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/

Substack:

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

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

X: https://x.com/Penny_Zang

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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

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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

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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

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Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Kathleen Glasgow, author of The Glass Girl, about her distinct writing process, being a "sad book" author, and writing YA novels about addiction, grief and other tough topics.

Kathleen Glasgow started as a poet and somehow found herself writing novels. She's the author of the New York Times and internationally bestselling YA novels Girl in Pieces, The Glass Girl,You'd Be Home Now, and How to Make Friends With the Dark, She's the coauthor, with Liz Lawson, of the bestselling mystery series, The Agathas and The Night in Question. Her books have been nominated for numerous school reading awards and have been featured in People Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Vanity Fair. She has an MFA in Poetry from The University of Minnesota.

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

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

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@misskathleenglasgow?hl=en

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/p/Kathleen-Glasgow-Author-100094105716522/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kathleenglasgow?lang=en

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Eva Langston and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Lish McBride, author of quirky books for teens and adults, about writing in different genres, navigating the publishing industry, and weaving humor through daily life.

Lish McBride is a prolific writer of Young Adult and Adult books that often contain humor and magic. Her latest adult novel, The Suitcase Swap, is a love story born out of a JFK Airport baggage claim snafu. The book was first released in the United Kingdom and will be out in the U.S. soon. The audio version can be found here. Her latest YA novel, Most Likely to Murder, will release in March 2026 and is available now for preorder.

In addition to being a professional writer, Lish exists as an amateur goblin living in the Pacific Northwest. In the crime of the century, she tricked not one but two universities into giving her degrees, ending up with an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Lish is a former bookseller and event host at Third Place Books, a giant thriving indie bookstore just outside of Seattle. Her first book, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults title, Morris Award finalist, and won the Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award. She is the author of other funny and creepy Young Adult books such as Necromancing the Stone, Firebug, Pyromantic, Curses, and Red in Tooth and Claw. She also has her adult fantasy romance series, which so far includes A Little Too Familiar and Rough Around the Hedges. Beyond writing, her ultimate dream is to have her own castle and one of those libraries with the wheely ladder.

Author website: https://lishmcbride.squarespace.com/

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

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/lishmcbride.bsky.social

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Alicia Elliott's debut novel, And Then She Fell, explores how motherhood and mental health collide as an Indigenous young woman confronts her inherited trauma and looks to her own creation story to find her power.

Alicia is a Mohawk writer and editor living in Brantford, Ontario. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30, and she was chosen as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was a national bestseller in Canada. Her debut novel, And Then She Fell, was A Globe and Mail "Best Book of 2023" as well as a Most Anticipated Book Pick by Good Morning America, Bustle, CrimeReads, Electric Literature, and more.

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

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Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Amanda K. Jaros, author of Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology, about mothering and stepmothering, running a motherhood magazine, and finding support in writing communities.

Amanda is a writer and editor living in Ithaca, NY. Her writing passion began with personal journals and short stories as a child, which morphed into a series of mommy blogs after she had her son in the mid-aughts. Nearing forty, she decided to follow her dream and returned to school to earn her MFA in creative nonfiction from Chatham University (where Rachel Carson earned her degree in 1929!). In recent years, her writing has appeared in a wide range of places, online and in print, from literary magazines to the local newspaper.

The opportunity to work at Literary Mama opened the door for more editing experience and she stayed there for 11 years. Amanda started as a blog editor, moved to the creative nonfiction department, and then became a senior editor while eventually serving as Editor-in-Chief from 2018-2022. During that time she incorporated the all-volunteer organization as a 501(c)3 nonprofit and led several successful fundraising campaigns. Find more of her work here. In 1999, Amanda thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail by herself. Her memoir In My Boots about the six-month adventure was published this year by Black Rose Writing.

Since 2018, Amanda has served on her County Legislature, participating in many committees and boards, focusing on environmental, water resources, health and human services, and government operations issues. She loves trees, mountains, the Adirondacks, and everything in nature. When not writing or editing, you can find her on a trail somewhere.

Author website: http://www.amandakjaros.com/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Amanda-K-Jaros-Author/100089608878145/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-k-jaros-champion-082b6842/

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Eva Langton and Amanda Fields chat with Nikkya Hargrove, author of Mama: A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found, about raising her half sibling as her child and navigating the family court and prison systems.

Nikkya Hargrove's powerful memoir Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found follows her journey as she makes the decision to raise her third half sibling, Jonathan, after he was born to her mother, who had a crack cocaine addiction and spent time incarcerated while Nikkya was raised by her grandparents. The book traces Nikkya’s path toward custody and adoption, her family’s perspective on her queerness, and the way she finds love and forms a family.

Nikkya Hargrove is a 2012 LAMBDA Literary Nonfiction Fellow and has written about adoption, same-sex multi-ethnic marriage, motherhood as a gay woman, and the prison system for The Washington Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, Scary Mommy, and Shondaland, among many others. She has worked for social impact nonprofits providing support to underserved communities throughout her professional career. She graduated from Bard College and lives in Connecticut with her wife and three children.

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

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

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Eva Langston, Holly Rizzuto Palker + Amanda Fields chat with Sandra Chwialkowska, author of The Ends of Things, about screenwriting versus novel-writing + surviving a book launch with a newborn baby.

Sandra Chwialkowska is a television producer and writer whose first novel, The Ends of Things, is a psychological suspense that explores female friendship and agency, and pushes back against the trope of the helpless female as a “perfect victim.” Her prolific years of screenwriting translate into engrossing cinematic writing on the page, and this novel grew out of her own fears of traveling alone as a woman.

Sandra Chwialkowska is a television writer and producer who splits her time between Los Angeles and Toronto. Most recently, she served as writer and co–executive producer on the Golden Globe–nominated ABC series Alaska Daily, starring Hilary Swank. She has also developed several TV adaptations for female-centric thrillers, including Mary Kubica’s New York Times Bestseller Local Woman Missing. Sandra holds a BA in literature from Yale.

Author website: https://sandra-c.com/

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-chwialkowska-75603a8/

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2181319/

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