Guess I need to come up with something...

CALL FOR ESSAYS ON THE TOPIC OF MORMON MOTHERHOOD. Holly Welker will be  guest editing an issue of the magazine devoted to Mormon motherhood. She writes:

I'd like to include essays on topics that, if not entirely ignored in Mormondom, don't get as much attention as more conventional aspects of motherhood, including but not limited to

post-partum depression
midwifery
helping children recover from abuse
how being an abuse survivor affects your approach to motherhood
co-parenting with a non-Mormon spouse
single motherhood
infertility
mothering a special needs child
step-motherhood
teaching children about gender

and of course mother in heaven.

If I've left out a really important aspect, please tell me.

Essays on those topics should be somewhere in the range of 1,000 to 3,000 words. Deadline will be November 15. Drop me a line right away if you're interested, though, so I can get an idea of how many more offerings I need to solicit.

I'm also very interested in prose poems/lyric essays of 250-750 words on the topic of the image of a mother (madonna) and child. One thing I found interesting when I learned Chinese on my mission is that the word for "good"--the image that denotes wholeness and value--is a picture of a mother and child. It's not a character that denotes a "family"--father, mother, child (though the character for family is actually a pig under your roof--I guess so you can feed everyone). Western art is full of images of a holy mother with a holy son, but what about ordinary women and their daughters? How would you paint a verbal self-portrait of yourself as a mother that participates in the artistic tradition of mother and child? What makes it "good"?

Contact Holly Welker for more information.