Wedding Cake for Breakfast
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Margaret Dilloway is the author of the novels The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns and How to Be an American Housewife. She lives in San Diego, California, with her family. She writes a blog, American Housewife, on her website: www.margaretdilloway.com
Susan Jane Gilman is the bestselling author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, Kiss My Tiara, and Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. A regular contributor to NPR, she has appeared on the Today show, Men Are From Mars, and ABC World News Now, and has been featured in USA Today, Ms. Magazine, People, and Glamour. She published her first piece of fiction in the Village Voice when she was sixteen; since then, she has won numerous literary and journalistic awards. She lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and is currently at work on a novel. Visit her website: www.susanjanegilman.com
Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of the bestselling novels The Knitting Circle and The Red Thread and the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times Editors Choice and named one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly. A regular contributor to the New York Times and NPR’s The Story with Dick Gordon, Hood has won two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Food Writing and Best American Spiritual Writing Award. Visit her website: http://www.annhood.us
Joshilyn Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Gods in Alabama, Backseat Saints, and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. She lives in quasi-rural Georgia with her husband, their two kids, and way too many feckless animals. You can visit her on the web at http://joshilynjackson.com
Jill Kargman is a New York Times bestselling author of trashy novels including Momzillas, The Right Address and The Ex.-Mrs. Hedgefund. Her memoir, Sometimes I Feel Like A Nut, is an essay collection that can be found in the humor section of your bookstore. She lives in New York. www.jillkargman.com
Sally Koslow is the author of Slouching Toward Adulthood: Observations from the Not-So-Empty Nest (Viking,) an examination of people in their twenties and thirties; three novels: The Late Lamented Molly Marx, With Friends Like These (Ballantine) and Little Pink Slips (Putnam), with a fourth novel in progress. She contributes essays to many magazines and has been featured in DIRT: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House. You can read Sally’s work on www.sallykoslow.com
Claire LaZebnik is coauthor with Dr. Lynn Kern Koegel of two nonfiction books (Overcoming Autism and Growing Up on the Spectrum) and has published six novels, including Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts and her first young adult novel, Epic Fail. Another YA novel, The Trouble with Flirting, will be out next winter. She lives in Pacific Palisades with her husband and four kids. www.clairelazebnik.com
Sophie Littlefield writes the award-winning post-apocalyptic Aftertime series for Harlequin Luna. She also writes paranormal fiction for young adults. Her first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, won an Anthony Award for Best First Novel and an RT Book Award for Best First Mystery. Sophie grew up in rural Missouri and makes her home in northern California www.sophielittlefield.com
Darcie Maranich lives with her family in Tucson, Arizona, where she spends an inordinate amount of time shooing away scaly desert creatures and tweezing cactus spines from her son’s extremities. Darcie blogs at www.suchthespot.com
Jenna McCarthy is the author of If It Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married. (Please note that it says the man you married, not the one she married. Her husband likes it when she points that out.) She is the author of four previous books, and her work has been published in magazines and anthologies around the world. Visit Jenna online at www.jennamccarthy.com
Liza Monroy is the author of the novel Mexican High and the forthcoming memoir The Marriage Act, which further explores her unconventional relationship with Emir. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at Columbia University and elsewhere. Liza has written for the New York Times’ Modern Love column, The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Salon, Women’s Health, Everyday With Rachael Ray, the Village Voice, Jane, Poets & Writers, Self, Bust, Publishers Weekly, and others. www.lizamonroy.com
Sarah Pekkanen is the international bestselling author of three novels: These Girls, Skipping a Beat, and The Opposite of Me. She has also written two linked short stories available for eReaders titled “All Is Bright” and “Love, Accidentally.” A former D.C. journalist who has also worked as a waitress, pet-sitter, model, babysitter, and stand-in on Hollywood films, she now lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband, three young sons, and rescue Lab. www.sarah pekkanen.com
Rebecca Rasmussen is the author of the novel The Bird Sisters (Crown/Random House 2011). She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter, where she teaches writing at UCLA. She’s been married for six lovely years. She still favors black dresses over white ones, and real playgrounds over ones named after the Devil. She spends her days writing and teaching and trying to be as grateful for this wonderful life as she can be. www.rebeccarasmussen.com
Susan Shapiro is the author of eight books, including Unhooked, Speed Shrinking, Overexposed, Lighting Up, and the memoir Five Men Who Broke My Heart, which is currently being made into a movie. She teaches her popular “instant gratification takes too long” writing method at the New School, NYU, and private workshops. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The Nation, Salon, Tin House, Daily Beast, the Village Voice, People, Psychology Today, More, and Marie Claire. www.susanshapiro.net
Abby Sher is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her memoir, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things) got a nod from Oprah and won the Elle Readers’ Prize, Chicago Tribune’s Best of 2009, and Moment Magazine’s Emerging Writers Award. Abby also wrote a young adult novel, Kissing Snowflakes, which is about snowboots and stepmoms. She’s written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, and HeeB. She is still happily married to Jay and they have two hilarious children. www.AbbySher.com
Claire Bidwell Smith is the author of The Rules of Inheritance, a memoir about coming of age in a fog of grief after losing both her parents at a very young age. She has written for many publications including Time Out New York, Yoga Journal, BlackBook Magazine, the Huffington Post and Chicago Public Radio. She lives in Los Angeles and is a therapist specializing in grief. www.clairebidwellsmith.com
Daphne Uviller is the author of the novels Hotel No Tell and Super in the City, and is the coeditor of the anthology Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo. She lives with her first and only husband in New York’s Hudson Valley with their two children. She can be found at www.daphneuviller.com
Kristen Weber spent most of her career working in New York City book publishing, most recently as a senior editor for Penguin’s New American Library, before relocating to Los Angeles in June of 2009. Now she works as an independent book editor in between relearning to drive and hanging out with her husband and her pug. Her short fiction has been published in Girls’ Life Magazine and in The Girls’ Life Big Book of Short Stories. You can visit her website at www.kristenweber.com
Judith Marks-White is the Westport News (Connecticut) award-winning columnist of “The Light Touch,” which has appeared for the past twenty-six years. She is the author of two novels published by Random House/Ballantine: Seducing Harry and Bachelor Degree, which won a Reader’s Prize 2009 from Elle magazine. Judith teaches humor writing, writes for numerous anthologies, and lectures widely. She is working on her next book. www.judithmarks-white.com
Amy Wilson is the author of When Did I Get Like This? The Screamer, The Worrier, The Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be (William Morrow, 2010). She is also the creator of the one-woman show Mother Load, which followed its hit Off-Broadway run with a national tour of sixteen c
ities. She blogs at whendidigetlike this.com
Wedding Cake for Breakfast
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. The stories in this book are snapshots of life; they reveal the complicated, the funny, the sometimes challenging experiences that women face during that pivotal first year of marriage. Which of these essays resonates the most with you and why?
2. Several stories, including Joshilyn Jackson’s “The Marry Boy” discuss friendship as a foundation for marriage. How important is being friends first in a romantic relationship versus having a relationship that begins with passion and attraction? How did yours begin?
3. In “Marriage Changes Things” Liza Monroy writes about her unconventional marriage to her best friend Emir: “I had expected nothing to change. But here we were, an unconventional twosome who suddenly found ourselves filling the most conventional roles. Marriage, I thought, was not supposed to do this—not to us—but as it turns out, marriage changes things no matter what kind of couple you are.” Discuss how Susan Jane Gillman also touches on this same sentiment in her essay “Do You Want Fries with That?” and the subconscious ways people fall into certain roles in a marriage.
4. Margaret Dilloway’s “Love in the Time of Camouflage” and Darcie Maranich’s “All the Time in the World” deal with their experiences as army wives. In “Home Is Where the Husband Is,” Kristen Weber also touches on long-distance relationships. Discuss how their husbands’ time away from home affected each couple. Do you believe distance makes the heart grow fonder? Or that distance just creates more distance in the relationship?
5. In her essay “Faith and Fairy Tales,” Andrea King Collier writes: “I would have appreciated it if someone had just said that the first year of marriage is the thing you have to go through to get to the happily married part.” Is there too much focus on weddings these days and not enough on actually being married?
6. In “Animal Husbandry,” Claire LaZebnik recounts how she finally realized that she could start her own traditions and break free from those she grew up with, while Elizabeth Bard’s “Twinkie Au Chocolat” and Sarah Pekkanen’s “Blending a Family” show ways in which family customs can be at odds in a new marriage. How do we decide what to borrow from our own upbringing and when to change it up? What are some of the customs you consciously changed in your marriage versus the ones with which you were raised?
7. Sophie Littlefield’s “He Chose Me” features a marriage that ended. She discusses putting herself on a shelf for her marriage. Do you think women often do this? How important is it to maintain your own independence and identity in a marriage, and what are some ways women are able to maintain theirs?
8. Abby Sher’s “Juan and Martita” and Claire Bidwell Smith’s “The First Year” are both about how they navigated their respective first year of marriage without their mother (and Bidwell Smith learns she’s becoming a mother). How pivotal a role do mothers play in the first year of marriage? What might they do to help the young marriage, and what should they not do?
9. Susan Shapiro, in “The Last Honeymoon,” wonders what it would be like if she’d ended up with an old flame. Do you think most women go into their marriages with unanswered questions about old flames? What kinds of “what-ifs” do you feel women generally harbor entering into marriage?
10. In “Ghosts of Husbands Past,” Judith Marks-White talks about how she and her future husband arrived at the “marital altar like beasts of burden dragging behind us remnants of our past.” Discuss the role that the past plays in these essays and the ways in which our past relationships color our present or future ones.
11. In both “Ciao Baggage” by Cathy Alter and “The Devil’s Playground” by Rebecca Rasmussen, things go wrong, but the relationship is as strong as ever and never falters under the pressure. What things have happened in your life that have tested your relationship, and how important is it to learn how to navigate challenges as a couple?
CREDITS
“Do You Want Fries with That?” copyright © 2012 by Susan Jane Gilman.
“Twinkies au Chocolat” copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Bard.
“My Kitty-Corner Life” copyright © 2012 by Ann Hood.
“The First Fight” copyright © 2012 by Amy Wilson.
“Love in the Time of Camouflage” copyright © 2012 by Margaret Dilloway.
“525,600 Minutes” copyright © 2012 by Jenna McCarthy.
“Shared Anniversary” copyright © 2012 by Daphne Uviller.
“All the Time in the World” copyright © 2012 by Darcie Maranich.
“Blending a Family” copyright © 2012 by Sarah Pekkanen.
“Marriage Changes Things” copyright © 2012 by Liza Monroy.
“Home Is Where the Husband Is” copyright © 2012 by Kristen Weber.
“Faith and Fairy Tales” copyright © 2012 by Andrea King Collier.
“Ciao, Baggage” copyright © 2012 by Cathy Alter.
“Animal Husbandry” copyright © 2012 by Claire LaZebnik.
“The First Year” copyright © 2012 by Claire Bidwell Smith.
“He Chose Me” copyright © 2012 by Sophie Littlefield.
“The Marry Boy” copyright © 2012 by Joshilyn Jackson.
“The Devil’s Playground” copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Rasmussen.
“The Last Honeymoon” copyright © 2012 by Susan Shapiro.
“The First Year” copyright © 2012 by Jill Kargman.
“Ghosts of Husbands Past” copyright © 2012 by Judith Marks-White.
“‘There’s Always Divorce’ and Other Parental Advice” copyright © 2012 by Sally Koslow.
“Juan and Martita” copyright © 2012 by Abby Sher.
About the Editors
Vincent Remini / Vivid
Kim Perel (right) is a New York City–based literary agent and writer. She holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the New School. She has attended more than fifteen weddings in the past year. This is her first anthology.
After a long career as a book publisher, Wendy Sherman (left) established her New York–based literary agency twelve years ago out of a desire to work more closely with writers, and she’s loved every minute of it. She lives with her two semi-grown daughters and one very adorable King Charles Spaniel.