Writers on Writing

Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the bestselling author of Deep River, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, and What It is Like to Go to War. His latest, Cold Victory, is out in paperback by Grove Press.

Karl joins Marrie Stone to discuss it. He talks about writing books based on direct experience versus writing books based on research, how he turned his experience in Vietnam into fiction, what he learned from Danielle Steel and Louis L’Amour, how to use Excel spreadsheets to plot your novel, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. Listen to past interviews on our website. If you'd like to support the show and indie bookstores, consider buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on December 10, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Caroline Leavitt, the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels, most recently Days of Wonder, A finalist for the Midatlantic Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. Caroline is also the co-founder of A Mighty Blaze and a book critic for People Magazine. Find out more at www.carolineleavitt.com
 
Caroline joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing the end of the book before the beginning, how understanding story structure changed everything for her, using real settings as well as making them up, writing in dual points of view, character arcs, covers, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. Listen to past interviews on our website. If you'd like to support the show and indie bookstores, consider buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on November 15, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.) 

Suzanne Redfearn didn’t discover her talent for fiction until her 30s. A trained commercial and residential architect, she’d also worked as a copywriter, marketing manager, graphic designer, and other odd jobs. Today, Suzanne is the #1 Amazon and USA Today bestselling author of seven novels: Two Good Men, Where Butterflies Wander, Moment In Time, Hadley & Grace, In an Instant, No Ordinary Life, and Hush Little Baby. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have been recognized by RT Reviews, Target Recommends, Goodreads, Publisher’s Marketplace, and Kirkus Reviews. She has been awarded Best New Fiction from Best Book Awards and has been a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist.

Suzanne joins Marrie Stone to talk about her path to success in commercial fiction. (Spoiler alert: it was neither linear nor easy.) She is an autodidact and shares the resources she found invaluable to teach herself the craft (including Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass and Save the Cat by Jessica Brody). 

Suzanne has had five agents, three publishers, and still has several unpublished manuscripts in her drawer. She talks about what to look for in an agent, the advantages and disadvantages of publishing under an Amazon imprint, writing the right novel at the wrong time, how to revive an old manuscript, where to look for story ideas, what to do when plot is a problem, and so much more. 

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 25, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.) 

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, playwright, and screenwriter. She also paints watercolors and makes collages. She was born in Boston and grew up in Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts, with six siblings who are all artists. Her first novel was Monkeys, published in 1986. She wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” (1995.) Her novel Evening, nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, was a worldwide bestseller and became a major motion picture in 2007. Her stories have received O. Henry Awards and have been anthologized widely, including The Best American Short Stories. Her eighth book, a collection of stories, Why I Don’t Write, was published in 2020. Her daughter, Ava, was born in 2001. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Stony Brook University and privately at her kitchen table. She lives in both New York City and on North Haven, an island off the coast of Maine. Her new book is Don’t Be a Stranger, and is the focus of today’s show.

 Susan joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss naming characters, the hubbub that surrounds September to May trysts, Lolita, epigraphs, the conflict between motherhood and desire, structure, book covers, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 12, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Coco Mellors is the author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and is currently being adapted for television. Her second novel, Blue Sisters, came out in September 20240 and was a Read with Jenna pick. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.  

Coco discusses writing from different POVs, writing compellingly about addiction and substance abuse, how to write sex scenes in all their various forms (and how to trick yourself to write difficult scenes by switching POV), the elegant weave of backstory, and her favorite advice by former professor Rick Moody. They also discuss the difficult heartbreak of the publishing process and the business of being a writer — rejections, MFAs, and the pressure of the next novel.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 4, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Instructions for Dancing, Everything, Everything, The Sun Is Also a Star, and a co-author of Blackout and Whiteout. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient, a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner and the first Black woman to hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult bestseller list. Two of her novels have been made into films. She’s also the co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter. 

Nicola joins Barbara DeMarc-Barrett to talk about her path to writing YA and the transition to writing adult fiction, trigger warnings, categorization of genres, writing horror, revising, theme, POV, titles, The Stepford Wives, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on September 20, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy (winner of the National Book Award), That Night, As Weddings and Wakes, and After This (which were finalists for the Pulitzer). She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her most recent novel, now out in paperback, is Absolution. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, her door into the Vietnam War, and many of the lessons she applies to her own work which appear in What About the Baby?

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 23, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jo Hamya was born in London in 1997 where she now lives. After living in Miami for a few years, she completed an English degree at King’s College London and a MSt in contemporary literature and culture at Oxford University. There, she divided her research between updating twentieth-century cultural theory into twenty-first-century digital contexts, and the impact of social media on form and questions of identity in contemporary women’s writing. Since leaving Oxford, she has worked as a copyeditor for Tatler and edited manuscripts subsequently published by Edinburgh University Press and Doubleday UK. She has also written for the Financial Times. The Hypocrite is her new novel and the focus of today’s show.

Jo joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss writing dual point of views, writing interiority, the lack of quotation marks in dialogue, poetry’s influence on her writing, changing publishers, and much more. And if you prefer watching interviews instead of listen, check out my youtube channel @inkmama. This interview, along with a few others, is up there.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 10, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Zoe Whittall is a Canadian poet, novelist, and TV writer.  She has published five novels including The Fake, The Spectacular, The Best Kind of People which is being adapted for film by Sarah Polley, the Lambda-winning Holding Still for as Long as Possible, and her debut, Bottle Rocket Hearts. She has film and TV credits on the Baroness von Sketch Show, Schitt’s Creek, and others. She’s also a poet, authoring three poetry collections to date.

Her latest, Wild Failure, is a collection of 10 stories that capture the queer experience, exploring power dynamics, gender roles, shame, desire, insecurity, aging, and other universal themes that make us all human. It came out a few months ago by Ballantine and she joins Marrie Stone to talk it. They discuss writing across various genres and how they feed each other, getting into and out of a story, writing sex (both consensual and nonconsensual), and so much more. They also chat about the business side of writing -- getting your work published, MFAs, agents, and editors.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 18, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of nine novels including The Latecomer and The Plot (both in development for limited series), You Should Have Known (adapted as HBO’s 2020 limited series, The Undoing, by David E. Kelley and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant) and Admission (basis for the 2013 film starring Tina Fey). The Plot was featured on The Tonight Show as the Fallon Summer Reads 2021 pick. Korelitz lives in New York City. Her most recent novel, which is a follow-up to The Plot, is The Sequel. 

Jean joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about sequels and if a sequel should stand on its own, unreliable narrators, writing a book within a book, how you know when a book is finished, rejection, appropriation, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded in August, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jonathan Lethem is one of the smartest, riskiest, and most experimental writers working in crime fiction today. He writes about crime not only like a fiction writer with all that propulsive page turning thrill, but also like a sociologist, a psychologist, a historian and a philosopher. That might never have been truer of his work than his latest, Brooklyn Crime Novel, which came out last year and is recently out in paperback. It's as much a book about gentrification, integration, race, class, economics, and all the things that come with coming-of-age stories like sex and drugs and skateboards and basketballs, as it is about what’s really a character in the book …. crime.

Jonathan writes about Brooklyn the way Tim O’Brien writes about Vietnam, with a kind of intimacy and respect and resentment and ambivalence for the way the place shaped who he became. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the novel. He talks about writing a novel in fragments, how to access and harness memory in fiction, living inside and outside a space to write about it, and tackling experimental points of view.

Jonathan is the author of 13 novels, including his 1999 blockbuster Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was made into a film by the same name in 2019 by Ed Norton. Fortress of Solitude, published in 2003, also delved into the streets of Brooklyn and race and gentrification. In addition, Jonathan has authored 4 story collections, 10 other essay collections and other books.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests (including many of Jonathan’s titles), as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on September 30, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jenna Satterthwaite was born in the Midwest, grew up in Spain, lived briefly in France, and now lives in Chicago with her husband and three kids. Jenna studied classical guitar at the Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Zaragoza and earned her BAs in English Lit and French at Indiana University. Once upon a time, Jenna moonlighted as a singer-songwriter in folk band Thornfield. As well as being a literary agent with Storm Literary Agency, she is a debut novelist. Made For You came out earlier this year. She has two more books coming in 2025: Beach Bodies (Summer 2025, Transworld/PRH UK), and The New Year's Party (October 2025, Mira/HarperCollins).

Jenna is different from most agents because not only is she an agent, she’s a debut novelist. Jenna joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss the inspiration for Made For You, why she wrote the thriller in dual points of view, how she kept going when previous novels were rejected, how also being a writer affects agenting, query letters, the differences among genres, advantages of working with a junior agent, and more. This podcast is released in time for you to query her as she’s accepting queries during the month of October 2024 and then will take a break to catch up.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on August 30, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than 40 books, including novels, YA fiction, middle grade and children’s books, short stories and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for her 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name, many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships. Toni Morrison called The Dovekeepers  “... a major contribution to twenty-first century literature.”

Her latest, When We Flew Away, tells Anne Frank’s story before she went into hiding. Alice joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book’s unusual origin story and how the pandemic may have influenced its writing. She discusses her research process, how she organizes her material, how to navigate fictionalizing a historical icon, and what she hopes this book will leave young readers. They also talk about Alice’s essay in Modern Love, and how she approaches different writing projects.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests (including all of Liz Strout’s titles), as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on September 13, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

This week we’re talking with four hybrid/self-published authors.

Christine Amoroso spent the first decade of her professional career as an accountant. In 1997 she chased a childhood dream and began a career in elementary education, first as a teacher and then a principal. In 2014 she started a blog, Bare Naked in Public, writing personal narratives about life’s lessons. In 2017, Christine sold her possessions and moved to Italy to write her memoir. A year later she returned home with the first draft of her memoir Bare Naked in Public, published in July of this year. When Christine’s not writing, she power-walks along the coast, plays soccer, and indulges her grandchildren. She travels abroad every chance she gets. 

Andrew Bridgeman has nearly as many twists in his own story as there are in his novel. A former rugby player, jazz singer, salesman, and entrepreneur, he finds inspiration in the characters he’s crashed into along the way. Mr. Bridgeman studied creative writing at Dickinson College and earned his MBA from Washington University in Saint Louis. After decades in the St. Louis Area, he now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Kathy. He enjoys hiking in the mountains near his home, playing guitar, and exploring the US in an Airstream RV. Fortunate Son is his debut novel.

Nancy Klann-Moren is an author, artist and third generation Southern California native. She began her writing journey after a career in advertising and marketing. Short stories were her primary genre until an instructor encouraged her to turn one into a novel. Her two novels, The Clock of Life and Love and Protest, explore  how ordinary people getting involved in social activism can make a difference for the greater good.  Her collection of short stories, Like the Flies On The Patio, is a insightful glimpse into the lives of working class people.

Anne Moose has mostly made her living as a technical writer. She has a background as an editor and small book publisher in Berkeley California, so self-publishing came naturally to her. In recent years she has written and published three novels: Arkansas Summer, House of Fragile Dreams, and her latest, When You Read This I’ll Be Gone. They span different genres while each is a suspenseful story highlighting social issues she cares about deeply.

The authors join Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about their path to writing and hybrid or indie publishing, the pros and cons, tips, and more.

If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, here’s the link. You can find other shows on my YouTube channel.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded August 23, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, brings together her whole cast of characters to Crosby, Maine. Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton finally meet. Lucy continues her intense friendship with Bob Burgess. And, along the way, there’s a murder investigation, separations, and struggles with addiction. The book asks the big questions — what gives our lives meaning, what is love, what’s the difference between being evil and being broken, and what does forgiveness really look like?

Liz joins Marrie Stone for her 7th appearance on the podcast. She shares some thoughts about Alice Munro and the revelations about her life in the aftermath of her death. She talks about what playing the piano has brought to her writing. She discloses the one writing exercise she always does with her characters, what’s currently on her reading stack, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests (including all of Liz Strout’s titles), as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on September 5, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Patricia Engel is the author of five books including the newest collection of short stories, The Faraway World; Infinite Country, a New York Times Bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick; The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, and a New York Times Notable Book. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.

Patricia Engel joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss how ideas become short stories or novels, how Veins of the Ocean started as a short story and became a novel, how the ending a short story differs from the ending of a novel, why she likes first person, knowing what to leave out in a short story, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 25, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Ben Shattuck is the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, which was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, and the New York Times Best Book of Summer. His latest is The History of Sound, a collection of 12 stories told as duets or couplets, with two stories talking to each other.  

He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, including finding the voice of each story across the three centuries of time the collection covers, point of view choices, managing time in fiction, the short story he loves to teach, and more. They also talk about the business of writing, including his feelings on getting an MFA and what made the biggest impact on his life as a writer (including one essay that changed the trajectory of his career), finding an agent for a story collection, how his audio books changed his reading experience, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on August 22, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Sarah Pearse lives by the sea in South Devon with her husband and two daughters. After moving to Switzerland in her twenties, she spent every spare moment exploring the mountains in the Swiss Alpine town of Crans Montana, the dramatic setting that inspired her debut novel, The Sanatorium, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub Pick. The Retreat, her second novel, was also a New York Times Bestseller and a Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller. Over 1 million copies of her books have been sold in over 30 countries. Her latest book, and the focus of today’s conversation, is The Wilds.

Sarah joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss Sarah’s path to writing, prologues, dual point of view, setting, structuring a novel, van life, plotting, and they also talk about her first novel, The Sanatorium, and how she based it on an actual place in the Alps where they did horrid experiments.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on June 27, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Julia Phillips is the author of the National Book Award finalist and NYT Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year debut Disappearing Earth. Her latest is Bear, out and available by Hogarth. She joins Marrie to talk about it, as well as the power of fairytales and using that structure in your work. She talks about working in a close third point of view, how to make setting a character in your story, and how the pandemic impacted this current wave of fiction. They also talk about finding an agent, being a good literary citizen, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on August 1, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Flynn Berry is author of Trust Her. Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of Under the Harrow, winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best First Novel; A Double Life, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and Northern Spy, a Reese’s Book Club pick that was named one of the ten best thrillers of 2021 by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Northern Spy is being adapted for film by Netflix.

Flynn joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about her new thriller, Trust Her, and to discuss why she was attracted to crime fiction, why she writes about Ireland, first chapters, how beholden to the facts is she when writing about a real place with serious history, how much she knows about structure and characters before she begins, her relationship to reviews, surprises in writing the novel, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on July 12, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

New York Times bestseller Kimberly McCreight is the author of eight novels, including A Good Marriage, Friends Like These and Reconstructing Amelia. She’s also the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult trilogy The Outliers. Several of her novels have been optioned for the screen.

Her latest is Like Mother, Like Daughter. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. Along the way, Kimberly shares how her prior career in the law serves her fiction and how she generates her ideas. She also talks about her revision process, when she shows work to readers, and when she knows a story isn’t working. They also talk about finding an agent and some of the business logistics behind making your living as a writer.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on July 25, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jill Ciment is the author of the collection of short stories and novellas, Small Claims; the novels The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, Heroic Measures, Act of God, The Body in Question; and the memoirs, Half a Life and Consent. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Jill is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, and New York City.

Jill joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss Jill’s path to writing, how she learned to structure books, how to be completely honest when the person you’re writing about is still alive, pacing a memoir while adding interiority and reflection, writing dialogue when you didn’t take notes, the hardest part of writing memoir, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on June 14, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Teddy Wayne is the author of the novels The Winner, The Great Man Theory, Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A former columnist for the New York Times and McSweeney’sand a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. He has developed films and series from his novels with Columbia Pictures, HBO, MGM Television, and others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Kate Greathead, and their children.

Teddy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his path to writing, how to make unlikeable characters empathetic, writing characters who are outsiders, his unusual way of plotting, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on July 12, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kevin Barry is the author of four novels — Night Boat to Tangier, Beatlebone, City of Bohane (which was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize) and, most recently, The Heart in Winter.  He’s also the author of three short story collections, including That Old Country Music.

The Heart in Winter was 25 years in the making. Unlike his other works, the story is set not in Ireland, but in Montana and Idaho in the late 1800s. Kevin joins Marrie Stone to chat about it. They talk about why he always finishes every piece of fiction, even when it’s not working. He also shares his one guiding principle for unlocking his characters, finding the “tuning fork” for your novel, why dreaming and fiction come from the same place, his recommended book on writing, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on July 5, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

(This podcast was recorded live on June 22, 2024 at Arvida Book Co in Tustin, California.)

Dawn Tripp is the author of the novel Georgia, a national bestseller. She is the author of three previous novels: Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, Conjunctions, and NPR, among others. She serves on the board of the Boston Book Festival and on the board of Gnome Surf: A non-profit Surf Therapy Organization focused on creating a culture shift towards kindness, love, and acceptance for athletes of all abilities. She graduated from Harvard and lives in Massachusetts with her sons. Her new novel is JACKIE.

Dawn joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss historical fiction and the research involved, surprises in the writing of the novel, why she chose the present tense, getting down the voice, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on June 22, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.

Joyce Maynard has been publishing since she was 13 years old. She first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story, “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life,” in 1972, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then, she has published 20 books, including the New York Times bestselling novel, Labor Day and To Die For (both adapted for film), Under the Influence and the memoirs, At Home in the World and The Best of Us.

Count the Ways —the story of a marriage and a divorce, and the children who survived it— was published in 2021. Its sequel, How the Light Gets In, came out last week. Joyce joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, including sustaining characters over two novels and how she knew she wasn’t finished with this family yet. She also talks about her ongoing obsessions and the importance of writing those obsessions down, her advice on not writing prematurely, her heavy use of white boards and what they look like, how to incorporate politics and the external world into fiction, her mother’s writing advice that she shares with her students, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on June 28, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Dani Segelbaum began her publishing career as an editorial assistant at HarperCollins Publishers, focusing primarily on highly designed non-fiction titles. She ‘s worked as a literary assistant at New Leaf Literary & Media, working with established and debut authors. Dani joined Arc Literary in 2024 after three years at the Carol Mann Agency. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Dani is a graduate of Boston University’s College of Communication where she studied journalism and political science. Dani represents both fiction and non-fiction and works with authors from diverse backgrounds to tell stories important to them. Dani is also an evaluation agent at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City.

Dani joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss comps, ageism in publishing and does it exist or not, prologues, mistakes writers make, query letters and just how voicey they can be, word counts of books, the difference between categories, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on May 31, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels and one collection of short stories. Her books have been on many “Best Books of the Year” lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into 30 languages.

Romantic Comedy is her latest. It was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club in 2023 and it’s now out in paperback. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about researching late-night comedy shows and how she accomplished her research during the pandemic, writing authentically about sex and relationships, when to decide to abandon a project, whether MFAs are worth it, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on June 13, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Tracy Sierra was born and raised in the Colorado mountains. She is an attorney who currently lives in New England in an antique colonial-era home complete with its own secret room. When not writing, she spends time with her husband and two children. Nightwatching is her debut novel and was the Spring pick of the Jimmy Fallon Book Club.

Tracy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss unnamed narrators, unreliable characters, beginning the crisis on the first page, writing scenes that take place in tight settings, unfolding backstory to increase tension, interiority, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 12, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Ann Leary has led an extraordinary life. Married for over 30 years to actor and comedian Denis Leary, Ann has walked red carpets, partied with stars, and traveled the world, all while sustaining her own rich career in writing. But she’s also relatable to the everywoman. She’s struggled with alcoholism. Struggled in her marriage. Struggled with her neighbors and her tennis game. Women of a certain age will likely relate to Ann’s life.

Her latest, a collection of 20 essays called I’ve Tried Being Nice, is a kind of coming-of-middle-age book. Ann joins Marrie Stone to talk about what makes an effective essay, finding the story within the situation, writing essays for particular markets and the gift of the prompt, how to write about family members without angering them, and more. Along the way, they discuss their favorite essays (Ann’s can be found here and Marrie’s here).

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on May 23, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Roxana Robinson is the author of eleven books—seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors’ Choices. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, The Southampton Review, Ep!phany and elsewhere. Her work has been widely anthologized and broadcast on NPR. Her books have been published in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain. Roxana Robinson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the president of the Authors Guild. She has received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award,” given by Poets and Writers, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. Her latest novel is Leaving.

Roxana Robinson joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss beginnings and endings, backstory, animal companions as characters, love scenes, theme, opera, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on May 8, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Megan Miranda is the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls; The Perfect Stranger; The Last House Guest, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick; The Girl from Widow Hills; Such a Quiet Place; The Last to Vanish; and The Only Survivors. She has also written several books for young adults. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on Instagram, @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook, or visit MeganMiranda.com. Her latest book is Daughter of Mine, published by Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books.

Megan joins Barbara to discuss her path to writing crime fiction, voice, transitioning from YA to adult fiction, ensemble casts, setting, plotting, pacing, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 8, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

A.J. Jacobs is the author of nine books including the NYT bestsellers The Year of Living Biblically, The Know It All, Drop Dead Healthy, and The Puzzler. His latest, in the spirit of The Year of Living Biblically, is The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.

A.J. joins Marrie Stone to talk about making yourself a guinea pig for your work and how to set up the rule system to do that, researching a bottomless topic and when you know you’ve done enough, walking the political tightrope in divided times, as well as how this book changed A.J.’s thinking on a variety of subjects and the impact of the project.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on May 16, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of 15 novels of suspense. She has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction, including five Agathas, five Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She’s the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, and has won 37 EMMYs, 14 Edward R. Murrow awards, and dozens of other honors for her groundbreaking journalism. Hank’s novels have been named Best Thriller of the Year by Library Journal, New York Post, BOOK BUB, PopSugar, Real Simple Magazine and others. Hank lives in Boston with her husband, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. Her new book is One Wrong Word, a twisty non-stop story of gaslighting, manipulation, and murder.

 Hank joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about her journey to writing, the crossover from broadcast journalism, voice, multiple points of view, avoiding the muddled middle, twists, pacing, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 4, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Debut novelist Ela Lee is author of the breakout novel Jaded, published in the US by Simon and Schuster and in the UK by Vintage. Prior to becoming a novelist, Ela was a litigator who grew up in London.

Ela joins Marrie Stone to talk about a lot of writerly topics, including writing about sexual violence and misogyny in the post #metoo movement, writing about racism and microaggressions in the current climate where diversity, equity and inclusion are hot button topics, and creating a cast of characters to represent various viewpoints without being didactic. They also discuss how to write a query letter that will grab an agent, finding an agent and publisher without an MFA, how to get your manuscript out of an agent’s slush pile, marketing your book on social media, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 16, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Alexander Sammartino was born in Rhode Island, grew up in Arizona, and now lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. His debut novel, Last Acts, was published by Scribner in January and was selected as a New York Times’ Editors Choice. Last Acts has been described as “hilarious and wrenching,” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “irreverent” by the Chicago Review of Books, and “a wholly American novel about salvation” by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Alex has been called “a magnificent sentence writer” by the New York Times Book Review. And George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo and A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, said, “What a taut, energetic, tender, and wholly original debut novel Alexander Sammartino has written. He knows something deep about the dark heart of America that somehow doesn’t stop him from writing about it with genuine, goofy love. Somewhere, Denis Johnson and Saul Bellow are smiling because their lineage—that of honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards, has found a worthy heir."

Alex joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss father/son novels, writing short chapters, multiple perspectives, beginnings and endings, interiority, backstory, influences, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to receive extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. Listen to past interviews on our website. Another way to support the show is by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 29, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jill McCorkle is the author of seven novels, two which came out on the same day in 1984 and, her most recent, Hieroglyphics, to great acclaim. Five of her books have been named New York Times notable books and four of her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories. Her essay, “Cuss Time,” originally published in The American Scholar, was selected for Best American Essays. Jill has published five collections of short stories. Her latest, that she discusses today with Marrie Stone, is Old Crimes.

This conversation parses through several of these stories, using them as examples to discuss point of view choices, how to manage time in fiction, how to balance backstory, how to incorporate humor into difficult material, how you can get your stories to talk to each other in a collection, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 11, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and These Women, a The New York Times best thriller of 2020. These Women was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Edgar Award, California Book Award, The Macavity Award, and the International Thriller Writers Award. Wonder Valley won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and France’s Le Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine. Visitation Street won the Prix Page America in France. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She teaches creative writing at the Studio 526 Skid Row.

Ivy’s latest novel, Sing Her Down, was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. (This show was recorded prior to the awards on Friday April 19. Fingers crossed that Sing Her Down is a winner.) Prior conversations with Ivy can be found by searching this website.

Ivy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about Sing Her Down, which was written during the pandemic, multiple POV characters, setting, twists, keeping track, prologues, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 3, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. You can check those out here.

His recent books include the novel All the Secrets of the World, which has been optioned for television by 20th Century Fox, and William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life.

For four years, Steve hosted the New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. He is the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant in fiction, and his short stories have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. He also publishes crazy, DIY books.

His latest is Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, including what this book adds to the conversation of craft. Steve also shares several of the books he’s found useful in his own creative endeavors including A Burning by Megha Majumdar, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey.

They talk about why childhood experiences consistently provide writers their material, and how to recognize when you’re being authentically true to your story versus performing for your audience. They also discuss elements of plot, character, managing time in fiction, writers block, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on April 1, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the award-winning author of Strip, her debut memoir.  Hannah has appeared on NBC CA Live, C-SPAN BookTV, dozens of podcasts, and panels, and has published essays in the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost (forthcoming), Arts & Letters, and more. Hannah lives in Los Angeles where she is working on her next book.

Hannah joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about voice, what to do about family members concerned with what you’re writing, or have written, writing short chapters, tools, getting personal, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 15, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Katherine Heiny has traveled one of the more interesting roads into publishing we’ve heard in a while. She was published by The New Yorker at the incredible age of 25. Praised as a prodigy, her work appeared in an anthology alongside Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. And then she disappeared.

She popped back up two decades later when she published her first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow – followed by two novels, Early Morning Riser and Standard Deviation, and now she’s back with another story collection. In those intervening years, she married a former spy, wrote 25 young adult books under a pen name, and emerged the hilarious and gut-punching writer she is today.

Games & Rituals came out last year. Katherine joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, what writing YA brought to her fiction, the situation versus the story and finding the aboutness of your story, what the short story form allows her to do that the novel does not, how to weave backstory into your short stories, fictionalizing real life events, Katherine’s thoughts about publishing and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 20, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Madeline is an agent and assistant at Janklow & Nesbit looking for fiction that bridges the gap between commercial and literary, upmarket thrillers and grounded speculative stories that explore the ideas of family and home, and queer stories. She's also looking for select narrative nonfiction. Madeline began her agenting career in 2018 as an intern at Curtis Brown, and soon after began working as an assistant at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. In 2021, she joined Writers House as an agent associate and in 2022 Madeline joined Janklow & Nesbit Associates where she works with senior agent PJ Mark and is actively building her own list. A graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Madeline now lives in Brooklyn. Prior to publishing, she worked in a children's library, at a few different advertising agencies, and as a barista in coffee shops around NYC. 

Madeline joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss the dreaded novel synopsis and how agents and editors use it, query letters, comps, how perfect a manuscript needs to be for her to take it on, mistakes writers make, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 1, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Téa Obreht is the international bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award when she was only 25. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Téa’s latest is The Morningside, out later this month by Random House. It has all her signature magical realism elements alongside exploring big contemporary issues like climate change and immigration, all spun around some compelling mysterious figures living in an evocative place. Téa joins Marrie Stone to talk about finding her characters, constructing her setting, and settling on her structure and point of view. They also talk about how to weave non-POV character’s backstory into a first-person narrative, her color-coded system of keeping track of her symbols, prologues, and her advice to writers just entering the field.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 7, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Grant Faulkner, the former Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and the co-host of the podcast, Write-minded. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. His stories have appeared in The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. His new book is The Art of Brevity, published by the University of New Mexico Press.

Grant joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about The Art of Brevity and why writing good flash fiction can be difficult to get right, the role of dialogue in flash, what you want to leave a reader with at the end of a story, how writing flash fiction influences his longer prose, the most common mistake he encounters in flash, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 1, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Mona Simpson is the bestselling author of seven novels including Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, Casebook and, most recently, Commitment.

Mona studied poetry at Berkley. She got her MFA from Columbia. During grad school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years. She also teaches at UCLA. She knows the industry from several angles and has worked in it for decades.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about Commitment and writing multiple point-of-view novels. They talk about maintaining momentum in a novel’s middle, bringing bygone eras back to life, breathing life into your characters, playing the role of psychologist as writer, the role of research and much more.

In many ways, Commitment might be considered a “what-if” novel. Some aspects bear resemblance to Mona’s life and other aspects are very different. Mona and Marrie also discuss the generative idea of “what-if” novels, how writing one novel sometimes begets another, and other ways to generate ideas for your fiction.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on February 9, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

CeCe Lyra, a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, represents adult fiction and nonfiction. She is especially looking for clients with whom she can build fruitful, lasting relationships. CeCe believes that stories are empathy-generating machines capable of healing, connecting, and enacting true change. As a mixed-race Latinx immigrant, CeCe understands the power of seeing oneself reflected in books, hence her passion for championing under or misrepresented voices and narratives. She is also the co-host of the popular podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which has over two million downloads.

CeCe joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about query letters, conversations writers should have with prospective agents, interpreting rejection letters, how much of a submission an agent will read before they stop, googling writers, mistakes writers make, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on Feb. 1, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Louise Kennedy may not have been a name you’d heard five years ago. Since 2021, she’s had both a debut novel and a collection of short stories published. Trespasses was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Her story collection The End of the World is a Cul De Sac came out to great acclaim.

Louise spent 30 years working as a chef and didn’t come to writing until her 50s. She grew up Catholic on the outskirts of Belfast in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. A bomb detonated in front of her grandmother during a walk to the bank, resulting in several hundred stitches. The pub that her grandfather ran suffered two bombing attempts. After the second one, they moved to Ireland where she still lives today.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about both books, her approaches to short stories versus novels, what coming to writing later in life gave to her fiction, why Irish is such a dynamic language, the importance of her writing shed, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on January 31, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Andrew Ewell, the author of the new novel, Set for Life. He’s received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and VCCA France. His stories and essays have appeared in Salon, the Chattahoochee Review, Five Chapters, and TriQuarterly, among others. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Boston University and taught creative writing at numerous other universities before writing Set for Life.

Andrew joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss autofiction, unnamed protagonists, unlikeable characters—a popular topic these days, keeping track of characters and plot, writing about academia, endings, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on January 19, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale. She also authored the NYT bestsellers The Great Alone, The Four Winds and, most recently, The Women, which shares the largely untold tales of women in the Vietnam War who served in the nursing corp. Warner Brothers already acquired the film rights even before the book’s release. (An interview with Kristin regarding The Great Alone can be found here.)

Kristin joins Marrie Stone to talk about The Women and why it took more than 20 years before she felt ready to tackle this topic. She talks about her approach to writing trauma and war without overwhelming the reader, and why writing about Vietnam was so different from writing about WWII. She also discusses what goes into researching a book like this and how she knows when she’s done enough. In addition to other writing advice, Kristin shares how Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones impacted her writing, why she writes in longhand, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on January 18, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Literary agent Emma Dries is a writer and editor, and an agent at Triangle House Literary, where she represents literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and academic crossover, with a special interest in climate writing. She began her career in editorial, working with bestselling and award winning authors at Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday,  Ecco, and Flatiron Books. She has a BA in History from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins, where she also taught undergraduate fiction and poetry. Her writing has been published in Lit Hub, Bookforum, Outside and Dwell and she was the finalist for the Boston Review 2021 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest.

Emma joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about about unlikeable characters in fiction, query letters, MFAs, when you know a manuscript is ready to send out, ageism, a conversation you should have with an agent before signing, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on January 20, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Pulitzer Prize winning author Hisham Matar’s debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and The Guardian First Book Award and won numerous international prizes. His prize-winning memoir, The Return, published in 2016, received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. It was one of The New York Times' top 10 books of the year. He’s also the author of Anatomy of a Disappearance and A Month in Siena, which was named One of the Best Books of the Year in 2019 by The Washington Post and Evening Standard.

My Friends is his latest. The New York Times recently said of it, “Readers encountering Matar for the first time will find in My Friends a masterly literary meditation on his lifelong themes. For those who already know his work, the effect is amplified tenfold. In the dark house Matar continues to explore, the rooms are full of echoes: The further in you go, the louder they get.”

Matar joins Marrie Stone to talk about these lifelong preoccupations, and the sources from which they stem. He discusses his literary influences, why he believes literature is critical in times of despair, and what he hopes to achieve in his fiction. They also discuss structure, points of view, how time can work in fiction, and other issues of craft.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on January 8, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels, Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in ten languages. She has written for the New York Times, Elle.com, and New York Magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles.

Melissa chats with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett about her new novel, Death Valley. She talks about how when the first line came to her, she put aside what she was working on because she knew this was the book she needed to focus on. They discuss making tragedy funny, the Best Western hotel chain, magic cacti, process, plotting, and externalizing the internal life of characters.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We also have an affiliate bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on December January 5, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Bonnie Jo Campbell, known as the “master of rural noir,” is the author of eight books. Her story collection, American Salvage, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. Her 2011 novel, Once Upon a River, was made into a film in 2020.

In this episode, Bonnie chats with Marrie Stone about her highly anticipated novel The Waters, which comes out next week. It’s Bonnie’s first novel in over a decade and it’s already receiving rave reviews. The Waters follows three generations of women in the swamplands of Michigan. Herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook is the matriarch and the area’s healer, homeopath, or witch, depending on the way the town looks at her. Meet Hermine (played by Bonnie’s mother) here.

Bonnie talks about the architecture of this novel, and how she struggled to find something beyond the traditional three-act structure. She shares her discovery of Sharon Blackie, and the realization that structure can take different forms. The conversation also references Jane Alison’s  Meander, Spiral, Explode.

They talk about character development and what makes characters unique, referencing both Jungian psychotherapists Robert A. Johnson and James Hillman (author of The Soul’s Code).

Bonnie also discusses fairy tales in literary fiction, how to talk about contemporary and divisive issues like abortion and gun control in accessible ways, how to make the most of your settings, breathing life into mysterious characters, her revision process and much more. She also shares additional advice to writers (particularly short story writers) here.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on December 27, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kathleen Schmidt, founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, has experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing impactful and strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities. To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM. Kathleen writes the Publishing Confidential Substack.

Kathleen joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss what sells books, blurbs, brands, Substack, book clubs, and more.

To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page.

(Recorded in September 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Lisa Gornick has been hailed by NPR as “one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America…immensely talented and brave.” She is the author of four previous novels—most recently The Peacock Feast and Louisa Meets Bear.

In this episode, Lisa chats with Marrie Stone about her latest novel, Ana Turns. Ana is turning 60, which is cause for reflection on her sexless marriage, her 7-year affair, her worries about her only child who’s doing some reflecting of their own, her arguably cruel and emotionally unavailable mother, and much more. In addition to unpacking how Lisa rendered these characters and their chorus of voices, they chat about how to manage time and backstory in a novel, dealing with contemporary issues in sensitive ways, thoughts on sensitivity readers (with a brief reference to Ian McEwan’s thoughts on the same),  and weaving in subplots, among other topics.

Lisa also shares some psychotherapeutic wisdom from her days as a practicing therapist including unpacking writers’ fears about telling their own stories authentically because of who it might hurt, the right to tell ones’ stories, and how to protect others along the way. She also shares some additional insights about how her work in psychotherapy impacts her writing process on Patreon. To read more, or for more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page.

To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on December 6, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Matthew Carnicelli is the president of Carnicelli Literary Management, located in New York City and the Hudson Valley. He represents bestselling and award-winning authors publishing books in the areas of history, current events, sports, business, memoir, biography, health, literary fiction, and graphic novels. Since becoming an agent in 2004, he has focused on helping leading thinkers, journalists, academics, and others with exceptional stories or messages develop clear and original book ideas and partnering them with the best editors and publishers for their books. Matthew is a graduate of Washington University, with a B.A. in English literature and political science, and received an M.A. from the University of Toronto in English literature. He has taught college-level nonfiction writing and is a frequent guest on various writing and publishing-industry panels.

Matthew joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what he’s looking for, comps, query letters, the author bio, ageism, interpreting rejection, how he finds his authors, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on December 1, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jayne Anne Phillips’s first book of stories, Black Tickets (published in 1979 when she was only 26), won the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Featured in Newsweek, Raymond Carver pronounced Black Tickets “stories unlike any in our literature…a crooked beauty” and established Jayne Anne as a writer “in love with the American language.” She was praised by Nadine Gordimer as “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty” and Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre. 

Since then, she’s written an additional collection of short stories and six novels. Her latest, Night Watch, was longlisted for the National Book Award. It’s considered part of a trilogy of war novels alongside Machine Dreams (about Vietnam) and Lark and Termite (about Korea). Others include Quiet Dell, Shelter, and Mother Kind. All of these works have garnered prizes, praise and critic attention.

Jayne Anne Phillips joins Marrie Stone to talk about Night Watch. They discuss writing a Civil War story that speaks to our times, the research required of historical fiction and how to organize it, accessing the voices of another time, writing difficult scenes, how to manage the element of surprise for both the reader and the writer, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 30, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Mark Tavani started his publishing career in 2000 with Ballantine Books and spent more than 23 years with Penguin Random House, Bantam, Del Rey, and G.P. Putnam's Sons. He edited bestsellers and award-winners across numerous categories of fiction and nonfiction, including books by Jim Abbott, Steve Berry, C.J. Box, Justin Cronin, Clive and Dirk Cussler, Jeffery Deaver, Lisa Gardner, Jack McCallum, Lisa Scottoline, Bill Simmons, and R.L. Stine. He recently joined the David Black Literary Agency, where he represents both fiction and nonfiction. Mark has a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He is an adjunct professor with NYU's School of Professional Studies and lives with his wife, his daughters, and a headstrong dog in Rutherford, New Jersey. 

Mark Tavani joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what he’s looking for, the dreaded comps, the category of bookclub fiction, submitting memoir, ageism in publishing (or not), why MFAs and the literary community involvement are important, how to know if an agent is the right fit for you, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 17, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Nathan Hill first came on the show in 2017 with his ­best-selling debut novel, The Nix, which was named the #1 book of the year by Audible and Entertainment Weekly, and one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others.

Wellness came out this year. It’s also a New York Times bestseller and was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club in September. Nathan joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, along with how his characters reveal themselves to him, how he manages time in a novel, how he weaves copious amounts of research into the narrative, how he plays with unconventional points of view, and much more. He also shares his thoughts on getting an MFA, how he found his agent, and his advice to aspiring novelists who feel stuck on the outside of the publishing industry.

Along the way, the conversation references an article Nathan wrote for Oprah’s Magazine, “How to Write a Novel in 7 Easy Steps.” It’s funny, irreverent, but has some great advice.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 21, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Matt Coyle, author of the new novel, Odyssey’s End, is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. He knew he wanted to be a crime writer when he was 14 and his father gave him The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. He graduated with a degree in English from University of California at Santa Barbara. His foray into crime fiction was delayed for 30 years as he spent time managing a restaurant, selling golf clubs for various golf companies, and in national sales for a sports licensing company. His tenth crime novel is Odyssey’s End. Matt lives in San Diego, where he’s at work at his next novel.

Matt joined Barbara to talk about writing a series versus a standalone, being a pantser, how he keeps the tension going, writing about emotional experiences he hasn’t personally gone through, time locks, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 20, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Back in the 80s, literary agent Susan Golomb plucked Jonathan Franzen’s manuscript from her slush pile. They’ve worked together ever since. She founded the Susan Golomb Literary Agency in 1988 with Franzen as her first client, and joined Writers House in 2015. Susan represents other notables such as Glen David Gold, William T. Vollmann, Rachel Kushner, Imbolo Mbue, Angie Kim, and Nell Zink. She joined me to talk about the state of publishing and how it’s changed, where A.I. is taking the industry, what she looks for in her clients, query letter dos and don’ts, why comp titles frustrate her, her feelings about MFAs, and much more.

Along the way, we referenced two articles. The first, a recent New Yorker article about how changes in the publishing industry impact writers. And the second, an essay her client — Vauhini Vara — wrote about her own experiences with artificial intelligence.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on November 3, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kim Foster is the author of the memoir The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City. Kim is a James Beard Award-winning food writer who writes about people at the intersection of food and mental illness, family separation, poverty, addiction, trauma, and incarceration. You can read her work on her weekly newsletter on Substack and find her on Instagram. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband, David, their four kids, and many animals.

Kim joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss hybrid publishing, surprises in writing her memoir, when she knew this would be a book, writing about food that isn’t pretty, learning to never write anyone off, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 13, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Betsy Amster is the principal agent of the Betsy Amster Literary Agency, which she opened in 1992. Located in Los Angeles, the agency handles publishing rights and all ancillary rights such as film, TV, audio, electronic, and foreign. They work with both first-time and established writers and represent literary fiction, upscale commercial women's fiction, voice-driven mysteries and thrillers, narrative nonfiction (especially by journalists), travelogues, memoirs (including graphic memoirs), social issues and trends, psychology, self-help, popular culture, women's issues, history & biography, lifestyle, careers, health and medicine, parenting, cooking and nutrition, gardening, and quirky gift books. 

Before opening the agency, Betsy spent ten years as an editor at Pantheon and Vintage and two years as editorial director of the Globe Pequot Press. She has been described in the Los Angeles Times as “a dogged prospector of literary talent” and celebrated in a profile in the ASJA newsletter for her “no-nonsense style and whimsical sense of humor.” She frequently teaches classes on publishing at UCLA Extension’s Writers Program and participates in panels at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Betsy has been on the show at least six times in the past (you can find those interviews in our archives). But much has been happening in both the publishing world and the world at large lately. Betsy joins Marrie to talk about all those changes, including her take on the consolidation of many of the publishing houses, the impact of A.I. on writers and how she feels about writers using ChatGPT to write their query letters, as well as projects she’s working on now that have her excited. They chat about query letters, how long to wait before assuming a rejection, what writers can do to improve their odds, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We like to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 17, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Clémence Michallon, author of The Quiet Tenant, was born and raised near Paris, France. She studied journalism at City, University of London, received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and has written for The Independent since 2018. Her essays and features cover true crime, celebrity, culture, and literature. She divides her time between New York City and Rhinebeck, New York.

Clémence joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss how The Quiet Tenant began; multiple point of view; how she kept the tension ratcheted up throughout the novel; how it is that crime writers write dark stories yet often appear to be happy, perky people; revising; the crossover from journalism to fiction; and getting an agent.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on Sept. 19, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Angie Kim came to fiction in her 40s, after careers in both law and business, and some challenging years mothering three boys who each faced medical complications. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award, the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics’ Award and the Pinckley Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews and the “Today” show.

Her second novel, Happiness Falls, came out in August by Hogarth. A NYT bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club pick, it will appeal to mystery and thriller lovers, philosophers, those active in the special needs and autism communities, and anyone who generally loves a thought-provoking and engaging read.

Angie joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. They discuss how both her childhood and her prior careers influence her fiction, how she used a combination of freewriting and her obsession with narrative architecture to structure this novel, how mysteries can be used as a Trojan horse in fiction, using creative literary devices to reveal character in a novel, the perils and pleasures of first person, and so much more. Angie also shares her story of finding her agent, what to look for in an agent, query letters, and shares other book business insights.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We like to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on October 7, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel, Thirteen Question Method. His other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time; and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. For Library of America, he has edited Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Didion: The 1980s and 90s.

David Ulin is the books editor of Alta and the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper's, The Paris Review, and The Best American Essays 2020. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles. He is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the journal Air/Light.

David Ulin joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about cinematic writing, Chekhov’s gun, embodying a protagonist, the “literature of disintegration” and why he’s a fan, tulpas, noir, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We like to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on September 22, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Shelley Read’s debut novel, Go As a River, published last February to instant international bestseller success. The story follows 17-year-old Victoria Nash through the mid-20th century as she endures grief, hardship, and loss in her western Colorado town. It’s a coming-of-age novel, an environmental novel, and a novel about displacement and reclamation. It’s also an incredible apprenticeship for novelists on excellent writing, and its publication backstory is almost as great as the story itself. Shelly joined Marrie Stone to talk about all of it.  

In addition to discussions about craft, voice, and rooting the themes of your novel in specific scenes, they talk about Shelley’s road to publication, finding her agent, enduring rejection, and why Shelley finally committed to writing a novel after three decades of encouraging her students to do the same.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type.

(Recorded on September 19, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Ben Purkert is the author of the poetry collection, For the Love of Endings. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Kenyon Review, among others. He is the founder of Back Draft, a Guernica interview series focused on revision and the creative process. He holds degrees from Harvard and New York University, and he currently teaches at Rutgers. The Men Can’t be Saved is his first novel.

Ben joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about making unlikeable characters redeemable, how Judaism plays a role in Ben’s life and his fiction, the crossover from poetry to fiction, choosing POV, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. We’re excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type.

(Recorded on August 17, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Lisa Teasley is the author of two novels (Heat Signature and Dive) and two short story collections (Glow in the Dark and, most recently, Fluid).

She joined Marrie Stone to talk about her latest collection, Fluid, which publishes on September 26th. Along the way, she shared why she gave up publishing for over 15 years (although she never gave up writing) and what brought her back around. She also shared her unique but likely relatable perspectives on agents, how to market your work without an agent, and the advantages of small presses.

The conversation also covered structure (including references to Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode), various approaches to ordering stories in a collection, flash versus traditional short fiction, Lisa’s approach to visual versus written art, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. We’re excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, to listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on September 6, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Ashley Audrain’s debut novel, The Push, was an instant New York Times bestseller. She has served as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada, and prior to that, worked in public relations. She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. The Whispers is her second novel and a #1 international bestseller.

Ashley joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing interiority, the importance of the ticking clock, writing unlikeable characters, writing chronologically, naming characters, and why she writes short chapters.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on August 11, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Anne Enright is the author of eleven novels, including the 2007 Booker Prize winner The Gathering. She’s written many short stories and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood. She also served as the first Laureate of Irish fiction from 2015 – 2018.

Anne joined Marrie Stone from Galway, Ireland to talk about her latest novel, The Wren, the Wren, forthcoming by Norton later in September. The book has been named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions and Literary Hub. They talk about poetry – writing poetry as a non-poet and how Anne used it to structure the novel. They discuss the Irish literary tradition (and what national literary traditions really mean). Anne talks about rendering characters from different generations, how her novels are in conversation, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. A big thanks to new patrons Amy Brown and Mariah Martin. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on August 23, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Halley Sutton is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. She graduated from Otis College of Art and Design with a master's degree in writing, and from University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in creative writing. Her first novel, The Lady Upstairs, was published by Putnam in 2020, and was nominated for a Lefty award. Her second novel, The Hurricane Blonde, was published by Putnam in August 2023. Her writing has appeared in Ms., The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, CrimeSpree Magazine, and more.

Halley Sutton joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about Hollywood history, writing backstory, naming and creating characters, revision, what to leave out, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 21, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year, Welcome Back, Kotter), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist whose work with creative people has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

He’s also the author of the popular nonfiction book, Writing From The Inside Out. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Strand, and is collected in From Crime to Crime. His series of award-winning mystery thrillers (the latest of which is Panic Attack) feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. Recently, Dennis served as consulting producer on the Hulu TV series The Patient.

Dennis joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about the why writers procrastinate, self-worth, the habit of endlessly revising, finding time to write, the writers strike, and writers’ worries.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 21, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Julie Schumacher is the author of nine novels, including five for younger readers. Three of her adult novels follow Jason Fitger, an English professor at an obscure midwestern liberal arts college known as Payne University. Dear Committee Members, The Shakespeare Requirement and, now, The English Experience all shine satirical light on academia and our cultural shift away from the humanities.

Julie joins Marrie Stone to talk about the state of satire and how she was able to satirize a profession she’s still working in (and the people involved in that profession). She also discusses the challenges and constraints she sets up for herself when writing, handling a big cast of characters, using letters and essays in fiction, and how she organizes her written notebooks. They also discuss Julie’s thoughts on MFAs, turning real life events into fiction, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on August 9, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of thirty books of fiction, including, most recently, The Harder They Come (2015), The Terranauts (2016), The Relive Box (2017), Outside Looking In (2019), Talk To Me (2021) and I Walk Between the Raindrops (2022). 

He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. 

His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney's, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Prise for best novel of the year (World's End, 1988); the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story (T.C. Boyle Stories, 1999); and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Curtain, 1997). He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.

His most recent novel is Blue Skies.

T.C. Boyle joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing climate fiction, dealing with heavy themes while keeping it light and not didactic, his influences, short stories, revision, crickets, and more.

A shout-out to our patrons: thank you, as always, for your support. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 30, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Ellen Keith is the author of the international bestselling novel, The Dutch Wife and, most recently, The Dutch Orphan. Both novels take place during the WWII occupation of The Netherlands.

Ellen joined Marrie Stone from her home in Amsterdam. They discussed finding new stories in saturated literary topics, why third person works well for historical fiction, the benefits of multiple points of view, working with dark material, managing backstory, how to humanize unsympathetic characters, and much more.  

A shout-out to our new July patrons — Lodi, Anne, Erin, Dawn, and Thomas. Thank you for your support. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 26, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Today we’re focusing on noir and Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is with the perfect guests to talk about it: Molly Odintz and Gary Phillips. Molly is senior editor for CrimeReads and editor and contributor to Austin Noir (Akashic). She grew up in Austin and was a bookseller at BookPeople. Gary Phillips has published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including the Anthony-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir and South Central Noir, recently published by Akashic. The Washington Post named his novel One-Shot Harry as one of the best mysteries of 2022, and it’s been nominated for a Nero and Macavity awards. He was also a staff writer and co-producer on Snowfall, streaming on Hulu about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. And Barbara edited and contributed a story to Palm Springs Noir, also published by Akashic.

Molly and Gary joined Barbara to talk about noir (what it is, it's history), putting together an anthology, the Writers Guild strike, beginning stories, the role of an editor when putting together an anthology, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on May 26, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, and former bookshop owner. She is the co-editor of This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017) and the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023).

Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top 5 summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film ‘The Atomic States of America,’ a 2012 Sundance selection.

Kelly joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest release, The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton, 2023). They discuss how this form mirrors the novel-in-short-story form and its differences. They discuss flash versus conventional essays, discovering what your essay is really about, and one piece of advice Kelly always uses during her revision process. Kelly also shares her insights about making a living as a writer and artist, what it requires, and why she won’t compromise. There are also references to advice Kelly gave in her TedX Talk about experiencing “voice block” (as opposed to “writer’s block”).

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 28, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Candi Sary is a graduate from the University of California, Irvine. Her novel, Black Crow White Lie, won a Reader Views Literary Award, a Chanticleer International Book Award, and was First Runner-Up in the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her new novel, Magdalena, will be released by Regal House Publishing on July 11. A mother of two adult children, Sary lives in Southern California with her husband, a dog, a cat and several ducks. 

Candi Sary joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about Magdalena and the path to publication. She also talks about creating a playlist to put you in the head of your protagonist and the world of your story, her influences, ghosts, taking your time, how Magdalena affected the writing of her current novel, and more

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 16, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the short story collection The Disappeared, which was published in April 2023.

Andrew’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Andrew is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Andrew joins Marrie Stone to talk about The Disappeared. He talks about the state of the short story in contemporary fiction (with references to Rebecca Makkai’s article about why we should be reading short stories), and what short stories can do for readers that novels cannot. He shares insights from his former professor, Marilynne Robinson, about endings. He talks about how he approaches flash fiction. He discusses why three is such a magical number of characters for a story, and much more.

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(Recorded on June 13, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett