Amanda Fields and Caroline Grant chat with Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Jenna Morton-Aiken, co-editors of the anthology Parenting While PhDing, about raising children in a restrictive academic system.

This episode includes guest co-host, Caroline Grant. Grant served on the editorial board of Literary Mama for 10 years, including 5 as editor-in-chief, and is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Make Yourself Useful: remembering a life in essential tools and unexpected foods. Grant has co-edited two anthologies: Mama, PhD and The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage. She is co-director of the Sustainable Arts Foundation (SAF), which worked for nearly 15 years to support writers and artists with children. SAF was recently sunsetted, returning its funds to Indigenous communities. Grant lives in San Francisco with her family.

Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Jenna Morton-Aiken are the co-editors of the anthology Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents. Featuring contributions from graduate students about raising children, the anthology includes personal stories and advice for student parents. The book also offers tips for program administrators about creating more inclusive, family-friendly environments for students.

Hoermann-Elliott is an associate professor of English at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, where she also serves as the co-director of the university’s first-year experience program. She is deeply passionate about supporting student parents and foster-care alumni. She’s also a mom of four kids, ages three to fifteen.

Morton-Aiken is the senior associate director of writing and English language support at Brown University’s Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, where she also teaches in the English department. She began teaching writing because she believed in the power of language to make the world a better place, a goal she’s still working toward as she also completes a leadership coaching certification. She’s devoted to facilitating the growth of humans, and relies on good books, Korean dramas, and snuggling with her husband, two cats, and two children to keep her going.

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Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents

Jackie Hoermann-Elliott

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Jenna Morton-Aiken

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Brown University

Caroline Grant

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Amanda Fields and Tiffanie Drayton chat with Shasta Grant, author of When We Were Feral, about absent mothers, growing up in the ’90s, and raising a teenage son in today’s patriarchal landscape.

When We Were Feral is a coming-of-age story set in the early 1990s. The novel is about friendship and the terrain between girlhood and adulthood. At the center is thirteen-year-old Maggie, who lives in a trailer on the edge of a rural New Hampshire town and is living with the grief of her mother’s disappearance. Maggie finds comfort with her best friend Sarah’s seemingly perfect family, and they’re soon joined by Erin, who has lost both her sister and mother. Compelled by a need to understand what makes mothers vanish, Maggie convinces her friends to search for answers.

Shasta Grant grew up in New Hampshire and lives in Indianapolis. An Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest winner, and recipient of writing residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project, she holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home, and her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, wigleaf, and elsewhere.

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Tiffanie Drayton and Amanda Fields chat with Rebecca Morrison, author of The Blue Dress, about adapting her memoir into a young adult novel, opening dialogue for teens to talk about disordered eating, and representing Iranian culture in the media.

The Blue Dress is based on Rebecca Morrison’s childhood as an Iranian immigrant trying to fit into her homeland and conform to her family’s expectations of beauty.

Morrison is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Newsweek, The Independent, and HuffPost. After spending nearly three decades practicing law, she left the profession in 2020 to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. Her debut novel, The Blue Dress, published in March 2026, draws on her experiences growing up as an Iranian immigrant navigating the competing expectations of her family and her American homeland.

In addition to writing The Blue Dress, Morrison has also hosted The Second Half, a podcast exploring the struggles, heartbreaks, reinventions, and joys that shape the later chapters of life.

Links:

Order The Blue Dress

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