own author page on Amazon, I have really loved the new connections I’ve made with the contributors. We are all pretty diverse, but this one thing – losing friends – has brought us together. It’s a pretty cool thing.

What is your advice to other writers who hope to get published in anthologies?

Alyson Herzig: Even if it is not your normal genre you should submit. Let your readers see all the many facets of you, not just one. It expands your base and builds a solidarity with a group of women that you most likely would not have had otherwise.

Kristin Shaw: Try, and try, and try again. First, polish your work before it’s submitted – it’s hard to see the mistakes in your own essay, and you become melded to the words you have created without looking at them objectively. It’s important to find a few editors you trust to give you honest improvement suggestions.

Victoria Fedden: Look for calls for submissions that speak to your experiences. Then try to imagine what the most common submissions will read like and be about and write the total opposite so that your piece stands out. Any way that you can be original or unique or find a new perspective on the topic will better your chances.

Alison Lee: Write and submit. In writing your story, stay true to your voice. Edit brutally. Ask for feedback and be prepared to take any criticism, because they’re there to help you. Then submit. Don’t think that your writing or story isn’t good enough.

What are your current and future writing projects?

Elline Lipkin: I’d love to write both essays and more reported pieces for sites like the Atlantic and Slate (dreaming here!) about things/topics that affect women and girls.

Estelle Erasmus: I am working on getting some of my essays published that have been taking space in my laptop for years. I sort of put stuff on hold in the early years of motherhood, but now it’s time to take everything off the back burner and begin again. I was thrilled to be published on Marie Claire and that is just the start for me. I’ve also reconnected with some publishing mentors from my early career and I’m excited to see where that will lead.

Alyson Herzig: I am working on my Mental Healthy anthology, having just gone through all the submissions. It will be published in 2015.

Kristin Shaw: One of my essays will be featured in Bannerwing Book’s Precipice anthology in October, and I have written two chapters for Carolyn Savage’s new book series (she is an author and Today show correspondent) that will be released early next year. I have written a children’s book with Kelly and Rick Dale from the History show American Restoration, and we’re hoping it will go to print later this year.

Katrina Willis: I just finished my next novel, tentatively titled “Parting Gifts.”

Sandy Ebner: I’m working on a short story about a Vietnam vet, and am getting ready to start a revision on the novel I’ve been working on for what seems like forever. I’d also like to do a collection of essays.

Lea Grover: I’m querying a memoir, and I’m working on an erotic fantasy e-book series. It’s AWFUL.

Victoria Fedden: I just finished a piece about postpartum depression and OCD and I am about to embark on my third memoir.

Jennifer Simon: I am publishing articles on various websites and working on my piece for the new anthology!

Alison Lee: I just had twins at 34 weeks, and I have many thoughts and emotions about our time in NICU. I plan to write a series of essays on this, as well as general experience with twins (and four kids!). I’m also keeping an eye out on future anthologies and other writing opportunities at various websites and magazines. I’d love to be published again!

Alethea Kehas: I’m working on some poetry and a Y/A book that would probably be in the category of Fantasy.

Katie Sluiter: I just submitted an article on using mental health issues in a secondary classroom (I’m an English teacher) to a scholarly journal. I am also working on an essay for the HerStories Project’s next anthology about Postpartum Mood Disorders. And I’m always writing alongside my students. Since they will soon be writing personal narratives, I have started my drafts so they can use them as mentor texts as they start their drafting processes.

Alexandra Rosas: Hoping to have my collection of 35 short stories published under cultural memoir/Latina heritage.

Sue Fagalde Lick: I’m marketing a novel and working on a memoir about the years I cared for my husband through Alzheimer’s disease.

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