Anna Rollins’s debut memoir, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, will be published by Eerdmans on December 9th, 2025. Rollins blends memoir, reporting, and research to examine how diet culture and biblical purity culture instruct women to fear their bodies and deny their appetites. She is also the author of numerous essays and craft pieces including: Between the Sunflower Stalks in The New York Times; Running an Olsen Twins Fan page Taught Me to Craft an Online Identity in Electric Literature; and many others in outlets (such as Slate, Salon, NBC News THINK, and Joyland).

Raised as a lifelong Appalachian in a Baptist community, she lives in West Virginia with her husband and children. As an award-winning instructor, she taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years and is a 2025 Tamarack Foundation for the Arts Literary Arts fellow. She also directs the writing center at Marshall University and runs a Substack newsletter offering craft guidance, publishing strategy, and even a “Perfect Pitch” template for emerging writers. Her academic contributions include scholarly articles on composition and writing center studies alongside a rich portfolio of personal and craft essays across various publications.

In Famished, Anna Rollins encourages women to reclaim their appetites for life, love, are the spiritual aspects of food. Interweaving her own story of disordered eating and sexual dysfunction with those of other women she interviews, Rollins discovers a sisterhood committed to finding freedom from body shame. Along the way, she rewrites her own body’s story, Rollins’s memoir begins by examining the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture, both of which direct women to fear their own bodies and appetites. Raised in a Baptist community, Rollins learned very young about the world’s dangers, and so she dedicated herself to keeping small and to both strictly controlling her calories and exercising to the point of exhaustion. Eventually, she discovers a purpose that’s much greater than its size or parts or the roles she fills as a daughter, wife, and a mother. Her body is well-loved by her and beloved by God.

I saw myself in this memoir and I also saw the stories of other girls and women I know. Growing up in a church, I have dealt with the same thing Rollins went through and felt a little different with my body image back then, than I do now. With over a series of emails, I had the honor to interview Anna Rollins Via google document and asked what inspired this memoir and what powerful impact she wants us to leave with and what made her the writer she is today.

What Inspired you to write Famished and tackle societal issues like body shaming? Was there a specific moment or realization that sparked the idea for this memoir?

I’ve always wanted to write this book. From as early on as my undergraduate years in creative writing classes, I always knew that, if I were to write a book, it would be about food, sex, and religion. I just never had the courage to write that book. And I did write privately – but I never submitted any of my work related to those topics to creative writing workshops. It felt too vulnerable, too embarrassing.

Flash forward fifteen years from undergrad, and in the pandemic, I was teaching from home while taking care of a baby and a toddler. My husband, a physician, was working on the COVID unit at our local hospital – and I was incredibly stressed. I had a moment in the kitchen, it was probably about 10 in the morning, and I decided then that I was going to use the pandemic to write this book. I decided I didn’t care if anyone ever read it (part of me hoped no one would ever read it), but I needed to have this book written before I died (and during COVID, especially during those early months, that felt like a real possibility). Once I gave myself permission to write, I couldn’t stop.

In chapter one, you write, “I was all hunger, all need. I was ashamed. But I was also proud—funny how it worked that way. I knew that I was also physical, embodied, a person with desires, despite how frequently I was told that I was not.” How did cultural forces shape your understanding of femininity and body image growing up?

So, I grew up fundamentalist Evangelical in Appalachia, and I learned early on that women were prescribed very specific roles. Women were nurturers, in the home, and they were to be submissive to men and silent in church. And I really wanted to be a good woman! I was a good girl, a people pleaser, and even if the rigid guidelines for girlhood felt unfair to me, I didn’t really see how I could challenge them – especially if I wanted to remain a Christian. For a long time, I suppressed my desires – for food, sex, ambition, you name it – because I thought that this suppression would lead to a “good life.” I learned as an adult, though, that this was not the case. Restriction does not yield abundance.

The memoir is not just your story and your journey. For example you talk about Nichole who is going through body shaming, and two other girls Caroline and Abby going through puberty. What made you want to include other women’s stories, and what role does sisterhood play in the book’s message?

It felt so important to me that I was not just telling my own story, but that I was describing the way particular cultures (purity culture and diet culture) have affected girlhood. My story is particular, but it is not unique. There might be unique scenes in this memoir, but my journey to heal from body shame is likely relatable to large groups of women.

Was there a particular woman or a group of women whose experience influenced you the most as you were writing your memoir?

I interviewed dozens of women for this memoir asking the question, “how did your experience in purity culture impact your relationship with your own body?” Each woman’s story was unique – and many of them kept me up at night. One woman I spoke to suffered from a medical condition, vaginismus, that involves involuntary contractions of the vaginal muscles and prevents penetrative sex. I, too, suffered from this condition for half a decade, and I was dismissed by doctors, as was she. She also confided about her condition to a friend at church, and they prayed over her, asking that a demon leave her body. This was just one example of a woman experiencing extreme bodily pain being told that was she was experiencing was spiritual, in her head, or nothing at all.

In chapter three, you address both diet culture and evangelical purity culture, writing, “I also felt ashamed of how often I repeated myself. Too many dear Lords. We’d recently reflected upon a verse in the book of Matthew in chapel: ‘But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking’ (6:7–8). After listening to this sermon, I realized my nighttime prayers were practically heathen.’”. Is this book your prayer now? Maybe not in the religious sense, but in how you grapple with a big topic?

Oh, I love this question so much! Yes! I think that the way I was taught to pray – the way I was taught to approach God – was through formula. Do XYZ, and then you will get a result. But that’s not how God works. My book wrestles with the difficulties of being in a female body in a world that tries to keep women small; it struggles with the difficulty of seeking a relationship with God when so much of religious culture can be toxic. I do not have a formula for approaching these issues, because there is no formula – the world is not this black and white. So yes, I love the idea of characterizing my book as a type of prayer.

As someone who has worked as an educator, how did your academic background influence your approach in writing Famished? Did your writing process differ from how you might approach a more traditional academic piece?

Great question! Before writing Famished, I wrote academic articles, which meant that I kept my own subjectivity out of the writing. Writing memoir means that you start with the self (even though I eventually incorporated reporting and research, too). I had to turn off my academic brain to write the personal narrative; but I felt very comfortable with the reporting and research due to my academic background.

In your second to last chapter you quote “My shame was layered. I was uncomfortable with my body, frustrated by its hungers. But I didn’t want anyone to see these fears or frustrations. That felt just as needy” In what ways do societal expectations regarding appearance impact women’s mental and emotional well-being?

Most women learn very early that there is an ideal body they need to pursue (thin, though the “right” type of thin is subject to body trends). But women also learn that they’re not really allowed to admit to this type of striving. To want something too much, to strive, to be hungry is something that is often punished in our culture. Ambitious women, for instance, often have to hide their own hard work, if they don’t want to receive blowback or punishment. Women are allowed to say that they’re trying to be healthy, but they might receive critique if they admit to wanting to lose weight. There are complex rules related to the ways women are sanctioned to express all sorts of desires.

What advice would you offer to readers who are struggling with body shame or societal pressures related to food and appearance?

There is very real size-based discrimination, and the advice I’m about to give cannot fix those cultural forces. But – I think that learning how to please yourself, rather than others, is a key part of unlearning body shame. And this becomes easier through exposure. So, saying yes to what you want – whether it’s an afternoon in bed, another slice of key lime pie, a leisurely walk rather than a run – becomes easier the more you do it. Exposing yourself to the judgment of others (for taking that walk or that nap or that pie) and realizing that you are strong enough to withstand the judgment is incredibly helpful.

What kind of conversations do you hope to spark with Famished? What do you want your readers to reflect on after finishing the book?

One thing that I kept thinking about as I wrote this book was how often our attempts to be “good” often end up bad – for ourselves and for other people. When we’re obsessed with controlling our body to control other people, we can’t see our own needs, or the needs of others. There’s so much hyper-individualism bound up in purity culture and diet culture, and this mindset doesn’t just affect the self, but the community – there are political implications. Right now, we’re seeing the political implications of people who believe that austerity and bootstrapping will save them. And this mindset leads to great suffering!

– Adrianna Scro