Hannah Bottigheimer

Hannah Bottigheimer writes essays about motherhood, marriage, and survival with humor and bite. Her essay Hunger Strike explores the echoes of family patterns across generations — how a small act of refusal at a pizza shop reverberates years later in her own life. She is fascinated by the ways love, loyalty, and old scripts play out in family relationships, and her work often uncovers the absurd alongside the painful. Hannah began writing at fifty-seven, after decades of raising four children and working in higher education. She is currently juggling two book-length projects: Aftershocks, a memoir about raising her teenage daughter through mental illness, and Private Acts of Disobedience, a collection of essays about identity, marriage, divorce, and the long shadows cast by complicated parents. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Chicago Story Press, with several pieces currently under review. Unraveling, an excerpt from her memoir, has been published as a stand-alone essay, and her shorter works — flash essays, hybrid forms, and narrative reflections — often center on the jagged intersections of caregiving, generational inheritance, and the stubborn hope of connection. She lives outside Boston with her husband and their large, blended family of seven children. When she isn’t writing, she’s often planning elaborate scavenger hunts for her daughter, researching Impressionist painters for her next travel itinerary, or devising games for milestone birthdays. Hannah’s work carries the conviction that even in the midst of rupture, love can be an act of rebellion — a quiet resistance against despair, silence, or erasure.