PODCAST

This Mama Is Lit!

Literary Mama

Literary Mama"s podcast featuring interviews with mama writers. literarymama.substack.com

arts parenting

All Episodes

30:27

Whitney French: Love, War, Memory, and Black Futurism

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/04/16

Amanda Fields and Tiffanie Drayton chat with Whitney French, author of Syncopation: A Novel in Verse, about memory, identity, and what it means to reshape yourself in a fractured world.In Syncopation: A Novel in Verse, in the aftermath of a Memory War, society is fragmented into new cultures, castes, and coalitions. Set against a backdrop of retrofitted food garages, microchip-sorting factories, and hyperloop terminals, this novel-in-verse emphasizes memory as the highest currency and love as

30:58

Lara Ehrlich: Rage Against the Patriarchy

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/04/02

Amanda and Sam chat with Lara Ehrlich, author of Bind Me Tighter Still, about domesticity and wildness in motherhood, the fierce love for our children, and feeling like we’re always falling short.In Bind Me Tighter Still, the youngest of three siren sisters, Ceto, is weary of an existence driven by hunger. She trades her tail for legs, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter—only to discover that domesticity is just as mundane as sirenhood. In search of something more, she flees with

23:27

Chloe Yelena Miller: Public and Private Grief

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/03/19

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Chloe Yelena Miller, author of Perforated, about impossible wishes and material fears in parenting and poetry.In her second full-length poetry collection, Perforated, Miller’s poems span the grief of public and private losses. The poems are situated in both the US and Italy, ruminating on topics such as immigration, climate change, school shootings, and 9/11.Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and teacher living in Washington, DC, with her partner and child

25:21

Rebecca Lehmann: Resurrecting Anne Boleyn and Going...

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/03/05

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Rebecca Lehmann, author of The Beheading Game, about rewriting Anne Boleyn through the lens of motherhood, the punishment of powerful women, crafting a queer love story, and bringing poetry to the novel-writing process.Rebecca Lehmann is an award-winning poet and essayist. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Between the Crackups; Ringer (which won the AWP

27:22

Chloé Caldwell: Infertility & Queer-ception

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/02/19

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Chloé Caldwell, author of Trying, about loneliness in infertility, contradictions with IVF in the queer community, and the rawness of writing in the moment. Over the years that Chloé had been married and hoping to conceive a child, she’d read everything she could find on infertility. But no memoir or message board reflected her experience; for one thing, most stories ended with in vitro fertilization, a baby, or both. She wanted to offer something

30:29

Karen Palmer: DIY Witness Protection

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/02/05

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Karen Palmer, author of She’s Under Here, about living with an undercurrent of fear and clawing her way out of abuse. In her memoir, Palmer examines why she ended up trapped, how she escaped, and how she handled the ongoing perils of life constructed around a false identity. She ruthlessly explores the lines between desire and fear, victim and perpetrator, and what it means to make difficult choices as a woman when none of the options are good.Karen Palmer is

29:56

Dr. Robyn Kozlowitz: No One Ever Wins Trauma Poker

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/01/29

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Dr. Robyn Kozlowitz, author of Post Traumatic Parenting, about using guilt as a teacher, discovering how stress and trauma affect parenting, and creating patterns of joy. Dr. Kozlowitz argues that the best time to rewire our trauma brain is when we are parenting. It gives us an opportunity to heal our inner child through admitting our own damage and not passing it onto our children. By recognizing our trauma, we take the shame away.Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

26:12

Michelle Lerner: Complicated Grief

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/01/15

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston chat with Michelle Lerner, author of Ring, about defining and treating complicated grief, living with irreparable damage, and finding healing in nature. Ring takes the reader on an unforgettable odyssey through the depths of human emotion, from the hollows of grief to the heights of newfound hope. In the backdrop of a snow-covered sanctuary designed to aid the dying, Lee, a middle-aged non-binary person from the Midwest, grapples with the unbearable weight of

28:55

Claire Adam: Leaving the Baby Behind

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2026/01/08

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Claire Adam, author of Love Forms, about forced delivery in Venezuela and testing the mother-child bond in fiction. Love Forms, longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, centers on Dawn, a 58 year old mother of two grown sons. She finds herself returning to her past and a secret she has kept for many years. When Dawn was 16, her parents sent her from Trinidad to Venezuela to have a baby and give her up for adoption. She’s now trying to track down the

28:07

Teri Vlassopoulos: Technology, Fertility, and Karaoke

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/12/26

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Teri Vlassopoulos, author of Living Expenses, about technology creep in modern relationships, fertility treatments’ effect on emotional intimacy, and bookstore karaoke. Teri’s most recent novel interrogates the strain that can accompany even the strongest of relationships and also the discovery that so often it is when we are on the way to something else and stuck in the in-between period that we discover our true selves.Teri Vlassopoulos is the

28:45

Brittany Micka-Foos: Domestic Horror, Discomfort, &...

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/12/18

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Brittany Micka-Foos, author of It’s No Fun Anymore, about domestic horror tropes and how a neurodiversity diagnosis offered insight into writing and motherhood. The lack of safety felt in womanhood and discomfort that lies within it is the discussion that Brittany strives to acknowledge and pursue. Her most recent book is a collection of eight short stories that explore the politics of victimization, the sites of trauma on women’s bodies, and women’s attempts

30:05

Domenica Ruta: The Ecosystem of Single Mothers

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/12/11

Amanda and Eva chat with Domenica Ruta, author of All the Mothers, about a new dialectic in motherhood, the specific anxieties of single moms, and the necessity of single mom communities. She also explores the trials of the family court system and the realities of what those minefields can mean for single moms.Domenica’s latest book, All the Mothers, is a novel that follows three single mothers in New York whose kids share the same deadbeat father. The protagonists Sandy, Stephanie, and Kaya

28:18

Jessie Harrold: Becoming, Not Broken

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/12/04

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Jessie Harrold, author of Mothershift, about matrescence - the process of becoming a mother, the four radical transformations, and the seven mother powers. Jessie explains how mothers can be agents of change, and how modern mothers in crisis can step into their innate powers to reclaim themselves.Mothershift is the first book of its kind to dive deeply into the science and soul of matrescence, the 2-3 year transition into motherhood. Mothershift helps mothers

31:03

Liz Alterman: Humor is My Drug of Choice

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/11/28

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston chat with Liz Alterman, author of Sad Sacked, about the perils and freedoms of unemployment, the dichotomy of working moms, and the need to write the book you want to read. Diving deep into her own family’s dual layoffs, Liz’s memoir uses humor as a healing force as she details the downsizing and uploading of life’s losses and wins.Liz Alterman is the author of the young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting, the suspense novels The Perfect Neighborhood, The House on

30:14

Jessica Slice: Ableist Systems and Disability Designs

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/11/20

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Jessica Slice, author of Unfit Parent, about designing and inventing systems of parenting based on the bodies and minds we live in. Unfit Parent examines the obstacles that disabled parents face, the societal beliefs that undergird those barriers, and the political and economic systems that hold it all in place. Jessica explores how disability culture and the strengths inherent in having a body like hers would, if included in parenting culture, make

30:30

Natasha Williams: Love and Schizophrenia

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/11/13

Eva Langston and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Natasha Williams, author of The Parts of Him I Kept, about parenting her father through schizophrenia and healing through memoir writing.The Parts of Him I Kept is an intimate account of a daughter’s coming of age in the face of her father’s schizophrenic unraveling. Williams investigates the limits of our medical and cultural understanding of schizophrenia while chronicling the shared burden and benefits of caring for a mentally ill family member. The

29:46

Abigail Leonard: For Mothers Across Borders

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/11/06

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Abigail Leonard, author of Four Mothers, about parenting in four different countries, politicizing motherhood, and supporting mothers with the power of community.Utterly moving and propulsively readable from page one, Abigail interweaves stories of four mothers from four different countries with a critically researched exploration of how parental support programs evolved in each country—and why some provide more help than others. As nations around the

29:14

Allison Buccola: Cult Following

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/10/30

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Allison Buccola, author of The Ascent, about the anxieties of new motherhood, renegotiating relationships post-childbirth, and navigating career transitions.Allison’s most recent novel explores an unsolved mystery of a reclusive commune twenty years prior. The only known survivor, Lee, has tried to put the pain of her past behind her, building a new identity for herself. But motherhood is proving a bigger challenge than she anticipated. Then a stranger shows

34:06

Monique Clesca: Silence is a Language

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/10/22

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Monique Clesca, author of Silence and Resistance: Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti, about reckoning with family secrets, healing, and fighting for Haitian children’s rights.Monique Clesca is an activist, journalist, and advocate for children’s and women’s rights, participating in high-level policy issues in Haiti and Africa and offering holistic support to girls and women who have suffered domestic and sexual violence. For leading a movement to eliminate child

34:30

50th Episode Retrospective: Fangirling & Finding a...

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/10/15

Amanda Fields, Brianna Avenia-Tapper, Holly Rizzuto Palker, and Eva Langston come together to reflect on the evolution of this podcast, memorable guests, and the conversations we can’t wait to have. From their very first attempts at recording to latest and greatest moments, they take time to reflect, celebrate and appreciate all the authors they have featured in addition to what they have learned from each other. The Literary Mama community is fierce and fabulous. Thank you to our loyal listeners

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