Raised by therapists, married to a defense attorney, Laura Jean Baker writes where mental health, crime, and family intersect.
She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she was a Colby Fellow.
Her essays have appeared at The Washington Post, Salon, Longreads, and Scary Mommy.
Her poetry and memoir have appeared in literary journals such as The Gettysburg Review; Confrontation; The Connecticut Review; Third Coast; The Cream City Review; Alaska Quarterly Review; So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Literature and Art; War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities; and Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature.
Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her essay “Year of the Tiger” was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013.
Her memoir, The Motherhood Affidavits, was released by The Experiment in April 2018. It has been reviewed or mentioned in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Shondaland, Electric Literature, and Medium.
She is currently at work on her second book.
About The Motherhood Affidavits:
About The
Author
If motherhood is an addiction, what does Laura Jean Baker share in common with the drug dealers, addicts, sex offenders, and thieves her husband, attorney Ryan Ulrich, defends as he grinds out the grittiest of legal casework? By the time Ryan starts up Ulrich Law Office upon the birth of their third (but not last) baby, Laura Jean craves Oxytocin – the love hormone; the natural high of motherhood – as much as Ryan’s clients hanker for heroin and meth. Over the next eight years, as Ryan’s roster of defendants proliferates, so too does the Ulrich family, nearly to the threshold of everybody’s overdose.