This Mama Is Lit!

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

  1. MAR 5

    Rebecca Lehmann: Resurrecting Anne Boleyn and Going from Poet to Novelist

    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 Donald Hall Prize); and The Sweating Sickness. Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, NPR’s The Slowdown, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She lives in Indiana with her family, where she is an associate professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College. The Beheading Game is her debut novel. In The Beheading Game, Anne Boleyn wakes up the day after her execution, sews her head back on, and seeks vengeance on Henry VIII. Author Website Rebecca Instagram Crown Publishing Instagram Preorder The Beheading Game This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    25 min

  2. FEB 19

    Chloé Caldwell: Infertility & Queer-ception

    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 different. Chloé Caldwell is the author of the national bestselling novella, Women (recently reissued by Harper Perennial) and the books I’ll Tell You In Person, The Red Zone, and Legs Get Led Astray. Her latest book, the memoir Trying, is out now with Graywolf Press. Author Website Instagram Substack https://www.scrappyliterary.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    27 min

  3. FEB 5

    Karen Palmer: DIY Witness Protection

    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 a Pushcart Prize winner, with grants from the NEA and the Colorado Council on the Arts. She’s Under Here grew out of her essay, “The Reader is the Protagonist,” first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review and selected by Leslie Jamison for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2017. Author Website Instagram Facebook BlueSky This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    30 min

  4. JAN 29

    Dr. Robyn Kozlowitz: No One Ever Wins Trauma Poker

    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 is a clinical child psychologist and the author of the recently released book Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be. She’s a leading expert on the intersection of trauma and parenting, helping parents understand how both early life experiences and more recent events can shape—and sometimes sabotage—their ability to respond to their children with calm, clarity, and connection. Her core belief is simple but powerful: Parenting is a skill—and everyone can learn it. If you’re struggling, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s often because trauma has blocked your access to the parenting tools you need. And not only can you learn to parent skillfully after trauma—you can actually heal in the process. Through her book, podcast, YouTube channel, and the Post-Traumatic Parenting Summit, Dr. K offers practical tools, clinical insight, and deep compassion to help parents move from reactivity to intention. Author Website Instagram YouTube Podcast LinkedIn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    30 min

  5. JAN 15

    Michelle Lerner: Complicated Grief

    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 losing their young adult daughter. Abandoning their previous life and even the comfort of a longtime spouse, Lee is driven by a quest for closure—or an end to it all. Michelle Lerner is the author of the novel Ring, published by Bancroft Press, the poetry chapbook Protection, published by Poetry Box and she has had personal essays in publications like Time and The Hill; She’s published poems and other writing in journals such as Shenandoah and VQR. She has an MFA in Poetry from The New School and a law degree from Harvard Law School. Michelle directs the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation and mentors young writers in Gaza through the organization We are Not Numbers. She’s a recovering public interest lawyer currently emerging from late-stage neurological Lyme Disease, living with her family in rural New Jersey. Author Website Instagram Bluesky This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    26 min

  6. JAN 8

    Claire Adam: Leaving the Baby Behind

    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 daughter she gave up, which leads her to retrace her journey from Trinidad to Venezuela to London, and question not only that fateful decision she made as a teenager but every turn in the road of her life since. Claire Adam’s debut novel, Golden Child, was listed as one of the BBC’s “100 Novels That Shaped Our World” and was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. She was born and raised in Trinidad. She studied physics at Brown University and later received an MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in London. Author Website Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    29 min

  7. 12/26/2025

    Teri Vlassopoulos: Technology, Fertility, and Karaoke

    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 author of Living Expenses (Invisible Publishing, 2025), Escape Plans (Invisible Publishing, 2015) and Bats or Swallows (Invisible Publishing, 2010). Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in Room Magazine, Today’s Parent, Catapult, The Millions, The Rumpus, The Toast, Open Book, and more. She has been nominated for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and she sits on the Board of Directors of the FOLD (the Festival of Literary Diversity). Teri lives in Toronto. Author Website Instagram Substack This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    28 min

  8. 12/18/2025

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

    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 to divine meaning from suffering. Brittany is the author of the poetry chapbook a litany of words as fragile as window glass (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Her work has been published in Ninth Letter, Witness Magazine, NonBinary Review, Hobart, Literary Mama, Identity Theory, and elsewhere. A former victim’s rights lawyer in Washington, DC, she turned to writing after the birth of her first child. Author Website Instagram Literary Mama Essay (2023) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

    29 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

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

Information

  • Creator
    Literary Mama
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    67
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Literary Mama
  • Show Website
    This Mama Is Lit!