Blending memoir, research, and reporting, Famished untangles the lies of diet and purity culture and encourages women to reclaim their appetites for life, love, and food, both physical and spiritual. Interweaving her own story 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 to include a purpose much greater than its size or parts or the roles she fills as daughter, wife, and mother, a body well loved by her and beloved by God.
Anna Rollins is the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Her groundbreaking debut memoir examines the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture, both of which direct women to fear their own bodies and appetites. Her writing has appeared in outlets like The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Joyland, and more. She’s an award-winning instructor who taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years and a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellow. A lifelong Appalachian, she lives with her husband in West Virginia where they’re raising their three small children. Follow her on Substack and Instagram
Event Date & Time
Date: January 24, 2026Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
(Saturday)