Contributor Notes
Hal Ackerman
Read an Excerpt: "Alfalfa"
Hal Ackerman has been on the UCLA screenwriting faculty for twenty years. His book Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way renders all previous intellectual thought on the subject obsolete. His one-man play, Blue Sundays; How Prostate Cancer Made a Man out of Me, opens in Los Angeles in spring 2005.
Stevan Allred
Read an Excerpt: Only Rock ’n’ Roll
Stevan Allred’s fiction and journalism have appeared in many publications, including Beloit Fiction Journal, Lite, Rosebud, Berkeley Fiction Review, The Portland Mercury, Stepfamily Advocate, and others. He was awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in 2004. He lives outside of Estacada, Oregon, with his wife and two sons. He’s wondering if it’s any easier when the second child gets a tattoo.
Peter Applebome
Read an Excerpt: The Accidental Boy Scout
Peter Applebome writes the "Our Town" column for The New York Times and is the author of Scout’s Honor: A Father’s Unlikely Foray into the Woods and Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture. He lives in Chappaqua, New York, with his wife, Mary Catherine Bounds, and two children, Ben and Emma. Despite three years of scouting, he still can't tie his knots.
Dave Barry
Read an Excerpt: Warning: An American Teenager is Loose in Europe
Dave Barry is a writer whose humor column for the Miami Herald has appeared in more than five hundred newspapers in the United States and abroad for twenty years. In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Many people are still trying to figure out how this happened. Barry has also written a total of twenty-five books, including Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits, Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys, and Dave Barry Turns 50. Barry lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife, Michelle, a sportswriter. He has a son, Rob, and a daughter, Sophie, neither of whom thinks he’s funny.
Nancy Blakey
Read an Excerpt: Sex Education
Nancy Blakey is a freelance writer, parent educator, and author of the Mudpies Activity Book series. Her latest book is Go Outside! She and her husband raised a daughter and three sons and survived the teen years with luck, a sense of humor, and family work summers in Alaska. She can be reached at nancyblakey.com.
Rebecca Boucher
Read an Excerpt: The Dark Side of the Moon
Rebecca Boucher lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their four children. Her work has appeared in several publications and in the anthology Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love.
W. Bruce Cameron
Read an Excerpt: Teenager Owner’s Manual
W. Bruce Cameron was voted America's #1 humor columnist by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2003. His book, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, became a New York Times bestseller and was the basis for the ABC television show 8 Simple Rules. Having written a book on getting along with teenage girls, which is impossible, Mr. Cameron then turned his attention to another impossible feat, changing men and their habits, in How to Remodel a Man. He lives in Los Angeles and has three children.
David Carkeet
Read an Excerpt: How to Lie to Your Parents
David Carkeet has written several novels, most recently The Error of Our Ways. His new memoir, titled Campus Sexpot, won the Creative Nonfiction Award given by the Associated Writing Programs, and it will be published in September, 2005, by the University of Georgia Press. For many years he taught linguistics and writing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The father of three honest daughters—Anne, Laurie, and Molly—he now lives in Middlesex, Vermont.
Roz Chast sold her first cartoon to The New Yorker in 1978, and her work has appeared regularly in its pages ever since. Her cartoons have also appeared in such diverse publications as Scientific American and Redbook. Her latest book is The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995-2003.
Connie E. Curry
Read an Excerpt: Homework Assignment
Connie E. Curry is a non-fiction humor writer from Ohio whose three children and granddaughter are her tools for putting laughter into words. She won the annual James Thurber Humor Writing Contest in 2001. Her work has been published in Country Living Magazine, Reunion Magazine, Women With Wheels, and Shotgun Sports. Curry is a humor columnist for South West Sentinel, a newspaper in Georgia, and she is a member of the Write Life Writing Group, the Delaware Writing Group, and Ohio Writer.
Louise Erdrich
Read an Excerpt: Turn Signals
Louise Erdrich is a Native American novelist, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. She is the author of two volumes of poetry and several best-selling and award-winning novels, including Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, Master Butchers Singing Club, and Four Souls. Her memoir of motherhood, The Blue Jay’s Dance, was her first non-fiction work. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.
Flor Fernandez Barrios
Read an Excerpt: Tia Tata
Flor Fernandez Barrios was born in Cuba and immigrated to the United States in 1970 when she was fourteen, an experience she recounts in her memoir, Blessed by Thunder: Memoir of a Cuban Girlhood. Her writings have been anthologized in several collections, including Storming Heaven’s Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writing by Women. She is a psychotherapist and nationally known workshop leader on multicultural issues and spirituality. She recently completed her second book, The Mask of Oya, a collection of stories about her work.
Nina Gaby Read an Excerpt: The Thong Question
Nina Gaby resides in central Vermont, where she not only parents an adolescent but also a husband, a slew of pets, and a thirteen-room inn. A former therapist and award-winning ceramic artist, she has been published in several anthologies and was recently awarded a fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, where she will be exploring mixed-media visual art with contemporary literary themes. She is at work on a book tentatively titled Therapy, Stewardship, Running an Inn, and What a Girl Won’t Do to Get Out of Wearing Stockings to Work.
Daniel Glick Read an Excerpt: I Definitely Inhaled
Daniel Glick’s most recent book is Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, which won a Colorado Book Award in 2004. A former news correspondent for Newsweek for many years, Glick has written for numerous publications, including National Geographic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Outside, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Sports Afield, National Wildlife, and Wilderness. He lives in Colorado with his son and daughter.
Debra Gwartney
Read an Excerpt: Runaway
Debra Gwartney is a writer, editor, instructor, and mother of four daughters. Her memoir pieces, essays, and fiction have appeared in a wide array of publications, including Salon, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Kenyon Review, Washington Square Review, and The Oregonian. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Susan Hodara
Read an Excerpt: Sofie’s Boots
Susan Hodara is a freelance journalist who contributes regularly to The New York Times and whose work has appeared in Communication Arts, Salon, Parents, a Showtime website, and numerous other publications. She serves as consulting editor for Family Communications, which publishes four New York-area monthly parenting newspapers. As editor-in-chief of Manhattan-bhased Big Apple Parent, she received a Best Editorial award from Parenting Publications of America for her monthly column. She lives with her husband and two teenage daughters in Westchester County, New York.
Irene Hopkins
Read an Excerpt: The Seven Circles of Hormone Hell
Irene Hopkins lives in Seattle with her husband and two teenage daughters. She writes a newsletter for the University of Washington Medical Center and runs the Beauty & Cancer Program, an appearance support program for oncology patients. She is at work on a memoir about her family’s experiences boating through the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest.
Gail Hudson
Read an Excerpt: How to Get into College Without Really Trying
Gail Hudson’s personal essays about family relationships have appeared in numerous publications, including Child, Parents, Utne Reader and Self. As contributing editor for Child magazine she wrote a book on conflict resolution, Child Magazine’s Guide to Quarreling. She resides in Seattle with her husband and two teenage children.
Roberta Israeloff
Read an Excerpt: Junior Year
Roberta Israeloff is an essayist, short-story writer, and author of several books, most recently Kindling the Flame: Reflections on Ritual, Faith, and Family. Currently at work on a novel, she lives and teaches writing in East Northport, New York.
Barbara Kingsolver
Read an Excerpt: Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen
Barbara Kingsolver is the best-selling author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, most recently the collection of essays titled Small Wonder. Her novels include The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven, and Prodigal Summer. She is also the author of a collection of poetry, Another America. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000. After many years of living in Tucson, Arizona, Kingsolver now resides in southern Appalachia with her family.
Helen Klein Ross
Read an Excerpt: Their Bodies, Ourselves
Helen Klein Ross lives in Manhattan with her husband and two teenage daughters. Her writing has appeared in Mid-American Review, Quickfiction, and Mothering, and has received honorable mention in The Atlantic Monthly and Glimmertrain Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005 and is at work on a novel and a collection of poems about mothering.
Stephen J. Lyons
Read an Excerpt: Commuting with Rose
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of Landscape of the Heart: Writings on Daughters and Journeys, a single father’s memoir, and of A View from the Inland Northwest: Everyday Life in America. His articles, essays, and reviews have been published in various national magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Salon, USA Today, Newsweek, the Chicago Sun-Times, Sierra, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Sun, and many others. A native of the South Side of Chicago who lived for thirty years in the West, Lyons now resides in a small farming town in central Illinois.
Joyce Maynard
Read an Excerpt: The Girlfriend Sleeps Over
Joyce Maynard, a longtime journalist and former New York Times columnist, is the author of the best-selling memoir, At Home in the World and six novels, including To Die For and The Cloud Charmer, a young adult book to be published in June 2005. Maynard wrote Parenting magazine’s column “A Mother’s Days” for many years, as well as the nationally syndicated column “Domestic Affairs.” The mother of three grown children, she makes her home in Northern California. She can be reached through her website, www.joycemaynard.com.
Elizabeth Nunez
Read an Excerpt: The Color of T-shirts
Elizabeth Nunez is a City University of New York Distinguished Professor at Medgar Evers College and the author of five novels: Grace, Discretion, Bruised Hibiscus, Beyond the Limbo Silence, and When Rocks Dance. She lives outside of New York City.
Laura Smith Porter
Read an Excerpt: Band of Brothers
Laura Smith Porter writes a weekly column on family life called “Dispatches from the Home Front” for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Her essays and fiction have been published in magazines, newspapers, and literary anthologies, including FamilyFun, The Philosophical Mother, The Boston Parents’ Paper, and Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family. She and her husband have finally learned to fit all of the pieces of their teenage son’s drum set in the car.
Anna Quindlen
Read an Excerpt: Flown Away, Left Behind
Anna Quindlen is the best-selling author of four novels, Blessings, Black and Blue, One True Thing, and Object Lessons, and five non-fiction books, Loud and Clear, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and How Reading Changed My Life. She has also written two children’s books, The Tree That Came to Stay and Happily Ever After. Her New York Times column, “Public and Private,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek.
Linda Rue Quinn
Read an Excerpt: "Mom? Everything’s okay, but…"
Linda Rue Quinn lives with her husband, Bryan, and two teenagers, Paul and Cindy, in Chester, South Carolina. She is a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. She writes because it is cheaper than therapy.
Anna Viadero
Read an Excerpt: Sons
Anna Viadero, a first-generation American, is a writer living in Montague, Massachusetts. Her essays about her own family and her family of origin have been published in many anthologies. She is a frequent commentator on public radio in New England.
Jeffrey K. Wallace
Read an Excerpt: Shopping for Kotex
Jeffrey K. Wallace is currently teaching creative writing at Chapman University in Orange, California, and at the Orange County High School of the Arts in its Creative Writing Conservatory. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, and Family Circle magazine. He is a happily married, rapidly aging father of two.
Marion Winik
Read an Excerpt: Gods and Monsters
Marion Winik is a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and the author of several works of non-fiction, including Telling, First Comes Love, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, and Above Us Only Sky, forthcoming from Seal Press in October 2005. She lives in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, with her husband, writer Crispin Sartwell, and their many children.
Alex Witchel
Read an Excerpt: Freshman Orientation
Alex Witchel is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of Girls Only: Sleepovers, Squabbles, Tunafish and Other Facts of Family Life, based on columns she wrote for The New York Times, and the novel Me Times Three, which was a national bestseller.