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, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Theatre, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor at Northwestern University Press. She has one child, who just turned 16, and describes writer-motherhood in three words as “Oh my God."

Writer Mother Monster is a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. Each episode is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, then archived on writermothermonster.com

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 name Phoebe North – have been published by Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins. Their short fiction, critical writing, and poetry has appeared with Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, the YA Review Network, Umbrella Journal, District Lit, 2river View and Strange Horizons (among many others others), and in anthologies such as the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, Hungry Hearts, Among the Shadows, and Speculative Fiction 2015. From their home in the Hudson Valley, they save Girl Scout camps, write songs, climb trees, and have better taste in music than you do.

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut.

Today's guest, Dr. Janet Garcia-Hallett, is a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven's Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences. She earned her PhD in criminal justice from Rutgers University-Newark in 2017. From 2017 to 2021, she worked as a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. At this point, during the pandemic, Janet made the decision to move back to the East Coast to be closer to family and a support network. As an Afro-Latina mother, Janet has maintained a personal interest in mothers' experiences before, during, and after incarceration. Her non-fiction book, INVISIBLE MOTHERS: UNSEEN YET HYPERVISIBLE AFTER INCARCERATION is based on interviews she conducted throughout New York City with formerly incarcerated mothers of color. Her book shares mothers' stories and explores how mothers of color navigate motherhood post-incarceration. Although Janet was first drawn to this work due to her upbringing in Harlem, she continues to study the impact of the criminal legal system and advocate for communities of color. Janet has 3 children ages 7, 4, and 2,, and she describes writer-motherhood in 3 words as Versatile, Determine, Badass.

A special thanks to our sponsors and patrons listed on the Writer Mother Monster website. Your support helps make this show possible. If you enjoy this episode, please become a patron/ess to help keep this podcast going. 

Learn more at writermothermonster.com

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 magazine article on Asian American survivors of postpartum depression. Kathryn Gahl is the author of The Yellow Toothbrush, a look at anxiety, depression, OCD, and paranoid thinking through the eyes of a mother whose daughter is experiencing a jail sentence after committing filicide. 

Thank you, viewers and listeners, for helping to make Writer Mother Monster a safe space for our guests to share their stories as we come together tonight to illuminate and complicate what we think we know about postpartum psychosis and depression. 

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 executive producer of the series Black Writers in America. She has served on the jury for national and international literary prizes/awards, and is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. She has one son, age 46, and two granddaughters ages 15 and 22, and describes writer-motherhood in 3 words as: "life-affirming essential."

A few notes! The official Writer Mother Monster shop has everything from t-shirts and tea towels to onesies and undies so you can support the show in style! And this Mother’s Day, May 14, treat yourself to a writing class with me, your host and the author of the story collection Animal Wife. We’ll talk about writer-motherhood, share strategies for prioritizing our craft, and write. You’ll leave the workshop armed with a plan for recommitting to your creative work. Finally, a special thanks to our sponsors and patrons listed on the Writer Mother Monster website. Your support helps make this show possible. If you enjoy this episode, please become a patron/ess to help keep this podcast going. For details on the store, class, and sponsorship, visit writermothermonster.com

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 Film Festival in 2017 and adapted Mr. Dickens and His Carol for Seattle Repertory Theater in 2022. Sam has 3 children, ages 28, 26, and 22, and describes writer-motherhood in three words as NECESSITY OF INVENTION.

Writer Mother Monster is a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. Each episode is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, then released as a podcast and hosted on www.writermothermonster.com

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

(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 collection MUSIC FOR WARTIME—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada University and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. Her new novel, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU, is forthcoming in February, 2023. She has 2 kids ages 12 and 15.

Writer Mother Monster is a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. Each episode is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, then released as an audio podcast. www.writermothermonster.com

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/

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 read. Her research interests include American slave archives and contemporary African American prose and poetics. She has four children ranging in age from 14 to 26, and describes writer-motherhood in three words as Determined, Fierce, Improvisational.

Writer Mother Monster is a community and conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice.

If you appreciate what you hear, consider becoming a patron/ess of Writer Mother Monster. Depending upon your level of support, you can tell me who you want to hear and topics you’d like to hear about, send me questions for guests in advance of interviews, receive a letter of thanks, a signed book–and more! Thank you for contributing to WMM’s sustainability. www.writermothermonster.com/donate/