Holly Rizzuto Palker and Sam Field chat with Kerry Docherty, author of Selfish, about finding quiet moments of creativity, ambition, and why putting yourself first isn’t always selfish.

What does it mean to be good? What are the consequences of doing what we want? Who determines what is selfish?

These are the questions that haunted Kerry Docherty—the cofounder of Faherty brand, mother of two, and wife—as she realized she was giving away too much of herself: to a marriage with her college sweetheart, to the fast-paced family startup, and to a growing household that demanded attention she didn’t always want to give. Determined to feel seen—as an artist, activist, poet, romantic—she began to steal simple moments for herself, replacing her to-do lists with poems, pushing the business toward the things she cared about, and widening her circle of creative friends. However, as she leaned more deeply into her passions and purpose, she found herself veering into an ambiguous relationship with a musician, a potentially destructive direction that would seriously test her marriage.

With incisive observation, biting humor, and searing honesty, Selfish details Kerry’s twisting, sometimes conflicted journey to self-understanding. It chronicles her efforts to reconcile capitalism with her own heart’s desire, her complicated family dynamics, her struggles with motherhood, and her efforts to rediscover parts of herself buried under other people’s expectations. Her example invites us to demand to be seen, do what we need to do, and dare to put ourselves first—and shows how doing so can actually be a gift to others. Selfish is both a love letter to the Self and an unapologetic call to action for women everywhere to meet their own needs.

Kerry Docherty cofounded the lifestyle clothing brand Faherty with her husband and his identical twin. A graduate of Yale University and Pepperdine Law School, she is passionate about community building, sustainability, and creativity. Kerry is also the author of the children’s book Somewhere, Right Now, featuring art by New York Times bestselling illustrator Suzie Mason. She lives with her husband and two children on the New Jersey shore, where she is constantly looking for sea glass.

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Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Sona Movsesian, author of The World’s Worst Mom, about parenting twins, normalizing vulnerability and finding her voice as a comedy writer.

Have you ever wondered if you’re completely failing at parenting? In The World’s Worst Mom, Sona Movsesian delivers a funny, candid, and refreshingly honest look at the gap between the idealized version of parenthood and the messy reality. After chronicling her experiences working for Conan O’Brien in The World’s Worst Assistant, Movsesian turns her attention to the chaos of raising children.

Packed with laugh-out-loud stories, tongue-in-cheek survival tips, illustrations and comics, the book captures the everyday absurdities of modern parenting. Along the way, she shares personal anecdotes, behind-the-scenes moments with Conan O’Brien, and reflections on how her self-proclaimed shortcomings as an assistant may have prepared her for motherhood. The result is a relatable reminder that no parent has all the answers—and that finding humor in the madness might be the best coping strategy of all.

 Sona Movsesian is a former executive assistant turned author, podcaster, and media personality. She began as Conan O’Brien’s personal assistant in 2009, and was featured on his show on many occasions, including a televised trip she took to Armenia with O’Brien for his Conan Without Borders travel series. Since 2018, Movsesian has been a co-host of the hit podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and in 2022 she released her book The World’s Worst Assistant, which became a New York Times bestseller. Her second book, The World’s Worst Mom, will be released in early September. Movsesian lives in Los Angeles with her husband and twin sons.

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Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Andrea Louie, author of Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority, about her grandmother’s 1952 U.S. Mother of the Year Award.

Her most recent book is Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority. In 1952, Toy Len Goon, a Chinese immigrant widow who raised eight children while running their family laundry, was selected as U.S. Mother of the Year by the American Mother’s Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation. In Chinese American Mothering, Andrea Louie—the granddaughter of Toy Len Goon—argues that her grandmother’s selection for this honor can only be understood within the context of shifting representations of Chinese Americans during the Cold War era, and the accompanying assumptions about the strategic role that positive representations of Chinese Americans could have in extending U.S. influence to Asia.

Andrea Louie is a professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, where she is also affiliated with the Asian Pacific American Studies Program. She is the author of Chineseness Across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States and How Chinese Are You?: Adopted Chinese Youth and their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture.

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Chinese American Mothering: Toy Len Goon’s Legacy and the Myth of the Model Minority

Holly Rizzuto Palker and Sam Field chat with Lisa Roe, author of Big & Lily, about sisterhood, second acts, and the ways women learn to rewrite the stories they’ve been living.

A sharply funny, deeply heartfelt novel about two sisters who discover the best way to find yourself is by getting lost.

For her entire life, Bridget “Big” Ackerman Petty has struggled to hold everything together—her kids, her husband, her demanding mother, all in dizzying orbit around her. While the kids are grown and her husband is retired, every day still feels like a to-do list she can never quite finish. Why is everything so effortless and easy for her sister Lily—a woman blessed with a magnetic personality, a thriving business, and a husband who adores her?

But when Lily discovers her husband’s been cheating, her “perfect” life implodes. Devastated and overwhelmed, she decides to run as far away as possible: to Alaska to lose herself on a hardcore survival trek—and she’s dragged her reluctant sister Big along.

No cell service, no easy exits—just grizzlies, outdoor plumbing, and a group of strangers who know how to read a compass. As the sisters navigate freezing rivers, unmarked trails, and more than one near-death experience, the defenses they’ve used to protect themselves begin to crumble, and they’re forced to face everything they’ve spent decades avoiding: resentment, regret, envy, and the terrifying possibility that the other sister’s life might not be as easy as it looks.

Big & Lily is a laugh-out-loud, emotionally rich novel about second acts, sisterhood, and the unexpected ways we find ourselves when we’re truly lost.

Lisa Roe graduated from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and spent many years as an advertising creative director and copywriter in New York City before accepting the tougher job of stay-at-home mom and turning to writing fiction—mostly to entertain her kids, but later to tell her own stories. A classic firstborn, reluctant empty nester, and Dr. Doolittle wannabe, Lisa lives in New Jersey with her husband, David, and three incorrigible dogs. Big & Lily is her second novel.

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Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Martheaus Perkins, author of The Grace of Black Mothers, about Black motherhood, poetic form, and the complicated inheritance of the American Dream.

Martheaus Perkins is a first-generation college graduate and son of a single Black mother. He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers, published with Trio House Press. His writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, diode, Obsidian, Mizna, and Beloit. The name “Martheaus” is a collection of each woman who raised him: “Mar-” was his grandmother, “-Thea-” is his mother, and “-us” represents the aunties who created the name.

Perkins’ debut poetry collection, The Grace of Black Mothers, is a lyrical reckoning, finding grace through Black mothers, aunties, and grannies. Mamie Till-Mobley, Sybrina Fulton, Harriet Tubman, and the author’s own mothers guide readers through the collection. All the while, Perkins brings an array of poetic forms to genres such as fighting game menus, optometry charts, screenplays, pirate codes, and social media threads. The Grace of Black Mothers includes homemade heroes and villains, justice and fabrication, wit and risk, resurrection and erasure.

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Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Heather Sweeney, author of Camouflage: How I Emerged From the Shadows of a Military Marriage, about identity, divorce, and rebuilding after years as a military spouse.

Camouflage: How I Emerged From the Shadows of a Military Marriage is about Heather Sweeney’s journey from being overshadowed by her husband’s military career to rediscovering her identity as a single mother. The memoir explores how military spouses often conform to a support role that is secondary to their spouse’s military career. Sweeney writes about how the hardships of military life contribute to her adaptability and resilience.

Heather Sweeney is the author of the memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women’s health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Newsweek, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, and Military.com. She lives in Virginia, and Camouflage is her first book.

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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 dangerous, unruly, and singed with hope.

The protagonists are O and Z, two young women searching for purpose in a world where a decades-long earthquake reverberates, and the population scrambles to hide from deadly acid rain. Descended from space pirates, O is drawn to the sky, while Z is earthbound, a skilled forager with connections to the black market. The two become travel companions and lovers, and are conflicted between choosing their values or each other.

In this speculative novel, French offers readers an intricate future-world that resonates powerfully with our own, as it explores a people gripped in the war-torn politics of migration, memory-keeping, labor, and survival.

Whitney French is a writer, educator, and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina Press, 2019) and Griot: Six Writers’ Sojourn into the Dark (Knopf Canada, 2022). Whitney is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her work. She is a certified arts educator and an assistant professor in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She is also the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada.

Socials & Links

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Hush Harbor

Syncopation: A Novel in Verse

https://linktr.ee/WhitneyFrenchWrites

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 her daughter Naia to the ocean, where she establishes a mermaid burlesque called Sirenland and reinvents herself, performing as a siren in a tank built into the limestone cliffs overlooking the sea. She hires and trains human women to perform with her, and Sirenland becomes a national roadside attraction. Her daughter Naia performs as well, until she turns 15 and begins to resist the world her mother has created.

Lara Ehrlich is the author of the story collection Animal Wife (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the novel Bind Me Tighter Still (Red Hen Press, 2025). Lara is also the host of Writer Mother Monster, a podcast that has featured more than 100 conversations with writer–mothers navigating the tension between artistic ambition and caregiving. Her writing has been published in StoryQuarterly, Hunger Mountain Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Literary Hub, and others, and she is the writer in residence at Connecticut College. She is the founder and director of Thought Fox Writers Den and lives with her family in Connecticut.

Socials and Links:

www.LaraEhrlich.com

www.ThoughtFox.org

https://www.facebook.com/lara.ehrlich

https://www.instagram.com/lara.ehrlich/

https://redhen.org/book/bind-me-tighter-still/

Mentioned in the episode:

Nobody’s Girl

Hans Christian Andersen

Disney’s The Little Mermaid