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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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.

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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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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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