Writer Mother Monster

This is a special episode on Writing, Mothering & Gender Identity with Stephanie Burt, Jennifer Chen, and Toni McLellan. We talked about writing and mothering nonbinary and trans children, and writing and mothering as trans and nonbinary mothers. It’s no accident that we held this conversation on International Transgender Day of Visibility, even as LGBTQ+ rights are being attacked throughout t...

Poet Jessica Pierce is the author of Consider the Body, Winged , and has been published in numerous magazines, including Nimrod International Journal selected her as a finalist for the 2020 and 2021 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She was also a finalist in poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, the New Ohio Review, and MVICW, where she also earned a fellowship. Jessica earned her master’s in education...

(February 10) Alena Dillon is the author of Mercy House , a Library Journal Best Book of 2020, which has been optioned as a television series produced by Amy Schumer, The Happiest Girl in the World , a Good Morning America pick, My Body Is A Big Fat Temple , a memoir of pregnancy and early parenting, and Eyes Turned Skyward , a novel forthcoming Fall 2022. Her work has appeared in publications inc...

Note: Due to technical difficulties, there may be moments of awkwardness in this interview. Apologies! (February 17) Hilda Raz has been a director, award judge, and contributor in this country’s most prestigious poetry journals and contests. She has published 14 books as a poet, nonfiction writer, and editor, including the poetry collections include What Happens (2009), All Odd and Splendid (2008)...

Crystal Maldonado is a young adult author with a lot of feelings. Her debut novel, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega , was a Cosmopolitan Best New Book and a POPSUGAR Best New YA Novel. Her next novel, No Filter and Other Lies , explores teenage life in the social media age—and the lies we tell to ourselves and others. By day, Crystal is a social media manager working in higher ed, and by night, a writer w...

(November 11) Sara Hosey is the author of Home Is Where the Hurt Is: Media Depictions of Wives and Mothers , which looks at representations of the domestic in popular culture, as well as 2 young adult novels: Iphigenia Murphy and Imagining Elsewhere. She has a Ph. D. in American Literature and is a professor of English, Creative Writing, and Women and Gender Studies at a New York area community co...

Anna V. Q. Ross’s most recent book—Flutter, Kick—won the 2020 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award and is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2022. She is the author of 3 previous poetry collections: Figuring, If a Storm, and Hawk Weather and her work has received fellowships from organizations including the Fulbright Foundation. She is poetry editor for Salamander, teaches at Emerson College, and lives wi...

(November 4) Sheba Karim is the author of the YA novels Skunk Girl , That Thing We Call a Heart , which made several Best Book lists including Bank Street and Kirkus, and Mariam Sharma Hits the Road , which was named a NPR Best Book of the Year, and The Marvelous Mirza Girls (May 2021). Her fiction and essays have been featured in 580 Split, Asia Literary Review, Femina, India Today, Literary Hub,...

Note: Apologies for the technical difficulties at the start--our intro song refused to play! Kristie Robin Johnson is an educator, essayist, and poet from Augusta, GA. She is the current Chair of the Department of Humanities at Georgia Military College’s Augusta campus where she is an Assistant Professor of English. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing program at Georgia College and State Univer...

Ramona Ausubel is the author of two novels and two story collections. Her most recent book, Awayland , was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, a Finalist for the California Book Award, Colorado Book Award and long-listed for the Story Prize. She is also the author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born . She is the recipient of t...

Tara Laskowski’s debut suspense novel One Night Gone won the Agatha Award, Macavity Award, and the Anthony Award, and her second novel, The Mother Next Door , was published in October 2021. She is also the author of two short story collections and was the longtime editor of the online flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly . A graduate of Susquehanna University and George Mason University, Tara...

Diksha Basu is an actor and the author of the novels Destination Wedding and The Windfall, which is under adaptation for a television series by Shonali Bose. ELLE magazine said The Windfall broke stereotypes of exoticism surrounding India while The Wire called it a “shrewd and unstintingly funny story about the neuroses of New Delhi’s 1%.” Writer Mother Monster is a conversation series devoted to...

(September 2, 2021) Kelly Sue DeConnick is the force behind Carol Danvers’ reinvention as Captain Marvel and is the first female writer of an ongoing Avengers title in AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. In 2013, Kelly Sue debuted on the independent scene with the mythological Western PRETTY DEADLY, followed by the sci-fi kidney-punch BITCH PLANET. She began writing for DC Comics with the ongoing series AQUAMAN in...

Author of seven books, Leslie Lehr explores the duality of today’s women to navigate a new path between sexy and sacred. Salma Hayek is developing Leslie’s critically acclaimed new memoir, A Boob’s Life, into a comedy series for HBO Max. Writer Mother Monster is an interactive conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and adv...

Content warning: Childhood sexual abuse (August 5, 2021) Dorothy Allison’s novel Bastard Out of Carolina was a finalist for the National Book Award, became an award-winning movie, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She was an award-winning editor for numerous early feminist and lesbian & gay journals and her many publications include The Women Who Hate Me , Trash , and C...

(July 22, 2021) Margaret Adams writes short fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays. She was a Best American Essays 2019 Notable, the winner of the Blue Mesa Review 2018 Nonfiction Contest, and the winner of the Pacifica Literary Review 2017 Fiction Contest, and she’s a fiction editor for JMWW . Originally from Maine, she currently lives on the AZ/NM border in the Navajo Nation where she works as...

(July 8, 2021) Rachel Yoder is the author of Nightbitch (Doubleday), which has been optioned for film with Amy Adams set to star. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, and is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process. Rachel grew up in a Mennonite community in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Ohio and now live...

(July 1, 2021) With Alicia Elliott, author of the thought-provoking essay collection A Mind Spread Out on the Ground ; Liz Harmer, author of a memoir about wrestling with bipolar disorder, her hospitalization as a teenager, and postpartum depression; and Meg Leonard, a poet with a new collection, book of lullabies , that grapples with mental illness and new motherhood. Writer Mother Monster is a c...

(June 10, 2021) Kate Baer is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and poet based on the East Coast. She has been featured in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar , Vogue.com, Entertainment Weekly , & Literary Hub . Her first book, What Kind Of Woman , is out now with HarperCollins. “In these confident and fearless poems, Baer suggests that the deepest and most vulnerable love is found in lif...

(June 3, 2021) Kendra DeColo is the author of three poetry collections; most recently I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World (BOA Editions, 2021) . She has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and others, and her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House Magazine, Waxwing, Los Angeles Review, Bitch Magazine, VIDA, and elsewhe...

(May 27, 2021) Tananarive Due teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA and is an executive producer on Shudder’s documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror . A leading voice in black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her b...

(May 13, 2021) Lan Samantha Chang, Director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is the author of Hunger ; Inheritanc e; All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost ; and The Family Chao (W.W. Norton, 2022). She has a 13-year-old daughter and describes writer-motherhood in 3 words as “Need more time.” In this episode, Sam talks about growing up one of the only Chinese kids in Wisconsin, offers advice for applying...

(April 29, 2021) Sadie Hoagland is the author of Strange Children and American Grief in Four Stages and has two children, ages 6 and 2. She describes writer motherhood as “exhausting, hilarious, real.” In this episode, Sadie talks about multigenerational motherhood, why ambivalence is underrated, her changing relationship with darkness, and the language of trauma. And, she reads an excerpt of her...

(May 6, 2021) Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction and won The Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her children are 17 and 22, and she describes writer-motherhood as “intense, complex, evolving.” In this episode, Deesha talks about starting her writing career when her daughter was...

(April 24, 2021) Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, professor, and transgender activist who the New York Times called “one of the most influential poetry critics of her generation.” She has two children, ages 11 and 15 and describes writer-motherhood in three words as “busy, conflicted, resourceful.” In this episode, Stephanie talks about claiming motherhood, finding kinship with Mr. Spock...