Jazmine and Casey invite their producer, James Hillmer, and parent-writer, Dan Frey, into the studio to reflect on the first season of First Words. Together, they discuss the guests and interviews that impacted them the most along with their hopes for season 2.

Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a memoirist, podcaster, and writing coach. In 2017 she published her memoir, Of This Much I’m Sure, which shares her harrowing and life-threatening experience with infertility. Nadine taught at Loyola University before moving her unique writing courses online. Her work has been featured in Cosmo, The Moth, PANK, and many more. She hosts her own podcast called Heart of the Story.

Jazmine met Nadine in 2019 when she enrolled in Nadine’s Story Studio course, Memoir in a Year. Jazmine learned so much from her about planning, organizing, and publishing her writing that she continues to take her classes and workshops whenever possible. Nadine is the mother of a nine-year-old son.

Ana Bretón is a Latina director and producer who is a very funny lady. She currently works as a producer on The Kelly Clarkson Show on NBC. She also worked as a digital producer at The Drew Barrymore Show and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, where she was nominated for two Emmy awards. She keeps us laughing with her hilarious and often viral tweets on politics, pop culture, and becoming a mother in a global pandemic. When she’s not making us all laugh, she’s digging more deeply into the human experience with her narrative reporting in Bust Magazine. We enjoyed this conversation with Ana about writing, life, and parenting her two-year-old daughter.

Today Casey interviews First Words co-host and longtime friend Jazmine Aluma. Jazmine is a poet and essayist, currently working on a memoir and finishing her MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. She has an 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

Jazmine and Casey have been a source of creative support for each other throughout their many years of friendship. Last year, when Casey’s daughter was just a few months old and before COVID vaccines, Jazmine would drive over and join them on a weekly walk, with masks, to make sure Casey was getting some adult interaction in those early, isolating days of motherhood. It was on one of those walks where Jazmine first pitched Casey the idea for this podcast, and the rest is history

Bodé Aboderin, also known as Papa B, is a writer, speaker, businessman, and stay at home dad. His mission is to deconstruct the stigmas surrounding fatherhood, race, and masculinity, while showing the world that Black fatherhood is nurturing, inspiring, and empowering. Bodé, originally from Nigeria and currently residing in the UK, is the father of three children and the author of Fatherhood by Papa B: A Game-Changing Guide for Parents, Father-Figures, and Fathers-to-Be, recently published by Penguin Random House.

Rebecca Phillips Epstein is a screenwriter, essayist, and dramaturg, originally from New York City. She is known for writing candidly and humorously about parenting, mental health, and everything in between. In particular, she has written about her miscarriage, being trolled by anti-semitic conspiracy theorists, and her ADHD diagnosis at the age of 35.

Kelly Sue Milano is a writer, mother, and modern oracle. Yet when she discovered she was pregnant, it seemed the stars had something special lined up for her. In this episode, Kelly Sue shares her experience in early motherhood and how raising a neurodiverse three-year-old has impacted her writing. She now publishes a newsletter titled “A Little Different,” where she shares the learnings and musings of raising a son with autism. Kelly Sue is also the Vice President and Head Writer at Hex Comix, an independent comic book publisher nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity.

Cassandra Lane is the author of We Are Bridges, a stunning memoir that explores memory and strength as it moves between twentieth-century rural South and present-day Los Angeles. The book won the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and was published in 2021 by The Feminist Press. In our conversation, Cassandra shares how she came to the decision to be a mother after years believing it would prevent her from living a writer’s life. As Cassandra also splits her time writing, teaching, acting as editor-in-chief for LA Parent Magazine, and being a mother to her 15-year-old son, she has some valuable words of wisdom for writers aiming to balance family and career.

Meet Anne Terpstra, an award-winning, Chicago-based writer who tells heartfelt, sex-positive stories that are grounded in realism and center LGBTQ+ characters. Her debut women’s fiction novel, Beyond Any Experience, was released this past May with NineStar Press. In addition to being an author, Anne is a skilled potter and photographer. In this episode she talks about finding her way back to writing through other creative pursuits and the scarcity of fiction that reflects her experience as a queer, middle-aged parent to a differently-abled kid.

Meet Samara Bay, a speech and dialect coach with clients ranging from the stars of Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, to candidates running for congress. In this conversation, she shares what balancing an active career and parenthood looks like for her, how she birthed the concept for her upcoming book, Permission to Speak, and how she ultimately made the choice to center her life around beauty and joy.

Meet Casey Gates Frey, co-creator of First Words Podcast. She’s a writer, director, and artist whose most ambitious project yet, motherhood, has inspired a revolutionary new kind of storytelling: the SwipeBook. In this episode, Casey discusses the recently released memoir, The Belly Diaries: A SwipeBook, and what it was like bringing a baby home from the hospital during LA’s second lockdown.

Spotting postpartum depression can be tricky if you don’t know what to look for. Meet Katie Lovejoy, mother, poet, and screenwriter of the Netflix film To All the Boys: Always and Forever, along with several other TV and film projects. In this episode of First Words, she candidly shares her experience in the trenches of postpartum after the birth of her son, and how she navigated her way out to find joy in parenting. Katie will also discuss how parenting changed her as a writer and the role poetry played in her healing process.