I’m beginning a project about the unique tensions and compatibilities between motherhood and artistic practice, and am grateful to find examples of women whose integration of these vocations is mutually enriching. Click the image to read my essay “The Maternal Vision of Leslie Jamison and Marilynne Robinson” on the Ploughshares Blog.

“When I have seen the world awhile through Ames’s eyes, I become newly aware of the light in my own world—its cheering presence, its variety of expression. Narrative vision shaped by maternal attention shows me more of the world than I had seen before.”