Erica Stern
@ericarstern.bsky.social
Chicago-based writer. Work in The Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Hybrid memoir forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books.
please share this call with your human friends, human students, human neighbors, human writing groups
Barrelhouse@barrelhouse.bsky.social · 5mo agoHey we're opening for subs for all genres for the next print issue June 1. Put it in your calendar. Fiction is capped at 500 subs and tends to fill fast. More details soon
And thanks to @agnimagazine.bsky.social for running this interview with @ericarstern.bsky.social about FRONTIER agnionline.bu.edu/preview/77ce...
Thanks to @riverteeth.bsky.social for this great review of @ericarstern.bsky.social's FRONTIER! riverteethjournal.com/book-reviews...
Another year, another great day of writing craft lessons and book hauls from @barrelhouse.bsky.social's DC conference.
Another really great @barrelhouse.bsky.social conference in DC yesterday. I had a wonderful time chatting with @poeticmoni.bsky.social, @bydianarojas.bsky.social, Michele Evans, and @ericarstern.bsky.social, and even sold out of Aliens Attack! Thanks to everyone who came out, see you next year!
relevant to the debate over whether we should keep funding DHS without reforms and accountability for how out of control their spending is
"'Frontier' breaks the code of suffering in silence over and over again." Corinne Cordasco-Pak reviews Erica Stern's "Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story:" https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ghosts-of-the-delivery-room/
After Erica Stern's baby was whisked away to the NICU, she couldn’t stop replaying bad memories. A year and a half later, she was ready to try again.
Essay | Giving Birth to My First Child Was Traumatic. I Wanted a Redo.
After my baby was whisked away to the NICU, I couldn’t stop replaying bad memories. A year and a half later, I was ready to try again.
on.wsj.com
substack.com/@ericastern/... Loved these questions! Thank you to Postpartum Productions for featuring me and my book!
Erica Stern (@ericastern)
Thank you so much to @Kaitlin Solimine for featuring me and my winding journey to writing FRONTIER!
substack.com
Thank you to Leslie Lindsay and Hippocampus for this lovely review✨
Hippocampus Magazine & Books@hippocampusmag.bsky.social · last yr."Like Erica Stern, I had idealized motherhood through tender diaper commercials and anodyne magazines..." from Leslie Lindsay's review of Frontier: A Memoir & A Ghost Story. Read it here: https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2025/07/review-frontier-a-memoir-a-ghost-story-by-erica-stern/
After a long break, @ericarstern.bsky.social and I are back with some very personal book recommendations. books4endofworld.substack.com/p/birth-trau...
Birth Trauma Edition
Better late than never
books4endofworld.substack.com
substack.com/@memoirland/... Excited to have this excerpt from Frontier up at Memoir Land! Big thank you to @saribotton.bsky.social and @cassmannes.bsky.social
Memoir Land on Substack
“Jonah’s injury was an anomaly, unexpected personally but not statistically, not if you examine the probabilities; it had to happen to someone somewhere—I had just stupidly, selfishly really, assumed ...
substack.com
Peace demonstrators have been beaten, foreign students have been disappeared, and educational institutions have been broken and tarred for being "antisemitic" through a series of tortured jingoistic inferences, while Donald Trump constantly and explicitly tells us what he thinks of Jews
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · last yr."No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker. And in some cases, shylocks and bad people."
For no particular, topical reason I’ve been listening to “With God on Our Side” on a loop…😬
We have @littlelobbyists.com families on the way to Washington DC right now, they'll be on the House-side of the Capitol tomorrow. We're going to make them see us before they vote to kill disabled children. If you can help cover the costs of this urgent action: secure.actblue.com/donate/littl...
I just gave to Little Lobbyists Action Network!
Show your support with a contribution.
secure.actblue.com
New Orleans! Please join me in celebrating @ericarstern.bsky.social 's book release @bluecypressbooks.bsky.social, next Weds, June 18, 6:30 pm! FRONTIER is a beautiful and thrilling ride about birth, the unexpected, and the wild frontiers. I love it. From @barrelhouse.bsky.social books.
Check out this great excerpt of FRONTIER by @ericarstern.bsky.social in @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/here-is-what...
“Here is What I Know: A Baby is Born.” On the Wild West of Childbirth.
Ten centimeters, Dr. G. announces triumphantly. She’s back in the room. She means I’m fully dilated, that my body has released enough oxytocin to cause my uterus to shudder and squeeze my baby’s he…
lithub.com
An except from FRONTIER is up on @literaryhub.bsky.social !!!
Lit Hub@literaryhub.bsky.social · last yr.@ericarstern.bsky.social considers a traumatic birth and the many that came before: “Was there something she was afraid of, a contaminant that might transfer from me to her if she were to look at me directly?”
@ericarstern.bsky.social considers a traumatic birth and the many that came before: “Was there something she was afraid of, a contaminant that might transfer from me to her if she were to look at me directly?”
“Here is What I Know: A Baby is Born.” On the Wild West of Childbirth.
Ten centimeters, Dr. G. announces triumphantly. She’s back in the room. She means I’m fully dilated, that my body has released enough oxytocin to cause my uterus to shudder and squeeze my baby’s he…
buff.ly
Loved talking to @rachellayown.bsky.social for @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social! Such great and thoughtful questions about FRONTIER
Rachel León@rachellayown.bsky.social · last yr.Happy pub day @ericarstern.bsky.social! FRONTIER is so unique, beautiful, and chilling. So thrilled this book is officially in the world!
Chicago! Join us for a FRONTIER launch party next week! @ericarstern.bsky.social & @finejuli.bsky.social at @volumesbooks.bsky.social, on 6/5
Couldn't be clearer that — just like #MahmoudKhalil & #RümeysaÖztürk — #MohsenMahdawi is persecuted for his political speech & identity. DO NOT play "Good Palestinian/Bad Palestinian" or "Good Immigrant/Bad Immigrant" here. If you care about democracy, speak out without qualifiers. Raise hell. NOW.
Looking for some distraction? @ericarstern.bsky.social and I are back with book recommendations from someone far funnier than we are books4endofworld.substack.com/p/the-sopran...
The Sopranos but for Toddlers
Jermaine Affonso's Books for the End of the World
books4endofworld.substack.com
I am generally a big Severance fan but have one qualm—why do they pretend epidurals don’t exist? Kier has a network of birthing cabins and women undergo invasive brain surgery to avoid childbirth pain, but like, there is a simpler, fairly effective alternative!
![Giving birth a second time (and, years later, a third), didn’t take away any of my love for my oldest son. In fact, it allowed me to separate him from the experience of his birth. I could leave that trauma, or at least the power it wielded over me, behind. It had taken another round to figure out what should have been obvious: the child was not the birth. I hugged them close—children who had arrived in different ways, but who were both very much mine.
[Family photo below]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qcgmjzw4ty77w5zk46mvg25x/bafkreiee6owdphjrzqgktkvjuk7qv4lyr4vn3trweoqa6vk437vlytgada)
