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.

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Literary Mama Essay (2023)

Amanda and Eva chat with Domenica Ruta, author of All the Mothers, about a new dialectic in motherhood, the specific anxieties of single moms, and the necessity of single mom communities. She also explores the trials of the family court system and the realities of what those minefields can mean for single moms.

Domenica’s latest book, All the Mothers, is a novel that follows three single mothers in New York whose kids share the same deadbeat father. The protagonists Sandy, Stephanie, and Kaya eventually meet and begin to redefine family structure as single mothers. As they try to stay afloat financially while raising their children, and as these children grow and change, the father, Justin, creates numerous roadblocks and conflict along the way. Overall, this novel is real and funny, all while aptly narrating the intense struggles of single mothers, who are often judged for not maintaining the status quo.

Domenica Ruta is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir With or Without You and the novel The Last Day. She teaches in the creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The American Scholar, Oprah online, and many others.

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Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Jessie Harrold, author of Mothershift, about matrescence - the process of becoming a mother, the four radical transformations, and the seven mother powers. Jessie explains how mothers can be agents of change, and how modern mothers in crisis can step into their innate powers to reclaim themselves.

Mothershift is the first book of its kind to dive deeply into the science and soul of matrescence, the 2-3 year transition into motherhood. Mothershift helps mothers identify the cascade of changes they can expect as they enter motherhood, normalizes the feelings of grief and loss of self they may feel along the way, and reassures them that they are not broken, they are becoming. The book helps readers cultivate a sense of empowerment and leadership in motherhood, showing how mothering is a counterculture act. Mothershift is a Nautilus Gold Medal winner, has been featured in international media, and is being recognized as contributing to a pivotal development in our understanding of matrescence.

Jessie Harrold is a coach and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over fifteen years. She works one-on-one with women and mothers, facilitates mentorship programs, women’s circles and rituals, and hosts retreats and nature-based experiences. Jessie is the author of Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage (Shambhala 2024) and Project Body Love: my quest to love my body and the surprising truth I found instead. She is also the host of The Becoming Podcast. Jessie lives on the east coast of Canada where she mothers her two children, writes, and stewards the land.

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Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston chat with Liz Alterman, author of Sad Sacked, about the perils and freedoms of unemployment, the dichotomy of working moms, and the need to write the book you want to read. Diving deep into her own family’s dual layoffs, Liz’s memoir uses humor as a healing force as she details the downsizing and uploading of life’s losses and wins.

Liz Alterman is the author of the young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting, the suspense novels The Perfect Neighborhood, The House on Cold Creek Lane, and You Shouldn’t Have Done That, as well as the romcom Claire Casey’s Had Enough. Liz’s most recent literary thriller, A Different Type of Poison, was just released this week. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other outlets. Subscribe to her Substack where she shares the ups and downs of the writing life (and cat photos). Liz lives in New Jersey with her husband, three sons and two cats. She spends most days repeatedly microwaving the same cup of coffee and looking up synonyms.

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Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Jessica Slice, author of Unfit Parent, about designing and inventing systems of parenting based on the bodies and minds we live in. Unfit Parent examines the obstacles that disabled parents face, the societal beliefs that undergird those barriers, and the political and economic systems that hold it all in place. Jessica explores how disability culture and the strengths inherent in having a body like hers would, if included in parenting culture, make contemporary parenting more sustainable.

Jessica Slice is a disabled author, speaker, and essayist. Her book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World (Beacon, 2025) has been shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. She is the co-author of Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down (Hachette, 2024) and This is How We Play (Dial, 2024), as well as the forthcoming This is How We Talk (Dial, 2025) and We Belong (Dial, 2026), which was co-authored with the late Judy Heumann. Jessica has been published in Modern Love, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Guardian, The Globe & Mail, LitHub, Alice Wong’s bestselling Disability Visibility, Slate, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and more. She’s been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, PBS, NPR, The Cut, the BBC, and more. She lives in Toronto with her family.

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Eva Langston and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Natasha Williams, author of The Parts of Him I Kept, about parenting her father through schizophrenia and healing through memoir writing.

The Parts of Him I Kept is an intimate account of a daughter’s coming of age in the face of her father’s schizophrenic unraveling. Williams investigates the limits of our medical and cultural understanding of schizophrenia while chronicling the shared burden and benefits of caring for a mentally ill family member. The Parts of Him I Kept asks us to consider the ways mental illness is as much a social issue as a biological condition.

Natasha Williams has worked as an adjunct biology professor at SUNY Ulster in the Hudson Valley of New York and as a consultant for the International Public-School Network, coaching science teachers. She has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania. She attended the Bread Loaf School of English in the summer of 2020 and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 2023. Excerpts of The Parts of Him I Kept, published in April 2025 from Apprentice House Press, have been published in the Bread Loaf Journal, Change Seven, LIT, Memoir Magazine, Onion River Review, Writers Read, Post Road, and South Dakota Review.

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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 world debate programs like paid leave, universal daycare, reproductive healthcare, and family tax incentives, Four Mothers offers a uniquely intimate, moving portrait of what those policies mean for parents on the ground—and considers what modern families really want.

Abigail is an award-winning international reporter and news producer, previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time, and New York Times video. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. Before moving to Japan, she wrote and produced long-form news documentaries as a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America. Stories she reported have earned a National Headliner Award, an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination. She was a 2011 East-West Center Japan Fellow and 2010 UN Foundation Journalism Fellow. She served as First Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, a 2000-member national press organization, and also chaired its scholarship program.

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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 up on her doorstep, offering answers to all of Lee’s questions about her past. Can Lee keep her safe, stable life? Or will new revelations about “the cult that went missing” shatter everything? In The Ascent, Allison Buccola has crafted a nerve-rattling thriller about motherhood, identity, and the truths we think we know about our families.

Allison Buccola is the author of The Ascent and Catch Her When She Falls. She has a JD from the University of Chicago and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and their two young children.

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