Writers on Writing

00:47:27

Nicholas Boggs, author of BALDWIN: A LOVE STORY

Writers on Writing ·

2025/12/22

Nicholas Boggs is the New York Times bestselling author of Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of the iconic figure in more than three decades. He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as residencies at Yaddo

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01:00:48

A. Muia, author of A DESERT BETWEEN TWO SEAS

Writers on Writing ·

2025/12/15

We’ve been following A. Muia and her writing journey for several years. She’s been a longtime listener of the podcast and supporter of the show. We chatted in 2022 about getting an agent, the frustrations of the publishing industry and how to break into it, and all the things talented writers who have a strong manuscript but few publishing contacts encounter when trying to get their work published. Basically, most of us. A Desert Between Two Seas published in September. It’s a novel told in 14

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00:55:00

Eric Beetner, author of REAL BAD, REAL SOON: A Carter...

Writers on Writing ·

2025/11/25

Eric Beetner has been hailed as “the new maestro of noir,” by Ken Bruen and LitReactor said he’s “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson.” He has written more than 30 novels and his 100+ short stories have been featured in over 35 anthologies, including Palm Springs Noir, the Akashic anthology I edited that includes a story of Eric’s, one of my favorites. Along the way he’s been nominated for two International Thriller Writer awards, a Shamus, Derringer and four Anthony awards. He’s won none of

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01:01:54

Paul Trammell, author, podcaster, sailor

Writers on Writing ·

2025/11/11

Paul Trammell lives on a sailboat, currently at anchor in Bocas del Toro, Panama. He is the author of ten books and co-author of three more. His latest, Identity Crisis, is a nautical thriller inspired by his taking on a sailing hitchhiker and his mother’s resulting fear for his safety. This follows his psychological thriller Until They Bury Me, which explores the dangers of falling in love too fast and assuming your college sweetheart is still the person you loved years ago. Paul has also written

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00:58:57

Joan Silber, author of MERCY

Writers on Writing ·

2025/11/03

Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction, as well as The Art of Time in Fiction which looks at how fiction is shaped and determined by time, with examples from world writers. She’s been on the show three times in the past to talk about Fools, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Secrets of Happiness, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of the Year; and Improvement, which won The National

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00:57:41

Gish Jen, author of BAD, BAD GIRL

Writers on Writing ·

2025/10/20

Gish Jen describes her childhood as “a master class in perseverance.” The daughters of withholding mothers learn to reject rejection, she writes. And that’s proven great training for a writer. Jen’s 10th book — Bad, Bad Girl — is part novel, part memoir, part autofiction. When her mother passed in 2020, Jen began keeping a journal, and writing notes to her mother in an attempt to understand her. She also wanted to create a record of her life for her children and grandchildren. Not believing she

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00:54:27

Janelle Brown, author of WHAT KIND OF PARADISE

Writers on Writing ·

2025/10/06

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels I’ll Be You, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. Pretty Things—named a Best Book of 2020 by Amazon—is currently being adapted for television.Before becoming a novelist, Janelle worked as a senior writer at Salon, and began her career as a staff writer at Wired, working on seminal Web sites like HotWired and Wired News. In the 1990s, she was also the editor and co-founder

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01:03:49

Patrick Ryan, author of BUCKEYE

Writers on Writing ·

2025/09/08

One Story Magazine Editor Patrick Ryan cut his teeth on the short story form. Author of the critically acclaimed collections The Dream Life of Astronauts and Send Me, Ryan has spent a career editing masters like Joy Williams, Colum McCann, Alice Munro and Ann Beattie. For forty years, he’s tried his hand at novels, but nothing stuck. Until now.Ryan’s debut novel is Buckeye. The book has already become a Read With Jenna pick (which she calls a “once-in-a-decade epic”). It’s one of those

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01:07:23

Paul Bradley Carr, author of THE CONFESSIONS

Writers on Writing ·

2025/09/01

Paul Bradley Carr is the author of the new novel, The Confessions. He has written three memoirs about his adventures in and around Silicon Valley. He was the Silicon Valley columnist for The Guardian, senior editor at TechCrunch, and cofounder of PandoDaily. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and National Geographic. He lives in Palm Springs with his family and is the co-owner of The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs. Find out more at PaulBradleyCarr.com, and follow him

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00:53:16

Crissy Van Meter, author of CREATURES

Writers on Writing ·

2025/08/19

Crissy Van Meter’s novel, Creatures (Algonquin Books, 2020), was a Belletrist Book pick, an NPR Book of the Year, a finalist for the WILLA Literary Award, and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her writing appears in Vice, Guernica, Buzzfeed, and Catapult. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the founder of the literary project Five Quarterly and the contributing editor for

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01:00:16

Amy Bloom, author of I’LL BE RIGHT HERE

Writers on Writing ·

2025/07/14

The New Yorker has said that Amy Bloom “gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books.” She is the author of five novels: White Houses, Lucky Us, Away, Love Invents Us and – most recently – I’ll Be Right Here. She’s also authored three collections of short stories: Where the God Of Love Hangs Out, Come to Me (finalist for the National Book Award), and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). In 2022, she

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01:00:02

Richard Bausch, author of THE FATE OF OTHERS

Writers on Writing ·

2025/07/08

An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Gentleman's Quarterly, Harper's, The Missouri Review, The New Yorker, Narrative, New Letters, Playboy, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review, and his stories have been widely anthologized, including The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and Pushcart Prize Stories, among others. He is the author of thirteen novels and ten collections of stories, including his new

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01:02:40

Chris Whitaker, author of ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK

Writers on Writing ·

2025/06/30

Chris Whitaker is the author of four novels including Tall Oaks, All the Wicked Girls, We Begin at the End and All the Colors of the Dark (now out in paperback). The New York Times bestseller has sold more than one million copies. But more extraordinary is Chris’s story of becoming a professional writer and how these bestsellers get written. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his unusual path into publishing and how he used writing to overcome trauma. (In fact, Chris is so self-taught that he

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00:56:00

Caroline Fraser, author of MURDERLAND

Writers on Writing ·

2025/06/23

Born in Seattle, Caroline Fraser holds a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard. Formerly on the editorial staff of The New Yorker, she is the author of three previous nonfiction books, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, and Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution. She served as editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls

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01:01:55

Wally Lamb, author of THE RIVER IS WAITING

Writers on Writing ·

2025/06/16

Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. He also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years. He’s been on the show three times in the past. Those interviews

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00:43:46

Gillian McAllister, author of FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Writers on Writing ·

2025/06/10

Gillian McAllister graduated with an English degree before working as a lawyer. She lives in Birmingham, England, where she now writes full-time. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time and the Sunday Times bestsellers Everything But the Truth, Anything You Do Say (titled The Choice in the US), No Further Questions (titled The Good Sister in the US), The Evidence Against You, How to Disappear, and That Night. Her newest novel, Famous Last Words, is the focus of this

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01:00:41

Jess Walter, author of SO FAR GONE

Writers on Writing ·

2025/06/02

We don’t have many guests return to the show six times. Jess Walter is now one of them. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett has interviewed him three times — for his novels Beautiful Ruins and The Financial Lives of the Poets, as well as his story collection We Live in Water. He’s been on with Marrie Stone for The Cold Millions and the story collection The Angel of Rome. There are a few reasons we’re always eager to talk to him. First, he’s always trying something different — short stories, novels, historical

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00:54:10

Darrow Farr, author of THE BOMBSHELL

Writers on Writing ·

2025/05/28

Darrow Farr is a Salvadoran-American writer who was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 2017-2019 and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The Michener Center at the University of Texas. She was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband and son. The Bombshell is her debut novel.Darrow joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about why she chose a 17-year-old female protagonist and single POV—until the ending of the book, placing the story

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00:54:36

Charlotte Wood, author of STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL

Writers on Writing ·

2025/05/14

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It was described by the UK Guardian as ‘a quiet novel of immense power’ and has been praised by authors Anne Enright, Tim Winton, Karen Joy Fowler, Hannah Kent and Paula Hawkins among others. Her previous books include The Luminous Solution, a book of essays on the creative process; the international bestseller, The Weekend; and The Natural Way of

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00:55:24

Vauhini Vara, author of SEARCHES: SELFHOOD IN THE...

Writers on Writing ·

2025/05/06

Vauhini Vara grew up alongside internet startup companies. She was in middle school when AOL sent those first floppy discs to our homes, inviting us to dial up to the world wide web. A graduate of Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she became a tech writer for The Wall Street Journal and a business reporter for The Atlantic, The New Yorker and other publications. In 2017, Vara profiled Sam Altman, a cofounder of OpenAI, and gained early access to ChatGPT. She used the program to write about a

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