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What are you really hungry for? This week we sit down with food writer Tarajia Morrell, author of Desire Feeds the Feast. Raised in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment by a domestic goddess of a mother and a wine-store visionary father, Tarajia learned early that a meal is a chance for pleasure, whether it's a perfect bagel with whitefish salad or a slow-cooked cassoulet. She tells us how she found her way from struggling actress to food writer, why she never writes about a restaurant she doesn't love, and how co-writing with Top Chef's Fatima Ali in the last weeks of Fatima's life taught her to be braver and "take a bigger bite." We also talk about writing a memoir in the very apartment she grew up in, now with her own daughter asleep in her childhood bedroom, and why her mother read every draft. Tarajia opens up about heartbreak, about chasing the wrong things, and about the moment she realized the one constant in all of it was herself. Plus, she gives us her current favorite New York restaurants, and we commiserate about raising picky eaters. You can find Tarajia at tarajiamorrell.com and on Instagram at @tarajiamorrell, with a Substack coming soon. "My failure to launch had held me back and eroded my self-esteem, but did being a grown-up mean shedding the assumption that we all cling to, in our privileged cities and first world countries, that life itself is more assured than not?" - "Desire Feeds the Feast" by Tarajia Morrell Share this conversation with the friend you'd most want to split a bottle of wine with. Books referenced: Desire Feeds the Feast by Tarajia Morrell Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More by Fatima Ali and Tarajia Morrell Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What really happens behind the closed doors of a secret society, and what would you risk to find out? This Friday Fiction, we sit down with Michelle Maryk, author of The Found Object Society, and Karen Winn, author of The Society. They wrote two very different thrillers about secret societies before they had ever met, and their covers even match. Michelle tells us how an Etsy ad for a 1920s etched martini glass sparked the idea for a society where the ultrarich relive the final moments of the dead, and why she wrote a book called I Hate Tuna at eight years old. Karen shares how a docent's passing comment at the Boston Athenaeum sent her down a rabbit hole into the opium fortunes of Beacon Hill's Brahmin families, and how her years as an ICU nurse shaped Taylor, the ER nurse at the heart of her story. We get into plotters versus pantsers (or "plantsers"), why Karen rewrote Taylor's ending after the book was already done, and why Michelle refuses to call Greta Davenport unlikable when a man with the same traits would simply be called complex. Karen tells us about the night a house fire pushed her to finally take time off nursing and write her debut, and both authors share the best writing advice they've ever received. Share this conversation with the friend who would absolutely say yes to the Found Object Society. Connect with Michelle: https://www.michellemaryk.com Instagram: michellemmaryk Connect with Karen: https://www.karenwinnauthor.com Instagram: karenwinnauthor Tik Tok: TheKnoxSociety Books referenced: The Found Object Society by Michelle Maryk The Society by Karen Winn Our Little World by Karen Winn Not Mother by Michelle Maryk (coming soon!) Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the magic you were waiting for was inside you all along? This week we sit down with Barbara Latinka, author of the three-part memoir Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood. What began as journaling in trauma therapy became a trilogy of eerie, atmospheric novellas, with every chapter followed by a spell built from the sights, smells, and feelings of the story you just read. Barbara tells us why she left her narrator unnamed, how she wrote the entire manuscript through tears, and why she split her story into three parts to make it more accessible for trauma survivors. We get into the difference between reacting and responding, what it means to stop letting the eight-year-old drive the car, and how Barbara holds forgiveness and firm boundaries at the same time. She shares the ripple effect her books have already had, including a childhood friend who went back to therapy after reading them, and the lifelong friendship with Raven that saw her through it all. She also gave us one of the funniest lines we've ever had on the show. Barbara's series has been recognized by the AAMFT as a mental health resource for trauma survivors, therapists, and educators. A combined single-volume edition is also available, along with an audiobook narrated by Barbara herself. Share this conversation with someone who is learning that healing doesn't mean forgetting. "I will not be small. I will not be silent. I have survived before. I will do it again." - Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood, Barbara Latinka Books referenced: Spells for a Haunted Childhood Part One by Barbara Latinka Spells for a Haunted Childhood Part Two by Barbara Latinka Spells for a Haunted Childhood Part Three by Barbara Latinka Connect with Barbara: Instagram: @hauntedchildhoodspells Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does a celebrity memoir owe us its vulnerability, or can it simply be a pleasant afternoon with a funny friend? In this bonus episode, we finally tackle Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, the book that was almost the very first episode of Babes in Bookland. Colleen joins me to talk about why the audiobook won her over on a second listen, the behind-the-scenes SNL stories that sent us straight back to our childhood living rooms, and the title line we want on a poster in every daughter’s room. We dig into Plain Girl Versus the Demon, Amy’s mantra of good for you, not for me, and why we loved that she named and thanked the nannies who helped raise her kids. We also get candid about what fell flat for us, from a divorce chapter that never quite goes there to an apology chapter that felt more about Amy than the person she was apologizing to, and we ask whether funny women carry an extra burden to stay likable on the page. Plus, Colleen shares how she has navigated thirty years as a businesswoman in a male-dominated industry. Share this conversation with the friend who always says yes, please. "Saying 'yes' doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no and saying 'please' doesn’t mean I’m waiting for permission." -- Amy Poehler's "Yes Please" Thank you for supporting Babes in Bookland! xx, Alex Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does a celebrity memoir owe us its vulnerability, or can it simply be a pleasant afternoon with a funny friend? In this bonus episode, we finally tackle Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, the book that was almost the very first episode of Babes in Bookland. Colleen joins me to talk about why the audiobook won her over on a second listen, the behind-the-scenes SNL stories that sent us straight back to our childhood living rooms, and the title line we want on a poster in every daughter’s room. We dig into Plain Girl Versus the Demon, Amy’s mantra of good for you, not for me, and why we loved that she named and thanked the nannies who helped raise her kids. We also get candid about what fell flat for us, from a divorce chapter that never quite goes there to an apology chapter that felt more about Amy than the person she was apologizing to, and we ask whether funny women carry an extra burden to stay likable on the page. Plus, Colleen shares how she has navigated thirty years as a businesswoman in a male-dominated industry. Share this conversation with the friend who always says yes, please. "Saying 'yes' doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no and saying 'please' doesn’t mean I’m waiting for permission." -- Amy Poehler's Yes Please Thank you for supporting Babes in Bookland! xx, Alex

What if every relapse was also a moment of hope? In this episode, we sit down with Jowita Bydlowska, author of the groundbreaking memoir Drunk Mom and her new hybrid memoir, Unshaming. Jowita takes us into the part of the recovery story most books skip: what happens after the happy ending, when relapse returns and shame becomes its own addiction. We talk about why women authors are always asked if their fiction is secretly true, how Drunk Mom began as a novel until an agent asked how much of it was real, and why rigorous honesty gave her more freedom than any secret ever could. Jowita opens up about the lie behind the bike accident that opens Unshaming, rereading her own story through the lens of postpartum, and the ongoing conversations with her teenage son about what she shares. She also reflects on Clifford, the little chihuahua who saw her without judgment, and why recovery is so much more than a medallion. Darkly funny, deeply generous and radically honest, this conversation is a reminder that shame gets smaller the moment we say it out loud. Share this conversation with someone who has ever confused silence with strength. "Maybe I’ll leave myself alone now that I’ve given addiction the last thing I valued. Now that I’m free. Would freedom mean I’d stop or I’d just get worse because there was nothing left to lose" - Unshaming, Jowita Bydlowska Books referenced: Unshaming by Jowita Bydlowska Possessed by Jowita Bydlowska Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska Connect with Jowita: Instagram: @jowitabot Substack: Unshame Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the moments you've spent years avoiding are the very ones you need to face? This week, my friend Nadia returns to discuss Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, Sarah Polley's 2022 essay collection about the transformative power of returning to the past. We start with Sarah at fifteen, playing Alice on stage with a curving spine, a newly broken heart over her mother's death, and a father whose fascination with Lewis Carroll shaped far more of her childhood than it should have. Nadia shares her own experience losing her mother to ovarian cancer and the unexpected gift her mother gave the family by facing her death head on. We talk about why we can hold compassion for Sarah's father and still call his parenting a failure, how lawyers can believe women and still warn them not to come forward, and why a NICU nurse's line about martyrs and mothers stopped us both in our tracks. Then we get to the essay that gives the book its name: a concussion, three lost years, and a doctor who told Sarah to do the opposite of everything she'd been taught. Together we wrestle with the line between knowing your limits and setting them too soon, and why growth almost always lives on the other side of the thing that scares us. Share this conversation with the friend who has been listening to her body a little too closely and is ready to run towards something. "So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t. Why is it so hard for us to believe our own stories or begin to process them without corroborating witnesses appearing from the shadows of the past, or without people stepping forward with open arms when echoes of those stories present themselves again in the present?" - Sarah Polley | Run Towards the Danger Books referenced: Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take to climb back into the cockpit after one of the most traumatic days in our nation's history? This week we sit down with airline captain Nia Gilliam, author of CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF On September 11th, 2001, Nia was a first officer on the runway at Newark when the South Tower was hit, and her plane became the last to take off from that airport. Her memoir braids that morning with the story of a little girl near O'Hare who watched airplanes and wondered where they were going. We talk about how a writing class, a documentary interview, and a 2022 breast cancer diagnosis finally pushed her to tell this story, and why she says writing was harder than flying a plane. Nia takes us to space camp in Huntsville, to the funeral she skipped school to attend for pioneering aviator Janet Harmon Bragg, and to the moment she met Stacey Harris, the first living Black woman pilot she had ever seen. We get into the pressure of being the only woman and the only Black person in the room, the marriage and motherhood she stepped into while she was still grieving, and the line from her mom that changed everything: safe can be a place to heal, but it's nowhere to live. We also talk about Sisters of the Skies, the nonprofit Nia co-founded to increase the number of Black women pilots in professional flight decks, and the joy of being called Captain Mom by her son, who is now a pilot too. Share this conversation with the friend who put a dream on hold and needs a reminder that she's still cleared for takeoff. "I wasn't the only one who didn't have tidy solutions for what haunted her.” - Captain Nia Gilliam (excerpt from her memoir, Cleared for Takeoff) Books referenced: Cleared for Takeoff by Captain Nia Gilliam The Body Keeps the Score Connect with Nia: https://sistersoftheskies.org Linked in @pilotniagilliam @mypilotsonandfun Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens if we pay attention to our darkest fantasies? This week Ashley and I sit down with Jessica Knoll, author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women, to talk about Helpless, her newest novel and a sexy, uncomfortable, deeply intelligent erotic thriller. Jessica takes us from the lifeguard chair where she snuck pages of The Hours on rainy afternoons, to the Cosmopolitan offices that taught her to pull stories from the headlines, to the screenwriting professor whose stranger than fiction death became the opening of Helpless. We talk about why she named her daughter after a Final Girl, why she can't stand the do-gooder heroine, how motherhood has made her more private, and how her horny reading era led her to write the book she couldn't find on any shelf. "That was the first time I realized that not only will wealthy people pay to live like they’re poor, but they’ll call it a vacation too.” -excerpt from HELPLESS by Jessica Knoll Connect with Jessica Knoll @jessicaknollauthor Books Referenced: Helpless by Jessica Knoll Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll The Hours by Michael Cunningham The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief by Pauline Boss Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me. Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is reality TV ever really real, and what do  the women who star in it owe us? This week, Brett joins me for a bonus episode on Lisa Rinna's memoir, You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It, a quick, entertaining listen that we both enjoyed without ever feeling blown away by it. We talk about why this book landed as more filtered than the Lisa Rinna we know from television, and what that says about why she wrote it now. From there we get into the parts that stuck with us. Lisa's advocacy for older women not stepping aside for the next generation, her honesty about nearly going broke while living a very public Hollywood life, and the story of her father's death by assisted suicide and her mother's survival of a violent kidnapping decades earlier, a story Lisa doesn't fully connect back to her own parenting. We spend real time on the Kathy Hilton drama, the question of whether Bravo protected Kathy at Lisa's expense, and why Lisa stops short of saying outright what she says she witnessed. We also talk about her conflicting statements around disordered eating, her daughter's eating disorder, and what it means to take real accountability in a memoir versus performing it. We close out asking the bigger question this book keeps raising for us: when a memoir reads like a comeback attempt versus one written by someone who's truly done with Hollywood's opinion of them, and why that difference matters so much for how honest the book ends up being. Please note that this conversation includes discussion of disordered eating, assisted suicide, and a serious violent crime. Share this conversation with the friend who knows all about Puppygate. Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to access the full episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is reality TV ever really real, and what do the women who star in it owe us? This week, Brett joins me for a bonus episode on Lisa Rinna's memoir, You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It, a quick, entertaining listen that we both enjoyed without ever feeling blown away by it. We talk about why this book landed as more filtered than the Lisa Rinna we know from television, and what that says about why she wrote it now. From there we get into the parts that stuck with us. Lisa's advocacy for older women not stepping aside for the next generation, her honesty about nearly going broke while living a very public Hollywood life, and the story of her father's death by assisted suicide and her mother's survival of a violent kidnapping decades earlier, a story Lisa doesn't fully connect back to her own parenting. We spend real time on the Kathy Hilton drama, the question of whether Bravo protected Kathy at Lisa's expense, and why Lisa stops short of saying outright what she says she witnessed. We also talk about her conflicting statements around disordered eating, her daughter's eating disorder, and what it means to take real accountability in a memoir versus performing it. We close out asking the bigger question this book keeps raising for us: when a memoir reads like a comeback attempt versus one written by someone who's truly done with Hollywood's opinion of them, and why that difference matters so much for how honest the book ends up being. Please note that this conversation includes discussion of disordered eating, assisted suicide, and a serious violent crime. Share this conversation with the friend who knows all about Puppygate. Thank you for supporting the show! xx, Alex

What did the Spice Girls teach you about being a girl, and what did it cost the women who taught it? This week, Page joins me to talk about Melanie Chisholm's memoir The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl, a long, diary-like book that doubles as Mel C's thank-you to the people who carried her along the way and her chance to reclaim her own story. We start with why the group meant so much to us growing up, from our favorite songs and favorite Spice Girls to the way five distinct personalities showed a generation of girls they could be more than one thing. From there, we follow Mel C from a working class childhood and a lonely stretch of neglect to a dance school in London, a flyer that changed everything, and a band that first called itself Touch. We talk about Michelle, the almost Spice Girl, Emma's arrival, and the moment the group decided to write their own music instead of accepting a man's version of what young women wanted to say. We also get into the Spice names, which were handed to them rather than chosen, and why Scary Spice gave us pause. We also talk about the harder parts of the book, including the comment about her thighs that sent Mel C spiraling, the culture of thinness the group both absorbed and promoted, and a management style of divide and rule that pulled apart a band singing about friendship. Mel C writes openly about disordered eating, depression, and the long road to getting help, and we talk about why asking for help is so hard for so many of us. Along the way, we swap stories about work ethic, imposter syndrome, working mom guilt, and more. Please note that this conversation includes discussion of childhood neglect, disordered eating, and depression. We came away from this book with a lot of love for a woman we thought we already knew, and a reminder to applaud ourselves more. Share this conversation with the friend who still knows every word to "Wannabe." "As far back as I can remember, I set my sights on being someone. Someone that mattered. Something that stood out. I wanted, neededattention and I worked out at a very young age thatthe stage was the place to get that. But the attention and adoration came at a price. I got everything I wanted but I had never felt so lonely. I became ill- physically, mentally, and emotionally. But I survived.” - Melanie Chisholm aka Sporty Spice (excerpt from her memoir, The Sporty One) Books referenced: The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl by Melanie Chisholm Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack  Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who was the first female politician you ever became aware of? My friend Ashley encouraged me to pick up Kamala Harris' 107 Days-- despite knowing how it all ended, because it's important to read Kamala's account on her own terms. We talk through the emotional whiplash of 2024, from the moment Biden dropped out of the race to Election Night itself, and the ways Harris was sidelined by the Biden administration long before she became the nominee. We get into the details that surprised us most, from the Fourth of July confrontation at the White House to a small, telling moment involving a birthday gift from her husband Doug Emhoff, and why we think Kamala's candor about the Bidens matters even when she stays gracious about it on the page. From there, the conversation widens into the double standards women in politics face, the King's College London study on Gen Z men's views on marriage and gender roles, the role legacy media played (or didn't) in the campaign, and the case for and against the electoral college. We also dig into Tim Walz, the white working class voters both parties have left behind, and why Alex closed the book with a sense of hope while Ashley... didn't. This episode is about why women's accounts of their own history matter, especially now, while attempts to rewrite that history are already underway. “Throughout my career I’ve maintained that people in positions of power must be required to ask of themselves: Who am I not hearing from? Then make it their business to seek those folks out.” ― Kamala Harris, 107 Days Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack  Xx, Alex Share this conversation with a friend who needs to reread this book, or finally pick it up for the first time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you ever look back at everything you did to seem cool growing up and just have to laugh? This week I sit down with Maeve Dunigan, author of Read This to Look Cool, a memoir told in essays that had us laughing out loud on one page and completely choked up on the next. Maeve got her start writing sketch comedy in college before publishing satire in the New Yorker, and she brings that same sharp, funny voice to essays covering everything from straightening her hair within an inch of its life to a ruptured appendix at McDonald's to her deep, unwavering love of One Direction. We talked about the sad clown theory of comedy, why she considers chronic lateness a personality flaw, and how she learned that the version of herself she was always trying to be is usually just who she is when she stops trying. We also got the scoop on her already finished second book, a satirical murder mystery about a boy band trapped in a hotel with a killer in their midst. This one made us laugh so much we almost forgot how much heart it has too. Share this conversation with the friend who was also burning her hair with a straightener in high school. "I’m trying not to let my insecurity muffle my curiosity." - Maeve Dunigan's essay collection READ THIS TO LOOK COOL Connect with Maeve Dunigan: https://www.maevedunigan.com @maevedunigan Books Referenced: READ THIS TO LOOK COOL by Maeve Dunigan Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.  Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you do when the person who destroyed your family is also, undeniably, a human being? That's the question at the center of Nadia Bowers's Dear Dealer, and it's the question we sit with for this entire conversation. Nadia's sister Sasha died in 2015 after taking drugs laced with fentanyl, and rather than write a simple story of a villain and a victim, Nadia spent nearly a decade writing directly to the man who sold them to her. We talk about the letter that became a This American Life episode in 2018, the moment a producer emailed her that JJ Abrams wanted to option it as a film, and the year she spent unweaving a seven hundred page draft written entirely as letters before finding the structure that let the book breathe. Nadia talks about reading Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett's memoir about her friendship with Lucy Grealy, years before Sasha died, and tucking away the idea that grief could be written about honestly and lovingly at once. We get into the specific stigma that surrounds women and addiction, the friend whose book on losing loved ones to the opioid crisis helped Nadia think about radical acceptance, and the moment her husband suggested her sister might have been closer to the dealer's side of the story than either of them wanted to admit. This is a conversation about what we owe the dead, what we owe ourselves, and how you write your way into forgiveness without forcing it. Share this conversation with anyone who has ever loved someone impossible to hold onto. "I think maybe grief doesn't grow up, doesn't wither. It stays stubborn and young, rooted in the moment it was born." - Nadia Bowers, Dear Dealer Books referenced: Dear Dealer by Nadia Bowers Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love and Loss by Stephanie Wittels Wachs Support the show: Buy us a book Buy cute merch on Patreon Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Substack  Xx, Alex Connect with us and suggest a great memoir! Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.