Good Mom on Paper

The experience of motherhood is monumental, yet rarely discussed in connection with literary or creative life. How do we navigate the twin devotions of love and art? How does motherhood disrupt the creative process? How does it enhance it?

Good Mom on Paper is a collection of twenty essays that goes beyond the clichés to explore the fraught, beautiful, and complicated relationship between motherhood and creativity. These texts disclose the often-invisible challenges of a literary life with little ones: the manuscript written with a baby sleeping in a carrier, missing a book launch for a bedtime, crafting a promotional tour around child care. But they also celebrate the systems that nurture writers who are mothers; the successes; the intricate, interconnected joys of these roles.

Honest and intimate, critical and hopeful, this collection offers solace and joy to creative mothers and asks how we can better support their work. Mothers have long been telling each other these vital stories in private. Good Mom on Paper makes them available to everyone who needs them.

With contributions by Heather O’Neill, Lee Maracle, Jael Richardson, Carrie Snyder, Alison Pick, Meaghan Strimas, Sofia Mostaghimi, Rachel Giese, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Erin Wunker, Jónína Kirton, Jennifer Whiteford, Teresa Wong, Nikkya Hargrove, S. Lesley Buxton, Amber Riaz, Adelle Purdham, Harriet Alida Lye, and Kellee Ngan.

A portion of each sale will be donated to the Mothers Matter Centre: a not-for-profit organization dedicated to empowering isolated, at-risk mothers.

AUTHOR

Stacey May Fowles

Stacey May Fowles is an award-winning novelist, journalist, and essayist. She has written about sports for the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, Torontoist, the National Post, Deadspin, Hazlitt, and Vice Sports, among others. Her most recent book, Baseball Life Advice, was published in spring 2017. She lives in Toronto, Ontario. Pasha Malla is the award-winning author of six books, most recently Fugue States, a novel, and Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion, a collection of “found sports poetry” co-assembled with Jeff Parker. He contributes frequently to NewYorker.com, CBC Radio, and the Globe and Mail. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Reviews

“Some of the essays broke my heart. Some of them made me smile. Some of them gave me hope that there is a way to forge a path in this space.” — Cloud Lake Literary

“Referencing strong female writers, both past and present — Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Dey — each writer shares their experience, strength and hope and invites all women, not just moms and writers, to ‘challenge traditional forms of styles of cultural enquiry.’” —Toronto Star

“This collection denounces the commonly held belief that motherhood and writing are in contradiction to one another–its existence alone is proof enough.” — The Miramichi Reader

“Reader, I fist-pumped. In essay after essay – and I savoured every one; they are so beautifully written—mothers offer glimpses into their processes, their challenges, their grief. Their lives.” — The Globe and Mail