Rebecca Lehmann: Resurrecting Anne Boleyn and Going from Poet to Novelist

This Mama Is Lit! · Mar 5, 2026 · 25m

Eva Langston and Amanda Fields chat with Rebecca Lehmann, author of The Beheading Game, about rewriting Anne Boleyn through the lens of motherhood, the punishment of powerful women, crafting a queer love story, and bringing poetry to the novel-writing process.

Rebecca Lehmann is an award-winning poet and essayist. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Between the Crackups; Ringer (which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize); and The Sweating Sickness. Her writing has appeared in American Poetry…