Skip to content

BREAKING NEWS!! #LTYM BOOK NEWS!!

    New deals for September 17, 2013 Anthology Ann Imig, ed.’s LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER, a collection of essays celebrating mothers — being one, having one, losing one, and everything in between — based on the growing national performance movement, pitched in the tradition of The Bitch in the House and Mothers Who Think, to Amy Einhorn and Liz Stein at Amy Einhorn Books, by Elizabeth Kaplan at the Elizabeth Kaplan Agency (World). *** You can read how this deal came to be on the LTYM website. The cliff’s notes version? YOU.

    Join me Tuesday for an evening of live-streaming readings

      Date: The evening of Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 Time: 9 PM EST RSVP (optional for Google + users) View live: http://www.youtube.com/user/LTYMShow/live For the first time, Listen To Your Mother (the show/social media project I founded) has joined forces with The Partnership at Drugfree.org to host an exclusive live-streaming event via Google Hangout On Air, taking place on Tuesday, September 10 at 9 p.m. EST. The live readings will feature 11 leading women’s voices on the subject of medicine abuse – a health issue that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now calls an “epidemic.”… Read More »Join me Tuesday for an evening of live-streaming readings

      Abraham and Isaac and Corndogging (A Fable!)

        Last month my children and I successfully shared a room at my mom’s cabin, a heretofore unprecedented occurrence. I slept in the bed, they slept in sleeping bags on the floor. However, “Successfully” came and went the last night of our stay. Bedtime started with a simple request from Six… “I want to sleep on the other side of your bed tonight, Mommy.” Six and Nine then moved their sleeping bags 97 times during the subsequent 25 minutes, escalating to 15 minutes of shuffling/crying sleeping bags spilling over into the living room where they proceeded… Read More »Abraham and Isaac and Corndogging (A Fable!)

        Cairns

          Little totems called cairns dot the landscape around Lake Superior. They remind me of a Japanese rock garden equivalent of ANN WAS HERE spray-painted on an overpass, or carved into a picnic table. Only less Japanese, more Viking-ese.  People of all ages and from everywhere make them and leave them behind, but they seem to appear of their own volition. Cairns can symbolize trailblazing or reaching a peak or can simply be decorative. The pronunciation sounds like this –like something your high school choral director would make you repeat with your mouth just so. When… Read More »Cairns

          My #VOTY “Own Your Creativity” video: Taking a tricky piece of writing from page to stage

            I start talking :35 seconds in. If you don’t see a video, click here. When BlogHer selected me to read one of my posts as part of their Voices of The Year keynote, I was shocked, thrilled, then daunted by the task before me: Become a Lucha Libre motivational speaker…en Español. As someone who dishes out advice on launching writing from the page to the stage, it was ironic to find myself challenged with a less-than-ideal post to read aloud. First problem: conceptual humor. If your humor revolves more around wordplay than telling a story,… Read More »My #VOTY “Own Your Creativity” video: Taking a tricky piece of writing from page to stage

            Back To School Supply List

              All of the glue sticks. Nope. That’s not enough. All the small humans bathed and de-spirited 250 7AM MARIMBAS from the phone alarm you forgot to silence and left on your dresser across the room. Again. 10,900 pencils (We will happily purchase 20,000 pencils because NOSTALGIA and ELATION that they even still exist and haven’t yet—at least in the public schools that I’m aware of—been replaced by styluses). Art shirt for wadding up in bottom right corner of locker for cozy winter mudboot cushion. Scissors. Fiskars only. Nope. Those aren’t Fiskars. 1 bottle of hand-sanitizer.… Read More »Back To School Supply List

              Cool Jews

                I wrote this for Aiming Low a couple years ago. Thanks to my friend Beth for the request. Enjoy! ‘Tis the season for summer camp forms. After filling out two blue books worth of information and medical history on my first grader, and after paying a year’s writer salary (okay five), he will spend three weeks at the same Jewish day camp I attended throughout grade school. Growing up Jewish in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980s, temple and summer camp provided the main exposure to my fellow Jews. We saw each other on Tuesdays and… Read More »Cool Jews

                The 2013 Listen To Your Mother videos are here! And here’s mine.

                  This year’s LTYM: Madison cast really brought the humor, so I got to share my softer side. I hope you enjoy it (if you don’t see the video below, click here). You can watch the LTYM videos by show with each city’s playlist, or click around our 350 plus new videos at random. The LTYMShow channel on YouTube now boasts over 570 reading from our past three seasons!! The 2013 video launch was made possible with the support of The Partnership at Drugfree.org. LTYM is proud to share The Partnership’s message of preventing prescription drug… Read More »The 2013 Listen To Your Mother videos are here! And here’s mine.

                  5th time’s the charm! I’ll be reading in BlogHer Voices of the Year 2013!!

                    Next month, I’ll go to BlogHer in Chicago, and it will mark my fifth time at the conference and my fifth time hoping to read in Voices of the Year (VOTY). Only this time I will actually read in VOTY alongside some incredibly talented bloggers**! Every year I’ve nominated posts that I love from my favorite bloggers, and every year I’ve nominated a post or two of my own. Every year when I find out I’m not reading, I feel a pang of disappointment and self-doubt. Those reactions vary from “sob on the bed” to… Read More »5th time’s the charm! I’ll be reading in BlogHer Voices of the Year 2013!!

                    Second Honeymoon

                      First honeymoons celebrate two people finding each other, coming together, and surviving the daunting task of not only making themselves fancy, but also of hiring people to feed and photograph other fancy fully-grown people for one entire evening. You spend perhaps six nights and seven days recovering–eating, sleeping, having lots-o-sex—and anticipating a full set of Wustof knives awaiting your return. This first honeymoon serves in stark contrast to your twenty-something life with no children, largely spent eating, sleeping, having lots-o-sex, and surviving with nary a decent knife to your name. To make the transition from… Read More »Second Honeymoon