Today's guest, Dr. Tara Mulder, gets real about the challenges of writing while moving between temporary jobs, juggling a ton of teaching, and struggling to find a tenure track position. But also told me why that struggle brought a surprising amount of freedom and led to a much more creative and entertaining book.

These days, Tara is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, although she did not get that position until after her book was nearly published. She's a specialist in medicine, sex, and gender in antiquity, and her book is called A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome. In it, she brings the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth of Roman women brilliantly to life, turning scraps of archival materials into richly detailed narratives. In addition to her teaching, Tara also previously worked as a managing editor of Eidolon, an online classics journal that brought classics scholarship to the public in a playful, easy to read voice. You'll hear more in our conversation about how that experience shaped Tara's writing. We also talked about how her lived experiences, especially as the daughter of a homebirth midwife, helped her read the archive, and how keeping her writing going means trusting in her future self.

Heads up: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you buy books from these links, the podcast gets a small percentage—it's an awesome way to support our guests and the show at the same time.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Tara Mulder, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome
• Eidolon archives
• Scrivener
• Anna Bonnell Friedin, Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome
• Anna Tatarkiewicz, The 'Cursus Laborum' of Roman Women: Social and Medical Aspects of the Transition from Puberty to Motherhood
• Saidiya Hartman, "Venus in Two Acts"
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

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