What My Mother Gave Me (21 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Benedict

BOOK: What My Mother Gave Me

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Acknowledgments

All of the essays were commissioned specifically for
What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most.

“Heart's Desire” by Roxana Robinson. Copyright Â© 2012 Roxana Robinson. “Heart's Desire” originally appeared in
Narrative
magazine.

“Three-Hour Tour” by Emma Straub. Copyright Â© 2012 Emma Straub. “Three-Hour Tour” appears in
Gulf Coast
25.2.

“The Deal” by Martha McPhee. Copyright Â© 2012 Martha McPhee. “The Deal” appears in
The American Scholar,
Spring 2013.

“Finding the Love Child” by Sheila Kohler. Copyright Â© 2012 Sheila Kohler. “Finding the Love Child” appears in
Salmagundi,
Winter 2013.

Contributors

Elizabeth Benedict
is a graduate of Barnard College and the author of five novels, including the best seller
Almost
and the National Book Award finalist
Slow Dancing,
as well as
Th
e Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers.
She is the editor of the anthology
Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed
Th
eir Lives,
and has written for the
New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Narrative Magazine, Allure, Salmagundi, Daedalus, Huffington Post,
th
e
Rumpus,
and
Tin House.
Her
Daedalus
essays, “What I Learned About Sex on the Internet” and “Murder One: Mad Dog Taborsky and Me,” are Notable Essays in
Best American Essays
collections. She has taught widely and works as a writing coach and editor. Please visit
www.elizabethbenedict.com
.

Eleanor Clift
is a contributor to
Newsweek
magazine and the
Daily Beast
website, and is a panelist on the public affairs show
Th
e McLaughlin Group
. She has appeared as herself in several movies, including
Dave
,
Independence Day
,
Murder at 1600,
and in the CBS television series
Murphy Brown
.
www.eleanorclift.com
.

Lillian Daniel
is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church, UCC, of Glen Ellyn, and author of
Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony,
which is the story of one church's attempt to get mainline Protestants to talk to each other about God. Her newest book,
Th
is Odd and Wondrous Calling:
Th
e Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers,
coauthored by Martin B. Copenhaver, is a humorous and honest look at the ministry. Lillian also hosts the Chicago-based public television program
30 Good Minutes.
An editor at large for the
Christian Century
and a contributing editor at
Leadership Journal,
her work has also appeared in the
Huffington Post, Christianity Today, Leadership Journal, Books and Culture,
the
Journal for Preachers,
and in the daily e-mail devotionals available at
ucc.org
, with over twenty thousand subscribers. She has taught preaching at Yale Divinity School, Chicago
Th
eological Seminary, and the University of Chicago Divinity School. A frequent speaker around the country, Lillian has preached at the National Cathedral, Duke Chapel, the Festival of Homiletics, King's College London, and Queen's University, Ontario.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate
Rita Dove
is the author of nine poetry books, a collection of short stories, and a novel. Her play
Th
e Darker Face of the Earth
was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Royal National
Th
eatre in London, among numerous other venues.
Sonata Mulattica,
her most recent poetry book, was published by W. W. Norton in 2009.
Th
e Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry,
released in 2011, was edited by Rita Dove. Her honors include the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, the National Humanities Medal, the Heinz Award, and the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia and can be found on the Web at
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/
.

Mary Gordon
is the author of seven novels, including
Final Payments, Spending,
and, most recently,
Th
e Love of My Youth;
of two memoirs; of
Th
e Stories of Mary Gordon,
winner of the Story Prize; of
Reading Jesus;
and of a biography of Joan of Arc. She is the recipient of a Lila WallaceâReader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College.

Ann Hood
is the author of nine novels, including the best sellers
Th
e Red
Th
read, Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine,
and
Th
e Knitting Circle,
as well as a collection of short stories,
An Ornithologist's Guide to Life,
and a memoir,
Comfort: A Journey
Th
rough Grief,
which was named by
Entertainment Weekly
as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008, and was a
New York Times
Editor's Choice. Her new novel,
Th
e Obituary Writer,
will be published in 2013.

Margo Jefferson
is a Pulitzer Prizeâwinning cultural critic. Her book,
On Michael Jackson,
was published in 2006. She was a staff writer for the
New York Times
for twelve years, and has contributed reviews and essays to
Bookforum,
the
Washington Post,
New York Magazine,
and other publications. Her work has appeared in the anthologies
Th
e Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death
(Norton),
Best African
American Essays 2010
(Ballantine/One World),
Black
Cool: One
Th
ousand Streams of Blackness
(Counterpoint), and
Th
e Mrs. Dalloway Reader
(Harcourt). She has also written and performed a solo theater piece,
Sixty Minutes in Negroland
.

Karen Karbo
is the author of three novels and a memoir, all of which were named
New York Times
Notable Books of the Year. Her 2003 memoir,
Th
e Stuff of Life,
about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was a
New York Times
Notable Book, a
People Magazine
Critics' Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short stories, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in
Elle,
Vogue,
Esquire,
Outside,
the
New York
Times, Salon,
and other magazines. Her most recent book is
How
Georgia Became O'Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living,
the third in what she calls her Kick Ass Women trilogy.

Sheila Kohler
is the author of nine novels, most recently
Becoming Jane Eyre
(2009),
Love Child
(2011), and
Bay of the Foxes
(2012), and three collections of short stories. Kohler has been awarded the O. Henry twice Award (1988, 2008), the Open Voice Award (1991), the Smart Family Foundation Prize (October 2000), the Willa Cather Prize judged by William Gass for
One Girl,
and the
Antioch Review
Prize (2004).

Her work has been translated and published widely abroad by Gallimard, France; Klett-Cotta, Germany; Shinchosha, Japan; Distribuidora Rekord, Brazil; Querido, Holland; Jonathan Cape and Bloomsbury in England; Penguin India; and will appear in Hungarian, Hebrew, Korean, and Chinese.

She has taught creative writing at City College, the Chenango Valley Conference at Colgate, Sarah Lawrence,
Th
e New School, SUNY Purchase, the West Side YMCA; in Montolieu, France; and at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. She now teaches at Princeton and Bennington.

Her novel
Cracks
has been filmed with Jordan Scott as director, Ridley Scott as executive producer, and Eva Green playing Miss G.

Jean Hanff Korelitz
is the author of four novels (
Admission,
Th
e White Rose,
Th
e Sabbathday River,
and
A Jury of Her Peers
), a collection of poetry (
Th
e Properties of Breath
), and a novel for children (
Interference Powder
). She has contributed essays and articles to several anthologies and many magazines, including
Vogue, Real Simple, Reader's Digest, More,
and
Newsweek.
She lives in New Jersey with her family and has not seen a Woody Allen film in twenty years.

Caroline Leavitt
is the
New York Times
best-selling author of
Pictures of You
and eight other novels. A book critic for
People
and the
Boston Globe,
she is a senior writing instructor for UCLA Writers' Program online, and she lives with her husband, the writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their son Max, in Hoboken, New Jersey. She can be found at
www.carolineleavitt.com
. Her new novel,
Is This Tomorrow,
will be published in the spring of 2013.

Elinor Lipman
is the author of nine novels, including
Th
en She Found Me,
Th
e Inn at Lake Devine,
and, most recently,
Th
e Family Man.
Her next,
Th
e View from Penthouse B,
will be published in 2013, along with an essay collection. She recently held the Elizabeth Drew Chair in Creative Writing at Smith College.

Dahlia Lithwick
is a senior editor at
Slate,
and in that capacity, writes the “Supreme Court Dispatches” and “Jurisprudence” columns
.
Her work has appeared in the
New York
Times
,
Harper's
, the
Washington
Post,
and
Commentary,
among other places. She received the Online News Association's award for online commentary in 2001 and again in 2005. She was editor of
Th
e Best American Legal Writing of 2009.
She is the coauthor of
Me v. Everybody: Absurd Contracts for an Absurd World
, a legal humor book, and
I Will Sing Life: Voices from the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp,
a book about seven children from Paul Newman's camp with life-threatening illnesses. She appears frequently on television and radio, including
Th
e Rachel Maddow Show
and
Th
e Colbert Report,
and is a frequent guest on NPR.

Martha McPhee
is the author of four novels, most recently
Dear Money
. Her work has been nominated for a National Book Award and honored by grants from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Please visit
marthamcphee.com
.

Mameve Medwed
(named for two grandmothers, Mamie and Eva) is the author of the novels
Mail, Host Family,
Th
e End of an Error, How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life
(2007 Massachusetts Book Award's Fiction Honor), and
Of Men and
Th
eir Mothers.
Her stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in, among others, the
New York Times
,
Gourmet
,
Boston Globe
, the
Missouri Review, Newsday,
and the
Washington Post
. Born in Bangor, Maine (and claiming the title: “Bangor's other novelist”), she and her husband have two grown sons and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has recently finished a memoir of an editorial friendship and is at work on a new novel. Her website is
www.mamevemedwed.com
.

Mary Morris
is the author of fourteen booksâsix novels, including
Revenge,
three collections of short stories, and four travel memoirs, including most recently
Th
e River Queen
. Her numerous short stories and travel essays have appeared in such places as the
Atlantic, Narrative Magazine,
the
New York Times,
and
Travel and Leisure
.
Th
e recipient of the Rome Prize, Morris teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. For more information, visit her website,
www.marymorris.net
.

Cecilia MuÃ±oz
has been an activist for Latinos, immigrants, and civil rights for twenty-five years, twenty of them at the National Council of La Raza, where she directed the public policy office. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship for her efforts, as well as numerous other awards.
Th
e daughter of immigrants from Bolivia, she lives outside of Washington, D.C., with her husband and two daughters.

Maud Newton
received the 2009 Narrative Prize for an excerpt from her novel-in-progress. She has written for the
New York Times Magazine,
Narrative Magazine,
the
Paris Review Daily,
the
Los Angeles Times,
Granta,
the
New York Times Book Review,
the
Boston Globe
, the
Awl
, and many other publications. Her blog,
maudnewton.com
, which concentrates on books, culture, politics, and other matters, has been praised, cited, and criticized in the
New York Times
,
Washington Post, Wall Street Journal,
the
Times
(UK),
Forbes,
New York Magazine,
Entertainment Weekly,
USA Today,
the UK
Telegraph,
the
New Yorker,
Poets & Writers,
Slate,
and the
San Francisco Chronicle,
among other periodicals. She has more than 130,000 followers on Twitter.

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