Voices on the Side

Welcome to the Book Interview Series! This capsule of episodes is from the interviews I conducted while writing my book ⁠⁠Mom, Unfiltered⁠⁠. You'll hear from mothers, therapists, midwives, doulas, and more.

Our guest today is Ashley Simpo. Ashley is a writer, editor, creative strategist, and mother. She believes storytelling shapes how we connect, create, and grow.

For over a decade, Ashley has worked with brands, publishers, and creatives to craft compelling narratives and thoughtful strategies that inspire action and build meaningful connections.

We are so lucky to have her stories and wisdom here on the podcast and in the book.

Ashley website

Leah website

Welcome to the Book Interview Series! This capsule of episodes is from the interviews I conducted while writing my book ⁠Mom, Unfiltered⁠. You'll hear from mothers, therapists, midwives, doulas, and more.

Our guest today is Paris Abbas. Paris is a mother, doctor, and free theosophist. In this interview, she shares with us the differences between maternal care here in the US and in Russia where she grew up, how she sought out a makeshift village amidst the isolation of early motherhood, and so much more.

Paris Instagram

Leah Instagram

Welcome to the Book Interview Series! This capsule of episodes is from the interviews I conducted while writing my book Mom, Unfiltered. You'll hear from mothers, therapists, midwives, doulas, and more.

Our first guest is Robina Khalid. Robina founded her homebirth practice, Small Things Grow Midwifery, in 2017. She has been attending births for over a decade and has served as primary midwife for more than 500 births. Her experiences as a working class, biracial child in the United States and in Pakistan awoke in her a deep curiosity about race, gender, and class, and the intersections between them. 

That curiosity initially led her to complete a PhD in English with a focus on race and gender in early America at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her experiences as a doctoral student and professor influenced her calling to midwifery, which was both spiritual and political: she believes that pregnancy and birth are sacred experiences that exist in a world often hostile to those doing the birthing, and she works to change that.

Robina website

Robina Substack

Leah website

Jesse Mechanic is a columnist, essayist, and artist based in New York’s Hudson Valley. His work has been published in Mother Jones, In These Times, Huff Post, Truthout, World Post, and The Overgrown, among other publications. He is author of The Last Time We Spoke and Don't Be AF*#cking Marshmallow.

Jesse is known for his in-depth coverage of human rights abuses and systemic inequality and he is committed to working diligently to dismantle the inequitable, violent, and oppressive systems that define our world.

Jesse Instagram

Leah Instagram

Bianca Mabute-Louie is a Sociology PhD candidate at Rice University, where she researches the intersections of race, religion, and politics. She is published in top academic journals, including Social Forces, Socius, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Sociology of Religion, as well as in public outlets like LA Times and Elle Magazine. 

Bianca is the author of Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century. In this hard-hitting and deeply personal book, a combination of manifesto and memoir, scholar, sociologist, and activist Bianca transforms the ways we understand race, class, American respectability, and the concept of assimilation and its impact on Asian American communities from the nineteenth century to present day.

Bianca website

Leah website

Kristin T. Lee is a writer whose work has appeared in Christianity Today and Sojourners, and a primary care physician serving Boston's Chinatown community. She writes about faith, culture, books, and solidarity at The Embers. Kristin's passion is highlighting literature written by Asian and BIPOC authors via book reviews and reading groups on Instagram @ktlee.writes. Her work is informed by her experiences as an adoptive mother, host to refugees, and friend to those affected by incarceration.

Kristin's book - We Mend with Gold - will be released on April 7th! Please pre-order or request it from your local library!

Kristin's website

Leah's website

Lena is an author and a licensed psychotherapist certified in Imago Relationship Therapy. She has been published in The Washington Post and Huffington Post. She has also been interviewed for a variety of publications including Self Magazine and Glamour Magazine.

Lena self-published her first book - My Daddy is a Hero - and traditionally published her second book - The Facebook Narcissist. In this episode, we talk about all things related to publishing from agents to publicists and more.

Lena's website

Leah's website

Jinwoo is a Korean Canadian novelist whose debut Oxford Soju Club won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. The novel is about Korean spies of three different nationalities: North, South, and American. A tale of deception, espionage, and identity - it is quite apt for these times.

We talk about parenting our mixed race children, pride in our shared Korean culture which has survived war and occupation, and how to stay on track as a writer.

Jinwoo website

Leah website

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is the co-author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a NY Times Notable Book. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, received global praise and attention. Her animated films have won two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award. 

Molly’s reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. She was the 2019 artist-in-residence at NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2019, a New America fellow in 2020, and the winner of the Bernhardt Labor Journalism Award in 2022. In 2023, she was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Molly's third book, ⁠Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund,⁠ will be released by One World/Random House in April 2026. Please PRE-ORDER if you'd like to support her work and artistry!

Molly website

Leah website

We are so excited for another inspiring and heart-opening conversation with Yumi!

Yumi is a second-generation Japanese-Okinawan-American interdisciplinary artist and the author of several ⁠books⁠ including her latest eBook: ⁠Spells for Transforming Limerance into Liberation⁠.

Yumi reminds us that we are creative, playful, and imperfect beings.

⁠Yumi's website⁠

Yumi's recommended tool: ⁠Brick⁠

⁠Leah's website