Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (27 page)

Micki Grimland

Micki Grimland, LCSW-ACP, is deliciously and delightfully married to Sharon DePierri and has three cherished daughters and one precious son-in-law. They live in the suburbs of Houston, expanding consciousness of the suburban white picket fence society. Micki loves rock climbing, nature, the arts, having conversations, and enjoys exploring the intersection of spirituality and psychology. She is a therapist in private practice for thirty years and helps people along the path of full personal actualization. Her family appeared on
Oprah
on a show about coming out in mid-life, she is frequently on the
Great Day Houston
show, and is a mental health consultant with Channel 11 and 13 in Houston, Texas. Her life will be summed up on her epitaph by this quote: “She sucked the marrow out of life!”

Crystal Hooper

A Pennsylvania native, Crystal Hooper moved to Nashville, Tennessee, after graduation hoping to find her place in the country music industry. Ten years later, still looking for that place, Crystal found herself on an unexpected back road that would change her course of direction. In processing the pain, guilt, and fear she felt in falling for another woman, Crystal found that love and personal growth overrides the perception of success. Crystal is currently in a committed lesbian relationship, and with her ex-husband, they are all raising their six-year-old daughter together in a loving and peaceful environment.

Lori Horvitz

Lori Horvitz’s short stories, poetry, and personal essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including
The Southeast Review, Hotel Amerika, 13th Moon, The Dos Passos Review, Quarter After Eight,
and
P.S.: What I Didn’t Say
(Seal Press, 2009). She has been awarded writing fellowships from The Ragdale Foundation, Yaddo, Cottages at Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. A native New Yorker, Lori now makes her home in North Carolina, where she is an Associate Professor of Literature and Language at UNC-Asheville.

Jeanette LeBlanc

Jeanette LeBlanc is a photographer, writer, poet, and dreamer. She regularly consumes ridiculous amounts of dark chocolate, craves the sound of crashing waves, and wishes people would stop putting mushrooms on pizza. She has a love affair with words (all of them, especially the bad ones) and is inspired by the intersection of shadows and light. Hopelessly idealistic and impossibly pragmatic, Jeanette fully believes that she will one day earn a very good living with her camera and her writing. In the event that Plan A doesn’t work out, she is willing to settle for a huge lottery win, or the generosity of a very rich benefactor. Either way, she has no intention of being a starving artist. Jeanette lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her girlfriend and three delightfully unruly children. Jeanette writes about life at
www.peacelovefree.com
, and chronicles her coming out journey at
www.awakeningsblog.com
.

Erin Mantz

Since her childhood days touting pigtails and well-pronounced ad copy while auditioning for TV commercials, Erin understood the power of communication. Today, Erin’s articles have appeared in the
New York Post, Washington Parent
Magazine,
Tango
magazine, and more. Erin authored
Dads, Teach Your Child (Ages 2-6) About Computers
(WonderDads Publishing, 2008). She has also built her career in communications for major corporations in the Washington, DC, area. Erin grew up in Chicago and attended Ithaca College in New York. She resides in Potomac, Maryland with her partner, two sons, two “stepsons,” and two dogs. Her published clips are on
www.erinmantz.com
.

Meredith Maran

Meredith Maran (
www.meredithmaran.com
) is an award-winning journalist and the author of several best-selling nonfiction books, including
Dirty
(HarperOne, 2003),
Class Dismissed
(St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000),
Notes from an Incomplete Revolution
(Bantam, 1997), and
What It’s Like to Live Now
(Bantam, 1995). Her work appears regularly in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines. The mother of two grown sons, she lives with her wife in Oakland, California. Her next book,
My Lie: A True Story of False Memory
, was published by Jossey-Bass in September 2010.

Veronica Masen

New York native Veronica Masen is a self-employed costume designer, mother of two, dog lover, and avid gardener. She is a voracious reader, devouring everything from chick-lit to the classics, and writes fiction, poetry, and screenplays in her spare time. This is her first published piece.

Amanda V. Mead

Amanda V. Mead is a writer and teacher in Washington state, where she lives with her partner and their dog and cat. She is currently working towards her MFA in poetry at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers of Eastern Washington University. Amanda is an assistant poetry editor for
Willow Springs
literary arts journal. Her poetry has been published in
Opsis Literary Journal
and
Read This: Montana State University’s Literature and Arts Publication
. She is also a political activist for LGBT causes, and works with LGBT youth in the Spokane area.

Libbie Miller

Libbie Miller’s life was not particularly interesting until she finally came out to her husband of ten years. It was then that she decided she had a story worth sharing. She’s now engaged to be married to her best friend, who not only rivals her Converse collection, but is equally neurotic (in a cute,
When Harry Met Sally
kind of way). When she’s not at her day job churning out corporate copy, she’s concert hopping with her fiancée, learning to play more than two chords on her guitar, or hanging out with her four animals in Phoenix, Arizona.

Sabrina Porterfield

Sabrina Porterfield’s essays have been featured in the anthologies
Ask Me About My Divorce
(Seal Press, 2009) and
Labor Pains and Birth Stories
(Catalyst Book Press, 2009). She loves her Jane so much that she moved eight hours south of the Arctic Circle to be with her (and that’s love, baby). She spends her time mothering twins, teaching English to Finns, and wearing lots of warm clothing. When she can grab a quiet moment, she does a little writing on the side.

Sara C. Rauch

Sara C. Rauch is a poet, a writer, and an aspiring kombucha harvester. Her poetry has appeared in
The Berkshire Review, upstreet, Inkwell, Earth’s Daughters,
and
The Black Boot
. She lives with her partner and their four big-boned cats in Northampton, Massachusetts. When she isn’t writing, she is tending her community garden plot, riding her bicycle, and figuring out new and exciting ways to cook kale. Visit her blog at
www.cactusroom.blogspot.com
.

Michelle Renae

Michelle Renae is a writer and spoken word artist who makes her home in Chicago. Her work focuses primarily on feminist issues and spirituality as explored through her own life and sexuality. Michelle is also the co-founder and president of Organa Wellness Inc., a Chicago-based organization that helps women harmonize body, mind, and soul through a range of holistic services. She lives with her husband and their energetic three-year-old son. To contact Michelle and learn more about her work, please visit
www.michellespoken.com
or email her at [email protected].

Amelia Sauter

Amelia Sauter is a writer, cartoonist, martini lounge owner, marketing consultant, and musician living with her dynamic partner, their simple-minded dog, and their needy old cat in Ithaca, New York. Yes, she really does all those things, and yes, it pretty much makes her crazy. Back in the old days when newspapers thrived, Amelia wrote a regular cocktail column for
The Ithaca Journal
. Her cocktail blog can be found at
www.feliciaspeakeasy.com
and her freelance blog is
www.drinkmywords.com
. Amelia is currently writing a humorous memoir,
Small Town, Big Cocktails
(working title) about leaving a stable social work career to open a wild cocktail lounge, when she didn’t even know how the heck to make a gin and tonic. She is seeking a publisher for the book.

Rachel Smith

Rachel Smith was born in Chicago in 1970. She is the mother of two children: a son (eleven years old) and a daughter (three years old). She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and an MBA in Healthcare Management. Currently, she’s employed as an administrative assistant at a large teaching hospital in Chicago. She got married in 2005 and is currently separated from her husband, although he lives close by in effort to maintain a strong relationship with their children. She is still with her lover, K.

Sheila Smith

Sheila Smith was born into the Depression, came of age during the McCarthy era, but became a political radical and a gender queer anyway. She’s lived in the same town, Corvallis, Oregon, for fifty years. She worked in biology labs, and turned dog trainer and lay minister in retirement years. She writes for much fun and little profit. Her work has been published in
Spirit of Corvallis
(Donning Company Publishers, 2008),
A Cup of Comfort for Divorced Women
(Adams Media, 2008), two animal shelter newsletters, and PETCO’s electronic newsletter.

Leigh Stuart

Leigh Stuart lives in Los Angeles with her two teenage children. In addition to being a devoted mother, she is a partner, daughter, freelance writer, attorney, and former wife. Recognizing her personal truth while simultaneously uncovering her longtime husband’s secret life is the subject of her nearly completed memoir,
Revolution
.

Susan White

Susan White, originally from eastern Tennessee, received her master’s degree from the Bread Loaf School of English and her MFA from Stonecoast. She has published short fiction in
River Walk Journal
,
Pisgah Review, Front Range Review,
and
Fresh Boiled Peanuts
. Her nonfiction essay, “Night Run,” will appear in
A Daughter’s Story
anthology
.
She teaches high school English in Asheville, North Carolina. When she’s not grading or writing, Susan enjoys running on the mountain trails with her dogs, Zora, Callie, and Hooper.

About the Editors

Candace Walsh
is the editor of
Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On
(Seal Press, 2009). She is also the features and poetry editor at
Mothering
magazine. She co-founded and edited
Mamalicious
magazine. Her articles have appeared in
Travel + Leisure, Sunset, Food & Wine, Natural Solutions, Newsday, New York, Blender,
and
Details
. She also wrote, with John Morris, the book
Stone Designs for the Home
(Gibbs Smith, 2008). Candace lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Laura André
received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was Assistant Professor in the history of photography at the University of New Mexico from 2003 to 2007. Her essay “Not Otherwise Specified” appeared in
Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On
(Seal Press, 2009). She lives in Santa Fe and works for an independent bookseller specializing in rare and contemporary photography books.

Acknowledgments

W
e’d like to thank Krista Lyons for supporting and signing this project, Andie East for promoting it, and Seana McInerney for handling the paperwork. We love the brilliant cover design, and send our most passionately heartfelt kudos to the book’s cover designer, Kate Basart.

The rich variety of this book is entirely due to the many wonderful writers who sent in their stories—way more than could all be squeezed between these covers. Thank you for wading through the messiness of recalled personal history and sorting it out on paper for our appreciative consideration. We’d also like to thank all of the writing website moderators and blog writers (like Jen Sabella at
AfterEllen.com
) who posted our call for submissions. Jill Soloway was kind enough to give us some wonderful and accomplished writer leads.

This book has been generously graced with the eminent insights of Dr. Lisa Diamond and Jennifer Baumgardner, who have individually mapped the terrain of women’s desire in new ways that are both intrepid and visionary.

We are grateful to Andi Zeisler for publishing Audrey Bilger’s article on the changing meaning of the word “wife” in
Bitch
magazine, which sent us scrambling for her involvement in this book. Gretchen Van Esselstyn of
mediabistro.com
gave us one of our first mentions in a tutorial on writing for anthologies.

Candace’s children played nicely on many an afternoon when we had a deadline looming; Laura’s dogs snored soothingly in the background. Thank you to the friends and family who cheered us on and joined our book’s Facebook fan page; and thank you to the scores of complete strangers who joined it as well. Our book’s proposal was drafted at Two Fools Tavern in Albuquerque, and we read submissions and hammered out the introduction there over many a Guinness and Cobb salad (Candace), and Bass and nachos (Laura). It’s the quintessential, unpretentiously perfect writer’s haunt and we hope to linger there over many future projects. We also want to thank Jill McArthur for bemusedly hearing out our up-to-the-minute editorial dispatches and giving us each such great hair for our author photo.