Maggie Wells

Urban progressive mother + Conservative rural setting = Some really interesting parenting.

Visit Maggie Wells's blog

Member for: 4 years 29 weeks
Location: Rural Northern California

Maggie Wells, mother of two, has been writing for Parenting Squad and Wisebread for quite a few years now and loves it. Her experience of being a progressive urban mother living in the rural conservative corner of California has taught her all sorts of valuable lessons about parenting choices.
She loves the ironies of parenting, spends a good deal of time exposing her children to art,music, dance, literature, film and history and supports green living and gay parenting. She also loves all things Japanese.

She teaches at a couple of online universities as well as her local community college. The daughter of lesbians and growing up in a military family has given her a unique perspective on current event issues of our time. She is writing a book about growing up in a gay military household from the perspective of an adult child.

Maggie also writes fiction and poetry as Margaret Elysia Garcia. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011 for an excerpt from her novel manuscript. She won 2nd place in the 34th Annual National Chicano/Latino Literary Award given by the University of California, Irvine for her short story collection 605 Freeway Stories; a story of hers was a Glimmer Train finalist last year. Her latest work can be seen in Best Fiction, Underground Voices, Penduline Press, Solstice Magazine and other small literary places.

She lives in exile from her past lives in a remote corner of the Sierra Mountains with husband, two kids, three cats, and one dog. You can follow her rural mothering adventures on her blog, Tales of a Sierra Madre http://taleasofasierramadre.com/.

When not writing or mothering or figuring out how to live as an urban person in a rural forest area, she's a DJ at KQNY (www.kqny919.org) where she hosts two shows. A women's music show Milkshake & Honey with co-host Amelia Beck and a book club show called Under the Covers where she reviews books and talks to Plumas County book clubs about what they're reading.