This Mama Is Lit!

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Sarah Sawyer, author of The Undercurrent, about power in girlhood, mystical physicality in motherhood and secrets unravelled. Sarah also leaves us with a wise warning from her own mother: beware of life events that involve women throwing parties.

Sarah Sawyer's debut novel was touted by Gillian Flynn as "A mystery of remarkable scope, bristling with intelligence, beauty, and humanity. It is, quite simply: stunning." The Undercurrent (Zibby Books 2024) tells the story of an overwhelmed new mother who becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown―and unearths her own family’s dark secret. Told in multiple perspectives with two different timelines, it is a gripping portrait of motherhood, obsession, broken family bonds, and buried secrets.

A graduate of Amherst College and the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, Sawyer teaches English at a boarding school in Western Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Author Website: https://www.sarahsawyerauthor.com/

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

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Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a poet, essayist, and translator, works tirelessly to break down language and thoughtfully craft it to match the human condition. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award, Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention for the 2018 Arab American Award. Her writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Revie, the Nation, Poets.org, Protean, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion (Georgia Press), We Call to the Eye and the Night (Persea Press), and Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books). She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024 she curated a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore.Lena spent ten years working with journalists and editors as a volunteer for Seattle's Arab American community organizations. She helped to tell the stories of people living between two homelands, people who speak in translation and navigate the realities of long wars. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop. Lena was born in Seattle, Washington but she was raised in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. She has lived the experiences of first-generation American, immigrant, and expatriate. Her heritage is Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian and she is fluent in Arabic and English. She has lived in and traveled across the Arab world, and many of her poems are inspired by the experience of crossing cultural, geographic and political borders, borders between languages, between the present and the living past.Lena is passionate about a Free Palestine, the perfect cup of coffee, poetry, language, and gardening. She lives with her family in Redmond, Washington.

* Author Website: https://www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com/

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lenatuffaha/

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lena.khalaf.tuffaha

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Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (Penguin Press, 2023) where she shatters the silence that The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 imposed on the disenfranchised Chinese immigrant community. Her extensive research paired with her rich library of oral histories passed down through familial generations were woven together to create an American Library Association Notable Book and a Best Book of the year by TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Elle. She also wrote the award-winning Eating Wildly (Simon & Schuster, 2014), which won the 2015 M.F.K. Fisher Book Award for excellence in food writing. It's no wonder The Huffington Post named her one of "9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading."

Chin's writing has appeared in The New York Times (“Urban Forager”), the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Marie Claire, and Saveur, among many others. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), New York Institute for the Humanities, Asian American Writers’ Workshop and MacDowell. And as a former slam poet, she has performed on stages at Woodstock ‘94, the Whitney Museum, and the Knitting Factory.

Professor Chin holds a PhD from the University of Southern California, a MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from Queens College, CUNY. She is Professor of Creative Nonfiction and Journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is the head of the American Studies Certificate Program and she teaches nonfiction writing at the College of Staten Island. Chin lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

Author Website: https://avachin.com/

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ava-chin-45206b5/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Ava-Chin-Author-100065441441480/

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Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana - the tragedies of Katrina and the climate crisis run deep for her and pour onto her pages. Her most recent book is a collection of poetry Mother Water Ash (Louisiana University Press, July 2024) that explores the aftermath of sudden death and the feelings of loss we collectively experience with the endless ecological catastrophes. A prolific poet, Nicole is the author of seven books including Girl after Girl after Girl (Louisiana State University Press, 2017) and Of Marriage (Alice James Books, 2018).

Her awards include The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Discovery/The Nation Award, an NEA, a Creative Artists fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Cooley’s obsession with all things tiny has led to her latest project - a non-fiction book project, Dollhouse: A Book of Miniature Histories, excerpts of which have appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and the Feminist Wire.

Cooley is professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation and the English Department at Queens College-City University of New York and lives outside New York City with her family.

Author website: http://nicolecooley.com/index.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.cooley.965

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

Molly Spencer is an award-winning poet, critic, editor, and writing instructor at University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Her debut collection, If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) won the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Phillips. A second collection, Hinge (SIU Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series, won the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition judged by Allison Joseph. Invitatory (2024, Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press), her third collection, won the 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize.

Molly’s poetry has appeared in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, FIELD, The Georgia Review among so many others. Her critical writing and essays have appeared at Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review online, Literary Hub, The Writer's Chronicle, and The Rumpus, where she is a senior poetry editor. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

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

Instagram: @mollypoet

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/molly.spencer

X: https://x.com/mspencerpoet

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspencerpoet.bsky.social

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Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Nancy Reddy, author of The Good Mother Myth, about how flawed social science presumptions have blurred our visions of motherhood and trusting our intuition.

Author Website: https://www.nancyreddy.com/

Substack: https://nancyreddy.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancy.o.reddy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nancy.reddy.1

Preorder The Good Mother Myth: https://read.macmillan.com/promo/smpthegoodmothermyth/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

Anointed the “Toddler Whisperer” by Good Morning America, Dr. Tovah Klein is consistently tapped for her expertise in childhood development by New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Motherly, CNN, Today, and Slate, among many others. Her most recent book Raising Resilience has been hailed by Amy Schumer and is a USA Today bestseller.  As the Director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and a psychology professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, Klein is an advisor to programs for children worldwide to children’s media including National Geographic and Apple TV+.

Dr. Klein resides in New York City with her family and is the mother of three adult sons. 

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

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

Buy Raising Resilience:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/raising-resilience-how-to-help-our-children-thrive-in-times-of-uncertainty-tovah-klein/21201420?ean=9780063286566

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

K.T. Nguyen’s 2024 debut psychological thriller You Know What You Did has received praise from People Magazine, CrimeReads, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Book Riot, Parade, Elle Magazine, The Seattle Times, and The Telegraph. A former Glamour magazine editor, she’s lived in New York City, San Francisco, and Taipei and has now settled just outside Washington, D.C. with her family where she enjoys native plant gardening, playing with her rescue terrier Alice, and rooting for the Mets.

 

K.T. is a proud member of Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.

 

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

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/k.t.nguyen.books/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ktnguyen_author

Buy You Know What You Did: https://bookshop.org/p/books/you-know-what-you-did-k-t-nguyen/20435898?ean=9780593473856

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To find out more about Kate and her work, visit her website at https://www.katefeiffer.com

You can also follow her on

Facebook @Kate FeifferInstagram @KFeifferTikTok @katefeiffer

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com

For more information about Ona, please go to her author website at  https://www.onagritz.com/

More details regarding her awards is given here: https://www.onagritz.com/praise-awards

Her books include:

Everywhere I Look

https://bookshop.org/p/books/everywhere-i-look-ona-gritz/20981700

The Space You Left Behind

https://www.west44books.com/inc/_s24_The_Space_You_Left_Behind.php

Take a Sad Song

https://www.west44books.com/inc/_f24/TakeaSadSong.php

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com