Mona Shomali spent years as a professor of International Relations teaching courses on Indigenous human rights, resource conflicts, and environmental governance — and she had a book's worth of material to show for it. The problem was, nobody wanted to read it. In this conversation, Mona shares how she transformed a dense, unreadable nonfiction manuscript into Water Mamas, her debut climate fiction novel. We get into the five-year editorial journey, what it took to survive 180 rejections, and the collaborators who made self-publishing not just possible but excellent. We explore how her background as a visual artist shapes the way she writes — including the painting that became the book's cover. And we dig into what her work with youth has taught her about keeping the dreaming alive before reality shuts it down, and what technology and Western isolation are quietly costing us.

About the Guest:

Mona Shomali is a visual artist, author, and director of a Berkeley-based youth environmental leadership program. She spent a decade teaching International Relations at three New York universities, where she led courses on Indigenous human rights in the Amazon, resource conflicts in the developing world, and international environmental governance — and took students to live with the Makushi people in Guyana.

Her debut novel, Water Mamas: A Novel of Climate, Spirituality, and Indigenous Human Rights, follows a UN environmental scientist navigating a clash between a proposed geoengineering project and the indigenous communities whose land — and spirits — would be affected. It's a book that reads like a thriller and teaches like a course. The cover is Mona's own painting — a work she envisioned before the novel was even finished.

Episode Highlights

• From art major to Amazon obsession: how an environmental studies class changed everything

• The pivot from nonfiction to fiction — merging the academic mind with the creative one

• The painting on the cover: Death in the Forest, the Yanomami, and why the trees are bleeding

• 180 rejections, one botched yes, and the Reddit thread that pointed toward self-publishing

• Building a creative team you love: editor Dana, book designer April, and what great collaboration actually looks like

• The IngramSpark strategy that got Water Mamas into Barnes & Noble, the Strand, and indie bookstores nationwide

• What Mona can control in a painting that she can't control in prose — and vice versa

• Working with young people who haven't reached the place where reality shuts them down — and what that does for her own creativity

• What success looks like now: contentment, not benchmarks

Connect with Mona Shomali

Get Water Mamas at ⁠Bookshop.org⁠, ⁠Amazon⁠, or request it at your local independent bookstore.

Website: monashomali.com

Substack: monashomali.substack.com

Instagram: @monashomali_

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• Instagram: @creativesprocessing

• Email: creativesprocessing AT wordofmouthcreative DOT co

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• Strategic creative direction, brand development, and design for mission-driven organizations—always through the lens of humanizing the creative process
• Partner with Sarah to create authentic brand experiences that honor both strategic goals and human connection
• wordofmouthcreative.co⁠

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Credits: Edited by Cai Indermaur. Music by John Michael Rouchell