Everyone talks about how wonderful and amazing it is to have a baby, and while they aren’t wrong, there is a part of the narrative that often gets ignored: the hard, the ugly, and the wtf moments that come with motherhood.

As a teacher, I am accustomed to helping others tell their stories; as a mom, I have had the joy of sharing and swapping stories with so many mamas, and I am INSPIRED! I am seeking short stories from mamas from all walks of life and every neighborhood across the country that will help me tell the real stories of motherhood. This anthology will feature 30-40 stories written by mamas just like you and will be called Mom Game Strong: Stories from the First Year.

Please consider the following questions to guide your submission:

What do you with someone had told you before you had a baby? What was something especially challenging during that first year? What experiences were difficult at the time, but turned out to be great learning moments?

To be considered for publication in the anthology, you are welcome to submit a short story online. Short stories must be between 1,500 – 2,000 words in length. Stories must be written as first person narratives and must be about difficult, unexpected, or laughable moment from your child’s first year of life (birth-1 year).

I am looking for original, unpublished stories for my anthology. “Original” is defined as your own original written work to which you have all of the necessary rights and permissions to grant me a license to use the work in the anthology as described herein. “Unpublished” is defined as never having been published on social media, in a magazine or on a blog or in a book before.

Open Call Submission opens May 1, 2022 and has been extended to June 15, 2022. Participants selected for Mom Game Strong will be notified by August 15, 2022 that their story has been selected.

If your story is selected for publication in the anthology, you will be required to sign a license agreement which gives me non-exclusive rights to publish your story, as well as edit for spelling and grammar. This means that you will retain copyright ownership of your story but grant me the rights to edit and publish it in the anthology and to use it again for certain other purposes, such as marketing the anthology.