From Infertility to Empty Nesting in Fiction
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Trying something new here! I interviewed three women authors on the same day whose novels took me through the full spectrum of motherhood — so I wanted you all to have the same experience. We start with Angela Brown’s Ways to Find Yourself in which Grace Whittaker meets younger versions of herself as she mourns her mother’s loss while attempting to get pregnant. We then move on to British “it girl” Saba Sams’s Gunk which really throws you into the birth and baby experience. And then we fast forward to empty nesting in Lindsey Goldstein’s Gap Year in which a middle-aged mom takes off on an adventure after being left by her husband. Would love your input on this new episode format. I had fun doing it!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.2 | at Zibby Owens. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different, unique, and special. |
| 0:50.2 | I hope that you all enjoy it too. I know I really enjoyed making it. I happened to interview three |
| 0:57.3 | novelists on the same day within a couple hours of each other. And all the books had to do with a |
| 1:04.4 | different piece of motherhood. And I learned different things from reading the books. I learned |
| 1:09.0 | different things from talking to the authors. But I thought the most interesting part was just how all those books related to each other, |
| 1:16.1 | even though they might not have thought they would if the author saw them on the shelves. |
| 1:20.7 | The first one is Ways to Find Yourself by Angela Brown. And while this book is about a woman who loses her mother and goes |
| 1:31.1 | back to a town that has a lot of meaning to her and meets different versions of herself at |
| 1:36.1 | different ages, there is a big infertility plot line in the story that I found very moving and |
| 1:43.7 | compelling and really was the undercurrent of the whole |
| 1:47.7 | plot. So I want to start today hearing a little bit from Angela Brown and the infertility piece |
| 1:54.0 | of the book. Then we're going to move on to Sabah Sams, who wrote a book called Gunk, which |
| 2:00.0 | already came out in the UK. This is about |
| 2:02.6 | found motherhood, how you don't have to give birth to be a mother. It's about a failed marriage |
| 2:08.0 | and a nightclub owner and a woman who gets pregnant too young, a woman who can't get pregnant. |
| 2:14.8 | But a big part of the book in our conversation was about |
| 2:18.2 | actually giving birth and the moments leading up to that and the delivery and the physicality |
... |
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