Labor of love

They met for coffee, one a new mother and the other soon to become one. Each had moved away from Charlottesville and the security of their established writing careers. Jennifer Niesslein (English ’94) was working on short stories and trying to keep up her freelancing for a Charlottesville weekly. Stephanie Wilkinson (PhD, American and European Religious History, ’97) was trying to write while caring for a colicky baby.

“We were writing essays and trying to get them placed,” said Wilkinson. “We realized that no one was publishing the kind of things we wanted to read. ...”

“… about motherhood,” added Niesslein.

“In spring of ’99 we said, ‘Let’s start our own magazine,’” Wilkinson continued.

After a year of researching, putting a prototype magazine together and getting to know the business side of magazine publishing, they launched Brain, Child: the magazine for thinking mothers.

Since that phrase describes all mothers except perhaps during the first blurry weeks of exhaustion and exhilaration, that’s a huge potential readership. Niesslein and Wilkinson have caught some grief for the title and suggest “reading mothers” might better fit the bill.

And read they do. Subscribers e-mail to ask where their copies are; women joke that the magazine makes them terrible mothers because they ignore their children to read it. “I love love love this magazine!” wrote a reader from Boston.

Now in its fourth year of quarterly publication, Brain, Child has a readership of about 22,000 and subscribers all over the country and around the world — New York, Montana, Mississippi, South Africa, China, France, Australia and more. About a fourth of the subscribers have bought gift subscriptions for others. One has bought a dozen.

The editors developed their finish-each-other’s-sentences camaraderie in spite of living several Interstate 81 exits apart, Niesslein in Harrisonburg (she’s just moved back to Charlottesville) and Wilkinson in Lexington. They get about 600 submissions of writing for every seven they can use, and they’ve published well-known writers including Jane Smiley, Ann Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Hoffman and Susan Cheever.

Other College grads are involved too. Anne Matthews (Rhetoric and Communication Studies ’91) is the graphic designer, and the magazine has published photography by Alexandria Searls (English ’83, MFA, Creative Writing, ’91)and writing by Alison Condie Jaenicke (English ’84, MA, English ’89), Nancy Brandwein (English ’80) and John Blackburn (English ’91, MA, English ’96).

There are book reviews, light-hearted essays, debates on current issues and many, many letters from their readers. Features take on serious subjects, such as Niesslein’s piece on teenage mothers, including the story of her two sisters’ experiences.

Articles are occasionally political, but the focus is always motherhood. “We don’t want to be pegged as super-liberal or super-conservative,” said Wilkinson.

In 2001 the magazine won an Alternative Press Award from Utne Reader in the category Personal Life Coverage. “Brain, Child embodies why the independent alternative media is so essential in our lives,” wrote Utne’s editorial director, Jay Walljasper. “It stands as a creative, thought-provoking publication.”

Why such reader devotion? “I think it’s hard to find a community,” said Niesslein. “It takes a long time to nurture a friendship until you get to the point you can talk about things you’re not supposed to talk about,” such as rage at your children, a subject covered in the current issue.

“Reading these essays is sort of a short-cut to get that kind of girlfriend talk you need — especially if you don’t have any contact with adults on a day-to-day basis.”

Men read Brain, Child, too. “Motherhood and fatherhood are two separate but related things,” joked Niesslein.

The editors are branching out already. Niesslein had a commentary on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” on Dr. Spock’s 100th birthday. She talked about the proliferation of parenting advice. “The village can’t agree on how to raise a child,” she said. An agent contacted her afterwards, and she’s working on a book proposal.

And there may be more magazines to come — perhaps, said Wilkinson, something for parents of teenagers.