Lara Ehrlich of ‘Writer Mother Monster’: Fill a Gap to Create a Bingeable Podcast and Capture a Unique Audience
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As a new mother, I was looking for podcasts with writer-moms. I found podcasts for moms, writers, working moms, parents — but I couldn’t find conversations about balancing motherhood with a writing career. Writer Mother Monster fills that void and invites thoughtful engagement with the guests and the issues they raise.
As part of my series of interviews about “5 things you need to know to create a bingeable podcast”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lara Ehrlich.
Lara is an artist, advocate, author, marketer, mother, and monster. She is the Director of Marketing for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas based in New Haven, CT. In addition to her work at the festival, Lara juggles two other full-time jobs: raising her four-year-old daughter and as a writer/editor/podcast host. She has a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and her work has been published in F(r)iction, Lit Hub, Hunger Mountain, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. Lara’s short story collection, Animal Wife, won Red Hen’s fiction award and was published by the press in September 2020.
Writer Mother Monster is an interactive interview series devoted to dismantling the myth of having it all and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. It’s filmed in Streamyard, streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, and then archived as a video in both places and on the WMM website, as a podcast via all major podcast platforms, and as a transcript.
Can you tell us a bit of your “personal backstory? What is your background, and what eventually brought you to this particular career path?
My career has largely been in arts marketing and fiction writing. My podcast was born at the confluence of those careers, in the midst of a global pandemic, in the year during which I both published my first book, Animal Wife, and marketed a two-month virtual arts festival that introduced me to a new world of media production. I’d intended to do this podcast for many years…
