PODCAST

This Mama Is Lit!

Literary Mama

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

arts parenting

All Episodes

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

29:29

Maggie Smith: My Work is Play

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/10/08

For our 50th episode, Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Maggie Smith, author of Dear Writer, about applying poetic license to writing and beyond, embracing the beginner’s mind, and aging in reverse through creativity. Smith’s national bestseller guides the reader on how to unleash the creative mind with ten ingredients, each one explored through inspirational essays and writing prompts. It’s a book for artists of all genres and for everyday life.Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1977, Maggie

30:32

Jessica Guerrieri: Addiction and the Shadow Self

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/09/24

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Jessica Guerrieri, author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, about motherhood drinking culture, the power of family and friendship, and addiction. Jessica's debut novel offers an honest rebuttal to the prevalence of alcohol in "mom life" and the fragility of family ties.Originally from the Bay Area, Jessica Guerrieri lives in Davis, California, with her husband and three young daughters. Jessica has a background teaching special education but left

27:39

Catalina Margulis: Humor is My Favorite Flavor

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/09/10

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Catalina Margulis, author of Again, Only More Like You, about a reckoning of journalism, ideas of what a "good mother" is, and hard-kept female friendships. For fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Jennifer Weiner, Again, Only More Like You offers a poignant and humorous look at friendship and reinvention at 40.Catalina is an author, podcast host and mother of four who has written for many of Canada’s top publications over the past 20 years. Cat was an editor

29:48

Penny Zang: Unfinished Business

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/08/27

Eva Langston and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Penny Zang, author of Doll Parts, about writing through grief, the “rights and wrongs” of motherhood, and finding inspiration in Sylvia Plath. For readers of The Virgin Suicides and I Have Some Questions For You, Doll Parts is a dual timeline suspense novel following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a

30:45

Ellen Wiles: Coparenting with Friends

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/08/13

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Ellen Wiles about her second novel, The Unexpected, published in November 2024 by HarperCollins. It follows two best friends, Robin and Kessie, who find themselves platonically coparenting a baby. It's a book about different species of love, including friendship and kinship, about motherhood and fertility, and about unconventional and queer families.Ellen Wiles is a British novelist, sound artist, literary anthropologist, and Creative Writing professor at the

30:22

Emma Pattee: Chained to a Dream

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/07/30

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Emma Pattee, author of Tilt, about parsing capitalism and creative pursuits, powering large-scale climate activism, and questioning how to love something you know will die.Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon. She has written about climate change for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, and her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Idaho Review, Carve Magazine, and

32:33

Jill Dopf Viles, DIY Scientist: Cracking the...

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/07/23

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston talk with Jill Dopf Viles, the author of Manufacturing My Miracle: One Woman’s Journey To Acquire Her Personalized Gene Therapy. Jill writes about her experiences with Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy. These experiences are placed in the hands of a deft and lyrical writer who often surprises the reader with unforgettable images and memories even as she works through the story of diagnosis, acceptance, and further research. She persists in making her own connections

29:46

Kathleen Glasgow: This Book is Me

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/07/16

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Kathleen Glasgow, author of The Glass Girl, about her distinct writing process, being a "sad book" author, and writing YA novels about addiction, grief and other tough topics.Kathleen Glasgow started as a poet and somehow found herself writing novels. She's the author of the New York Times and internationally bestselling YA novels Girl in Pieces, The Glass Girl,You'd Be Home Now, and How to Make Friends With the Dark, She's the coauthor, with Liz Lawson, of

29:03

Lish McBride: Chaos is My Brand

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/07/02

Lish McBride is a prolific writer of Young Adult and Adult books that often contain humor and magic. Her latest adult novel, The Suitcase Swap, is a love story born out of a JFK Airport baggage claim snafu. The book was first released in the United Kingdom and will be out in the U.S. soon. The audio version can be found here. Her latest YA novel, Most Likely to Murder, will release in March 2026 and is available now for preorder.In addition to being a professional writer, Lish exists as an amateur

31:33

Alicia Elliott: Creating with Intention

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/06/18

Alicia Elliott's debut novel, And Then She Fell, explores how motherhood and mental health collide as an Indigenous young woman confronts her inherited trauma and looks to her own creation story to find her power.Alicia is a Mohawk writer and editor living in Brantford, Ontario. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30, and she was chosen as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her

28:08

Amanda K. Jaros: Writing in Community

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/06/04

Amanda is a writer and editor living in Ithaca, NY. Her writing passion began with personal journals and short stories as a child, which morphed into a series of mommy blogs after she had her son in the mid-aughts. Nearing forty, she decided to follow her dream and returned to school to earn her MFA in creative nonfiction from Chatham University (where Rachel Carson earned her degree in 1929!). In recent years, her writing has appeared in a wide range of places, online and in print, from literary

30:50

Nikkya Hargrove: Born Into My Heart

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/05/22

Nikkya Hargrove's powerful memoir Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found follows her journey as she makes the decision to raise her third half sibling, Jonathan, after he was born to her mother, who had a crack cocaine addiction and spent time incarcerated while Nikkya was raised by her grandparents. The book traces Nikkya’s path toward custody and adoption, her family’s perspective on her queerness, and the way she finds love and forms a family.Nikkya Hargrove is a 2012 LAMBDA

25:38

Sandra Chwialkowska: Perfect Victims

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/05/07

Sandra Chwialkowska is a television producer and writer whose first novel, The Ends of Things, is a psychological suspense that explores female friendship and agency, and pushes back against the trope of the helpless female as a “perfect victim.” Her prolific years of screenwriting translate into engrossing cinematic writing on the page, and this novel grew out of her own fears of traveling alone as a woman.Sandra Chwialkowska is a television writer and producer who splits her time between Los

31:32

Susan Kiyo Ito: Adoption, Birth Mothers, &...

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/04/23

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker speak with Susan Kiyo Ito, author of I Would Meet You Anywhere, about adoption, the complexities of meeting one's birth mother, and reproductive freedom. Seeking her birth mother and fighting for reproductive rights inspires Susan to find the power of support in community and answers through her writing.A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award and a Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, I Would Meet You Anywhere is

29:12

Judith Smith: If Not Me, Then Who?

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/04/09

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston speak with Judith Smith, author of Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children Through Conflict and Change, about mothering challenging adult children, and how to find solutions through acceptance and no assignment of fault. Becoming an adult is not nearly as clear today as it was 50 years ago. Major structural changes are needed for mothers not to blame themselves and begin to discover answers on how to move forward.Difficult is based on a series of

28:14

Rachelle Bergstein: In Full Blume

This Mama Is Lit! ·

2025/03/26

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston chat with Rachelle Bergstein, author of The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us, about why Blume, once the most banned writer in the United States is more relevant now than ever. Judy Blume's ability to reflect real life parenting, puberty and precocious kids built a trust with her adolescent readers and provided a solid training ground for the next generation of women's rights activists. The original Judy Blume generation has now

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