Writing
“It takes courage to write about motherhood in a culture that sets women with children on the sidelines, and it takes even greater courage to give voice to the powerful emotions and fears that swirl deep beneath the surface of our daily lives, informing and shaping our relationships with our children and the world at large.”
—Kathleen Hirsch and Katrina Kenison, Mothers
Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers
Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers is a guide to the art of creative nonfiction for women who want to give written expression to their lives as mothers. The book includes excerpts of quality writing about motherhood and teaches readers how to find the heart of their writing, learn to use motherhood as a lens through which to write the world, and turn their motherhood stories into art. The book is scheduled for publication in April, 2012 from Viva Editions. Now available for order from IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Advance praise for Use Your Words:
“Part writing workshop, part anthology, part mothers’ group between two covers, Use Your Words is so much more than an instruction manual. It is also a readable, powerful call to the page for
every woman in the process of giving birth to herself as a writer. If you have ever wondered whether motherhood is a viable literary subject, or whether you have a mothering story worth telling, Kate Hopper’s beautifully written book will answer that question once and for all – with compelling excerpts, exercises to inspire you, and clear, practical teachings on matters of voice,
structure, and style.”—Katrina Kenison, author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Mitten Strings for God
“Kate Hopper has been teaching writing for years, and she brings all her experience to bear in Use Your Words, a writing guide that’s a pleasure to read. The book is both deeply personal and quite
rigorous, offering examples from a range of writers to illustrate how good writing works, plus targeted exercises to let readers practice their craft. Use Your Words will help any writer, beginning or experienced, reckon with the messy stuff of life and shape it into memoir.”—Caroline Grant, Editor-in-Chief, Literary Mama, co-editor of Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (2008) and The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat (forthcoming fall 2012)
“Use Your Words brings a unique voice to the world of writing guides: honest, forthright, funny. Reading it felt to me no different than sitting down to have a writing tête-à-tête with a literary
friend and practicing writer. Because it is real, the voice welcomes beginners with trustworthy invitations to reach deep, and it also speaks to the practicing writer with new levels of insight about writing motherhood literature. It’s totally original in that it covers the specific areas where the experience of motherhood fires—and complicates—the task of writing. The true brilliance of Use Your Words is voice. When a teacher/author takes a risk with voice and really bares herself, her students/readers can do no less than rise to the same challenge. Also, the book is funny! I thought I was reading it just for fun, and the surprise for me was the spur in the ribs I got to write and write well.”—Bonnie J. Rough (Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA, Counterpoint, 2010)
“Though Hopper filters her valuable information and help through the lens of writing about the transformative experience of becoming a mother, her words are, in fact, a course in creative nonfiction for anyone writing in this genre.”
—Sheila Bender, founder of Writing It Real and author of About a New Theology
Small Continents: A Memoir of Navigating New Motherhood
No woman dreams of having a premature baby when she becomes pregnant. Whether she imagines a home or hospital birth, the imagined outcome is always the same: a healthy baby cradled in her arms. But millions of women do not experience the birth of their dreams. In the United States alone, half a million babies are born prematurely every year, more than one thousand every day.
In September 2003, when I was pregnant with my first child and just beginning my third year in the MFA program at the University Minnesota, I began exhibiting signs of preeclampsia, the pregnancy-induced disease that affects over 200,000 U.S. women and causes an estimated 76,000 maternal deaths worldwide every year.
Two months before my due date, when my symptoms became life-threatening, my daughter, Stella, was born via C-section, and my husband and I were thrust into the uncertainty and terror of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Stella spent four weeks in the hospital and five winter months inside with me, quarantined from the world.
Small Continents is an often funny, often terrifying account of the final weeks of my pregnancy, the “this-was-not-part-of-the-plan” first weeks of my daughter’s life in the hospital, and the isolated, post-NICU world we inhabited after we took her home. Small Continents is a story about learning to live with uncertainty. It’s about the different ways that men and women deal with crisis and the unexpected. It’s about faith and writing and the power of words to transform us.
Other Writing
Essays
“Becoming a Sanvicentena: Five Stages” in Brevity #32 (January, 2010).
“Afraid of Loving Her” in Motherlode in nytimes.com (February 12, 2009).
“Go, Mama, Go!” in Minnesota Parent (September, 2007).
“The Milkmaid” in MotherVerse, Issue #7 (Fall, 2007).
“Mothers’ Words Speak Volumes” in the Minneapolis Star Tibune (July 14, 2007).
“The Nuk Princess” in Minnesota Parent (May, 2007).
Reviews and Profiles
“An Interview with Bonnie J. Rough” in Literary Mama (November 28, 2010).
“Broadening the Motherhood Discussion: A Review of Who’s Your Mama and Unbuttoned” in Literary Mama (March 21, 2010).
“The Making of a Political Mama: A Profile of Shari MacDonald Strong” in Literary Mama (August 23, 2009).
“Writing Ambivalence.” Review of The Baby Lottery and Interview with Author Kathryn Trueblood in mamazine (March, 2008).
A review of Suzanne Kamata’s Losing Kei in mamazine (January, 2008).
“A Life Fully Lived: Deborah Garrison’s New Poems: A Review of The Second Child and an Interview With the Author” in mamazine (July, 2007).
Articles
“The Importance of Face Time: Making the Most of Writing Conferences” and “It’s Not a Hobby: Writing and the Value of Non-paid Work” in the anthology Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, forthcoming in 2011.
“Cross-country Skiing, Profile on Jen Rolfes” in Edina Magazine (Winter, 2010).
“Teaming Up: College Outreach Programs Promote Activity and Well-being” in Connect! (Fall, 2009).
“Inquiring Minds: Ongoing Teacher Development Supports Best Practices” in Connect! (Fall, 2008).
“A Make or Break Relationship: Graduate Students and Their Advisers Navigate a Challenging Course” in Connect! (November, 2007).
“CaringBridge: A Conduit for Hope and Support” in the May/June 2007 issue of Preemie Magazine.
“Hit the Road: 4 Tips for Happy Traveling with Your Preemie” in the May/June 2007 issue of Preemie Magazine.