Jill Christman

Jill Christman’s memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction. Recent essays have appeared in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, and other journals, magazines, and anthologies. She teaches creative nonfiction writing in Ashland University’s low-residency MFA program and at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, writer Mark Neely, and their two children. Visit her at Jillchristman.com.

Borrowed Babies

Until the 1960s, infants were plucked from orphanages and maternity wards and used as “practice babies” in college home economics department across the country. Award-winning writer Jill Christman was determined to find out what happened to them. Along the way, five months pregnant herself, with her hormones (and anxiety) raging, she also hoped to discover what it means to be a mother.