Writer Mother Monster

Claire Oshetsky the author of the novel Chouette , which was longlisted for the 2022 Pen/Faulkner award for fiction and won the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Chouette was also named to the Honor List for the Otherwise Award, given annually to works of science fiction or fantasy that best explore gender roles, and it was shortlisted for the Barbellian Prize, dedicated to the...

This episode is filmed live at the Stonington Free Library.  Mary Collins is the author of articles, essays, and three books, including her most recent, A Play Book: Creating Writers, Creating Citizens. She is a professor of nonfiction for the Creative Writing Minors at Central Connecticut State University. Writer Mother Monster is a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myt...

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, the Nonfiction Book of the Year from the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, Longreads, Guernica, LitHub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story,...

Fox North (call them Fox!) is a critically acclaimed novelist for teenagers and adults. Fox, a graduate of the University of Florida’s MFA program in poetry, was a finalist in 2018 with the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the recipient of a Creatives Rebuild NY grant, a Publisher’s Weekly Flying Start, and an Analog AnLab’s Reader’s Choice Award winner. Their novels for teenagers – written under the...

Welcome to a special live episode of Writer Mother Monster, a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. The show is typically streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, and then released as an audio podcast on all major platforms--but today's episode is in-person at the 2023 CT Lit Fest, hosted at R...

A panel discussion with  Chaya Bhuvaneswar , a psychiatrist and author of White Dancing Elephants, who has treated postpartum patients in-hospital, including at a forensic psych ward for women awaiting trial for harming their children. Sharline Chiang is a writer, editor, book coach, publicist, and journalist who wrote, among many other articles, Don’t Call It Baby Blues , the only existing online...

Elizabeth Nunez emigrated from Trinidad to the US at age 19. Winner of an American Book Award, an Independent Publishers Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Hurston Wright Legacy Award, she is the author of a memoir and ten novels, four of which were selected as New York Times Editors Choice. She is the co-founder with John Oliver Killens of the National Black Writers Conference and executiv...

SAMANTHA SILVA is an author, playwright, and screenwriter based in Idaho. She’s sold film projects to Paramount, Universal, and New Line Cinema, and she is the author of Mr. Dickens and His Carol (Flatiron Books, 2017), and Love and Fury: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Flatiron Books, 2021). Sam wrote and directed the award- winning short script, THE BIG BURN, which premiered at the Sun Valley Fi...

(February 14, 2023) Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, THE GREAT BELIEVERS, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the LA Times Book Prize; and it was one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2018. Her other books are the novels THE BORROWER and THE HUNDRED-YEAR HOUSE, and the...

Artress Bethany White, associate professor of English at East Stroudsburg University, is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. She is the recipient of the Trio Award for her poetry collection My Afmerica: poems and the essay collection, Survivor’s Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity, which received a 2022 Next Generation Finalist Indie Book Award and is listed as a CLMP social justice rea...

Lisa Czarina Michaud is an American novelist of Italian-Mexican origins whose work is inspired by her life experiences. She attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington before stumbling through adulthood in Los Angeles. In 2009, she followed in the footsteps of her jazz-singing grandmother and moved to France where she currently resides. Her first novel Slanted and Disenchanted expl...

(November 3, 2022) Sarah M Jasat grew up believing her family was very strange but later discovered she was Indian. She lives in Leicester, UK, and writes short fiction about the strangeness of family. She dreams about writing a novel for older children if only she could get her own children to go to sleep. Writer Mother Monster is a conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it...

(November 10, 2022) Yexandra “Yex” Diaz is a multi-disciplinary artist whose oeuvre is her sobering expression of what it is to exist in a world of resistance, resilience, and revolution during a new era of renaissance rooted in healing. Chicago born and New Haven raised, the polarizing reality of oppression juxtaposed alongside privilege inspires Yex, an Oral Narrator, to employ the art of spoken...

(December 1, 2022) Anna Hogeland is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School of Social Work and an MFA from UC Irvine. She lives in Vermont. Her essays have appeared in LitHub, Gloss, Big Issue, and elsewhere. The Long Answer, sold in 8 countries to date, is her first novel. Support the show If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writ...

(January 10, 2023) Caroline Hagood is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Writing and Publishing and Director of Undergraduate Writing at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. She is the author of the poetry books, Lunatic Speaks and Making Maxine’s Baby, the book-length essay, Ways of Looking at a Woman, the novel, Ghosts of America, a book-length essay Weird Girls, and her novel Filthy Creation is...

(October 27) Lindsay Lerman is the author of two experimental novels, I’m From Nowhere (2019) and What Are You (2022). She is also a translator. She has a Ph. D. in philosophy and sometimes teaches philosophy and creative writing. Her essays and short stories have been published in LA Review of Books, New York Tyrant, Entropy , and elsewhere. She is working on her third novel and a screenplay. She...

(October 20) Toni McLellan is a marketing writer by day and a round-the-clock phrase-gatherer. For two decades, she’s written for major magazines and brands, including a stint as an outdoor family travel writer. She’s also published essays with Outside, KitchenAid , and Fort Collins Magazine . In 2022, Toni started New-to-me Phrases, a weekly newsletter dedicated to curiosity, language, and humor....

(October 13) Caroline Leavitt is the NYT Bestselling author of 13 novels, including With or Without You and Cruel Beautiful World . She is also the cofounder of A Mighty Blaze, a blogger/columnist for Psychology Today , and a book critic for People Magazine . A New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow, she was long-listed for the Maine Readers Prize, and was a Sundance Screenwriting Lab finalist. Wr...

Shin Yu Pai is a poet, essayist, and visual artist. She is the author of several books of poetry, including VIRGA (Empty Bowl, 2021), and served as the fourth poet laureate of the city of Redmond. In 2014, Shin Yu was nominated for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature. She is the creator and host of The Blue Suit, a podcast on Asian American stories, for KUOW, Seattle’s NPR affiliate. She lives w...

(May 5) This is a special episode on poets writing motherhood with Emily Pérez and Nancy Reddy, co-editors of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (UGA, 2022). bell hooks said : “No woman has ever written enough.” This truth demands that we make space for the essential writing of mothers, too. Motherhood is an experience central to all our lives, and The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherh...

(May 19) Elana Bell is the author of Mother Country (BOA Editions in 2020), poems about fertility, motherhood, and mental illness. She is also the founder of the Mother-Artist Salon , a virtual community dedicated to supporting mothers in their artistic practice. Elana’s debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Awa...

(May 26) This is a special episode on writing motherhood and sex with Tracey Livesay, Cat Sebastian, and Julie Tieu. Tracey Livesay’s latest release, Like Lovers Do , was named one of the 100 Best Fiction Books of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews and one of the Top 10 Romances of 2020 by Entertainment Weekly. Cat Sebastian has written sixteen queer historical romances and her books have received starred rev...

(April 21) Lian Dolan is a writer and podcaster. She is the author of three best-selling novels, The Sweeney Sisters, Helen of Pasadena and Elizabeth the First Wife . Her latest book, Lost and Found in Paris , was published in April 2022 and is a Southern California Indie Bestseller. Lian has written regular columns for Pasadena Magazine , O Magazine and Working Mother Magazine and is the creator,...

(April 14) Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a practicing physician, writer and PEN American award finalist for her debut collection WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS: STORIES, which was also selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best Debut Fiction and Best Short Story Collection. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan...

Mireya S. Vela is a Mexican-American creative nonfiction writer, storyteller, and artist. Vestiges of Courage is her work of collected essays. In her work, Mireya addresses the needs of immigrant Mexican families and the disparities they face every day. She tackles issues of inequity and how ingrained societal systems support the (ongoing) injustice that contributes to continuing poverty and abuse...