Episode 107 Church Lady, Finally Uncensored with Susan Byrum Rountree
She's a self-described "professional church lady" who spent fifty years writing around one rule: be home when the kids get off the bus. She's also just written a novel that opens in a grocery store with a cucumber — and doesn't stop there.
Susan Byrum Rountree built her career freelancing and teaching writing while raising two kids, then returned to nonfiction with Nag's Headers, a history of North Carolina's Outer Banks cottages now back in print for its 25th anniversary.
But the real story is what came after: a breast cancer diagnosis in 2019 that she credits with pushing her to finally finish the novel she'd shelved for decades — and the permission that came with it, at almost seventy, to finally write without holding back.
In this episode, Maura and Christie talk with Susan about choosing motherhood over a faster-moving career and never fully regretting it, the particular sting of pitching and rejection as a freelance writer, surviving a serious health setback and rededicating herself to her craft, and what it took to finally write her upcoming novel, Church Ladies — including the scene she says she wouldn't have dared write twenty years ago.
Episode recorded on September 22, 2026.
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Susan Recommends
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (2026)
Good Hang Podcast with Amy Poehler
SmartLess Podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett