This Mama Is Lit!

<p>Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Heather Sweeney, author of <em>Camouflage: How I Emerged From the Shadows of a Military Marriage, </em>about identity, divorce, and rebuilding after years as a military spouse.</p><p><em>Camouflage: How I Emerged From the Shadows of a Military Marriage</em> is about Heather Sweeney’s journey from being overshadowed by her husband’s military career to rediscovering her identity as a single mother. The memoir explores how military spouses often conform to a support role that is secondary to their spouse’s military career. Sweeney writes about how the hardships of military life contribute to her adaptability and resilience.</p><p>Heather Sweeney is the author of the memoir <em>Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage</em>. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women’s health. Her work has appeared in <em>The New York Times</em>, <em>The Washington Post</em>, <em>HuffPost</em>, <em>Newsweek</em>, <em>Business Insider</em>, <em>Good Housekeeping</em>, and <em>Military.com</em>. She lives in Virginia, and <em>Camouflage</em> is her first book.</p><p>Order <a target="_blank" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Camouflage/Heather-Sweeney/9798895653081"><em>Camouflage</em></a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.heatherlsweeney.com/">Website</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/writersweeney">Instagram</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-sweeney-5a15115b/">LinkedIn</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/@heathersweeney">Substack</a></p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://literarymama.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">literarymama.substack.com</a>

<p>Amanda Fields and Tiffanie Drayton chat with Whitney French, author of <em>Syncopation: A Novel in Verse</em>, about memory, identity, and what it means to reshape yourself in a fractured world.</p><p>In <em>Syncopation: A Novel in Verse</em>, in the aftermath of a Memory War, society is fragmented into new cultures, castes, and coalitions. Set against a backdrop of retrofitted food garages, microchip-sorting factories, and hyperloop terminals, this novel-in-verse emphasizes memory as the highest currency and love as dangerous, unruly, and singed with hope.</p><p>The protagonists are O and Z, two young women searching for purpose in a world where a decades-long earthquake reverberates, and the population scrambles to hide from deadly acid rain. Descended from space pirates, O is drawn to the sky, while Z is earthbound, a skilled forager with connections to the black market. The two become travel companions and lovers, and are conflicted between choosing their values or each other.</p><p>In this speculative novel, French offers readers an intricate future-world that resonates powerfully with our own, as it explores a people gripped in the war-torn politics of migration, memory-keeping, labor, and survival.</p><p>Whitney French is a writer, educator, and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology <em>Black Writers Matter</em> (University of Regina Press, 2019) and <em>Griot: Six Writers’ Sojourn into the Dark</em> (Knopf Canada, 2022). Whitney is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her work. She is a certified arts educator and an assistant professor in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She is also the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada.</p><p>Socials & Links</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://whitneyfrenchwrites.com/">Website</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/whitneyfrenchwrites/">Instagram</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.hushharbour.com/">Hush Harbor</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/syncopation"><em>Syncopation: A Novel in Verse</em></a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://linktr.ee/WhitneyFrenchWrites">https://linktr.ee/WhitneyFrenchWrites</a></p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://literarymama.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">literarymama.substack.com</a>

<p>Amanda and Sam chat with Lara Ehrlich, author of <em>Bind Me Tighter Still</em>, about domesticity and wildness in motherhood, the fierce love for our children, and feeling like we’re always falling short.</p><p>In <em>Bind Me Tighter Still</em>, the youngest of three siren sisters, Ceto, is weary of an existence driven by hunger. She trades her tail for legs, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter—only to discover that domesticity is just as mundane as sirenhood. In search of something more, she flees with her daughter Naia to the ocean, where she establishes a mermaid burlesque called Sirenland and reinvents herself, performing as a siren in a tank built into the limestone cliffs overlooking the sea. She hires and trains human women to perform with her, and Sirenland becomes a national roadside attraction. Her daughter Naia performs as well, until she turns 15 and begins to resist the world her mother has created.</p><p>Lara Ehrlich is the author of the story collection <em>Animal Wife</em> (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the novel <em>Bind Me Tighter Still</em> (Red Hen Press, 2025). Lara is also the host of <em>Writer Mother Monster</em>, a podcast that has featured more than 100 conversations with writer<strong>–</strong>mothers navigating the tension between artistic ambition and caregiving. Her writing has been published in <em>StoryQuarterly</em>, <em>Hunger Mountain Review</em>, <em>SmokeLong Quarterly</em>, <em>Literary Hub</em>, and others, and she is the writer in residence at Connecticut College. She is the founder and director of Thought Fox Writers Den and lives with her family in Connecticut.</p><p><strong>Socials and Links:</strong></p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.laraehrlich.com/">www.LaraEhrlich.com</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.thoughtfox.org/">www.ThoughtFox.org</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/lara.ehrlich">https://www.facebook.com/lara.ehrlich</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/lara.ehrlich/">https://www.instagram.com/lara.ehrlich/</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://redhen.org/book/bind-me-tighter-still/">https://redhen.org/book/bind-me-tighter-still/</a></p><p><strong>Mentioned in the episode:</strong></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712958/nobodys-girl-by-virginia-roberts-giuffre/"><em>Nobody’s Girl</em></a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hans-Christian-Andersen-Danish-author">Hans Christian Andersen</a></p><p>Disney’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097757/"><em>The Little Mermaid</em></a></p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://literarymama.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">literarymama.substack.com</a>

<p>Amanda Fields and Eva Langston chat with Chloe Yelena Miller, author of <em>Perforated</em>, about impossible wishes and material fears in parenting and poetry.</p><p>In her second full-length poetry collection, <a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/perforated-chloe-yelena-miller/82b209874d841ce2?ean=9781957755649&#38;next=t"><em>Perforated</em></a><em>, </em>Miller’s<em> </em>poems span the grief of public and private losses. The poems are situated in both the US and Italy, ruminating on topics such as immigration, climate change, school shootings, and 9/11.</p><p>Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and teacher living in Washington, DC, with her partner and child. She’s the author of <em>Perforated</em> (2026) and <em>Viable</em> (2021), both published by Lily Poetry Review Books, and the poetry chapbook <em>Unrest </em>(Finishing Line Press, 2013). She co-founded and co-directs <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brownbaglit.com/">Brown Bag Lit</a>, an online writing community. Miller teaches writing and literature through University of Maryland’s Global Campus, Politics and Prose bookstore, and New Directions in Writing. Miller has a Bachelor of Arts in Italian language and literature from Smith College (1998) and an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College (2003.)</p><p><strong>Socials and Links</strong>:</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://chloeyelenamiller.substack.com/">Substack</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/chloeyelenamiller/">Instagram</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/profile/chloeyelenamiller.bsky.social">Bluesky</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.brownbaglit.com/milkjournal">Milk Journal</a></p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://literarymama.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">literarymama.substack.com</a>

<p>Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Rebecca Lehmann, author of <em>The Beheading Game</em>, about rewriting Anne Boleyn through the lens of motherhood, the punishment of powerful women, crafting a queer love story, and bringing poetry to the novel-writing process.</p><p>Rebecca Lehmann is an award-winning poet and essayist. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. She is the author of three collections of poetry: <em>Between the Crackups</em>; <em>Ringer</em> (which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize); and <em>The Sweating Sickness</em>. Her writing has appeared in <em>American Poetry Review</em>, <em>The Kenyon Review</em>, NPR’s <em>The Slowdown</em>, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She lives in Indiana with her family, where she is an associate professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College. <em>The Beheading Game</em> is her debut novel.</p><p>In<em> The Beheading Game</em>, Anne Boleyn wakes up the day after her execution, sews her head back on, and seeks vengeance on Henry VIII.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://rebeccalehmann.com/book/">Author Website</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/rebeccalehmannauthor/">Rebecca Instagram</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/crownpublishing/">Crown Publishing Instagram</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/786110/the-beheading-game-by-rebecca-lehmann/">Preorder The Beheading Game</a></p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://literarymama.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">literarymama.substack.com</a>