Eirinie Carson and Savala Nolan at Womb House Books

Authors Eirinie Carson and Savala Nolan will be in conversation at Womb House Books to discuss their two most recent books on womanhood and more, followed by Q&A from the audience and book signing.

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About BLOODFIRE, BABY by Eirinie Carson

Before the shadow appeared, Sofia thought mothering would be all sun-drenched light and white linen sheets, as seen advertised by the momfluencers of Instagram. In her gorgeous home anchored in a posh suburb, far removed from her origins, Sofia revels in her success.
Motherhood seems like the natural next step, but when her husband travels for a work trip, leaving Sofia all alone with their unnamed three-week-old baby, she can’t quite square how mothering falls solely in her lap. Nobody seems able or willing to help her: not her husband, not her best friend, and certainly not the zealot mother she cut off long ago.
Her postpartum reality is overtaken by an ominous figure. Sleep-deprivation collides with a darkness that creeps in and begins to spread, threatening to consume her entirely. As her grip on reality slips away, Sofia learns of an insidious haunting that has plagued the eldest daughters in her family for generations. With her baby’s safety on the line, Sofia realizes she must confront her murky history or risk losing more than just the veneer of perfection.

About GOOD WOMAN by Savala Nolan

A lifetime of playing by the rules of female social conditioning is not what it’s cracked up to be for Nolan. The years of making herself smaller (literally and metaphorically); the sexual advances that led to more than she wanted; the bad marriage she fought like hell to keep; all the ways others questioned her identity or choices and she let it slide to keep the peace; her silence when requested; her body when desired—none of it worked. None of it protected her the way it was advertised to.

Nolan noticed the same was true for the women around her and the women in history she read about. Across time and location, they were raised to be agreeable and “good.” Hyper-visible as sexual objects but invisible as full people. Living in a physical world created by men for men. Taking on the ultimate role of birth-giver and caretaker, yet seeing it remain an unsung act, even as it’s a God-like endeavor. Only in midlife did Nolan begin to realize she was capable of living outside these cages of conditioning so slyly insidious that they’re nearly invisible.

Good Woman elegantly probes the knotty conditions themselves, the costs of adhering to them, and what happens when one refuses to comply. The twelve stunning and unforgettable essays blend memoir, reportage, and history to create a collection that is alternately bold, brash, and explosive ... and ravishingly tender, sensual, and joyous. Nolan takes aim at big and old ideas, and she does not miss. Hers is a testimony to witness and to savor.

Eirinie Carson is an award-winning Black British writer living in California. She writes about sexual taboos, death and dying, illegal substances, hauntings both real and imagined and ancestral inheritance in a world desperate to sever the connections between what came before and what is to come. Her work has appeared in LitHub, The Notre Dame Review, Electric Literature, The Sonora Review, The Los Angeles Review, Unibrow and others.Eirinie's first book, The Dead Are Gods (Melville House, 2023), was critically acclaimed by Oprah Daily, Nylon Magazine, Shondaland, Kirkus Reviews and The Washington Post. Eirinie’s first book of fiction is a maternal gothic novel called Bloodfire, Baby (Dutton, 2026).

Savala Nolan is an essayist and professor who writes about race, bodies, and gender. She helped create the Peabody Award–winning podcast The Promise, and directs the social justice program at UC Berkeley, School of Law, where she teaches about the role of identity in lawyering. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s magazine, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Time, Forbes, LitHub, and more.

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