writing life

I wasn’t part of this past weekend’s mad AWP melee but I was thinking about how the influx of an estimated 10,000 attendees filled with literary ambition creates its own kind of adrenaline and angst-filled elixir.  It led me to dig out a piece I wrote for an online magazine last spring, yet unfortunately, they never ran.  I corresponded with several major female poets to ask what their experience of gender bias in the literary world has been.  Plus ca change, I want to say, but the irony is that for women publishing, so very little has.

Just before this year’s AWP conference began, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts released this year’s “The Count” which starkly portrayed the woefully small pieces of the literary pie served up by women writers in major literary sources.  I wish I could say much was different from last year’s report, but it’s not the case.  One thing that is rising, however, is awareness of the gross discrepancies about who is published in the literary world. Here is the article I wrote last year, with excerpts from several prominent writers I was thrilled to correspond with:

Although T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month,” the first signs of spring bring the annual celebration of National Poetry Month.  This year, however, interest began to blossom early with the February release of “The Count” by the literary organization VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.

Founded by poet Cate Marvin in 2009 during a moment she describes as an homage to Tillie Olsen’s iconic story “I Stand Here Ironing,” Marvin, while folding her infant daughter’s clothes, began to contemplate why her panel on contemporary American women poets had been rejected for the competitive national Associated Writing Program conference. An email “seemed to blast right out of my head,” she writes, and within months her cri de coeur about lack of gender parity in the literary world had picked up a fierce momentum.  A year later, VIDA is thriving, with plans for a conference focusing on women’s writing, and moreover, a community that has the desire to shake up an imbalance that has been tolerated for too long.

The Count 2010 revealed stark pie charts that indict the top literary journals and highly regarded magazines for their abysmal inclusion of women — whether as contributors or authors reviewed or book reviewers.  Immediately, both outrage and “it’s about time” comments appeared as some editors went on the defensive about the results.  One humbled male reviewer called the study “in many ways a blunt instrument” with the suggestion that breakdown of its statistics would further illuminate the nuances of bias that surface in, as he writes, “the staggering differences between male and female representation.”  Meghan O’Rourke on Slate lauds the study but adds, “a task VIDA might usefully take on is a breakdown, by gender, of the genres reviewed and represented.”  Shock, debate and denial quickly raged in many literary sources with a mix of defensiveness and admirable get-to-the-bottom-of-this persistence. But, as O’Rourke tackles, the fundamental question behind the thin pie slices served up for women is, Why?

The answer, of course, is complex.  The oft-cited information that women enroll in MFA programs at an equal, if not higher, rate than men is clear, as is the fact that more women buy books in the United States, and are likely to be readers.  But breaking into the journals and magazines that can “make” a writer’s career by laying a direct pipeline to a high-profile agent or a publishing contract, or can compound the cultural capital of a positive review into a prestigious grant or even tenure-track job interview, seems to be about something else — the tactics of how one gains ground in the po’biz world or becomes part of the g/literati.

As talk swirled around the indisputable net effects of the VIDA stats, attention began to focus on the subtler issues surrounding how ambition and promotion are gendered. Blogosphere debate raged around topics such as how networks of male influence hold impact; the subtle, but real, assumptions behind who deserves a job; how fame is won; as well as the intangible but real sense that putting oneself forward as a writer requires a certain kind of brash ego more often cultivated by men.  And while most editors responded with culpable awareness, some offered that the flip solution of tokenism doesn’t solve the root problem.

The topics raised afresh by VIDA, unfortunately, are hardly new.  Just four years ago, an essay entitled “Numbers Trouble” co-written by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young in The Chicago Review targeted gender representation in the experimental poetry world. The two women counted bylines by women within anthologies, journals, major awards and blogs, confirming a rather dismal ratio.  The blog site of the venerable Poetry Foundation responded swiftly, in part, trying to parse the social conditions surrounding women and time, caring for children, encouragement of ambition, cultivation of career, and its much-vaunted Poetry Magazine had even commissioned an essay years before (in 2003) trying to root out why women are represented in such unequal numbers.  As Spahr and Young write in “Numbers Trouble”: “We are also suspicious of relying too heavily on the idea that fixing the numbers means we have fixed something. We could have 50 percent women in everything and we still have a poetry that does nothing, that is anti-feminist.”

Spahr and Young also counted women’s bylines at a variety of small, independent presses and hardly found parity there, although “University presses are a little more skewed to gender equity.” But even Wesleyan University Press, which they point out is known for publishing mainly women, “has 90 books by men and seventy by women (44 percent); a better number, but far from ‘mainly.'”

I corresponded with four poets of different generations who published with Wesleyan, and they each came back to the idea that it’s not a question of quality that keeps them from being published–it’s systemic bias.

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A number of folks chided me for not including a link to the opEd when I wrote about process of writing that oped here last month for CNN.com.  Er, whoops.  So here it is!  Bachmann, Palin and a New Season for Sexism.

And while I’m on it, it’s been a quite a week for a number of OpEd Project alums who are also writing opEds:

*Tera Hunter, a historian at Princeton this spring, ran an opEd in the New York Times this week “Putting an Antebellum Myth about Slavery to Rest”

*Meg Urry, an astrophysicist at Yale, published an opEd this week in CNN Opinion, “Heavenly Discoveries, Earthly Interventions”

A ton of GWP readers–and bloggers–are prime candidates for writing opEds.  You can read about the kinds of things The OpEd Project does with universities and nonprofits.  If you’re interested in bringing a seminar (or one of our longer programs) to your campus or organization, please email me at deborah[at]theopedproject[dot]org.  I’d love to work with you.

I wasn’t planning on spending a day and a half turning around an op-ed.  But when editors from certain venues call, I jump.  Some opportunities are just too good to turn down.

Colleagues—especially, often, academics—sometimes ask me how it’s possible to turn something around with the speed that today’s media requires.  So I thought I’d break it down, blow by blow, in an effort to demystify the process and show how it is possible to hop on the news when you’re ready with expertise—even on a day when you have other things planned.  I hope this helps!

(A note of gratitude: I could not have made this happen had my babysitter not been flexible and able to stay that extra hour.  Thank you, Erica.  This one’s for you.)

Day 1

1:01pm – I check my email before walking into a restaurant where I’m slated to meet a colleague for lunch.  There’s an email from an editor from national news outlet, inviting me to write—quickly!—an opinion piece of 500-700 words on a general topic she suggests.  I haven’t written for this outlet before.  I know what this opportunity means.  I get fired up, order a Caesar salad with egg, then email the editor to say that I could file a draft by end of day tomorrow and ask whether that would work.  That time frame feels realistic, given what else I have slated for that day (specifically, this lunch, a short meeting, a hospital visit, and a babysitter to relieve at 6pm).

1:40pm – I receive a second email from the editor.  It’s a hot topic and they’d really like to run it tomorrow morning.  Could I file it today?  I tell her I can get it to her later tonight.  The editor asks for my approach, my thesis.  I tell her I’ll get back to her with it soon.

2:15pm – I walk my colleague back to her office, have a brief meeting while there concerning other topics, then read a number of online articles related to the op-ed topic from my colleague’s office.  I formulate my angle.  It’s a topic I’ve thought a lot about before receiving this particular invitation today, and it doesn’t take me long to know where I stand.

4:10pm – I email the editor a paragraph and some bullet points.

4:12pm – The editor emails back to say “great.”

4:30pm – I call the babysitter, realizing that I’m not going to make it to the hospital to visit my friend and make it home at 6pm.  She says she can stay a little late.  I race to the subway and go visit the friend, 30 weeks pregnant and on bedrest, picking up Haagen Dags and chocolate bars on my way.

4:50pm – One block from the hospital, I email a savvy colleague my angle to ask if she’s seen any other articles on the overall topic I should read.  She sends me a helpful link.

4:55pm – I visit with my friend.  We commiserate about bedrest (I was on bedrest when pregnant too).

5:45pm – I outline the piece on the subway home.

7:00pm – I arrive home, late for the babysitter, and apologize profusely.  I read Goodnight Moon to my toddler twins and begin easing them into sleep.

7:30pm – Toddlers are out.  I get to work fleshing out a full draft, consuming half a bag of Oreos to stay awake (all the while reminding myself: I really must learn to like coffee one day).

10:30pm – I send the completed draft to a trusted reader, whose opinion I deeply respect.  While awaiting her feedback, I insert links.  She sends her feedback, with tweaks, swiftly.  She likes it.  I breathe a sigh of relief.

10:45pm – I incorporate my reader’s feedback and send the draft to two more readers who I know are still awake, then incorporate their feedback as well.

11:00pm – I send the draft to editor, thank her for this opportunity, and tell her how energizing it was to write.

Day 2

9:05am – I email to confirm that the editor has received draft.  The editor thanks me for the quick turnaround.  She’s just sitting down to her desk and will have edits for me soon.  She asks about my availability this morning to make changes.  I tell her I’m available!

9:30am – I reluctantly cancel plans to meet an old friend in the city for a writing date long-scheduled for today.   I don’t want to be on the subway when editor responds, in case there are questions we need to resolve by phone.  I wipe my slate clean for as much as the day as I can.

9:45am – The editor and I chat via phone about the need to flesh out some details here and there.  She braces me for heaps of edits, reassuring me that they are “garden variety”.  I tell the editor I love to be edited (because honestly, I do) and I promise not to panic when I see her revision.

10:00am – I leave the toddlers with my husband, who happens to off for the day (holiday weekend) and therefore available for the handoff to the babysitter in an hour.  I’m ready to go.

10:30am – Astonishing breaking news has hit.  I email the editor to check in.  She explains that she’s been diverted by the breaking news but is now returning to my piece.

11:27am – The first round of edits come in, with a gracious note to please tweak and adjust or push back as necessary.

11:33am – I email the editor that the edits all make sense (which they do), thank her for her thoughtfulness, and set about filling in the gaps.

12:42pm – I send the editor the revised draft, with all holes filled but one.  I call her to make sure the revise works.  She asks that I address the remaining hole.

1:35pm – After a second search, I email the editor that there is very little out there I can access today that would help fill said hole.  She emails back ok.  I make sure she has my bio.   I tell her I’m going to be away from my computer, in a meeting, until 4:15pm but reachable via cell and email anytime.

2:00pm – I enter the meeting, checking email every 10 minutes or so (oh, the obsession!)

2:24pm – I start getting antsy, as I haven’t heard from the editor and know that she wanted the piece to go live as early as possible.

2:50pm – She emails back that she’s been diverted again due to the breaking news story from the morning and will let me know where we stand when she can.

2:51pm – I start wondering whether the piece will indeed go up today, or whether it might be killed, and start brainstorming alternate outlets.  I’m invested.

3:19 – Editor kindly reassures me it will go up today; it’s just a normal upended day, due to the breaking news.  The piece now goes to the Standards and Practices desk, and she may have more questions after that.

5:10pm – The editor emails that the piece has cleared the Standards and Practices reviewer.  She asks me to eyeball the final changes that she made, based on the S&P review.

5:23pm – I make the case for the reinsertion of some links that were taken out during the last edit but approve all else.  The links go back in.

5:59pm – The op-ed goes live.  I send the url to my network, tweet, and race home to the babysitter.

7:00pm – Once the twins are down, I network the piece around a bit more.  The negative comments start pouring in, as do the Facebook “recommends.”  It’s Shabbat, and my husband and I try hard not to check the site every five minutes…but it’s hard.  My op-ed is the lead opinion piece and makes it to the homepage.

And so it goes – a day and a half in the life of an op-ed.

On Thursday 6/23 at 1-2pm ET, I’m hosting one of my favorite authors for a frank conversation about writing/life integrity on She Writes Radio from 1-2pm ET.  Here’s a description, and how to join in, plus a tweet — thanks for any help the word!

Recalibrating Writing/Life Balance in a Digital World: A Conversation with Dani Shapiro and Deborah Siegel (6/23, 1-2pm ET)

Bestselling author Dani Shapiro and Girl w/Pen’s Deborah Siegel contemplate the precarious balance of being a writer while living this social media-filled life.  How do you carve out time when Facebook and email beckon? Does your outer atmosphere reflect your inner writerly needs? Listen for thoughts from two wired authors, both currently between books, on the quest for quiet.

Listen online at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/s_w/2011/06/23/recalibrating-writinglife-balance-in-a-digital-world

Hope to “see” some of ya’ll there!

If you wanted to convince the remaining unconvinced populace that the F word is not so scary, Tina Fey would be the perfect conduit. In her new book, Bossypants, Fey, like a jocular Mary Poppins, gives readers many spoonfuls of sugar to make the feminist medicine go down. Coating incisive points about sexism with sweet comedic flare, her prose is easy to swallow, much like her infamous Sarah Palin impersonations, of which she writes “You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!” (216-7).

In the introduction, Fey explains the book’s title, noting that as an executive producer people often ask “Is it hard for you being the boss?” to which Fey deadpans “You know, in the same way they say, ‘Gosh, Mr. Trump, is it awkward for you to be the boss of all these people?” (5).

Many sections mock female beauty norms, as when Fey discusses “Twelve Tenets of Looking Amazing Forever.” In the chapter, she relates an embarrassing mother-daughter bra fitting story, admitting that “This early breast-related humiliation prevented me from ever needing to participate in ‘Girls Gone Wild’ in my twenties” (104). Here, Fey alludes to lots of big feminist ideas – the institution of motherhood and how mothers often enforce patriarchal norms that are detrimental to themselves and their children, the hyper-vigilance expected of the female body, and the mainstream media’s sexualization of women – all in a simple couple of sentences that most who have ever worn a bra can likely relate to.

Though a celebrity herself, Fey ridicules the cult of celebrity throughout, framing it as a ruse. In her typically understated tone, she advises “You have to remember that actors are human beings. Which is hard sometimes because they look so much better than human beings” (122). Her section on magazine cover shoots reveals all the effort and artifice that goes into celebrification. Noting “at five foot four I have the waist of a seven-foot model,” Fey pokes fun at body ideals promoted in the media, offering a sort of ode to Photoshop, which she names “America’s most serious and pressing issue” (157). Acceding that “Retouching is here to stay,” Fey puts a comical spin on the inanity, arguing “At least with Photoshop you don’t really have to alter your body. It’s better than all these disgusting injectibles and implants. Isn’t it better to have a computer to it do your picture than to have a doctor do it to your face?” (161).

Later, in the same vein, she laments “I’ve never understood why every character being ‘hot’ was necessary for enjoying a TV show” (193), admitting “I personally like a cast with a lot of different-shaped faces and weird little bodies and a diverse array of weak chins, because it helps me tell the characters apart” (192).

Perhaps my favorite section is “Dear Internet” in which Fey answers some of the more insulting missives directed at her online. To “jerkstore” who claims “she completely ruined SNL” by virtue of being too celebrated because she’s a woman, Fey sarcastically agrees “Women in this country have been over-celebrated for too long…I want to hear what men of the world have been up to. What fun new guns have they invented? What are they raping these days?”

Her mantra “Do your thing and don’t care if they like it” (145) coincides with what she titles her “Bossypants Managerial Technique”:

“I hire the most talented of people who are the least likely to throw a punch in the workplace. If this is contributing to the demasculinization of America, I say hold a telethon and let me know how it goes. I don’t ever want to get punched in the face over a joke – or even screamed at” (175).

Lamenting that women, especially comedians, are labeled “’crazy’ after a certain age” (270), Fey offers the following theory on Hollywood’s infamous inability to write roles for females ‘of a certain age’: “I have a suspicion that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking after no one wants to fuck her anymore.”

Fey is particularly astute about how the media (and society) is more critical of women than men, relating “There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was ‘mean’ when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of ‘going too far’ in their political impressions. You see what I’m getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. Too imply otherwise is a disservice to us both” (234).

Neither is Fey the overbearing ball buster indicated by her title “Bossypants” – it is just that our society, as her book so humorously reveals, still likes it women in certain types of boxes – and the boss box  isn’t one of them. But, and let me put this in my bossiest tone, “Do yourself a service! Read this feminist comedic treat!”

With a heavy heart, I write in honor of two women who spent much of their time writing and thinking about motherhood.

Two weeks ago, feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick (1935-2011) passed away.  The author of the highly influential Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, Professor Ruddick focused attention on the day-to-day activities of mothering (a practice she did not restrict to mothers).  In her obituary, New York Times reporter William Grimes writes that she

developed an approach to child-rearing that shifted the focus away from motherhood as a social institution or biological imperative and toward the day-to-day activities of raising and educating a child. This work, she argued, shaped the parent as much as the child, giving rise to specific cognitive capacities and values — qualities of intellect and soul. Doing shapes thinking, in other words.

He quotes Andrea O’Reilly, scholar and founder of Demeter Press and the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, on the impact of Ruddick on the study of motherhood.  Professor O’Reilly cites Maternal Thinking (along with Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution) as “the most significant work in maternal scholarship and the new field of motherhood studies.”  In 2009, Demeter Press published an edited collection of essays, Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice, that explored the impact of Ruddick’s book on maternal scholarship.

Her ideas influenced many fields.  On the Feminist Law Professors blog, Pace law professor Bridget Crawford writes that Ruddick’s influence “was seeping into feminist legal theory” and provided the groundwork for much “contemporary legal scholarship on caretakers and vulnerability.”  Her loss is felt by many of us who have been deeply influenced by her thinking about mothering.

Although I did not know Sara Ruddick personally, I did know Jessica Nathanson (1968-2011), a contemporary and a Women’s Studies colleague who passed away earlier this week.  Jessica was an inspiring human being.  She was a smart, creative, and accomplished professor, writer, and blogger, and a generous and committed mother, friend, and activist.  She fought breast cancer with an indomitable spirit.

I first met Jessica at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, where she was an active member of several groups, including the Feminist Mothering Caucus.  She always had an incredibly thoughtful and perceptive answer, whatever the question.  (And as a newcomer to the Feminist Mothering Caucus, and later as a co-chair, I asked her many questions.)  Over the years, we had several opportunities to talk about mothering, research, creative writing, blogging, teaching, job searching, and trying to fit it all in.  But, I now realize, not enough opportunities.  Nowhere near enough.

Jessica thought a lot about motherhood, parenting, and work.  She co-edited a book with Laura Camille Tuley, Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the “Experts,” published by Demeter Press in 2009.  Her book gives voice to mothers who contest what “experts” have to say about motherhood and mothering.  I reread her essay this morning and was brought to tears by her voice: smart, honest, and fierce.

Jessica wrote her essay, “What Mothers Don’t Say Out Loud: On Putting the Academic Self First,” when her son was 2 ½–a time in her life when she was finishing her dissertation, interviewing for academic positions, and starting her first full-time job as a professor of Women’s Studies and Director of Women’s Studies and the Women’s Resource Center at Augsburg College.  In her essay, she writes honestly about the conflict between her need to live an intellectual and creative life, and her need to be close to her young son.  She writes movingly about the pull of her body towards her son, about his need (at times his demands) for her body, and about the embodied dimensions of mothering young children: the physical intimacy of hugging, breastfeeding, and simply being near one another.

But she also claims her own need to write, create, and teach.  While the “struggle for a life of the mind” can be difficult and exhausting, it’s also essential.  The ability to continue creative and intellectual work sustains us; it is what enables us to parent.  She realizes that

If my academic self struggles for a life of the mind, and my mother self is rooted in a contested body, then allowing myself to be an academic mother helps to resolve this split.  It also makes me a better mother.  Teaching and research give me a creative and intellectual outlet.  Because I am engaged in activities that support my selfhood, challenge my intellect, and provide a creative outlet, I can come back to mothering refreshed and energized.  If I can live my own life for part of the day and then spend time with him, I can really be with him, and enjoy him, and be a better parent to him.  I am not an engaged mother when I don’t have this time.

Her call at the end of the essay speaks to me now, from the moment she wrote down these words to the present moment as I read them, thinking of her and her family and all the people who knew her, learned from her, and loved her.

We need to speak this truth to ourselves and to each other: the sacrifices involved in motherhood do not need to be complete and self-annihilating.  Putting the academic self first is not selfish.  It is an honest investment in mothering.

Jessica, you are deeply missed.

This post is crossposted at She Writes.

This month I was a nominee in Babble’s Moms with Clout contest.  In the end, Sausage Mama won, not me.  But the whole enchilada got me thinking: What is “clout”?  And why do so many women have trouble owning theirs?

My dictionary defines clout as “power and influence.”  Synonyms include “pull,” “authority,” “sway,” and “weight.”  In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.  To an overwhelming degree, it still is.  (See the depressing stats here.) Women, however, are mixing it up.  At social networks like She Writes, where authors promote one another and not just ourselves, at game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, “clout” is being redefined as something more communally achieved.  But even in the push for collaborative clout, and particularly among women, the tension between the one and the many remains.

I know this tension personally.  I experienced it this past month as I emailed my friends to ask for their vote, then opted against posting the request at She Writes or at my group blog,Girl w/Pen.  It just didn’t seem Girl w/Pen-y (or She Writes-y) to promote myself just for the sake of winning an iPad 2 (the prize).  I meticulously checked to see if any other of the 30+ nominees were She Writes members, so that I could shout us out collectively, as my colleagues in leadership at She Writes and I agreed that that would be the right way to do it.  But since they weren’t, I let it go.

In the end, I mildly regretted not saying something about it in the forums available to me—forums, heck, I’ve helped create.  I admit: I wanted that iPad!  I would have put it to good use, downloading e-books and apps and learning about the new forms all our books might take as I work toward my new project (The Pink and Blue Diaries).  But as early as day 2 or 3 of the contest, I quickly learned that I didn’t want it that bad.  Just as I couldn’t bring myself to harass my non-She Writes friends and followers more than once (ok, twice), I felt that promoting myself here for commercial gain would compromise the spirit of the community.  It felt like a conflict of interest, you know?

And that, exactly, is the problem.  Not just my problem, but women’s more generally I fear.  Are women collaborative, at times, to a fault?  In putting the community above ourselves, are we losing out on opportunities to enhance not merely our pocketbooks but our careers?  After all, winning a contest like this one is not just about winning an iPad.  To say you’ve won a contest breeds…clout.

And why should we care about clout?  Love it or hate it, fact is if you want to be a successful writer these days, clout matters.  It’s no longer the merit of our work but the reach of our platform that gets us the goodies.  Clout has been a social media buzzword for “influencer” or “community leader” for a while, but interestingly, now it’s also a website, complete with metrics and scores.  Klout.com measures “overall online influence” through an algorithm that determines exactly how much influence someone has over their social networks.  In a Klout score, numbers mean nothing; “true” influence means more.  (Come on, you know you want to, so go for it: check your Klout score here.) Will publishers start looking up our clout scores, like they look up our previous book’s sales in Book Scan?  Who knows.

In the meantime, I am not alone in my hesitation.  But nor do I necessarily think that’s a good thing.  In an article for a Canadian parenting site, top blogger Ann Douglas explores the dark–or rather, the ambivalent side–of making the top “mommyblogger” lists, while Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother notes in a post at her own blog that top blogger and clout lists can be a source of bad feeling in the mom community, leaving those not listed feeling badly.  “I think, to that extent, they’re a little problematic,” Connors says, then adds: “I think it’s interesting that we worry about…whether feelings get hurt and the community spirit gets undermined—when this kind of discussion would be pretty much unthinkable in almost any other sphere.  Does anyone talk about Forbes business rankings making men feel bad?”

Um, no.

And that brings me back to my main concern: I was flattered to be nominated in Babble’s “Moms with Clout” contest.  In the end, I couldn’t do what it takes.  I find it interesting—and problematic—that I am so comfortable writing this post after the contest is over, revealing my ambivalence, but wasn’t comfortable asking for your vote.  Either I am being too ladylike, or simply not woman enough.

Attention GWPenners in the NYC Area: Join me, She Writes, and The OpEd Project for a joint Happy Hour in Manhattan on Sat. April 16! And for a break from all that clout-making and clout-sharing, come recharge at the mini-retreat I’m leading for writing mamas with Christina Baker Kline on May 21 in Brooklyn.

Since becoming a first-time mother 17 months ago over here, I’ve decided that PAMPERING OTHER MOTHERS can be a feminist act.  In that spirit, I share news of a new offering of mine:

Rejuvenate Your Writing Life!

A Restorative Mini-Retreat for Writing Mamas

With authors Deborah Siegel and Christina Baker Kline

Saturday, May 21, 9:30am – 3:30pm
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture

For details (like, you know, how to register!) click here.

I’m thrilled to be teaming up with my fellow She Writer Christina on this one. In addition to being one of the most prolific writers I know, she’s a gifted teacher. Plus, two people have now said we look alike.  Which makes me smile.  A lot.  Come meet us in person and see if you agree 🙂

Many GWP readers know Christina from the anthology of personal essays she coedited called About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror and the book she co-authored, with her mother, on feminist mothers and daughters called The Conversation Begins.  She also commissioned and edited two widely praised collections of original essays on the first year of parenthood and raising young children, Child of Mine and Room to Grow.  Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Southern Living, Ms., Parents, and Family Life, among other places.  In addition to writing nonfiction, she’s also a novelist (Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines and Sweet Water), Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, and an on-staff editor and writing coach at the social networking site SheWrites.com.

Our first retreat is taking place in Brooklyn.  But Christina and I are also available to take it on the road.  To discuss the possibility of bringing this retreat to a locale near YOU, please email me at deborah[at]shewrites[dot]com.

A mere 3% of books published in the U.S. each year are translations.  An even smaller number of these books are written by women.  What are the obstacles facing women writers around the world?  What are their successes?  Given the different barriers surrounding literary production and distribution, how can U.S. readers find excellent fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays by women writing and publishing outside of the U.S.?

Read about the experience of Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur in the new column Jean Casella (former editorial director and publisher of the Feminist Press) and I are co-editing over at She Writes.  Jean’s debut post introduces readers to Shahrnush Parsipur’s story and her books, which include the novels Touba and the Meaning of Night and Women Without Men, recently made into a film by Shirin Neshat.

When Baby X and Baby Y turned one a few weeks ago, something changed in my brain. A window opened just a crack, enough to let in the crisp air that tells me a change of seasons has transpired. I started tweeting. I refreshed my Google Reader to incorporate my new focus on all things writerly and She Writes-y. I started playing around with a Tumblr (not really public yet, but maybe soon!). And last Friday night, I went on a date with myself—my first since my twins were born.

Give a girl some moules frites, a glass of Shiraz, a notebook as a companion, and later in the evening, an old friend and a book party with some fabulous feminists (Gloria Steinem! Eve Ensler! Shelby Knox!) and suddenly she remembers who she is: A thinker. A writer. Ah yes, that.

It’s not that I haven’t been thinking lo these past twelve months. It’s that my brain has been, as they say, differently occupied. Taking care of twins in their first year of life, along with a new start up that’s all about (did I mention?!) supporting women who write, takes a lot of brain cells. It made sense that parts of me went on hold to grow new things. It’s all necessary and right and true. But here’s how I know that the sleeping parts of me are once again alive and kicking:

1. When last week’s snarky New York Magazine cover story about a generation of women who naively “woke up” from the pill to find themselves too old to reproduce, I plugged back in to good ole gut-busting outrage. (See Jill at Femiste’s most excellent response, “Oops! I Forgot to Have Babies”).  And I also started compiling news round ups at She Writes, to merge my worlds–like this one, today.

2. I made a batch of Tollhouse cookies on the weekend just for kicks. I used to make them all the time (those who know me know that I have a penchant for cookie dough). I hadn’t made them in, like, a year.

3. I’m following TEDWomen via the shiny new TweetDeck app on my iPhone. My buddy Courtney Martin is there, and so is dear friend Jacki Zehner, and I’m feeling vicariously hooked in to the thought leading femme-o-sphere.

4. In the space between things, I finished a second draft of a personal essay for an anthology. The essay is called “Genderfication Starts Here” and is about, guess what, the first year of raising boy/girl twins.

5. I’m moisturizing again. And taking baths on the weekend with my favorite lavender gel. And lighting candles. And browsing Levenger catalogues before falling asleep. All things I did NONE of lo this past year.

I’m curious to hear. When a part of YOU goes on mental hiatus for a while and then resurfaces, what are the signs to yourself that you’ve returned?

Photo cred: Tayari Jones