About the Author:
Winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Dumesnil is the author of In Praise of Falling, editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall, and co-editor, with Kim Addonizio, of Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.

Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry East, Bloom, Nimrod, Indiana Review, Calyx, and Many Mountains Moving, among other literary magazines.

Her essays have appeared on literarymama.com, hipmama.com, mamazine.com and in Hip Mama Zine. She is a regular contributor to www.outandaround.com,  Huffington Post, and lesbian.com, where she writes from the crossroads of parenthood, suburbia, and lesbian life.

For over fifteen years she has taught creative writing at universities, conferences, K-12 schools, and in private settings. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their two sons.

About the Book:
Follow poet Cheryl Dumesnil and her unlawfully wedded wife as they stumble toward parenthood, through four odds-busting conceptions, three miscarriages, a temporarily legal wedding during San Francisco's Winter of Love, a stint as poster children for the marriage equality movement, and finally the arrival of their longed-for son.

Along the way, in the face of relentless uncertainty, Dumesnil struggles to cultivate some sense of inner peace. Though she wrestles mightily with the opposing forces of hope and fear, in the end, she finds the middle ground between them: acceptance.