Holly Rizzuto Palker and Brianna Avenia-Tapper chat with Aileen Weitraub, author of Knocked Down: A High Risk Memoir, about the sacrifice of motherhood, interfaith marriage, and the gifts of grief. Grieving the loss of her father while on bedrest has Aileen poking at the notion of how the boy becomes a man when he loses a father. But what about the girl? What does she become?

Aileen Weintraub is an award-winning author, journalist, and editor whose latest book is Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, about a Brooklyn girl who moves to the country, gets married, and finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, knocked up, and faced with the prospect of five months of bed rest. What ensues is a laugh-out-loud, emotionally charged story of one woman’s unexpected path to authenticity. The Erma Bombeck Workshop named Aileen Humor Writer of the Month for Knocked Down and Publishers Weekly says, “…there’s beauty on every page.”

Aileen is also the author of the middle-grade social justice book WE GOT GAME! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, which was honored as A Mighty Girl’s Best Book of the Year. Her best-selling Never Too Young: 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference won a Parents’ Choice Award. She has been invited to write about women’s health and wellness for multiple anthologies including PLAY IT FORWARD and SO HEAVY A WEIGHT both forthcoming in Spring 2025.

Her essays and articles have appeared in The Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC, AARP, Glamour, and other publications. Her essay “This Is What No One Tells Women About What Happens to Your Body in Your 40s,” in HuffPost garnered over 2 million hits and was discussed on The View.

Inspired by the athletes in WE GOT GAME! Aileen has taken up boxing. She pronounces her name with a long A, like the first letter of the alphabet.

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

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AileenWeintraub.Author/

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Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Nancy Johnson, author of People of Means, about ancestral pride, Black excellence and social reckoning in each and every moment in time. They explore the notion of how nothing has changed, yet so much has in a short period of time. Ultimately, Nancy writes to open the dialogue on race and welcome complicated conversations about the racial divide in our country.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. Her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and is featured on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2021 by Newsweek, O, the Oprah Magazine, Shondaland, NBC News, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Refinery29, and more. Booksellers nationwide selected her novel as an Indie Next pick and librarians chose it for LibraryReads. Nancy’s work has been published in Real Simple and O, The Oprah Magazine, and has received support from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Tin House, and Kimbilio Fiction.

A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nancy lives in downtown Chicago and leads corporate and internal communications for a large health care nonprofit.

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

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

Author Website: https://nancyjohnson.net/

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/#