Read this if you ever prayed to lose weight as a kid.

I just interviewed the author of a book you should add to your list.

On paper, Anna Rollins and I could not be more different as people. I live in California, she lives in West Virginia. She currently belongs to a church, I do not. She’s a self-professed introvert, and I’m as extroverted as they come.

But as soon as she told me about her debut memoir during Leigh Stein’s Hype House, I felt a tingling stomach lurch of recognition. Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, comes out on December 9, and I’ve now been lucky enough to be a part of her launch team.

Like Anna, I grew up around evangelical Christianity. Like Anna, my education was heavily influenced by purity culture. And like Anna, I struggled mightily to make my (I thought) too fat, too big, too much body smaller so (I thought) I would be good and lovable.

My parents were both intelligent people, so I was also taught to question anything that seemed fishy, a trait that didn’t make me super-popular at my Christian school. They assured me that what I did was more important than how I looked.

But I grew up where I did, and I went to school where I did, so I couldn’t help wanting to be accepted by the culture around me. Yes, I used to pray every night to lose weight, well into my teens. And yes, this definitely led me to write a protagonist in my debut novel who, after a childhood as a chubby girl in a megachurch, gets sucked into a holistic wellness maybe-cult because she just wants to feel loved, accepted, and powerful.

This is sort of what I looked like in middle school when I was asking God to help me lose enough weight to feel beautiful. Photo credit: Canva.

So naturally, I had to interview Anna about the process of writing Famished, the major parallels between purity culture (“women have to stay virgins until they’re married and are 100% responsible for making sure those sex beast men can control their desires”) and diet culture (“you are only valuable and desirable if you fit into a very specific standard of thinness”). Our conversation is below.

Your book is about to launch! Congratulations! How are you feeling?

Thank you so much! I’m feeling a range of emotions. I’m so incredibly excited about this memoir finding its audience because I believe my life experiences in purity culture offer an important perspective on the cultural moment.

I also feel the vulnerability of exposure. It’s a wild thing to write about such intimate moments, obsessions that were for decades my personal secrets, and now I’m not just publishing a book about them, but I’m also speaking openly on the internet. It’s a privilege. It’s also scary.

This is your debut memoir, but you’ve been writing for a long time. Was there any one moment in your life that made you realize: “I have to write this book”?

I’ve always known that if I did ever write a book it would be about food, sex, and God. But – I thought to myself – no way will I ever write that book. Because that would be so embarrassing! But privately, I wrote about these topics for years.

And during the pandemic, I had this moment where I very clearly felt my own mortality. I thought to myself – so, I could die, and I’m going to never write this book because I’m scared of what people will think of me? I decided that was ridiculous – and that’s when the book really began to pour out of me.

Can you talk a little bit about what the journey to publication was like? How long did you spend querying, etc.?

I finished a draft of my book in 2021, and at that point, I knew almost nothing about traditional publishing. I decided to invest in some guidance and hired a query doula, Courtney Maum, and a developmental editor, Jill Rothenberg. Courtney helped me polish my query, and Jill worked closely with me to find the memoir’s narrative arc.

At that stage, I’d queried a few agents. Courtney had advised me to start with a small batch—three to six—and see what kinds of responses I received. To my surprise, I didn’t just get ghosted or receive canned rejections; I actually got a bit of feedback. That was encouraging, but one thing I heard repeatedly was: “Memoir is hard to sell, and you don’t have a platform.”

At the time, I hadn’t published a single popular essay, so I realized I needed to learn how to pitch and publish my shorter work to start building that platform. In 2022, I began doing that with real focus. My first byline was in HuffPost, and from there, I threw myself into pitching—I was writing and submitting any chance I got. Over the next two years, I published around fifty pieces.

Meanwhile, I continued to query. But I didn’t end up signing with my agent through that process. I had interviewed a woman for my book who wasn’t yet an agent at the time, but we discovered we had a lot in common—especially our experiences with purity culture and diet culture. We stayed connected on social media, and several months later, she reached out and asked if I had an agent. When I said no, she told me she was about to join a literary agency I’d already heard of and invited me to submit my proposal to her on her first day.

That’s exactly what I did. Two weeks later, we hopped on a call, she offered representation, and I signed with her. We went on submission a few months later, and within a short time, we had several offers. That’s how my book came to be.

What’s your writing routine, if you have one?

My writing routine really depends on whether or not I have child care—and it’s evolved through different stages of my life. I used to work full-time outside the home in higher education, in both teaching and administration. Since then, I’ve stepped away from that role to focus on freelance writing and coaching.

Part of the reason for that shift was timing: right around when I signed my book deal, I was also about to give birth to my third baby. I knew I needed to make some changes to create a life that felt more sustainable.

When I don’t have child care, I typically write early in the morning before my children wake up, or during nap time—while my baby naps and my older two have quiet time.

When I do have child care, I follow a more structured routine. I start the morning with new writing for current projects, usually for an hour or two. Then I’ll shift gears to editing—often on a different piece—because I like to give my brain a break between creative modes.

Before lunch, I handle administrative tasks like email, scheduling posts, or designing social media content. After lunch, I’ll often return to writing or editing until it’s time to pick up my children.

So when I have child care, I follow a fairly specific rhythm. When I don’t, I try to be more flexible and simply work with the flow of the day.

I’m sure you’ve encountered a lot of people (i.e. me) who hear what you’ve written about and immediately hit “pre-order.” But on the other hand, you’ve probably also met people who never have heard the phrase “saving yourself for marriage” or counted calories obsessively. How do you explain your book to people who don’t have direct experience with purity culture or diet culture?

Well, I don’t know who among us has truly escaped diet culture—it’s the water we swim in. That said, I do think some people have felt its effects less acutely than others.

I often find myself needing to explain what purity culture is, because for people raised outside evangelical circles, it can feel like a nebulous concept. But I would argue that most of us who came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s were shaped by purity culture in some way. It wasn’t just a religious movement—it was also a political force, one that arose largely in reaction to the AIDS crisis.

Campaigns like True Love Waits were even promoted through schools with government support, under the guise of public health education. There was a deep cultural fear of sex at that time. We associated sex with danger, disease, and even death.

To describe purity culture simply as “saving yourself for marriage” is too reductive. It taught women, in particular, to be hypervigilant—to believe they had to be in constant control of their bodies or risk something terrible happening.

Purity culture perpetuated patriarchal narratives that framed men as inherently sexual beings and women as devoid of desire but responsible for managing men’s impulses. That logic laid the groundwork for rape culture, placing an enormous burden on women not only to control themselves but also to control others.

It also linked a woman’s worth and morality to her virginity, suggesting that once she was “stained,” there was no redemption. Grace, forgiveness, or male accountability were rarely part of the story.

These beliefs don’t just disappear in adulthood—they bleed into every area of women’s lives, including their relationships with food, their bodies, and their sense of self.

Be honest: did you ever pray to lose weight? Because I (and my novel’s protagonist) totally have.

Well, yeah—of course. I struggled with disordered eating for most of my coming of age. I prayed to lose weight. And when I lost weight, I prayed not to gain it back.

But I also prayed because I knew—on some level—that my obsession with weight loss and my body was a sin. I prayed to stop thinking about my body so much, to be free from that fixation.

Still, I couldn’t escape the feeling—reinforced by both the broader culture and my religious environment—that my body, and what I did or didn’t do with it, was the most important thing about me.

I felt trapped in that double bind. And yes, I prayed about all of it—obsessively. It consumed so much of my inner life.

You talk about in Famished about wanting to disassociate with your body and what it wanted, and how the intertwining of evangelical purity culture and diet culture promised that as a path to enlightenment. Do you think that drive is what’s made so many former church girls gravitate toward extreme wellness trends like juice fasts? Seems like the evangelical-to-crunchy pipeline in America is real.

The evangelical-to-crunchy pipeline is so real. I think that’s because many of us were taught, explicitly or implicitly, that our body size and what we put into our bodies are reflections of our morality.

You can even hear it in the language we use around food. We call certain foods “indulgent” or “sinful.” We talk about “temptation.” We describe foods as “natural” or “clean.” That purity language is everywhere—and it’s not an accident.

There’s a long history of religious theology shaping the way we view appetite and bodies. Historically, “fasting girls” were often considered saints. There’s an entire tradition of religious diet culture—from programs that promise to teach you how to eat like people did in the Garden of Eden, to the Daniel Fast, modeled on what Daniel ate under Nebuchadnezzar.

From an early age, many of us were taught that small is good, that less desire means more purity, and that what you consume determines your moral worth. The logical extension of that mindset is wellness culture—where religious people, in particular, gravitate toward practices that signal restraint, willpower, and discipline.

It’s all still about striving for the same thing: the kind of body our culture deems good, worthy, and obedient.

Now that you’ve written this book, what do you say if someone starts talking to you about a diet they’re on, a hardcore exercise regimen they’re doing, or a slightly culty-sounding workout or wellness club membership they have?

When people talk to me about their diets, their wellness routines, or their particular interests, I honestly just try to understand. I don’t always engage deeply or offer opinions, and I don’t tend to tell people what I think of their choices.

I don’t feel like I’m “above” it or immune to those influences, but I do try to approach those conversations with a spirit of non-judgment and curiosity. If someone seems to be struggling with shame, compulsion, or obsession, I try to respond with compassion rather than critique.

It’s really hard to live in a body—especially when some bodies face far more obstacles than others. While I write about the harms of diet culture and wellness culture, I also believe that compassion and curiosity are the way forward, not shaming people for what they’re drawn to or what they’re still trying to figure out.

Growing up around evangelical purity culture in the 1990s and 2000s was…interesting, to say the least. My novel’s protagonist and I both know that for a fact. What advice do you have for anyone who wants to stay connected to the people they love who are still a part of it, but wouldn’t want to raise their own families or live that way?

I’m still deeply connected to many of the communities I write about. I’ve lived in West Virginia my whole life, and I’m still part of church culture—many of those churches being evangelical. I also move in other worlds now, but I think it’s important for all of us to learn how to be in community with people who don’t think the same way we do.

That means having kind, compassionate, and curious conversations—and ideally, that openness comes from both sides. I genuinely believe that sometimes, if we approach people with non-judgment and curiosity, they’ll meet us there. People can surprise you with their willingness to engage in good faith.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are people I need to hold boundaries with because they’re rigid or fundamentalist in their thinking. But there are others with whom I disagree profoundly, and yet we’ve had beautiful conversations rooted in mutual understanding.

Honestly, I think that’s the only way forward in a culture as divided as ours. If we can’t learn to talk to people who disagree with us, it’s not going to end well. My advice would be to model the openness and respect you hope to receive—and let yourself be surprised by how people respond.

Is there any advice you’d give to someone who wants to write a book but doesn’t know where to start?

If you want to be a writer, read. Read all the time. Read everything.

Of course, you should get to know your own category really well, but don’t limit yourself to it. Before I began writing my memoir with any real focus—during the pandemic—I spent years just reading constantly. At the time, I think I knew instinctively that I was soaking it all in. I wanted to see what worked, what didn’t, and to understand other people’s voices as a way of developing my own.

That period of immersion helped me immensely. I’m so grateful for all those years of simply reading, reading, reading without any pressure to publish, because when I finally did start publishing, I had this incredible foundation to build from.

I’d also recommend taking classes. That could mean a university program, but I’ve also taken some truly excellent online courses. Honestly, I honed my craft in the university setting, but I learned about publishing as a business through online workshops and courses.

So, start there: read deeply, learn widely, and give yourself the space to grow before worrying about where your work will land.

You have exactly ten words to tell someone why they need to pre-order your book right now. What are they?

I’ll give you ten words that others have used to describe the book:

Page-turner, mind-blowing, audacious, visceral, bold, haunting, nuanced, brave.

Click here to order your copy of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl.