A Q &A with Anna Rollins

By Sarah Canney

I’d been engaged on my memoir for a couple of 12 months after I was positioned randomly in a beta reader group with a girl whose story was eerily just like my very own. We met bi-weekly to workshop pages, and Anna Rollins has since grow to be an in depth good friend. Her memoir, Famished: On Meals, Intercourse and Rising up a Good Ladyis a vital exploration of 90’s eating regimen tradition and evangelical purity motion. I spoke with Anna about how the kismet of our connection helped propel her work via the writing course of. 

Sarah Canney: What have been your first impressions once you found our tales “matched?”

Anna Rollins: The very first thing I seen after I clicked via your social media was that you just have been this very profitable operating coach and athlete. And I bear in mind pondering, I ponder what she’ll assume when most of my writing is actually pushing again towards eating regimen tradition and the wellness business. After I adopted you for a bit, I noticed that a part of your story was that you just’d struggled with anorexia and bulimia for fairly a very long time—a battle we each shared.

SC: What was essentially the most shocking similarity you discovered between our tales? 

AR: It wasn’t that we have been two girls with consuming issues. It was that you just had basically grown up the best way I had. You have been homeschooled in a fundamentalist Evangelical household, and I went to a personal Christian faculty, which such as you, left me very sheltered from the world.

We have been each good women—bold, desirous to stay the correct method and be good Christians—however secretly, our lives have been being consumed by this obsession with meals and the physique.

SC: In what methods do you assume having a critique associate with the same expertise was useful within the writing course of?

AR: Studying your narrative helped me see my very own story inside a extra common framework. I used to be in a position to step exterior of my very own lived expertise and extra deeply take into account how our surroundings inspired these sorts of harmful behaviors. For instance, as a part of my analysis for the guide, I interviewed a scientific psychologist who believed excessive weight-reduction plan was an excellent woman’s drug of selection, as a result of it was the a method you may insurgent and nonetheless obtain reward.

SC: A lot of our conversations stirred up recollections I’d forgotten about, which was useful in offering larger context to my story. Did you’ve gotten the same expertise?

AR: Yeah, a lot of your tales felt acquainted to me. One factor you centered on in your writing—one thing I hadn’t thought of as a lot—was self-discipline. Particularly, how strict self-discipline in parenting can present up in a toddler or adolescent as disordered consuming.

SC: Conversely, was there ever any discomfort or doubt? Did you are worried concerning the similarity of our tales or have any aggressive emotions.

AR: I hope not. I’m positive I had a quick considered, like, what if we’re attempting to get our work on the market on the similar time and folks assume there’s an excessive amount of of this explicit form of story? And I’m an enormous believer that simply since you learn one form of memoir doesn’t imply you’ve learn all of them. Narrative and voice make a studying expertise distinctive. And in that method, we’re very totally different. We strategy sentences in another way. We see the world via totally different lenses, although we share a standard upbringing.

Largely, I felt excited that the story wasn’t explicit to me and that meant there could be a readership. 

SC: It actually made me really feel much less alone figuring out your story existed. Later in your writing course of you interviewed girls who had experiences like ours. What did you uncover via these conversations and why did you embody their tales in your memoir?

AR: I thought of interviewing you too. However I made a decision towards it due to our shut private connection.

Truthfully, I interviewed different girls as a result of I needed to promote my guide. I had taken some teaching periods with publishing professionals who mentioned that memoir by itself very not often sells historically, and that I wanted to open it as much as “memoir plus”—so reporting and analysis. I felt like if I may show that my expertise rising up within the evangelical purity tradition and scuffling with disordered consuming wasn’t simply this fringe factor however a pure consequence of the ideology I used to be taught—then I may exhibit its broader relevance.

I offered my guide partly as a result of I located my explicit story inside a extra common framework.

SC:  What would your recommendation be to writers who discover themselves in a critique group the place their work is just like one other member’s work? 

AR: I feel that being in a gaggle with individuals who share your story actually is dependent upon the personalities of the group members. I can see the way it may result in competitors, however Sarah, I feel you and I each have abundance mindsets. Although we struggled with restriction, we each imagine there’s greater than sufficient area for everybody to succeed. 

I’ve at all times felt lifted up by you. I’ve at all times felt such as you don’t hoard alternatives—you genuinely imagine there’s sufficient room for all of us to succeed. 

With comparable tales you get this further layer of perception. The reader isn’t on the surface wanting in; they deeply perceive what you’re attempting to discover. And since we share a lot, you have been in a position to give much more. I feel that’s an enormous reward.
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Sarah Canney’s work has appeared in Runner’s World and Girls’s Working Journal, and she or he has been featured in The New York Instances, The Washington Submit, and Outdoors. Discover her on Instagram and Substack. 

Anna Rollins‘s memoir, Famished: On Meals, Intercourse, and Rising Up as a Good Lady, examines the rhyming scripts of purity tradition and eating regimen tradition and will probably be launched on December 9, 2025. Observe her on Substack and Instagram.