Mom Writer's Literary Magazine

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ABOUT THE MAGAZINE

Our Mission Statement

The Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, an online literary magazine, features writing by mothers on the ups and downs and many challenges of motherhood. We publish creative nonfiction essays, columns, book reviews, and profiles about mom writers.

The Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine features writing that is vivid, complex, and down-to-earth. We are not looking for “sugar-coated” material. Our philosophy is simple: Motherhood is always worthy of literature. We are a literary magazine for mothers with something to say. We’re proud to have published essays that are poignant, smart, and sometimes, humorous.

The Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine is also a resource for the literary community. We provide author profiles, book reviews, and our writer’s guidelines.

Here at The Mom Writer's Literary Magazine we know that being a mom takes more than the act of giving birth or adopting a child. Being a mom takes constant devotion and psychological work that goes on throughout your entire life. The Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine honors the fulfilling and tedious work that women do by making their stories visible through print.

About the Editors

Paula Schmitt - Founder and Editor-in-Chief, is a writer living in Vermont with her husband and five children. She has been featured in The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Herald, The Burlington Free Press, The Times Argus, Kids VT, Adopting for Tomorrow magazine, Adoption Today magazine, Penwomanship magazine, The Herald of Randolph, and in online parenting magazines such as ThePhilosophicalmother.com and RaisingOurKids.com. Her syndicated column runs on various websites, including JustForMom.com and SanityCentral.com. She also has her syndicated column in Kids VT Family Newspaper and has been quoted in American Baby magazine, Parenting magazine, Family Circle magazine, All You magazine and Real Simple magazine. Her award-winning book, Living In a Locker Room: A Mom’s Tale of Survival in a Houseful of Boys is available at your favorite online retailer and at all bookstores. She launched her radio talk show for mom authors, Mom Writer's Talk Radio, November of 2005. You can read Paula’s writing and get more information about her book at her website paulaschmitt.com.

Samantha Gianulis, Managing Editor and Regular Columnist, is a mom writer living in San Diego, California with her husband and their three children. Her first book, Little Grapes on the Vine…Mommy’s Musings on Food & Family comes out April 2007 (Wyatt Mackenzie Publishing). She has been published in San Diego Family Magazine, in the book Mommyhood Diaries: Living the Chaos One Day at a Time by Julie Watson Smith, on longstoryshort.us, recipestoday.com, sandiegomama.com, and has written for Total 180! Magazine. Her website is www.samanthagianulis.com. Check out her blog at http://samathagianlis.blog.com.

Jessica Ramsey Golden , Copy Editor, spent the last several years on staff at the award-winning weekly, The Northern Light where she held a variety of positions including reporter, managing editor, and columnist. Her poetry has been featured in Understory and The Rectangle. She is the 2006 winner of the Eleanor B. North Poetry Award. She currently spends her days trying to figure out this motherhood thing, with the help of Esmé - her infant on the brink of toddlerhood. This spring, Jessica will graduate from the University of Alaska Anchorage with a BA in English.

Jackie Papandrew, Profiles Editor and Regular Columnist, airs out her rather soiled sense of humor about everything under the sun – from the comfort of granny panties to the agony of aging gums and sagging, er, gams. She tickles the funny bone with tales of troublesome teenagers, the trials of testosterone, and using Formula 409 as foreplay. Jackie's writing has won awards from the Florida Magazine Association, the American Association of Business Press and the Florida Freelance Writers Association, among others. Her humor columns have appeared in a variety of publications, including the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Please visit JackiePapandrew.com to read additional humor columns and to sign up for a FREE email version of Airing My Dirty Laundry. You can contact Jackie at Jackie@JackiePapandrew.com.

Tracy Lyn Moland , Co-Cover Editor, Reviews Editor, and Regular Columnist - Over the past few years, best selling author Tracy Lyn Moland, B. Ed. has established herself as a highly sought after and internationally recognized life management and marketing expert. You may recognize Tracy Lyn’s ideas and advice from magazines like Reader’s Digest, Chatelaine, or Women’s Day as well as her series on Good Morning Canada and appearance on Living it Up! With Ali and Jack. She has been featured in over 500 media outlets and presented in three countries. Her expertise has lead to her work as a spokesperson for Johnsonville Sausages, Crayola, TJ Maxx, and Whirlpool appliances. Tracy Lyn’s books Mom Management and Quotes of Inspiration have provided much needed advice and sanity in our crazy world.

Stephanie McCarty, Co-Cover Editor and Regular Columnist, is a freelance writer and public relations consultant. Stephanie worked in PR and media relations full-time for more than a decade, before starting her own writing and consulting career. She grew up in Florida, where she earned her B.A. in English (Creative Writing) from The Florida State University. Stephanie has lived in various parts of the country, including Washington DC, where she earned an M.A. in Political Management from The George Washington University. While in DC, she worked as a press secretary on Capitol Hill, and in the public affairs departments of a national public relations agency, a large university, and a major corporation. She has also served as spokesperson for two political campaigns.

Melissa Fulwider, Writer’s Resource Editor - Mom, writer, chief cook and bottle washer. Married with two toddlers, she never runs out of blog fodder. She writes regularly for OcalaCafe’.com and Underwired Magazine. She has contributed to Mommy Mentors web site, conducts The Adland Interviews Series, and is the web master for several sites, including her own (TheWriteTimes.com). Being in her early thirties, she is re-designing her life around kids, chaos, and minor catastrophes. Melissa absorbs trivia, enjoys classical music, and is a tenacious Tetris player.

Veronica Hosking, Poetry Editor, is a stay at home mom, which works out well for her writing career. Her two daughters are a great inspiration for her writing. She wrote a creative nonfiction story, "Carousel," about her oldest daughter's love of horses. The story was printed in the anthology, Forget Me Knots from the Front Porch (Obadiah Press 2003).
In the year 2005, she saw her second print publication - "In a Tree" was published in the anthology, Cosmic Brownies (Sun-rising Poetry Press). Her poem, "Morning Accolade" was published in Whispers of Inspiration (Sun Piper Press) later that same year.

Karrie McAllister, Webmaster, Illustrations Editor, and Regular Columnist, has dabbled in everything from coal mining to culinary classes. She and her family live in Northeast Ohio where conversations in the grocery store and pierogis are as common as Amish buggies. Her local column, Small Town Soup, appears in local newspapers and her writing has appeared on numerous web sites. She is slowly discovering the benefits of being a stay at home mom, including mid-afternoon naps, staying in pajamas until noon, as many leftover PBJ sandwich crusts as she wants, and being constantly entertained by her two nutty children. Read more of Karrie at her website, www.KarrieMcAllister.com.

About the Columnists

Lucie Bouchard Antoniazzi, Regular Columnist, is a work-at-home mom with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a specialization in telecommunications from Concordia University in Montreal. She chose to stay home full time with her three children after working as a telecommunications engineer for twelve years. When her youngest child started school in 2002, she decided to pursue her second passion: writing. Lucie now works from home as a freelance writer, editor, and web designer. She currently writes mainly for adults but loves to write for children, too. Her writing has been published at justformom.com, sanitycentral.com, institutechildrenslit.com, and reallygreatinfo.com. In February of 2005, she sold her first children's piece to Highlights for Children magazine. Lucie is also senior editor and webmaster for justformom.com and works part-time for a Montreal engineering firm where she is responsible for the development and management of technical training manuals and materials. You can find out more about Lucie's work by visiting her web site at www.LucieBouchardAntoniazzi.com. In her spare time, Lucie likes to read, listen to music, take tae-bo classes, and spend as much time as she can with her family. She lives with her husband and their three children in Laval, Quebec, Canada.

Jennifer Brown, Regular Columnist, is a freelance writer with award-winning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appearing in over a dozen publications around the world. Jennifer's work has appeared in Writer's Journal, Australia's The Messenger, Long Story Short, and Simple Joy, just to name a few. Jennifer most enjoys writing humor essays, and her humor column, "Adrift in the Gene Pool," appears bi-weekly in The Liberty Sun News. In 2005, Jennifer's humor essay, "Fling Shui for Beginners," won first prize in the global humor category of the Erma Bombeck contest. Jennifer is also a book reviewer for Bookpleasures, Road to Romance, Foreword Reviews, and TCM Reviews, and teaches essay-writing and book reviewing classes for Writer's Success.com and humor writing classes at Long Story Short School of Writing. To find out more about Jennifer's work, visit www.freewebs.com/jennifer_brown.

Nicole Dean, Regular Columnist, was born and raised in the Northwoods of Wisconsin - watching deer play in her backyard, swimming in the many lakes, and trying to stay warm in the white, snowy winters. After college, she married her college sweetheart and headed west to Portland, Oregon. Eight years and two children later, she and her family moved to the Gulf of Mexico where the snowplows are only used for pushing the beautiful white sand from the beaches off the roads. A proud work at home mom (WAHM), Nicole is the owner and creator of ShowMomTheMoney.com, for which she was awarded the WAHM Community MVP of the Year 2004 by WAHMTalkRadio.com. Her newest creation, RomanceYourHusband.com is designed to help couples stay friends throughout their marriage. Nicole is not a psychologist, nor is she a marriage therapist. RomanceYourHusband.com is meant for women who are in respectful, healthy relationships to find fun ways to keep the romance alive. 'Til Death Do Us Part' can be a long time. So, why not make the most of it? When she's not snuggling her husband, playing with her children, working, or dodging hurricanes, she enjoys reading, gardening, belly dancing, laughing often, and experiencing the joys of life.

Sharon J. O’Donnell, Regular Columnist, is an award-winning newspaper columnist, who specializes in humor columns. Since 1998, Sharon has been a columnist for The Cary News, in Cary, NC (just outside of Raleigh) and has won awards for those columns. She has also written for Good Housekeeping, The News & Observer, and Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards.

Sharon is a 1984 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (she used to live in the same dorm as Michael Jordan!!) with a degree in print/broadcast journalism. Since then she’s worked in radio promotions, special events planning, public speaking, and public relations.

Her current project is a humorous book of essays about what it’s like to be the only woman in a houseful of males, dealing with a husband, three sons, and a male dog.

Sharon also writes fiction. In 1997, her novel manuscript, Hand-Me-Downs, was a finalist in the Heekin Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the novel-in-progress division. An excerpt from her current novel-in-progress, Bluebirds Fly, was published in the Sunday Reader section of The News & Observer, the Raleigh paper, in December of 2002. In the spring of 2003, she won third place in the short story division of The Paul Gillette Memorial Writing Contest, sponsored by the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.

Since 2000, she’s taught narrative writing through week-long writing residency workshops in schools and is a writer-in-residence through the United Arts Council. She has also done public relations consulting that has resulted in successful media coverage for various programs and events.

Jacob’s Ladder, a volunteer group she helped start in honor of her nephew who underwent a successful bone marrow transplant in 1993, won a national award called the HOPE award in 1997 for raising testing money and promoting the bone marrow registry to minorities.

She lives in Cary with her husband Kevin and their three sons ages 14, 11, and 5 (ages of this writing in late 2005).

Her Websites are www.momsofboys.org and www.sharonodonnell.com.

Lisa Rickwood, Regular Columnist, is passionate about helping people slow down and enjoy their lives. She is the founder of Escape The Pace^®, a business dedicated to helping people live a happier, relaxed life while pursuing careers, raising families, and making their dreams come true. This was a spin-off from her highly regarded book, Escape The Pace: 100 Fun And Easy Ways To Slow Down And Enjoy Life. Lisa has helped dozens of professionals, entrepreneurs, and executives improve their lives by offering: seminars, play-shops, keynote talks, books, greeting cards, gift boxes, e-books, and an e-zine.

Lisa was born in Vancouver, Canada, and raised in the Okanagan in British Columbia. She has a visual art degree from the University of Victoria and is an accomplished international visual artist. She also spent years working for two large newspapers as an advertising consultant before becoming co-owner of a high-end menswear store with her husband on Vancouver Island. When she’s not at the store or working on her business, she’s taking care of her husband, two sons, and step-son.

She is a sought-after speaker and has lectured at colleges, Health and Wellness Shows, business networks, Rotary Clubs, and large organizations. She is a regular contributor to Woman’s World magazine as well as Synergy and Pure Woman magazine. She has been featured in Common Ground magazine and the The Berkeley Psychic Institute Newspaper. Two well-known U.S. authors will feature her in their books, respectively, Mom CEO and Less Than Perfect.

Lisa is passionate about being involved in a world-wide movement about work/life balance and was asked to participate in a conference in Seattle called: Take Back Your Time (www.timeday.org). She looks forward to helping others ‘take back’ their lives.

Karen Rinehart, Regular Columnist, is the creator of The Bus Stop Mommies^TM a syndicated newspaper and magazine humor columnist, public speaker and author of the book, Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True To Life. Karen has been dubbed this generation’s Erma Bombeck while Editor & Publisher Magazine named her a possible replacement for Dave Barry. Karen lives in Concord, NC with one husband, two children, and two goofball dogs.