Hear us Roar

Mar 25, 2021

Mary Helen talks about the three things she was advised not to do in a debut novel (unfortunately she’d done all three), messaging her “Christmas list” one day before her pub date with specific, simple things they could do to help her, why she’s given up on Pinterest, and why she’s writing the rough draft of...

Mar 18, 2021

In this interview, Regina describes how she used her childhood experiences in the Catholic church to inform her protagonist’s guilt and shame over a long-buried secret, how she changed her original title during the publication process, and her positive experience going with a hybrid press for her first novel. And be...

Mar 11, 2021

Quế Mai shares how she wanted to write a novel set during the Vietnam War from the missing perspective of the Vietnamese themselves, specifically the women, who she felt were often portrayed in literature as having no agency, when actually they were unbelievably strong and resilient. We discuss how she wove...

Mar 4, 2021

A child raised in both Mormon and Muslim religious traditions, Ehsaneh worked in Iran for several years and her experiences there form the backdrop to her novel about  three people whose lives are upended by the 2009 Green Wave protests in that country. We discuss how the 2020 US election echoed many of the themes...