Lea Grover is a writer and toddler-wrangler living on Chicago’s South Side. When she isn’t cultivating an impressive dust bunny collection she waxes philosophic about raising interfaith children, marriage after a terminal cancer diagnosis, and vegetarian cooking.

Keep reading

Arnebya is the voice behind the lifestyle blog What Now and Why, where she discusses topics such as parenting, mental health, race relations, and healthy eating. A government contract writer/editor by day, Arnebya is also a married mom to three. 

A 2013 Listen To Your Mother speaker and a three-time BlogHer Voice of the Year, Arnebya’s writing has appeared on multiple online parenting sites. She is the recipient of a local DC award for fiction, the Larry Neal Writer’s Award. Her work is also published in the Washington City Paper’s fiction issue (2013). As a speaker at BlogHer’s HealthMinder Day in 2013 on the topic of mental health in the online space, Arnebya returns to BlogHer this year in the “writing lab” to discuss grammar.

Most recently, Arnebya took on new territory in her love of public speaking and signed on to counsel previously homeless women on resume and cover letter writing, and interview skills. A native Washingtonian, she can often be found lobbying against the government’s incessant ill treatment of the District, and mumbling taxation without representation.

Keep reading

Originally from NJ, Alyson now lives in the Midwest but has kept her sarcastic cynical Jersey attitude. You can find her blogging about the perpetual shit storm of her life at TheShitastrophy.com. She also has more to offer the world than just humorous observations and can be found flexing her brain at LeftyPop.com where she is a Featured Contributor. Alyson’s other works have been published at Mamapedia.com, WhatTheFlicka.com, InThePowderRoom.com, and BonBonBreak.com.

She is also working on a collection of humorous essays in hopes of proving to others they really could have it worse – they could be her. She has branched out for the Her Stories Project and shared a personal poignant side of her life, the collapse of a good friendship and how through her daughter she was able to learn a valuable lesson.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google +.

Keep reading

Andrea Jarrell’s essays have appeared in The New York Times; Narrative Magazine; Memoir; Brain, Child; Literary Mama; The Washington Post; Washingtonian Magazine; and The Christian Science Monitor. She writes about love, sex, family, and mothering.

Her My Other Ex essay “What We Don’t Say” is part of a collection of personal essays that build on her New York Times “Modern Love” column – “A Measure of Desire.” “What We Don’t Say” traces a friendship that begins in college with a doppelgänger pair of young women who become inseparable.

Jarrell grew up in Los Angeles and has lived in Austin, Santa Fe, New York City, coastal Maine, and Paris. Place factors into her memoir in significant ways. By day she is the principal of a marketing firm specializing in colleges and universities. She earned her BA at Scripps College and her MFA in creative writing and literature at Bennington College and is a recipient of a Martin Dibner Writing Fellowship. She now lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two children.

Read more about Andrea at her author website.

Keep reading

Alethea Kehas lives and writes in Bow, New Hampshire, where she shares a home with her husband, two children, two dogs and two cats. In 2008 she began to write her life stories in the form of a memoir, A Girl Named Truth, for which she is seeking publication. The story she contributed to this collection, “The Girl with the Pink Bow,” was adapted from her manuscript, which together explore the themes of silence and truth. Alethea’s healing and writing journey have led her to publications in various literary journals, including: Complete Wellbeing, The Whirlwind Review, Airplane Reading, TouchPoetry and Emerge Literary Journal. In 2012 she started her own business, Inner Truth Healing, where she devotes time and energy to helping adults and children heal and uncover their truths.

Keep reading

Alison Lee is a former PR and marketing professional turned work-at-home mother. After a 10-year career in various PR agencies, and of the world’s biggest sports brands, Alison traded in launch parties, product launches, international press junkets and world travel, for sippy cups and diapers, breastfeeding and potty training. Alison has been actively over-sharing stories of motherhood on her blog, Writing, Wishing since 2011. Her writing has also been featured on The Huffington Post, Mamalode, Queen Latifah, and Scary Mommy. She is a weekly blogger at Everyday Family, and founder of social media consulting business, Little Love Media, specializing in working with bloggers, self-published authors, and small businesses.  Alison lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with her husband, two boys and is expecting boy/ girl twins in October 2014.

As a work-at-home mother, Alison relies heavily on the Internet as a source of information and friendships. Through blogging, she has made some incredible connections, particularly with one fellow mom on the other side of the world in New Jersey. For two years, Alison and her long-distance BFF talked every day, until their relationship fractured. In her essay, Alison writes about the concreteness of online connections, how friends you’ve never met in person impacts your life as much as the ones you have, and the real heartbreak that comes when that friendship ends.

You can connect with Alison on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Keep reading