Rock-A-Bye Worlds: Mothers Get Lit(erary)

Join a reading and conversation that digs into how motherhood feeds the chilling dystopian stylings of Helen Phillips (Hum) and LaToya Jordan (To the Woman in the Pink Hat), the incisive escapades in contemporary life of Amy Shearn (Dear Edna Sloane) and Nicole Haroutunian (Choose This Now), and the wickedly accurate satire of New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck (How to Baby), moderated by MUTHA editor in chief Meg Lemke and Pen Parentis director M. M. De Voe (Book and Baby).

Come with questions and your notebooks—we’ll get their tips on writing for mothers and others who want to reconnect to the craft.

Book signing and reception to follow. After-party (cash bar) at Hinterlands Bar.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2024 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT

Liana Finck is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn. She is the author most recently of a children’s book, You Broke It!, and a memoir about motherhood, How to Baby. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellowship, and a Wallant Award.

Nicole Haroutunian is the author of the novel-in-stories Choose This Now (Noemi Press, 2024) and the story collection Speed Dreaming (Little a, 2015). Her work has appeared most recently in Story, the Georgia Review, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature. Since Choose This Now was published, she has been organizing "storytimes" for caregivers—readings happening at traditional storytime hours but geared toward the adults rather than the babies. She works in museum education, holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives with her husband and 7-year-old in Woodside, Queens. nicoleharoutunian.com / @nicoleharoutunianwriter

LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn. Her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat (Aqueduct Press) won a 2023 Shirley Jackson Award. Her writing has been featured in Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and was notable in Best American Essays. She is a reader for Wigleaf’s Top 50, author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar, and has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram @latoyajordanwriter.

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum. Her novel The Need was a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a finalist for the NYPL’s Young Lions Award and the LA Times Book Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and teaches at Brooklyn College.

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of five novels, including the forthcoming Animal Instinct (Putnam, March 2025). Amy's work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Poets & Writers. She has taught creative writing at NYU, the Yale Writers' Workshop, and the experimental cooperative Writing Co-Lab, which she helped found, and also works as an editor and writing coach.

Meg Lemke is the comics and graphic novels reviews at Publishers Weekly and Editor-in-Chief of MUTHA Magazine. She’s acted as series editor for the Illustrated PEN series (PEN America) and curated programs at PEN World Voices Festival, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and for the French Comics Association. Her writing has appeared in MUTHA, Publishers Weekly, The Paris Review, Seattle Review, The Atlanta Review, and Seleni, among other places. Find her @meglemke. She lives in Brooklyn.

M. M. De Voe is an internationally published fictionista. Columbia University Writing Fellow, MFA. Five Pushcart nominations, two Editor’s Prizes, a Shirley Jackson Award, a Hugo nomination, and two children later, De Voe founded Pen Parentis.

Collected wisdoms from first 10 years of running Pen Parentis in Book & Baby (first prize at the 2021 NextGen Indie Awards in the category of writing guides). Debut fiction: A Flash of Darkness: Collected Stories of M. M. De Voe (Borda Books, 2023), was called “masterfully conceived” by Kirkus Reviews. An inaugural member of the Lithuanian Writers of the Diaspora Forum, M lives in New York City.

Host or Publisher Lofty Pigeon Books