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Meet Our Contributors
Penny Aicardi
Penny is a sportswriter who resides with her husband, John, in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Ms. Aicardi currently serves as the NASCAR Busch North Series columnist and editor at Speedway Scene, an auto racing trade publication in the Northeast. She’s the mother of two: Samantha (5) and Jason (9 months).
Christine Allen-Riley
Christine Allen-Riley has given birth only twice, but she cares for up to seven day-care children. Despite this, she continues to be a romantic at heart and is pursuing a career as a romance novelist. She resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband, Matt, their two young sons, Killian and Corwin, and seven neurotic cats. These days, she drives her own car. Her brother’s car has limped along to the Parking Garage of the Great Beyond (lot 666), where it belongs. Back To Top
Jan Andersen
Jan Andersen is a freelance writer and copywriter, with twenty-one years’ marketing and PR experience. In addition to writing commercial copy for a broad spectrum of audiences, Jan specializes in compelling articles and features on diverse lifestyle topics and social issues. She has also participated in many TV and radio programs. Jan also owns and runs five Web sites: World Writer, Mothers Over 40, Child Suicide, SACS (Surviving After Child Suicide) and Jan Andersen Writing Services. Until recently, Jan had four children aged 20, 17, 16 and 4. Her eldest son, Kristian, tragically took his own life on November 1 2002. While campaigning for depression, suicide and drugs awareness, Jan is writing a book on child suicide entitled Chasing Death.
www.mothersover40.com, http://worldwriter.homestead.com
Elizabeth Blair
Elizabeth L. Blair resides in Arizona with her husband and two stepsons. She is anxiously awaiting the birth of her first baby, due in June of 2004. Elizabeth works as both a freelance writer and flight attendant. Her work has appeared or been accepted for publication in many online and print publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, The Dollar Stretcher, Chicken Soup for the Bride’s Soul, Chocolate for the Woman’s Soul (sequel), and many more. Currently, she is working on her first book, tales of her humorous journeys in the airline industry.
Jackie Buxton
After graduating in 1992, Jackie worked in public relations for charities. But her heart was in fiction so when her job was declared redundant two weeks before her wedding, she felt that something was telling her to ditch the day job and write her novel. Five years and two wonderful daughters later, the novel is being submitted. Meanwhile, she writes anything and everything to keep the bread and butter coming in. But she is proud to admit that this is the first time she has written about using the bathroom in public. She’s just not sure whether to include it in her portfolio.
Donna Conger
Donna Conger was born and raised in Junction City, Kansas. She left at age eighteen to attend college in Massachusetts, where she met her first husband and the father of the child in her story. Donna currently lives in Utah with her second husband, four children and two dogs, and together they raise purebred beagles. Donna is the published author of four romantic suspense novels, one nonfiction book and over one hundred poems, short stories and articles. Her daughter Celeste is now eighteen years old and is employed as a full-time sales person, part-time model and actress. Back To Top
S. (Shae) A. Cooke
Shae Cooke is a mother, inspirational writer, domestic humorist and former foster child. A writer for all reasons and seasons, Shae shares her heart with a worldwide audience. She lives in beautiful British Columbia with her family and a host of misfit animals — a miniature parrot with a big attitude, a one-legged frog, a cross-eyed gerbil, two neurotic cats, an aged but beloved black labrador retriever and Dick the beetle, buried somewhere amid a sea of manuscripts on her desk.
Tami Crea
Tami Crea is a mom to two boys, a writer, a graphic designer and a publisher. She runs an e-newsletter filled with activities for parents of preschool children called Preschool Play.
Barbara David
Barbara David lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband Geoff, and their five children. She earned a Phi Beta Kappa key during her undergraduate studies and taught English, journalism and film studies before becoming a stay-at-home mom. Barbara enjoys freelance writing in moments between helping with homework and changing diapers.
Charles Dowdy
Charles Dowdy manages a small cluster of radio stations in Louisiana and Mississippi. Married seven years, he and his wife have four children under the age of six. Charles writes a weekly newspaper column about his family, sharing the trials and triumphs of a sometimes wild and always abundant fatherhood. Back To Top
Amanda Euringer
Amanda Euringer has been an actor, director, janitor, housepainter, dog walker, teacher, condom seller, face painter, bartender, as well as a mother to large dogs, children, and numerous well-behaved houseplants (though not necessarily in that order). Amanda completed her bachelor of fine arts in theatre — with a specialization in dramaturgy. She interned at the Playwrights Workshop in Montreal. After several years of working on new Canadian plays and many adaptations of Shakespeare, Amanda moved to the Canada’s West Coast to pursue her love of theatre in a warmer climate. Although Amanda has worked in the field of language and storytelling all of her life, this is her first published story.
Cheryl Fury
Dr. Cheryl Fury lives in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada with her husband and two young sons. She teaches history at the University of New Brunswick and St. Stephens University. Her area of specialization is the social history of Elizabethan seafarers and she’s published academic articles and a book in this field. In her spare time, she plays soccer, plays bass guitar in a rock band and writes for fun.
Cindy Graul
Cindy Graul lives in Wyncote, Pennsylvania with her husband, Bert, and her three children: Allison (7), Alex (5), and Bradley (4). She has a professional photo business that she runs in her spare time producing casual portrait photography. This is Cindy’s first publication. She had planned to have four kids over the course of sixteen years, but managed instead to produce three in three years and survived a total of twenty-seven LONG months of full day sickness! WHEW!
Sheri Guyse
Sheri Guyse, a freelance writer, resides in Oklahoma City with her daughter and husband. Thankfully, he was not permanently scarred by the operatic emissions of her pregnant body. Sheri’s writing regularly appears in such prestigious places as the backs of receipts, Happy Meal napkins and her checkbook register. When Sheri isn’t scrambling for a moment to complete a thought, she and her two-year-old watch The Wiggles and dance together.
She says, “I considered myself well-versed on what to expect. How clueless I was!” Back To Top
Megan Kelley Hall
Megan Kelley Hall is a freelance writer based in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She has written on parenting, health and fitness, and lifestyle issues for national publications including Boston Magazine, Working Mother, American Baby, and The AKC Gazette. She learned quickly about pregnancy surprises after giving birth to her first child three months early due to placenta previa. Piper Elizabeth, born at 2.5 pounds, is now a healthy and beautiful toddler who is constantly discovering new ways to distract her mother from her writing. Megan is currently working on her first novel.
Virginia Heffernan
Virginia Heffernan is a former geologist and principal of GeoPen Communications, a research and writing service for the resource and environmental sectors. The youngest of eight, she lives in Toronto with her husband, Roger, an exploration geologist, and her son, Graham. Neither Virginia nor Graham have had any more run-ins with police since that hot day in July.
Dorothea Helms
Dorothea Helms is a freelancer writer, editor and writing instructor who lives in Sunderland, Ontario, Canada. Dorothea’s work, much of it humor, has appeared in publications across North America, and she has been featured twice on CBC Radio’s First Person Singular. She has poked fun at her family in print since 1993 (hey, it’s a living!). As of 2003, she has been married for thirty-two years. Her son is twenty-eight years old, married and living in Raleigh. Her daughter is twenty-one and is studying art history at the University of Toronto. Dorothea is also a published poet and aspiring novelist.
www.wsws.ca, www.thewritingfairy.com
Kirsten Hines
Kirsten Hines is a wife and mother of two. Jack who is three and Katherine eighteen months. She freelances in her spare time while working at the Springfield YMCA in New Jersey as the Membership Director. You can read her work in such publications as the Philosophical Mother online magazine. Back To Top
Susan Hines
Susan Hines and her military husband, Steve, and their five-year-old twin girls live in Indianapolis. Susan is a never-at-home stay-at-home mom, active in Girl Scouts, Southside Parents of Multiples and “preserving my sanity as much as possible”.
Laura Irani
Laura Irani lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Ted, and son, Vincent. Laura works part-time as an attorney and as a freelance writer. Laura specializes in employee benefits law.
Kate M. Jackson
Kate M. Jackson is a freelance writer and mom who misplaces her shoes and keys at least twice a day. Her true passions include hanging out at the beach — off-season — with her family, reading “thinking-women’s trash,” and snuggling with her iPod. She spends her free time bidding on handbags on eBay and making up songs to sing to her daughter. Greatest hits include: The Clean Bum Club and Beautiful Baby with a Big Buddha Belly. She lives in Boston with her husband, James, her daughter, Caroline, and a portly pug named Vito.
Melinda Jones
Melinda Jones was born and raised in Oregon and is a graduate of Oregon State University. She currently lives in Connecticut with her husband, who is a member of the United States Navy, and their two children. Melinda is a freelance writer and a stay-at-home mom. Back To Top
Theresa Kane
Theresa Kane is an entrepreneur who specializes in communications. Humor is now the most recent genre added to her writing portfolio. Whether in her role as founder of Viva Voce Press Inc., consulting with clients or cajoling her two young sons, Matthew and Justin, Theresa tries to live in that gap between expectations and reality. When she doesn’t find it, it has had a habit of finding her.
www.vivavocepress.com, www.pipergrp.com, www.quittingeasy.com
Candy Killion
Candy Killion is a freelance writer, mother of four and grandmother of two, whose wit has appeared in numerous greeting cards, northeastern US newspapers and magazines, and trade publications. Newly transplanted to Florida, she does her best work on the Fort Lauderdale beach, holding a glass with one of those funny little umbrellas. The product of her second labor, chronicled here, is twenty-year-old Chris. He is a smart aleck like his mother.
Kathy Coudle King
Kathy Coudle King writes essays, plays, screenplays, and had her first novel, Wannabe, published in 2000. In the early nineties she was the playwright-in-residence at the University of North Dakota Women’s Center, where she wrote plays about women’s friendship, eating disorders, and domestic abuse. Currently, she lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota where she teaches writing and women studies. She and her husband are raising four children together, ages three to nine. She collects stories about “firsts” in women’s lives, and publishes them on her web site.
Gordon Kirkland
Gordon Kirkland is an award-winning author and syndicated columnist. His first book, Justice Is Blind – And Her Dog Just Peed In My Cornflakes, received Canada’s Stephen Leacock Award of Merit for Humour in 2000. His latest book, Never Stand Behind A Loaded Horse is another collection of his stories, which focus on life from the perspective of a husband and father rapidly approaching the half-century mark. His frequent live TV and radio appearances in both Canada and the United States bring his stories to an ever-increasing and appreciative audience. He is the senior editor at Viva Voce Press Inc.
www.gkirkland.netfirms.com
Anita Kugelstadt
Anita Kugelstadt lives with her three children, and partner, Pierre, in Quebec City, Canada. She has worked as a teacher, waitress, chambermaid, curriculum designer and cook — all of which were perfect training for motherhood. She is currently working on her first novel. Back To Top
Abby Lederman
Abby Lederman, mother of firstborn “Egg” and twins three years younger, is coauthor with Dr. Jeff Kaplan of the book Finding The Path: A Novel for Parents of Teenagers. She and Dr. Kaplan run teleclasses and coach parents of teens from their web site at www.parenting-teenagers-today.com. They are the co-founders of “Love-A-Teen Day,” a celebration acknowledging the struggle, joy and triumph of today’s teens.
www.ParentingTeensToday.com, www.LoveATeenDay.com
Heather Lodge
Heather Lodge is a freelance humor and fiction writer living in southwestern Pennsylvania. She has been employed both as a technical writer and as a proofreader/editor, and is currently enjoying her newest professional challenge: motherhood.
Christy Lui
Christy Lui is most inspired when her expectations for being a mother clash with reality, which is often daily. Instead of getting depressed, she gets even. Her most thrilling writing moments are when someone reads her work and says thank you for being brave enough to say what I wish I could say. Her work has appeared in Brain, Child magazine, SASS magazine, Metroparent Wisconsin, other regional parenting publications, and online at mommytales.com. She lives with husband John, sons TJ (5) and Ben (3), two fish — Flippy and Sticky, and Gazoo, the psycho-kitten, in Dousman, Wisconsin.
http://nutbrotherscircus.tripod.com
Nadine Meeker
Nadine Meeker is a freelance writer, editor and journalist of fifteen years residing in Michigan with her husband, daughter and a menagerie of pets. She is also a screenwriter and producer with NiteOwl Productions. Her first novel, Pennsylvania Avenue, is set for release in 2004 with Baycrest Books. In her spare time, she enjoys motorcycling, painting and campy television shows. Back To Top
Christine Miles
Christine Miles is the mother of three busy children — Braden, Nikki and Liam. She is a stay-at-home-during-the-day-mom, and works in a busy doctor’s surgery as a registered nurse two evenings a week. Christine enjoys baking, walking, playing and reading. She lives with her husband, Derek, and children in Auckland, New Zealand.
Jennifer D. Munro
Jennifer D. Munro’s stories about fertility issues have appeared in Calyx, Kalliope, Room of One’s Own, Clean Sheets and Slow Trains. She was a Hedgebrook resident, an Artist Trust grant recipient and the Seattle Writers Association’s essay contest winner.
Lisa Nicholl
Lisa Nicholl had some good practice at resting while expecting her daughter Olivia. Olivia, on the other hand, used that time in utero to store up her energy for the many activities that showcase her talents today. From singing to dancing to writing stories, Olivia rests when she is sleeping and now Mom does, too. When not with Olivia, Lisa is the creative talent and business visionary that steers a home-decorating chain to success. Evening Shoes is her first published short story.
Jamie M. Pearson
Jamie Pearson, whose writing has recently appeared in Brain, Child magazine, at imperfectparent.com, and in Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love, came to writing circuitously via a degree in political science and a career selling bonds on Wall Street (an odd job for her as she is both highly principled and bad at math). She currently lives in London, England with her husband, Rich, four-year-old daughter Avery and eighteen-month-old son Max, and is at work on a book about the misadventures of expatriate parenting. Back To Top
Tenna Perry
Tenna Perry is a native Texan who lives happily in the country with her husband, three children, five collies, a snobbish cat and one temperamental hedgehog. She holds black belts in both Bushido Kai and American Freestyle Karate. With her husband, Tenna has taught karate, self-defense and rape prevention for ten years. In addition to her martial arts background, Tenna has more than thirteen years’ experience in small animal veterinary medicine and seven years in equine medicine. She is also a survivor of child sexual abuse and rape with extensive writings online concerning all of the subjects mentioned above.
Irene A. Pileggi
Irene Pileggi is a mother of three beautiful girls — Alexis, Allie, and Brooke. She currently is a stay-at-home mom who decided to take a break from the corporate environment and enjoy being with the kids. Irene likes writing, reading and spending the most time possible with her family. They currently live in Westchester County, New York. Irene has a certificate in computer arts and an associate’s in business administration.
Tamara Talbot
Tamara Talbot is a mother, creative director and all-around do-it-on-paper lover. Her patient education materials have been proven to help sufferers of various diseases including COPD and Asthma. Her most challenging communications project yet is in raising two girls, Karley and Devan, with her extremely patient husband, Todd. Her ultimate goal in life is to help her girls follow their dreams and to build on their talents. Piece of cake!
www.vivavocepress.com, www.pipergrp.com, www.quittingeasy.com
Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson is a freelance writer, author, editor, journalist and anthologist from the eastern shore of Virginia. She has written for many publications, as well as her online writing site, The Writer’s Life www.thewriterslife.net, one of Writer’s Digest magazine’s Top 101 Web sites. She is the author of a children’s book, No More Gooseberry Pie, and is the founder of the Romancing the Soul series of anthologies. Dorothy is also editor of the online humor column, “Where's The Damn Picket Fence”? She lives with her three children, Melissa, Ryan, Amanda Jane and her three dogs, Cassie, Max and Skylar. Back To Top
Grace Tierney
Grace Tierney is a freelance writer who lives in Ireland and whose first child, Daniel, was born in October 2003. Her short stories have been published internationally in print magazines and online media, and even on coffee cans. Her nonfiction has been published in Ireland, the UK, America and Australia. She contributes a regular column to Writer Online and is a staff writer with Netsurfer Digest.
www.writeronline.us, www.netsurf.com
Philippa Tite
Philippa Tite is the mother of six-year-old Christopher and one-year-old Jaden as well as being the wife of Chris (of indeterminate age). Currently living in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and running a division of a computer company, she spends her free time doing her MBA, and trying to juggle schedules. To pay for all these expensive habits (like children and MBA), she freelances for numerous papers and magazines covering diverse topics ranging from business strategy to child rearing. She is a fierce advocate against domestic violence and for South Africa.
Kira Vermond
Kira Vermond is a Toronto-based mom and freelance writer who still wonders if she’ll ever get used to juggling laptop and baby. Her “money-work” can be found in The Globe and Mail, Today’s Parent and more trade magazines than you can shake a rattle at. She and her husband, David are raising their son, Nathan — who occasionally allows his mom to have a shower long enough to shave both legs. He is truly her labor of love.
www.vermond.ca
Peggy Vincent
Peggy Vincent, a retired midwife based in Berkeley, California, delivered nearly 3,000 babies during her career; nearly half were home births. Her memoir, BABY CATCHER: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife, was published by Scribner in 2002 and came out in paperback in 2003. A Los Angeles production company has optioned movie rights to the book. Peggy is now a full-time writer and lives at her home in Oakland, California with her husband and teenage son. Two adult children live nearby. Back To Top
Diane Meredith Vogel
Diane Meredith Vogel lives on a farm in Michigan with her husband/best friend. Her children are now grown and she has recently become a grandmother. With the nest empty, the couple is considering what adventures they will tackle in the future. Diane’s writing has appeared in many periodicals and can also be found in two of the Cup of Comfort anthologies. She is currently working on a historical novel about the 1847 emigration of her Dutch ancestors. The book explores the difference between religion and true relationship with God. Besides writing, Diane enjoys painting and raising goats and dogs.
Yvonne Eve Walus
Yvonne Eve Walus lives in New Zealand with her baby daughter, two cats (one of whom makes an excellent babysitter) and one husband (who’s also not half-bad at babysitting). She did her first piece of creative writing when she was four years old, and never really stopped. Her daughter is making her first tentative steps in Mommy’s footsteps and she loves all printed matter already.
http://members.fortunecity.com/yewalus
Naida Lynn Wyckoff
Naida Wyckoff resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with her husband of thirty-four years, Russell. In 1979, Naida graduated from Humboldt State University with a BA in fine arts. Her fabric art has warmed babies, graced churches and traveled the world. While Clover was her only “midwife” experience, she has had the privilege of witnessing six other births. Mother of a daughter and grandmother of four, she will always be an “Earth Mother” at heart.
Margaret Yang
Margaret Yang lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and two children. She is the restaurant critic for the Ann Arbor Observer. She is currently at work on her first novel. Back To Top
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