Playwright. Chaplain. Middle school teacher. Author. Historian. These are just a few of the talented writers who share their wonderful stories of trying to conceive, carrying, and raising multiples. They come from far and wide but are threaded together through their joy and experience with parenting twins and triplets. We are so pleased to introduce the contributors to Multiples Illuminated: A Collection of Stories and Essays from Parents of Twins, Triplets and More.
Before becoming a middle school English teacher, Jared Bond was a stay-at-home dad to his triplets. While he doesn’t remember much about that first year, he took copious notes so that he could share the experience with other parents of multiples (and himself, once he caught up on sleep).
Allie Burdick is happiest when writing or sweating! Her work has appeared in Runner’s World, Women’s Running Magazine, Run Haven and countless other health and fitness publications. Allie is also a competitive athlete on the Oiselle Volée team and has represented Team USA in a duathlon competition. When not updating her blog VITA – Train for Life, she is busy with her twin boys and husband, living a big life in the Northeast.
MeiMei Fox is a New York Times bestselling author who regularly blogs for The Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen, among other publications. Also, MeiMei works as a life coach, assisting clients in realizing their most ambitious dreams. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University, with a BA and MA in psychology. MeiMei lives in Hawaii with the Love of Her Life, her husband Kiran Ramchandran, and their twin boys. Her mantra is Fear Less, Love More! MeiMei writes about raising and traveling with twins in her blog, Adventures with Twins.
Kirsten Gant is a freelance writer, Barre fitness instructor, and mother of 6-year-old triplets and a 9-year-old big brother living in Marietta, GA. Kirsten’s first children’s book, The Matter of the Moo Cow, was published last spring and is available on Etsy and in many local shops and bookstores. Kirsten hopes to have her next children’s book, The Matter of the May Mouse, on sale next spring.
Angie Kinghorn is a freelance writer who has published pieces on Good Housekeeping, Redbook, BonBon Break, and In the Powder Room. Her work is published in four anthologies, including the best-selling humor compilationYou Have Lipstick on Your Teeth. She was a BlogHer VOTY honoree in 2012. Her dog was not impressed. Angie adores dark chocolate and the Oxford comma with equal fervor and cannot be trusted in a bookstore with a credit card.
Janine K
ovac was a ballet-dancer-turned-software-engineer when she discovered that her surprise pregnancy was a high-risk twin pregnancy. Her NICU-related essays have appeared in Pregnancy and Newborn magazine, Raising Happiness, and in the anthologies Mamas Write: 29 Tales of Truth, Wit, and Grit and Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God. In 2012 Janine co-founded the 501c3 nonprofit writing group Write On Mamas. She is the 2016 director for the San Francisco production of Listen To Your Mother, and an event producer for Litquake. Janine lives with her husband and three children in Oakland, California.
Eileen C. Manion grew up in New York and moved to Montreal in 1969 where she got her Ph.D. in English at McGill University. Since the mid-1970s, she has been teaching English at Dawson College in Montreal. In 1987, she had triplet daughters, one of whom currently lives in Canada, while the other two are in the U.S.
Janet McNally is the author of the YA novel Girls in the Moon, coming in Fall 2016 from HarperCollins/ HarperTeen, and a collection of poems, Some Girls, winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame and has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives with her husband and three little girls (including twins) in Buffalo, where she teaches creative writing at Canisius College.
Becki Melchione‘s writing about young adult cancer, infertility and raising twins has appeared in Brain, Child; Literary Mama; Cargo Literary and Kaleidoscope Magazine. She’s been working on a memoir about choosing hope through cancer and infertility for too long to admit. Her current home is in the Philadelphia suburbs with her husband, the girls (twins daughters) and the boys (two cats).
Susan Moldaw works as a chaplain in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Brain, Child, Lilith, Literary Mama, Narrative, and other publications. She is the mother of triplets.
Ellen Nordberg‘s stories have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, The Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, Errant Parent, and numerous anthologies. She has performed her humorous twin essays in several Colorado Listen To Your Mother shows and is currently a co-producer of the Boulder show. She lives outside of Boulder where she spends much of her time rescuing her middle school age twins’ remote control drones off neighbors’ roofs.
Amy Paturel, Amy Paturel, M.S., M.P.H., is an award-winning writer who has chronicled her triumphs, heartbreaks and parenting escapades for Parents, Fit Pregnancy, American Baby, the New York Times and Newsweek. When she’s not trying to master the art of raising young children without losing her mind, she teaches essay writing and pens service stories about health, fitness, food and wellness for consumer and custom magazines. Now with three boys under 5, Amy lives in bleary-eyed fog, populated by giant LEGO towers, remote control cars, and captivating renditions of “The Hot Dog Dance.”
Jackie Pick is a former teacher who is now writing her way through what she nervously identifies as her “second adolescence.” Her work can be found in The HerStories Project anthology: So Glad They Told Me (Spring, 2016) and on Scary Mommy. She is the co-creator and co-writer of the upcoming short film Bacon Wrapped Dates, and she occasionally performs in and directs sketch comedy in Chicago. When she’s not in one of her three children’s school pick-up lanes, she can be found on Twitter apologizing for not updating her blog.
Lexi Rohner wrote her first book at age seven and won a library summer contest for reading the most books. Her FAQ about life with loud, messy and expensive 7-year old triplets (two with special needs), 18-year old stepson and her children’s 11 grandparents offers one answer: don’t fold anything. A lifelong competitive figure skater, Rohner left her 13-year hospitality management career to coach skating for 11 years, created a monthly column for SKATING Magazine and found previous experience in voiceover and as a camp director oddly handy for the unexpected adventures of multiples.
Shelley Stolaroff Segal is a playwright, actor, composer, and essayist living in Greensboro, North Carolina. She enjoys wearing different artistic hats so long as it doesn’t interfere with raising her husband, twin teenagers, and three cats. Her latest play, My Son, is about autism and race and premiered in NYC. It was presented as a TED talk at TEDx East and continues to tour. Anthology credits include Voices from the Spectrum, Cup of Comfort/Autism, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Multiples Illuminated. Her poetry and non-fiction pieces have been featured in A Quiet Courage, The Washington Post, Midlife Boulevard, Blunt Moms, Autism Speaks, and Autism/Asperger’s Digest. She’s been working on the same book for six years now and is hoping it will literally write itself one day. You may find her at her blog.
Erika Sigurdson is an Icelandic-Canadian writer, historian, and mother of twins.
Shanna Silva is an author, freelance writer, and two-time Tony-nominated Broadway Producer. She writes for Kveller and has a children’s book set for publication in 2017. In between it all, she is raising three amazing and loud boys with her husband, Steven.
Allie Smith is a freelance writer and blogger who writes about parenting, autism, books, and travel on her blog, The Latchkey Mom. She’s an assistant editor for The HerStories Project and a contributing book reviewer for Chick Lit Plus. Each summer, she takes an epic road trip with four children and documents their adventures in a monthly column for My Forsyth magazine. Her work has been published by the Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, Full Grown People, The Forsyth Herald, Club Mid, Autism Speaks and various other sites. Most recently, Allie had an essay included in the anthology, Mothering Through the Darkness.
Melanie Sweeney is a writer and mother of a singleton boy and twin girls. She holds an MFA in creative writing from New Mexico State University. Birds as Leaves, her nonfiction chapbook on motherhood, nature, and the body, is available from The Lettered Streets Press’ Split Volume Series, and she blogs at Micro-Affections.
Briton Underwood better known as Punk Rock Papa is a parent above all else. When he gets sick of being at their beck and call, he likes to escape to his page or site. He writes about any and everything he wants, but mainly about his twin boys or his newest addition – another boy. He also would like the world to know he has a beautiful wife because the couch isn’t that comfy.