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

Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and keynote speaker.

Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation.

Jaiya is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. He holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. He is a Lewis & Clark College Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.

Jaiya's Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Jaiya Website

Leah Website

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, published author, and online educator. For ten years he has been an interfaith chaplain at a 1000+ bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief support, attending every death, trauma, and Code Blue, and end-of-life care.

J.S. has been interviewed by CNN, CBS News, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Bay News 9, and FOX13 Tampa Bay, among others, for his work in death and dying. He is the author of As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve, and an upcoming book on contending with our family-of-origin and family dynamics.

J.S. Instagram

Leah Instagram

Benji is a musician, writer, and co-host of the White Homework podcast. As an adoptee, exvangelical, and spiritual abuse survivor, he advocates for justice and humanity through the lens of decolonization.

A week before we recorded this conversation, Benji's work was plagiarized by an account with over 1 million followers. As a fellow writer whose work has been plagiarized, I wanted to highlight this often quiet extraction of the labor and artistry of us folks of the global majority. I share one of my personal experiences in the introduction of the episode.

May we all continue speaking up for all injustices, big and small. It all matters as we work to build a more liberated existence for all.

Support Benji's work

Benji's Instagram

Leah's Instagram

Nancy Jooyoun Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of What We Kept to Ourselves and The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese’s Book Club pick. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the Bay Area and teaches at the University of San Francisco.

Our conversation calls in joy, art, ancestors, and a new world...the medicine we all need in this moment.

Nancy website

Leah website

Fariha is a Muslim queer Bangladeshi who is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam, degrowth and queer identities.

Fariha’s published works include books of poetry, a journal called Being In Your Body, and a novel named Like A Bird which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Globe and Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, among many other accolades. Their first work of non-fiction Who Is Wellness For? was released in 2022 and they’re currently working on multiple books.

PLEASE NOTE: This episode comes with **content warnings** as we talk about sexual abuse, parental abuse, suicide, and related topics. Both Fariha and I share experiences of our childhoods which have compelled and inspired us to write. It is a deeply personal and emotional conversation which ultimately lands on hope, healing, and love.

Fariha website

Leah website

Welcome to the Writers Series on Voices on the Side!

As part of celebrating my upcoming book - Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom through Motherhood - I'll be focusing the podcast on conversations with fellow writers. From authors to essayists to journalists and professors, we are going to be talking about all things writing.

In this first episode of the series, Joon Ae takes the position of host and interviewer and asks me about the book and how I became a writer.

If you have a favorite writer you'd love to hear from or a specific question you're wondering about, leave it for me in the reviews (Apple) or comments (Spotify).

Joon Ae website

Leah website