Do you have a toddler seat strapped in the back of the tour van? Do you write poetry while the baby naps? Have you discovered that becoming a mother has changed not only your daily life but the content of your creative work? Mamaphonic is about mothering and the creative process. The book includes confessions and conversations about the true, exhilarating, entertaining, and difficult aspects of remaining creative while raising kids. It’s a smart, sexy, alternately funny and heartbreaking look at balancing art and motherhood, told in the artists’ own words. Published by Soft Skull Press, the book will be available from your local independent bookstore in the fall of 2004!
Mamaphonic.com is a web zine offering monthly content from emerging writers and poets. Designed for and by artists who are also mothers, Mamaphonic provides an active discussion board community with practical advice, resources, and opportunities to interact with writers, visual artists, zinesters, musicians, actors, and filmmakers.
Bee Lavender is the founder of the Mamaphonic site and the co-editor of the book. A 33 year old mother of two kids (one a teenager), Bee is the publisher and editor of the online edition of Hip Mama and also created and launched Girl-Mom.com, an advocacy site for teen parents, and Yomamasays.org, an activist news and commentary site. Bee is the co-editor of Breeder: Real Life Stories from a New Generation of Mothers and the author of the zine A Beautiful Final Tribute. She is a renegade public administrator with a working background in the disability civil rights and youth liberation movements.
Susan Presley is the executive producer and editor of Mamaphonic.com, and the executive producer of HipMama.com. She is currently rejoicing in her husband, two daughters & enjoying civilian life after getting her Masters of Library & Information Science. When there is no other way to cope, she turns to cathartic haiku, though she also maintains a BLOG for sanity purposes, and to add her thoughts & brain candy to the electronic consciousness of humanity.
Stacey Greenberg is the editor of Mamaphonic and an urban anthropologist and writer who lives in Memphis, TN with her husband and two sons. She is the creator of the zine, "Fertile Ground: For People who Dig Parenting."
Submission information
We are seeking literary first-person nonfiction essays of 2,000 - 4,000 words. We are interested in hearing from mothers participating in all aspects of art, writing, music, puppetry, performance, film, photography, independent publishing, or any other creative endeavor. We are seeking diverse views on subjects such as: children as muses, how an artist's daily life is changed after becoming a mother, how women balance their work and creative process with motherhood, and the specific influence of parenting on career trajectory and expectations. Although we are primarily concerned with the positive influences motherhood can have on the artistic process, we are also interested in the challenges motherhood brings to the working artist and how those challenges are met and overcome.
We are also accepting fiction and poetry submissions by or about mothers or mothering, and periodic alternative forms of media. Due to our format, you may wish to include a link to your own site if you have visual art pieces. Mama -- mother, phonic -- of or relating to speech sounds. We'd like to encourage you to send an mp3 of you reading your pieces, but it's not required by any means.
Deadlines: there are no deadlines as we are always looking for material & try to change our features regularly. We may periodically have times when we do a theme which will have a deadline, but we'll make a separate call for those submissions.
Compensation for published work includes all viewers of Mamaphonic's sincere appreciation of your unique talent.
Response time may be two days to a month, depending on the season of the year and editorial schedule.
Contact us for more information or to submit an article. Submissions should be either in the body of the email or in Word.doc. sent to susan [at] hipmama [dot] com. Please include the title & your name in the document with your work.
