We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful M. M. De Voe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with M. M. below.
Hi M. M. , thanks for joining us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
I hold an MFA from Columbia and my writing is award-winning literary and slipstream fiction, but because I founded a nonprofit that helps writers stay creative after having kids, I am frequently asked if I am a mommy blogger or if my books and short fiction are for kids.
Recently a collection of my weirdest short stories came out and many people were surprised that they are dark humor. I keep telling people that the goal of Pen Parentis is to keep writers on creative track…anyone who knew me before I had kids knows that my writing is quirky and weird, like Black Mirror. It just goes to show that the nonprofit, which is all about breaking parental stereotypes so that writers can do what they do best, is just as relevant today as it was when I founded it in 2014!
P.S. Shirley Jackson (who is the author we know best for The Lottery among other terrifyingly brilliant short stories) was also a mom!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a Gemini, so I’m going to break this into a two-part question, is that okay?
I am known for short stories that Kirkus called “ominous, masterfully conceived psychological fiction” – which basically means, like watching the Twilight Zone, you never know quite what you’ll get in terms of genre but it will be compelling, expose ironies of life, amuse you, and hopefully make you feel a little bit more human. I have won awards in poetry, published many essays and I even had a sci-fi musical produced Off Broadway–but I am primarily a fiction writer.
Between writing sessions, I run the nonprofit I founded, Pen Parentis. Everything we do recently moved online in order to be more accessible to parents who live outside of urban centers and crave a literary community. There are three major programs: an annual Writing Fellowship for New Parents, the Cycle of Support that includes mentorship, membership, and weekly accountability groups, and free monthly Literary Salons that present the diversity of writers who are also parents — from National Book Award winners to emerging poets, we curate small groups of writers from Hawaii to Maine who are all parents. Recent featured writers included Cleyvis Natera, Sergio Troncoso, Min Jin Lee, David Mura, Domenica Ruta, David Gerrold, Jennifer Egan, and 300+ more. We like to say that we have opportunities and resources for writers at any stage who have kids of any age. I encourage all writers with kids to check us out at penparentis.org
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I don’t think people realize how painful it is to be told “I could never have had kids, I’m too dedicated to my career,” because it implies your own kids were a choice you made because you’re not all that dedicated to your art. This was one of the real impetuses (impeti? what is the plural of impetus?) to found Pen Parentis. I wanted a community where I didn’t have to explain that writing IS my career and parenthood is NOT a career. (Parenthood, for the record, is a relationship. It is like becoming an older sister. Parenthood is a life event, like falling in love or buying a home. Parenthood doesn’t affect your talent, but affects your resources: time, energy and money. Manage the resources and you can have a wonderful career.)
And this too, for me, writing is not a hobby, it is a creative career–and just like any career you maintain after having kids, you have to really love it and make a plan in order to keep going. This is a problem faced by every professional from a litigator to a financial advisor — you have to find the time to do your job in addition to being a good parent.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I had no idea there were so many online databases to help you organize your submissions. I have been a loyal user of the Submission Grinder to track markets for my paid-story submissions for many years, but I just found out there is a literary-journal equivalent that launched in 2022 called chillsubs.com, And a few years ago I discovered Query Tracker for agent submissions.
It is so hard to keep up with all the tech! Scrivener has recently been one-upped by ButterDocs. I wish I had realized earlier that when you get frustrated, you can just type your frustration into Google search bar and nowadays, there is usually a solution out there.
Contact Info:
- Website: mmdevoe.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/femmekafka
- Facebook: facebook.com/mmdevoe
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmdevoe/
- Twitter: @mmdevoe
- Youtube: youtube.com/penparentis
- Other: Weekly on Sundays: mmdevoe.substack.com Occasional essays, stories and poems: mmdevoe.medium.com
Image Credits
Luba Grosman, Pen Parentis archives