Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Jessica Guerrieri, author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, about motherhood drinking culture, the power of family and friendship, and addiction. Jessica's debut novel offers an honest rebuttal to the prevalence of alcohol in "mom life" and the fragility of family ties.

Originally from the Bay Area, Jessica Guerrieri lives in Davis, California, with her husband and three young daughters. Jessica has a background teaching special education but left the field to pursue a career in writing. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea won the Maurice Prize for Fiction from her alma mater, UC Davis. With over a decade of sobriety, Jessica is a fierce advocate for addiction recovery. Jessica's second novel, Both Can Be True, will be released in May 2026 and is available for preorder now.

Author Website

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Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Catalina Margulis, author of Again, Only More Like You, about a reckoning of journalism, ideas of what a "good mother" is, and hard-kept female friendships. For fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Jennifer Weiner, Again, Only More Like You offers a poignant and humorous look at friendship and reinvention at 40.

Catalina is an author, podcast host and mother of four who has written for many of Canada’s top publications over the past 20 years. Cat was an editor at ELLE Canada, Flare, and Today’s Parent, she was a regular contributor to Savvymom, Mabel’s Labels, and Walmart Canada, and has written for more than 40 publications, including The Globe and Mail, Reader’s Digest, and Yummy Mummy Club. She is also the host of Passion Project, a podcast about making your dreams happen. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she lives with her family in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada.

Author website: https://catmargulis.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catmargulis

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catmargulis

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpkg_U6XtfcbptMuCXd_p_g

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Eva Langston and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Penny Zang, author of Doll Parts, about writing through grief, the “rights and wrongs” of motherhood, and finding inspiration in Sylvia Plath. For readers of The Virgin Suicides and I Have Some Questions For You, Doll Parts is a dual timeline suspense novel following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a secret that will slowly unravel her new, suburban dream life.

Penny Zang is from Maryland and graduated with an MFA in Fiction from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in the Potomac Review, Louisville Review, and South 85, among others. She is the 2024 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker fiction fellow via the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She lives in South Carolina, where she teaches English. Doll Parts (Sourcebooks Landmark) is her debut novel.

Author website: https://www.pennyzang.com/

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pennyzang/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PennyZangWriter/

X: https://x.com/Penny_Zang

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Ellen Wiles about her second novel, The Unexpected, published in November 2024 by HarperCollins. It follows two best friends, Robin and Kessie, who find themselves platonically coparenting a baby. It's a book about different species of love, including friendship and kinship, about motherhood and fertility, and about unconventional and queer families.

Ellen Wiles is a British novelist, sound artist, literary anthropologist, and Creative Writing professor at the University of Exeter, UK. She has previously worked as a barrister and as a musician. She is the author of two novels, The Unexpected (2024) and The Invisible Crowd (2017), and two non-fiction books, Live Literature (2021) and Saffron Shadows (2015). She also makes literary audio work engaging with nature and landscape, and is currently artist-in-residence at an environmental science center.

Author website: https://www.ellenwiles.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenwiles/#

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/ellenwiles.bsky.social

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-wiles-a8478951/?originalSubdomain=uk

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Emma Pattee, author of Tilt, about parsing capitalism and creative pursuits, powering large-scale climate activism, and questioning how to love something you know will die.

Emma Pattee is a climate journalist and fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon. She has written about climate change for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, and her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Idaho Review, Carve Magazine, and many more. Her debut novel, Tilt, was published by Simon & Schuster in March 2025.

Author website: https://www.emmapattee.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmapattee/?hl=en

Amanda Fields and Eva Langston talk with Jill Dopf Viles, the author of Manufacturing My Miracle: One Woman’s Journey To Acquire Her Personalized Gene Therapy. Jill writes about her experiences with Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy. These experiences are placed in the hands of a deft and lyrical writer who often surprises the reader with unforgettable images and memories even as she works through the story of diagnosis, acceptance, and further research. She persists in making her own connections about EDMD as she performs her own research, discovers others with this rare condition, communicates with medical researchers, and weighs the risks and benefits of matters such as personalized gene therapy.

Since the age of 19, Jill Viles has sought answers for a rare genetic disease that has plagued her family for generations. She began her studies in her university library and genetics courses. But her most fruitful efforts involved an internship in a genetics lab with a medical doctor. Over the next 30 years, Jill self-diagnosed her family with Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy, a disease originally dismissed by her neurologist because it was thought that “girls don’t get that disease.”

Author website: https://diyscientist.blog/

Obituary: https://www.laufersweilerfuneralhome.com/obituaries/jill-viles

ProPublica article: https://www.propublica.org/article/remembering-jill-viles-diy-geneticist-muscular-dystrophy-david-espstein