Well-Read Mom is a nationwide network of local book clubs for women.

Well-Read Mom accompanies women in the reading of great books and spiritual classics to encourage personal growth, friendship, and meaningful conversations in order to explore the human condition and reorient ourselves to what is good, beautiful, and true.

We read together to create an openness through conversation and friendship where Truth can be encountered. We welcome women of all religious traditions.  Each group has its own flavor which reflects the life experience of the members. 

Because staff and many key volunteers are deeply committed Catholic women who strive to be faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium, the reflections, audios, and discussion questions view the literature through the lens of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Visit our “Join Today” tab on our website to see membership options and member materials.

Check out our website under the “Join Today" > "Begin A Group” tab. You’ll find how to host an informational meeting, find editable flyers to promote your group, and a Leader Guide. After you register, you’ll receive an email with the next steps.

Well-Read Mom makes it easy to start a group. We recommend beginning with a few friends and hosting a Well-Read Mom informational meeting to share our mission. You can also post a flyer at church, a coffee shop, or social media. A core of even three committed women is enough to get started.

Members that choose our Sustaining Member level ($250) or higher receive all of the year’s books. Otherwise, you can find links to the recommended editions of the monthly selections on our website. Libraries and used book stores are great resources as well.

A limited number of scholarships are available. It is our desire at Well-Read Mom that no woman is turned away due to financial hardship. We actively seek out funds for scholarships for this reason. If you are interested in receiving a scholarship, we ask that you reach out to us. Please prayerfully consider if there is any amount you would be willing to put towards your membership, and we will find a way to cover the rest. 

We recommend that you purchase your books as soon as possible as sometimes the book prices spike or the titles are difficult to find when many women are purchasing at the same time.

Due to the proprietary nature of our reading list and materials, we do not show the entire list to non-current members. Unfortunately, too many women were taking advantage of the list without registering, and our reading list is a fundamental part of the Well-Read Mom experience and the feasibility of our business. However, we’re happy to give you a sneak peek of three of our authors: Sophocles, Rumer Godden, and St. Teresa of Avila. Thanks for your understanding. We hope you’ll join us!

The goal of Well-Read Mom is to read more, read well. We believe that even reading part of a good book is better than not reading at all. Here is a note from one of our moms explaining how reading among moms with newborns, although challenging has still been worthwhile!

“I did want to email you and let you know that we do our book club a little differently. We are all young moms, and between morning sickness and newborn babies and the general exhaustion and lack of time that comes with raising a flock of children, we only do four books a year. We vote when the list comes out and then meet in October, January, April, and July. We do a lot of rejoicing over babies and a little talking about the books that nourish us. It’s a great way to keep book club manageable! I thought you might like to pass along the idea in case there are moms out there who are intimidated by the reading list. I am so grateful for Well-Read Mom and the friendships that have developed and deepened over good books (and babies too:))” - WRM member

Current members can view the book lists from all of the previous years on our website. The book lists are also available in Marcie Stokman’s new book The Well-Read Mom. Read more. Read well.

Use the subscribe feature at the bottom of the email or log-on to your account to unsubscribe to various email lists.

The audios are important to understand why the book was selected, how it applies to the year’s theme and often provides literary information that helps enrich the reading. 

We have also asked all women to listen to the audios for a very business-related reason. Over the past few years, we have found it increasingly difficult to communicate and connect with our members. Email open rates and communicating important information from Well-Read Mom to each member is challenging. We hope that by asking you to commit to listening to the audios each month, we will be able to share the most important information with you via that route. On our end, we promise to be respectful of your time. We understand how fruitful your group discussions are. It is our great hope that you will find that listening to the audios each month becomes a source of uniting your group to women all over the world and that they might inspire you to explore a new component of the reading selection that you may have overlooked.

We recommend using the audio to launch your meeting and close your meeting. That way, your discussion is not interrupted. Using the audios also makes it easy for someone to step in and lead the group with virtually little preparation.

Another reason we have asked for your commitment to listen to the audios is our desire to provide "at its core" a similar experience for every woman who joins Well-Read Mom. Each group will have their dynamics and flavor, but if someone was to join a group in Crosby, Minnesota, or Houston, Texas we want her experience of Well-Read Mom to be essentially the same in its basic structure. That is what Well-Read Mom is all about, the journey together. We want to remind our members and their book groups that they are a part of something bigger than just the women sitting together at their meeting. Your participation is Well-Read Mom is influencing culture. We have seen evidence of this all over the country in a multitude of ways. 

Due to the proprietary nature of Well-Read Mom’s materials, it is our policy that membership is non-refundable. However, because your materials have not shipped yet, we will suspend your membership and refund your payment. This may take up to 7-10 business days.

Yes, our regular membership level is set up to be an auto-renew membership level, which means that each year you will have to unenroll from the auto-renewal feature. The good news is that it is easy to unenroll. 

 First, you will need to complete the renewal process, which will mean that you are enrolled in the auto-renewal feature. 

After you have done that, log into your account on www.wellreadmom.com using the red login button. 

Select "My Account" from the menu bar.

On your profile page, you will see a big red button midway down that page that says "stop recurring payments"

Click on that button and follow the instructions.

All of the Well-Read Mom materials are copyrighted. There is no duplicating or sharing of materials allowed. Well-Read Mom requires that each woman purchase her own materials, and as such we do not permit the sharing of study materials (such as two women sharing the Companion or sharing website usernames and passwords).

Yes, every woman intending to participate signs up with Well-Read Mom, even if she does not read all of the books or attend all of the meetings.

You can use our "Find A Group" map feature to find a group near you.

Please contact us at support@wellreadmom.com. You may also try clearing your browser:

Please make sure you are logging in to "https://www.wellreadmom.com" (not wellreadmom.wildapricot.org). Check your top browser bar to be sure you are in the right place. Sometimes the browsers make too many assumptions for us!

Then, please clear out your browser cache. 

If you are using Google Chrome (go to the three vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner, select "settings", a new window opens. Scroll down to the bottom until you see "Advanced". Click on that and scroll down until you see "Clear browsing data" and then "clear your browser")

You may also need to update your Chrome browser by going to the three vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner, select "help", then select "About Google Chrome". If the browser needs to be updated, it will start automatically.

We would love to help you gift a membership to someone. If you have someone specific in mind, you can email me their name, address, and email address. Then, I will add an invoice to your account for her membership. Once that is paid, I will activate her account. Your additional membership fee (for her) will not auto-renew and her account will be activated for Year of the Sister. Please note, that she will have to agree to the membership terms and log in to verify her address. We will send her a postcard and an email letting her know she has been enrolled in Well-Read Mom.

Yes, we do have women that participate on their own.

Yes, please contact info@wellreadmom.com for more information.

Yes, for regional and national events. Sometimes local groups join together to host a larger event. Please contact marcie@wellread.com for speaking engagements.

We are blessed to have groups in almost every state and several countries. One of the most beautiful aspects of Well-Read Mom is that women all over the world are accompanying one another in the commitment to deep and thoughtful reading and are reading together the same book at the same time. Following a theme and the order of the books is unique to the Well-Read Mom method of reading books together. The national conversation is possible when we stay together in this way.

Yes, the discussion questions are a starting point for your group. If you have written your questions, by all means, feel free to use them. Our questions are written by a variety of women, so the style varies from month to month - some focus more on book analysis, and others toward personal reflection.

Communicating with members all over the country is difficult. Most women experience Well-Read Mom as their local group; however, the Well-Read Mom experience is also national! Our emails alert you to when resources are available, where to find a book that is low stock, any programmatic changes that may be happening, announcement special events, and more. We try to limit the number of emails we send to our members.

Since Well-Read Mom’s founding in 2012, Marcie Stokman has donated 100% of the time she gives to Well-Read Mom. However, there are business expenses in running a non-profit such as rent, utilities, legal fees, insurance, etc. Membership fees, grants, and donations all keep Well-Read Mom running.

Use the "Click here to change your group's status" on the "Find A Group" page to change your group status as Full. When a group is getting too big, sometimes the group splits in two. Other times, one leader will run two groups. Each group decides its capacity.

No, sometimes a group is listed as “Full” due to space where it meets or the comfort level of the group members, and this is just fine.

You can consider hosting an informational meeting, inviting other parents, relatives, coaches, and friends. Another idea is to ask a friend to be your accountability partner for reading.

We have found that when women register they are are more committed to attending the meetings. Another suggestion is to set your meeting dates at the beginning of the year so you don’t have to look for a date each month. There are very few evenings that women would have no other potential commitments, so we encourage the women to make this self-care time for personal growth and friendship a priority.

When women understand that Well-Read Mom is a non-profit funded by the membership dues of women that participate, it is easier to register. There are many reading lists available online, but Well-Read Mom is an experience.

Sometimes a simple, “We’d love to hear more about that. Can you tell us more after the meeting? Or, “Can we hear from anyone else that hasn’t had the chance to share yet?” Or, passing an object that shows who has “the floor” can help curtail someone who is dominating the discussion.

You can reiterate that to have the kind of deep conversation that Well-Read Mom promotes, you ask that women attend the whole meeting so that those relationships have time to develop.

Our leaders tell us that they have more success when they choose the dates for the whole year in later summer. That way, women can save the date. It seems impossible to find a date that “works for everyone” month-by-month.

We welcome your contributions to our blog. Submissions should focus on your experience of Well-Read Mom, literature, or how a certain book has influenced you. Please contact us at info@wellreadmom.com.