In honor of 2026 International Day of the Midwife on May 5, we are excited to announce the recent acquisition of the Penny Armstrong Papers at the Maine Women Writers Collection. Penny Armstrong, CNM, MSN is the author, with Sheryl Feldman, of A Midwife’s Story: Life, Love and Birth among the Amish (1986) and A Wise Birth: Bringing Together the Best of Natural Childbirth and Modern Medicine (1990), and the coeditor of A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology (2001). For eleven years, Armstrong was immersed in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Amish and Mennonite communities, practicing as a nurse midwife; throughout her career, she has attended some 1,400 births, in homes, birth centers, and hospitals.

Through her nurse midwifery, her writing, her volunteer work, and her educational roles at  the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Medicine (now Frontier Nursing University), and the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine, she has advocated for improvements in the ways people give birth and has sought to provide support and information for those seeking greater autonomy in their birthing experience.

You can learn more about Armstrong and about the materials in her archival collection.