Dixon Books Signing, Natchez Democrat, December 13, 2025.
Tombigbee Tales | 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with Rod Davis and Julie Liddell Whitehead | August 29, 2025
Daily ‘Sip with Walt Grayson, WJTV, August 27, 2025.
Lunch and Learn, Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights, August 26, 2025
Julie Liddell Whitehead’s Hurricane Baby: Stories, Studio 3 with Jessica Wilkinson, WLBT-Jackson, MS, August 18, 2025.
Possumtown Book Fest, Columbus Dispatch, August 17, 2025.
How Being a Good Literary Citizen Leads to Stronger Book Launches, The Bottom Line with Jane Friedman, August 14, 2025.
“What to do When You Don’t Know What to Do”: A Conversation with Julie Liddell Whitehead by Katharine Armbrester, Southern Review of Books, August 6, 2025.
Video podcast of Writers Drinking Whiskey with Bill Hincy posted July 23, 2025.
Second Possumtown Book Fest welcomes 19 authors to Columbus, Columbus Dispatch, July 20, 2025
Oh My Word by Katie Ginn Podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon Music on June 5, 2025.
Podcast with Fine Beats and Cheeses, “Music as Inspiration with Julie Whitehead,” March 11, 2025
Lunching with Books Set at the Library Jan. 9, Pontotoc Progress, January 8, 2025.
Video of Alec Hawkins’ channel on YouTube: “How to write and publish your first book” January 7, 2025
Video of Louisiana Book Festival’s Madville Press panel, November 2024
Video of Mississippi Book Festival panel “Mad About Madville” September 2024
Podcast on Tombigbee Tales with Shannon Evans, Mississippi Author Julie Liddell Whitehead, W Girl Turned Novelist, October 18, 2024.
Hurricane Baby: Stories made a list! Thank you to the Southern Review of Books!
Authors Guild Member Spotlight, October 8, 2024
Magnolia Tribune, syndicated across the state, September 4, 2024
Good Things with Rebecca Turner, SuperTalk Mississippi, August 29, 2024
First Person Singular “To Live For” with Sari Botton, August 28, 2024
Studio 3 WLBT, television appearance, Jackson, MS August 23, 2024
Mississippi Arts Hour interview, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, August 18, 2024
Hurricane Baby: Stories, Mississippi Books Page, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson MS, August 18, 2024.
Rooted Magazine, August 14, 2024
Mississippi Christian Living, August 2024:
Starkville Daily News, July 29, 2024.
I’m listening to Tombigbee Tales | Mississippi Author Julie Liddell Whitehead Hurricane Baby Interview on Podbean, check it out!
Julie Liddell Whitehead Images
Hurricane Baby Q&A with Julie Liddell Whitehead
Q: What is the main point or purpose of the book?
A: I always write to answer a question I have. In the case of Hurricane Baby, I wondered: What would happen to someone who endured Hurricane Katrina without suffering physical losses but was destroyed psychologically? That’s where the crux of the book lies for me.
Q: What was the most surprising or shocking thing you learned from writing the book? How did it make you feel?
A: How much darkness spilled out of me. So much destruction and death and sin just came pouring out. And happy endings were very elusive. I couldn’t think of any way for events to end happily ever after. All the moral choices that presented themselves seemed to lead to the character having to decide between the frying pan and the fire.
Q: How did your choices of how to frame and organize the book impact your writing?
A: I framed it first as a novel with Wendy and Judd’s indiscretion being the action that gets events moving, and all the subsequent action revolved around that. In 2022, when I picked it back up again, I decided to keep the most emotionally impactful scenes and rewrite them as short stories. About half of the original novel remains—some scenes were rewritten to apply to other characters than were in the original, while I wrote several brand-new sections to explore all these new characters.
Q: What are some of the ethical, moral, or social implications of the book? How did it challenge you as a writer?
A: One important theme of the book is the fragility of conventional morality when faced with traumatic situations. In this book, the trauma causes all the characters to do things they would never dream of doing under normal circumstances. Wendy can’t articulate why she gave in to Judd. Tommy had never taken a drink in his life until after he learned that Amy Thompson didn’t make it. Dinah is helpless in the face of what’s happening to Mike. James and Lori’s relationship was doomed because of the trauma each had to face alone.
Q: Which character did you relate to or empathize with the most as a writer and why?
A: Actually, I think Dinah Seabrook is the most appealing character in the book. I know I felt very protective of her as I was writing about her. She stayed strong in circumstances that certainly would have sent me around the bend had I been her. She’s watching her world and life and marriage and husband fall apart, and all she has to hold on to is her faith. Writing her made for some bright spots in the book.
Q: Which character did you dislike the most and why?
A: Jack Rawson, for sure. His dismissive attitude towards Wendy in the labor room and her dislike of him points to some history between them we don’t get to see. And his acting so possessive of her after Ray dies and Judd comes back to Hattiesburg comes off as him thinking he’s in charge of her now? Ugh.
Q: What was the most memorable or shocking scene or twist in the story when you were writing it?
A: Actually it came pretty early. I had only planned to write a short story about Wendy and Judd’s encounter during the hurricane. After I finished it, I thought I was done. But a few days after I thought I finished it, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants for Judd to find out she was pregnant and wonder for the rest of his life if it was his baby?” And that question led to more questions, and pretty soon, I had a book.
Q: How did writing this book impact you? It has so many dark elements; how did you handle writing some of the more difficult sections?
A: In some ways, it was very exciting; I felt I was stretching myself as a writer and telling an important story that showed how the storm affected people not on the coast or in New Orleans. The challenge came this last time through to match what I was writing now with what I had written then. This time, I was choosing to put the characters in impossible situations and choosing to keep twisting the knife and raising the stakes. I used to be a very binary thinker—right was right and wrong was wrong. Writing Hurricane Baby taught me nuance—that sometimes all the choices people face are bad choices.
Selected Links to Julie Liddell Whitehead’s Journalism
Bipolar Disorder & Coping with Indirect Trauma, bpHope, January 9, 2023.
Julie Liddell Whitehead 
