The Motherlode Writers is a Berkeley-based community of mother-writers. We work in a wide variety of genres, including essay, memoir, poetry, and fiction. This webpage contains bios on each of our members, upcoming readings, pieces we have published, and links to other sites where our work appears.

Latest Event: Mother's Day Reading at Nomad Cafe on Sunday, May 13th from 4-6pm. The Nomad Cafe is a funky, community-based, earth-friendly arts and internet café located at 6500 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA 94609. Thank you for joining us in a celebration of Motherhood and Writing!

In spite of (or, perhaps due to) her misgivings, Marian Berges has been writing fiction for more years than she would like to admit. She has a proliferation of novels and other stories of various lengths awaiting publication. Her short story, The Children's Park appeared in Literary Mama.

Ursula Goulet is a writer of creative non-fiction, and a poet since the age of 14. As a bodyworker and holistic sex educator, she is interested in embodiment, diversity in sexuality and the integration of the sacred and the profane. Her work has been published in We’Moon 2005: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn, an astrological datebook. Joining the Motherlode Writers in February 2006 rescued her brain from the infamous milk-mush of motherhood, and she gives thanks to the Goddess for these brilliant rabble-rousing women. Raised in New England, she lives in Oakland with her partner and daughter, where she appreciates the lack of snow but misses the fireflies and humid summer nights of the East Coast.

Caroline Grant once spent nearly three years writing a dissertation about American cinema that roughly seven people read (including her mom). Now a mother herself, she writes about movies for a broader audience (including her mom) in her Literary Mama column, Mama at the Movies. She puts her teaching background to good use as an editor at Literary Mama, where she co-edits the Literary Reflections section. She is currently at work on an anthology about combining motherhood and academic work called Mama, Ph.D. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught classes on film, women's studies, American literature, and writing; she has also taught at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons, and offers up recipes and stories of family life on her blog: food for thought.

Rebecca Kaminsky has been a proud member of Motherlode since 2002. She writes the column "Down Will Come Baby" for the online magazine Literary Mama, where she is also the Literary Reviews Editor. She lives in Berkeley, California with her spouse and two sons. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press, Jan. 2006), as well as the locally best-selling Wednesday Writers: Ten Years of Writing Women's Lives. In June, 2006 Rebecca was a guest blogger for the Washington Post. She holds a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Women's Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center.

Sybil Lockhart is a compulsive journal-writer with a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology, and a founding member, reviews editor and columnist at Literary Mama Magazine. She has taught high school French and English, done research in developmental neurobiology, and taught neuroscience at U.C. Berkeley. Her essays can be found in the recent anthologies, Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (2006) and Using Our Words: Moms and Dads on Raising Kids in the Modern Neighborhood (2006), and her writing has also appeared in Brandeis University's Artemis Magazine, The Journal of Neuroscience, and The Journal of Neurobiology. One of her children's nature stories is forthcoming in Ladybug Magazine, and her essay "Naked" has been chosen for the forthcoming Alzheimer's Anthology, Beyond Forgetting. Sybil is currently at work on her book of creative nonfiction, Early Stages: a Biologist's Tale of Mothering and Daughtering, (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2008). She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and two daughters.

Sophia Raday lives in Berkeley, California, with her soldier/police officer husband, their four-year-old boy, a bipartisan dog,
and assorted firearms. In marital disagreements, Sophia is apt to say, "Honey, you aren't being present with me." Whereas her husband might say, "You're messin' up, Troop!" Her recent work appears in three books released winter and spring 2006: Tied in Knots: Funny Stories from the Wedding Day(Seal Press); Mexico, A Love Story (Seal Press); and Using Our Words: Moms and Dads Write About Raising Kids in the Modern Neighborhood (NPN). Sophia's column on literarymama.com, Mommy Athens, Daddy Sparta, was mentioned specifically when Forbes cited Literary Mama as one of the best websites of 2005. In June, 2006 her essay "Diary of a Soldier's Wife", was featured in the Modern Love section of the New York Times. She is at work on a forthcoming memoir of her bipartisan love affair, including the impact of her husband's recent deployment to Iraq (Beacon Press, 2008).

Sarah Raleigh Kilts is an Editor for the Literary Reflections section of Literary Mama. She writes poetry and creative non-fiction. Currently she is working on her first novel, a collection of short stories inspired by her childhood-- which was spent growing up in rural Northern Vermont sitting by the woodstove, listening to the yarns spun by the great storytellers in her large French-Canadian/Irish Catholic family. Her work has appeared in Common Ties, Literary Mama, and The Mirror. When she's not writing or chasing her daughter, she plays bass and sings with her partner, Tom in their band, Diablo's Dust. After many cross country moves, she and her family happily make their home in the San Francisco Bay Area.