Interview with Mikita Brottman

Mikita Brottman , author of "A Double Life: The Anatomy of a Premeditated Murder"

Mikita Brottman's Website

Mikita Brottman is a British American non-fiction author, scholar, and psychoanalyst known for her interest in true crime. Her writing blends a number of genres, often incorporating elements of autobiography, psychoanalysis, forensic psychology, and literary history.

The most consistent focus of Brottman’s work, however, is her reconsideration and transformation of the true crime genre. Thirteen Girls (Nine-Banded Books, 2012) is a story cycle of fictionalized narratives, each based on a real victim of a serial killer, each told from a different perspective.

According to a review of the book in Rain Taxi, “Brottman’s grimly pragmatic literary stance recalls such earlier artists of the quotidian macabre as Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor: Thirteen Girls is an impressive successor to their stories of American dread.”

The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men’s Prison (2016) describes Brottman’s relationship with nine inmates in a reading group she started at Jessup Correctional Institution, a men’s maximum security prison, and their reactions to the works of classic literature they read together.

With sharp psychological insight, the acclaimed author of Guilty Creatures digs into the sensational murder of Florida physician Teresa Sievers in this engrossing and unconventional true crime tale of holistic health, childhood doppelgangers, dark obsessions, and an open marriage.Teresa and Mark Sievers led an enviable life in Bonita Springs, Florida. Teresa ran a thriving medical practice specializing in anti-aging and holistic care. Mark, a former nurse, managed the business while home-schooling their two daughters. Then, in June 2015, the unimaginable happened: Teresa was found murdered in their kitchen.Mark’s alibi was airtight. He and the girls were in New York on a family vacation. Initial signs pointed to a burglary gone wrong, but it soon became clear that the attack was targeted. The Sievers’ friends and relatives were shocked. Teresa was a respected, charismatic physician, nicknamed a “modern-day Mother Teresa.” Yet someone hated her enough to bludgeon her to death.Cracks appeared beneath the glossy surface of the Sievers’ lives. Teresa’s quest for fame had led her to make some questionable decisions. The couple’s marriage was passionate but volatile. Then there was Mark’s childhood best friend, who looked so much like him that the two were often mistaken for twins. The bond between the two men was intense and intimate.In a compelling narrative that goes beyond conventional true crime tropes, acclaimed author and psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman delves into a case that encompasses both obsessive love and deep hatred, probing the corrosive, sometimes deadly nature of both.

Michael Carter , Co-Host

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