Slate’s new online magazine “written mostly by women, but not just for them,” Double X, is launched!  Do check it out:

http://www.doublex.com/

An article in the Business section of today’s NYTimes notes that “Although the editors describe the site as a savvy, intellectual, feminist antidote to glossy, celebrity-obsessed women’s magazines, it will not turn away male readers, which they say have made up 40 percent of the blog’s readership.”

Um, maybe that’s because men can be feminists too?  For more on THAT topic, run, don’t walk, to go get your copy of our very own Shira Tarrant’s Men and Feminism, hot off of Seal Press (and part of the Seal Studies series)!

Happy reading, all around 🙂

You heard it here first!  Or rather, folks have heard it on Publisher’s Lunch last week, and I’m uberexcited to share the news with the GWP community.  Here’s the listing announcing my next project (title, of course, subject to change!):

NON-FICTION: HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS
Young feminist commentator and author of SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED: FROM RADICAL WOMEN TO GRRLS GONE WILD Deborah Siegel’s MAN ENOUGH: HOW THE NEW MANHOOD IS CHANGING WOMEN’S LIVES, exploring how young men today may express very different attitudes about gender equality than previous generations but at the same time our cultural ideals of masculinity have not changed very much, to Amy Caldwell at Beacon Press, in a nice deal, by Tracy Brown at Tracy Brown Literary Agency (NA).

I launched the weekend by reading my first official parenting book: Amy Tiemann’s mojo-y book, Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family (the new editiion!).  And I am so thankful to have started here.  Many of you are familiar with Amy’s message from reading her blog (Mojo Mom), but in all honesty, it didn’t really sink in for me of course until I got pregnant.  Now it’s all gotten very personal.  And what a relief that this book exists.

Chapter 1 begins: “It is tempting to romanticize miraculous transformations.”  The chapter’s epigraph reads: “Sometimes you just have to take a leap and build your wings on the way down.”  Still barfing at 13 weeks, I’m having a wee bit of a hard time when well-intentioned friends and loved ones say to me “this is such a special time! enjoy each moment!”  Because it’s hard to enjoy it all when you’re on the verge of 24/7 puke.  Believe me, I am overjoyed beyond belief that I am at this particular juncture; but overjoy and “enjoy” are not the same thing.

But I digress.  I really wanted to use this post to send a HUGE shout out to Amy for writing this book, and for writing a second edition of it, one which addresses more of the cultural conversation around motherhood.  I’d been feeling intimidated by all those books with light pink covers written about pregnancy and mothering and couldn’t bring myself to read anything other than The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, which Marco picked out for me early on.  Mojo Mom is helping me build confidence that I will find my own way into this whole pregnancy and motherhood gambit, that there are motherhood books written for women like me, and that there are fellow travelers out there–Amy did a PhD in neuroscience and is on the executive team of MomsRising.org (and a longtime supporter of Women for Women International)–to guide the way.

For some more hardcore political reading, definitely check out the opeds in today’s NYTimes on what to give mothers in the developing world, and the stats and links Kyla rounded up over at The REAL Deal (“Motherhood by the Numbers”).

And to all the moms out there, the moms-in-the-making, and the moms-in-waiting (I have a number of friends in this latter camp), and to my own extremely amazing mother, who I am becoming more and more grateful for every day, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

I’m excited to help honor and celebrate 21 amazing women tonight at the Women’s eNews Benefit. And I love the way they are describing this group: Seven Who Seven Who Break the Barriers of Bias, Seven Who Stretch the Possible, and Seven Who Redraw the Boundaries. And each honoree has a superhero name too.

My dear friend and colleague Jacki Zehner is among the honorees.  She’s categorized as a Redrawer of Boundaries and identified as Investor in Female Futures. Also honored tonight are Guider of Girl Techies (Kathy Rodgveller), Flag-Bearer for Equal Pay (Lily Ledbetter), and Grower of Latina Power (Dusti Gurule).

What would your superhero name be?!

Well, here we go.  I’ve decided today is the day to officially “come out”:  I’m pregnant!  I’m 12-and-a-half weeks along, and here’s the kicker: it’s twins.  OMG OMG Marco and I are still getting used to saying that out loud.  “It’s twins.”

That fertility stuff can really work.  I bow, with tremendous humility and gratitude, to the miracles of modern medicine.

It’s been strange sitting on this piece of rather all-encompassing information for the past three months and not sharing it with the world–or at least, I mean, with the GWP community.  So it’s a relief to say it.  I’m pregnant.  I really am.   We went for the first round of testing yesterday, and so far, all clear.  Two heartbeats, two fetuses of relatively same size, both swishing around and doing their thing.

I’ve been confused about whether to pregnancy blog or not, but, well, I just broke my own taboo.  So there you have it.  I’m preggers.  Overjoyed to the point of tears, feeling a little clueless, and nauseous as all hell.

Marco has been wonderful.  It’s been serendipitous, really, having him home while I’ve been feeling so physically bleh.  Today he went back to his freelance job for a few days, however, which is also quite nice, of course.  My Love in the Time of Layoff column is about to become Pregnant in the Time of Layoff.  I suppose my next column over there will have to be something about momentarily breadwinning wife expecting twins?!  (My Recessionwire contribution has gone from weekly to monthly, by the way, due to, shall we say, other demands…)

This month is a double hitter for me: I’ve got bits in the current issues of Ms. and Psychology Today.

The Spring 2009 issue of Ms.— just about to hit the newsstands if not already there– features an article I wrote on the history and funding of women’s studies programs for the special Ms. “2009 Guide to Women’s Studies.”  The first in a planned annual series, the guide—done in collaboration with the National Women’s Studies Association—provides details on 196 undergraduate and 47 post-graduate women’s studies programs, with data on additional undergraduate programs here and here.  Very cool tool for promoting women’s studies as a college major.  And the best part was that I had another reason to call up Mariam Chamberlain, founding president of the National Council for Research on Women, who was at the Ford Foundation when women’s studies began. Mariam–who just celebrated her 91st birthday, in great style–was responsible for funding women’s studies research from the get go, and for many reasons, I owe her a ton.

The June 2009 issue of Psychology Today has a bit not by me, but, well, about me.  Or rather, about Marco and me.  Seems we’re fast becoming the postercouple for laidoff men and breadwinning wives.  Ok, I know, I started it by writing about it at Recessionwire.  But we just said “no” to a very nice invitation to appear on one of the national morning shows, because we’re feeling a little reticent.  I mean, I’m all for going on tv to speak as “the expert,” but we’re starting to feel like a human interest story, and well, that’s just not in our interest, if you know what I mean.  (But thanks for the interest, morning show!  And I’m still happy to come on as an expert on gender and recession over there!)

The funniest part of it all, however, was that I had forgotten I’d done this interview and photoshoot for Psychology Today (magazine lead time is generally 3 months, so it took place in the winter).  I was reminded on the airplane, while sitting next to Courtney Martin on our way down to Atlanta last week.

I was reading (this is embarrassing) Star, and Courtney was reading Psychology Today.  I was just saying how fed up I was getting with Star (I’m a glutton for punishment) when Courtney shouted something like “Hey, it’s you!”  And there I was, photographed with Marco in a full page spread with a little blurb about our situation.

I think I shouted “Get! Out!” just as everyone got quiet for takeoff.  Ah well.

Seriously.  I kid thee not.  In the May 18th issue currently on the stands, two members of my writers group have features!

For an adaptation from a chapter of her forthcoming book, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood (Basic, May 11), see “Why I Froze My Eggs” by our very own Rachel Lehmann-Haupt.

Four pages later comes “Listening to Madness” by our Alissa Quart–also part of chapter of a forthcoming book.  The article looks at “why some mentally ill patients are rejecting their medication and making the case for ‘mad pride'” and is, like Alissa, rather brilliant.

It’s been humbling and inspiring and instructive to be part of this writers group, which we affectionately call Matilda, after the cat who lives at the Algonquin Hotel where we first met.  Rachel’s book in particular has paralleled aspects of my life–as it will the lives of many of us living on, as she calls it, the edge of our fertility.

For more on In Her Own Sweet Time, which should be available in bookstores asap, check out this interview with Rachel over at YourTango.

I got lots more to say on the whole fertility front, but I leave that for another post…

I’m here setting up for my workshop, Blogging Demystified, with Courtney Martin, waiting for participants to walk in and testing the Interwebs. Looks like it works!

Meanwhile, here’s a pic from dinner last night. From left to right: Courtney, Jacki Zehner, Barbara Dobkin, Lynda Goldstein, and Chris Grumm.  What a group…!

More on all this when I return, I promise.  Off to start the show.

After weeks of anticipation, Girls Write Now will be featured TONIGHT (Tuesday, April 28)* on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams reported by national correspondent Amy Robach.

NBC Nightly News airs daily at 6:30 PM Eastern/Pacific, 5:30 PM Central. Check out your state’s local listings.

I am SO late to posting this today, but here goes.  Today is (still!) Equal Pay Day.  And this morning, the National Women’s Law Center released some new state-by-state data on the wage gap.  Seems we’re doing a little better here in New York (where women make 82% of what men do) than in my homestate of Illinois (where women make 73%).  But it’s all really quite pathetic.  I mean, this is 2009, for christsake!  Didn’t we all think we’d be a little further along by now?  I mean, seriously, if you want to talk about ways to stimulate the economy, how bout investing in women by paying us what we’re worth!  Jeesh.

For more blogging, raging, ranting, and informative discourse on the subject, go here. For some particularly great posts, check out the one at The REAL Deal, by Kyla Bender-Baird and the one over at Gloria Feldt’s blog.

If you’re like me, after getting all fired up about this issue, you’re gonna want to take action.  You can write to your Senators in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, by clicking here.

(And thanks to the National Women’s Law Center — and in particular Robin Reed — for spearheading Blog for Equal Pay Day!)