38 | The Writer • May 2020
LITERARY SPOTLIGHT
BY MELISSA HART INSIDE LITERARY MAGAZINES
F
ive years ago, poet and essay-
ist Julianne Palumbo
founded the online literary
magazine Mothers Always
Wr ite to offer readers insightful pieces
about parenting and to give mothers
and fathers and writers a place to
gather and create community.
Now, she works with fellow editors
Michelle Riddell and Sarah Clayville to
publish parenting experiences from
birthing infants to embracing the empty
nest. “We’re looking for word choice
and form and use of figurative language
so strong that we feel like we’re actually
there with the writer,” Palumbo
explains. “We want pieces that create an
emotion we just can’t shake.”
Tone, editorial content
“We get a lot of writing about really
interesting mother issues,” she says,
“but they’re not all written in a literary
way. We believe how the words are
arranged in a piece is just as important
as what those words are saying.”
She admires the literary quality of
Alexandra Umlas’s essay titled “Sticks”
(6/19/19) about watching a 7-year-old
girl who sits mesmerized by a TV pro-
gram on which artist Bob Ross shows
viewers how to paint mountains. “Bob
Ross is teaching my daughter how to
paint,” Umlas writes, “but his voice
hints at other things: science, philoso-
phy, life, and even death.”
Palumbo immediately gravitated
toward the writing style. “It’s layer upon
layer,” she explains. “The author is
watching her daughter, who’s watching
Bob, who’s painting a picture, and there
are layers of what that all means to life.”
Mothers Always Write
Parenting and powerful writing come together in this
bi-monthly, online literary journal.“We want
pieces that
create an
emotion we
just can’t
shake.”struggle, and maybe every mother
writer goes through it at some point in
her career. Do I sit down in my free
time and write, or should I be doing
more mothering?”Contributors
Several readers wrote in to respond to
Tara Mandarano’s essay “If I Don’t
Have More Than One Child, Am I
Still a Good Mother?” (4/3/17). “It
was hugely popular,” Palumbo says.
“Tara’s piece addresses a struggle that
a lot of women go through. They
wonder what it means about them
that they don’t want a second child.
The essay explores that inner struggle,
how mothers judge themselves.”She also appreciates Marissa Glover’s
“I Don’t Want to Write Any More
Poems” (12/30/19), which rails against
poetry because it can’t cook dinner or
empty the dishwasher. Glover writes:“They won’t fold
clothes or fill the car with gas or
sit at a desk
eight hours a day, listening to
the boss bark.”By the end of the piece, however,
she acknowledges poetry’s power to
offer solace and community in the
midst of parenting challenges.
“It’s one of my favorite poems,”
Palumbo says. “It’s such a common