Writers on Writing: A Weekly Podcast for Writers, Readers, & Book Lovers

Dylan Landis, author of LIST OF ALL POSSIBLE DESIRES: A Novel in Stories

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:57:48 +0000

Dylan Landis is the author of three works of fiction in the Rainey Royal Cycle, set in 1970s Greenwich Village: List of All Possible Desires, a novel in stories; the novel Rainey Royal, a New York Times Editors’ Choice; and the novel in stories Normal People Don’t Live Like This. Her work has appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and she has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction. In a past life she wrote six books on interior design. She lives in Los Angeles.

Dylan joins Barbara to talk about writing a novel with standalone stories, how she comes up with her incredibly original similes and metaphors, dramatic arc, revisions, characters that won’t leave us alone, and the four things a reader needs that writers should keep in mind, 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. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded April 3, 2026)

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

Anne Enright, author of ATTENTION: WRITING ON LIFE, ART, AND THE WORLD

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:30:08 +0000

Anne Enright has written eight novels, most recently The Wren, The Wren, for which she was on the show in 2023. She won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards.

Her latest collection of essays is Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World. These 24 essays cover a lot of ground, but one big theme is how Anne reads other writers, and specifically how she reads them today in contrast to how she’s read them before. There are familiar names like Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Edna O’ Brien, Samuel Beckett, and Alice Munroe. But some obscure writers, as well.

Anne joins Marrie Stone to talk about reading, both for the joy of it and for the study of it, writing, attention, our waning attention spans, and how being a woman has played a role in every one of these topics.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded March 31, 2026)

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

Allegra Goodman, author of THIS IS NOT ABOUT US

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:55:22 +0000

Allegra Goodman’s new book, This Is Not About Us, is a Late Show With Stephen Colbert Book Club Selection. Her novels include Isola (a Reese’s Book Club selection and Libby award winner), Sam (a Read With Jenna Book Club selection), The Chalk Artist (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), and more. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and fellowships from MacDowell and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Allegra joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about literary fiction, writing in different genres, revision, short stories, how much she knows about her story before going in, readers, 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. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded February 20, 2026)

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

Kate Schatz, author of WHERE THE GIRLS WERE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:07:49 +0000

Kate Schatz is the New York Times bestselling author of the "Rad Women" book series, including Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, and Rad American History A-Z, as well as "Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book" co-written with W. Kamau Bell. Her latest is Where the Girls Were.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about bringing history and culture alive in your fiction; how to introduce a big cast of characters to your reader; creating and maintaining suspense and momentum when your character is confined; using texts in your fiction that are now in the public domain, and more. They also talked about Kate’s publishing process, finding an agent, matching with the right publisher 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. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded March 11, 2026)

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

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of LAKE EFFECT

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:24:10 +0000

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling novels The Nest (named a best book of the year by People, the Washington Post, and NPR) and Good Company (a Read with Jenna selection). She has been a guest on Today, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Her work has been translated into more than 28 languages, and The Nest is in development as a limited series with AMC Studios. Cynthia holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She and her husband live in New York City. Her new novel is Lake Effect.

Cynthia joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss writing multiple point of view characters, why she based the book in the ‘70s, themes, stucture, naming characters, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donatio n, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our booksto re on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded February 16, 2026)

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

Jordy Rosenberg, author of NIGHT NIGHT FAWN

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:00:08 +0000

Jordy Rosenberg is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He’s the author of the 2018 novel, Confessions of the Fox, which was the NYT Editors’ Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Lambda Literary Award and a recipient of a number of other accolades. His latest, Night Night Fawn, is part novel, part autofiction, part unauthorized fictionalized memoir of a character inspired by Jordy’s mother. It tackles transgenderism, homophobia, Marxism, Zionism, all through the lens of both history and this contemporary moment we’re living through.

He joins Marrie Stone to pick the book apart on the craft level, including writing from the POV of your own antagonist, capturing a strong and singular voice, using different textures (letters, movies, other novels, appendices, etc.) in fiction, using sex scenes and other scenes of various kinds of intimacy to show power dynamics, and so much more.

(Recorded February 26, 2026)

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

Larissa Pham, author of DISCIPLINE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:42:06 +0000

Larissa Pham’s writing has appeared in The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Aperture, Bookforum, Art in America, Granta, the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her essays and short fiction have been anthologized in Kink (Simon and Schuster, 2021); Wanting: Women Writing on Desire (Catapult, 2023); and Critical Hits, an anthology of writing on video games (Graywolf, 2023). She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School. Her debut novel, just published, is Discipline.

Larissa joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about plot, narrative tense, the freedom of writing without quotation marks, metafiction, revision, naming characters, themes, and much more.

(Recorded February 6, 2026)

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

Bret Anthony Johnston, author of ENCOUNTERS WITH UNEXPECTED ANIMALS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:30:03 +0000

Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi. He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. These 12 pieces are masterclasses on managing time in short fiction, showing what dialogue can do, bringing setting to life, playing with POV (including 2nd person), and arranging a collection to read like an album. They discuss it all.

(Recorded February 11, 2026)

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

Reena Shah, author of EVERY HAPPINESS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 23:32:10 +0000

Reena Shah is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her work has been featured in the Masters Review, Electric Literature, Joyland, BBC, the American Prospect, National Geographic and the Guardian, among other publications. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Millay Arts, Tin House, and the Fulbright Foundation. She received an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center for Writers, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature. For many years, she was a kathak dancer in New York and India. She now lives on Roosevelt Island, NY, with her family and teaches in a public school. Her debut novel is Every Happiness, the focus of our discussion.

Reena joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett and they talk about being a writer in training, a short story that led to the novel, complicated friend relationships, the time it takes to finish a novel, having faith in a project while also doubting, the book’s title and cover, reader reviews, and more.

(Recorded February 6, 2026)

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

Mark Haddon, author of LEAVING HOME: A MEMOIR IN FULL COLOUR

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:04:27 +0000

Mark Haddon might be best known for his 2003 breakout novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But it’s only the tip of a body of work that stretches across genres and artforms. He’s the author of three other adult novels, including The Porpoise and two collections of short stories. Dogs and Monsters came out last year. He’s also written poetry and plays. Before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark wrote over a dozen children’s books. He’s also an illustrator and visual artist.

Out this month is Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour, which gives us access to his amazing mind and provides one roadmap into the creative process (recognizing there are an infinite number of roads). He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his insights into the craft including using constraints to enhance creativity, why he no longer uses flowcharts to map his work, how the flow state in writing differs from visual art, how writers’ childhoods are different, and how he leaned into his writing weaknesses to produce The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He also talks about mental illness and creativity, points of view he won’t touch, and so 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded February 2, 2026)

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

Richard Lange, author of JOE HUSTLE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:20:33 +0000

Richard Lange is the author of the story collections, Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing, and the novels, This Wicked World, Angel Baby, The Smack, Rovers, and Joe Hustle. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Prize, The Short Story Dagger from Great Britain’s Crime Writers Association, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles.

Richard joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his most recent novel, Joe Hustle, and topics they touch on include avoiding backstory that pulls down a story, structure devices, not being a one-genre writer, finding your voice, rejections, road trip stories, naming characters after friends, 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. We love to hear from our listeners. Email us at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com.

(Recorded January 23, 2026)

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

Ann Packer, author of SOME BRIGHT NOWHERE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:36:42 +0000

When Ann Packer’s latest novel, Some Bright Nowhere, was chosen by Oprah for her book club last November, we saw what an impact this book was making on so many folks and their experiences with dying loved ones. The book was written in a record four months – in contrast to her novel The Dive from Clausen’s Pier which took nearly 10 years. It’s a masterclass in subtle conflict, in putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, in compressed dialogue that heightens tension, in character change, in point of view decisions. It gave us a lot to pick apart on the craft level. She joined Marrie Stone to talk about it, as well as her 2015 NYT essay Between Books.

In addition to Some Bright Nowhere, Ann is the author of three other bestselling novels: The Children’s Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has been published in two collections — Mendocino and Other Stories and Swim Back to Me — and includes stories that appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies.

(Recorded January 13, 2026)

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

Andrea Bartz, author of THE LAST FERRY OUT

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:18:12 +0000

Andrea Bartz is a journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here, The Spare Room, The Lost Night, and The Herd. Her thrillers have been optioned by Netflix, Hulu, and other production companies, and more than half a million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Vogue, and she's held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self. She was also a lead plaintiff in the landmark class-action lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic, which was the first major win for creatives against an AI company as well as the largest copyright recovery in history. She lives with her girlfriend and pets in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Her latest novel isThe Last Ferry Out, published in May.

Andrea joined Barbara to talk about prologues, writing as an intuitive pantser, literary vs. genre fiction, the Anthropic class action lawsuit, and much more.

(Recorded January 19, 2026)

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

Elizabeth McCracken, author of A LONG GAME: NOTES ON WRITING FICTION

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of nine books across several genres — novels, short story collections, autofiction, and now a craft book about writing. Her novel, The Giant’s House, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1996. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the Story Prize in 2015 and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She’s appeared in five editions of The Best American Short Stories. And she has taught fiction off and on (mostly on) since 1989 including at the University of Iowa, where she also received her MFA. She’s retiring from the University of Texas (Austin) this year.

Ann Patchett once said that Elizabeth was the only person she allowed to read her manuscripts as she was writing them. We discuss a great interview Elizabeth and Ann did back in 2005 that can be found here.

A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction is out and she joined Marrie to talk about it. Basically, if this podcast were a book, we would hope it might look something like Elizabeth’s book — full of insights, wisdoms, anecdotes, and advice on craft, but sometimes second-guessing itself, contradicting itself, and understanding that all the “rules” we hear about art are meant to be broken. It gave us endless things to talk about.

(Recorded December 19, 2025)

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

Marrie Stone’s BEST OF 2025

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Last year, I compiled my first-ever “Best Of the Year” show. It was such fun to make, and received such a great response from listeners, that I decided to make it an annual tradition. While I could only include a handful of authors from the past year, this episode provies a fun Whitman’s Sampler of the kinds of conversations available in our archives.

Listen as Adam Johnson, Wally Lamb, and Chris Whitaker tell us where their stories come from. Laila Lalami teaches us to read like a writer. Amy Bloom and Bruce Holsinger offer their thoughts on revision. Patrick Ryan (via Ann Patchett) shares his insights about how to write war scenes with authority, and Richard Russo talks about the moral dilemma of using the people in our lives for material.

Authors in this episode include Jess Walter (So Far Gone), Wally Lamb (The River is Waiting), Richard Russo (Life and Art), Amy Bloom (I’ll Be Right Here), Laila Lalami (The Dream Hotel), Joan Silber (Mercy), Chris Whitaker (All the Colors of the Dark), Adam Johnson (The Wayfinder), Patrick Ryan (Buckeye), Bruce Holsinger (Culpability), Eric Puchner (Dream State) and Colum McCann (Twist).

The Jane Smiley essay that Laila Lalami refers to can be found here. And Joan Silber’s book about how to use time in fiction can be found here.

For nearly 28 years, Writers on Writing has delivered MFA-level advice from some of our world’s most accomplished living authors – all without the hefty price-tag. We’ve grown only by word of mouth and rely only on listener support. So, if you like what you hear, help us spread the word!

(Recorded in December 2025)

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

Nicholas Boggs, author of BALDWIN: A LOVE STORY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 14:18:40 +0000

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 and MacDowell. Most recently he was the 2024-2025 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he received his BA from Yale and his PhD from Columbia, both in English, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He now resides in New York City.

Nicholas joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his path to writing nonfiction, what moved him to write a biography of James Baldwin, how he went about structuring the book, perseverance versus talent, research, how his background in music influences his writing, surprises in writing the Baldwin biography, writing what you don’t know, and more.

To learn more about Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You will find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. If you’d like to contact us, email writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on December 19, 2025)

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

A. Muia, author of A DESERT BETWEEN TWO SEAS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:26:45 +0000

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 linked stories set in 19th century Baja California, Mexico. It won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and, as a result, was published by the University of Georgia Press. It was also a finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award and is a 2026 Top Pick for the Southwest Books of the Year. All this, ultimately, was done without an agent.

She joined me on the podcast to talk about all this because I find her experience so relatable. It gave us much to talk about in terms of selling a book without an agent, the experience of publishing with a university press, winning literary prizes, marketing your work, what she wishes she knew then that she knows now, how she’ll approach her next project, and much more. We also talked about publishing in literary journals and how she targeted the literary journals she did, as well as the most useful writing advice she’s received.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. She shares even more advice and insights there. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on November 25, 2025)

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

Tod Goldberg, author of ONLY WAY OUT

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:21:21 +0000

Tod Goldberg is the author of the new novel, Only Way Out, published by Thomas & Mercer. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of 16 books including the acclaimed Gangsterland quartet. His short fiction and essays appeared widely and have been selected in Best American Mystery & Suspense and Best American Essays. Tod is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.

Tod joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing a multiple point of view novel and how his ensemble of characters came together, setting, backstory, writing dialogue, outlining, word quotas, influences, and more.

(Recorded on November 28, 2025)

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

Megha Majumdar, author of A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:03:30 +0000

Megha Majumdar’s A Burning came out in 2020. It was an instant NYT bestseller and was nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the National Book Award, and was named one of the best books of that year by a number of media outlets.

Her latest, A Guardian and a Thief, is enjoying perhaps even more success. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and was Oprah’s pick for October. Like A Burning, A Guardian and a Thief is set in contemporary India (this one in the near-distant future). And, like A Burning, Megha allows us to fall in love with her characters and then puts them on a painful collision course. This time, the climate crisis has accelerated a famine in Calcutta which is forcing good people to act desperately and sometimes violently.

Megha joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. They talk about structuring a “ticking timebomb novel,” and telling a story over the course of seven days. They discuss incorporating backstory without losing forward momentum, and how to make even minor characters full and rich portraits. And they talk about endings, the art of surprising inevitability, and striking the right emotional tone. She also shares her favorite current read: Loot by Tania James. All this and so much more ….

(Recorded on November 20, 2025)

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

Eric Beetner, author of REAL BAD, REAL SOON: A Carter McCoy Novel

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 14:26:24 +0000

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 them, he jokes.

Eric joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his most recent novels, the Carter McCoy series: Real Bad, Real Soon and The Last Few Miles of Road. They discuss why he likes to write trilogies— a third Carter McCoy is coming; why he chose to write a good guy who commits crimes, kind of a Dexter in Wisconsin; why he writes what he doesn’t know; outlining; how it’s vital to know the beats of a story; what becomes a novel and what becomes a short story; and more.

(Recorded on November 21, 2025)

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

Adam Johnson, author of THE WAYFINDER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:10:57 +0000

Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his novel, The Orphan Master’s Son. He won the National Book Award in 2015 for his story collection, Fortune Smiles. He also authored Parasites Like Us and Emporium. Every novel and story is unlike anything that’s come before it. His latest, The Wayfinder, is no exception. Set over 1,000 years ago in the South Pacific, it weaves together the stories of two families and two islands and their opposing views of the world.

Adam joins Marrie Stone to talk about how he’s not only expanded the idea of what a novel can do, but reimagined it entirely. He talks about how oral traditions of storytelling informed the creation of this book and the massive amounts of research necessary to write it. He talks about what forces shaped the writer he’s become, and the many insights about story he shares with his students (Adam teaches in the Wallace Stegner Fellowship program at Stanford). This conversation contains a wealth of insights into craft, process, and storytelling. It also includes a passage from the book which Adam reads and dissects for the listener. (Warning: the passage contains difficult material. Listener discretion is advised.)

(Recorded on November 11, 2025)

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

Paul Trammell, author, podcaster, sailor

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 17:58:48 +0000

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 many nonfiction books, his latest being Sailing to Newfoundland. He is also the author of two self-help books about alcoholism (he is ten-years sober) the latest of which is The Joy of Living Clean and Sober. And he writes short stories (most of which are sci-fi) and poetry. These can be found on his Substack page. Paul writes and podcasts full time, but also finds time to surf, spearfish, and sail. His two podcasts are Offshore Sailing and Cruising with Paul Trammell and Dream Chasers and Eccentrics. His website is paultrammell.com

Paul joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to discuss self-publishing, being accountable, how he got started as a writer and self-publisher, 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on November 7, 2025)

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

Joan Silber, author of MERCY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:30:00 +0000

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 Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Her latest is Mercy. It’s told in six chapters, or six stories, each from a different character’s point of view (POV). It takes place over the course of 50 years and comes in at a lean 240 pages. Joan joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book, using it as a craft lesson to discuss managing time in fiction and POV choices, how to write about drug use and sex, and how to treat characters with generosity. One chapter appeared as a standalone piece in the New Yorker (“Evolution”), and Joan discusses that chapter in detail (she also talked about it with the New Yorker). Along the way, they also discuss how she’s been influenced by Alice Munro, Anton Chekov, and Grace Paley. Paley was one of Joan’s undergrad instructors and Joan shares one of Paley’s writing prompts. She also discusses the writers she teaches with respect to character generosity (including Chekov and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie).

(Recorded on October 30, 2025)

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

REPLAY: fiction writer Melissa Bank

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 19:19:31 +0000

Melissa Bank, who passed away in 2022, was a fabulous writer and an incredible person. We met a few times in person, out here in Southern California when we were both speakers at the Literary Guild, and in NYC when I traveled there for conferences. She came on the show a couple of times, for Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot. Her output was modest though her books became bestsellers. She received an MFA from Cornell University and won the Nelson Algren Award for short fiction from the Chicago Tribune. I’ll always remember when I asked her to talk about how to write a novel, she said, “I don’t know how to write a novel.” What she knew how to do, she was, was write stories. Stories became chapters and chapters become a book. If you’ve never read these two books, check them out. My guess is you will become a fan.

(Recorded on October 7, 2007)

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

Gish Jen, author of BAD, BAD GIRL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:35:10 +0000

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 could bridge the gap from family story to publishable book, Jen took a leap of faith and created a novel that everyone can relate to, or at least sympathize with. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.

Jen shares what fiction gave her that strict memoir did not, and how she overcame her own doubts. She talks about the distinction between fine art and therapy, and what the creative process can give to writers. So much wisdom in this conversation for readers, writers, mothers and daughters.

(Recorded on October 17, 2025)

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

REPLAY: Literary agent MATTHEW CARNICELLI

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:03:29 +0000

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.

I’ve known Matthew for a long time, he’s articulate and funny, and I simply like him. I’d recommend him in a minute to anyone who writes the kind of nonfiction he handles. On the show we talked about what he’s looking for, comps, the author bio, ageism, interpreting rejection, referrals. and much more.

(Recorded on December 1, 2023)

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

Janelle Brown, author of WHAT KIND OF PARADISE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 09:36:15 +0000

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 of Maxi, an irreverent (and now, long-gone) women’s pop culture Webzine. All that information becomes very relevant when you read her latest, What Kind of Paradise.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. What Kind of Paradise draws on that tech reporter past and subtly asks the question: What if Ted Kazinsky had a kid? They discuss how fiction, and our bestselling authors, are grappling with this technological moment. They also discuss writing in the first person and how to use other textures and devices to gain access to other major characters, capturing bygone time periods, conveying cultural messages without preaching to your readers, and much more.

(Recorded on September 24, 2025)

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

Replay: ELMORE LEONARD, legendary writer

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:51:46 +0000

Today we’re going to replay a show from 2007. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is joined by Elmore Leonard, an American novelist, short story author and screenwriter many of you are familiar with. He was, according to British journalist Anthony Lane, "hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land." Mostly working in the genres of westerns and crime, more than 30 of his stories were adapted to the screen over the course of a writing career spanning 60 years.He wrote Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, and Glitz. The series Justified was inspired by his book, Fire in the Hole. He had a few rule of writing, and one was, leave the boring parts out. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 87.

(Recorded in 2007.)

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

Bruce Holsinger, author of CULPABILITY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:14:55 +0000

Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability was Oprah’s big pick this summer. No surprise. It’s a novel that gives book clubs a lot of contemporary ethical issues to talk about. From self-driving cars to drones to chatbots, technology isn’t just changing our daily lives, it’s changing our laws, our relationships, our sense of self. And it’s reshaping the way we talk about responsibility and culpability.

Culpability is Bruce’s third contemporary family drama, following The Displacements and The Gifted School. He’s also the author of the historical thrillers A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire as well as many nonfiction books. In his “spare time,” Bruce teaches in the Department of English at UVA, where he specializes in medieval literature and modern critical thought and edits their quarterly journal New Literary History. He also teaches craft classes and serves as board chairman for WriterHouse, a nonprofit in Charlottesville.

Bruce joins Marrie Stone to talk about Culpability and his unusual writing backstory. He discusses jumping genres and how that impacted his brand, how Bruce mastered the contemporary family drama, and how to write about hyper-contemporary issues without that writing feeling stale or outdated a year from now. Bruce also talks about the advantages of writing from the first person, present tense point of view, injecting other textures of narrative — like text conversations and book excerpts — into your narrative without breaking the story’s flow. He shares his experiences with agents and different publishing houses, and so much more.

If you’re in the Orange County area, Bruce will be at the quarterly “Evening with an Author” series in Laguna Beach on October 15th. More information on that event can be found here.

(Recorded on September 12, 2025)

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

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, author of POOL FISHING

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:33:00 +0000

Today, the microphone turns on Writers on Writing founder and host Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest story collection, Pool Fishing. Barbara’s venture into noir fiction began with the short story, “Crazy for You,” originally published in Akashic Book’s, Orange County Noir, later included in USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She’s also the editor and contributor to Palm Springs Noir (Akashic) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Rowboat,” in Kelp Journal (Dec. 2023). Both “Crazy for You” and “Rowboat” appear in her latest collection.

Barbara’s fiction and poetry have been published extensively, including in Coolest American Stories 2022, CrimeReads, Dark City Crime & Magazine and elsewhere. Her first book, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, was a Los Angeles Times best-seller and honored with an American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Book Award. She’s taught creative writing at various colleges for decades. All that means she has much to teach us, and tell us, about the creative process.

She joins Marrie to talk about the creative germ for many of these 15 stories, why setting is so critical in noir, the attributes she believes necessary to make a successful writer, why she’s such an advocate for small presses, and so much more.

Barbara will be appearing at Arvida Books in Tustin on Friday, September 19th, at 6pm (with Maddie Margarita) and Knoll’s in Laguna Niguel on Sunday, September 21, at 7pm (with Marrie Stone). For more information, check out her website here.

(Recorded on September 1, 2025)

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

Patrick Ryan, author of BUCKEYE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:30:00 +0000

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 cancel-your-plans, move-into-the-guestroom, forget-about-getting-anything-else-done-for-three-days novels. It is a 450-page wholly immersive book that sweeps across generations and wars and dives deep down into its characters’ lives. It follows two couples in a small Ohio town in the lead-up and aftermath of WWII, how their lives intertwine and the impact of their relationships on the generation that follows, who fight wars of their own.

Ryan captures the intimacy of what happens inside people’s bedrooms and inside their own minds as well as what has happened to our nation and the arc of history across the 20th century. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. They discuss pacing a novel versus short stories, the research required to render a novel as detailed as this — and how to make it not feel like you’ve done a lot of research — managing characters across generations, how to avoid sentimentality in intimate fiction, what editing writers like Joy Williams and Alice Munro has taught Patrick about writing, and so much more. They also talk about Ryan’s longtime friendship with Ann Patchett (parts of this novel were written in her basement and the book is dedicated to Ann and her husband, Karl), and how that friendship feeds both their work.

(Recorded on August 20, 2025)

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

Paul Bradley Carr, author of THE CONFESSIONS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 23:10:53 +0000

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 on Instagram.

Paul joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing female protagonists, outlining, POV characters, how running a bookstore affects his writing, writing with little bits of time, how people really do judge a book by the cover, what sells books, and much more.

(Recorded on August 29, 2025)

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

Michelle Huneven, author of BUG HOLLOW

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Michelle Huneven is the author of six novels including Round Rock, Jamesland, Off Course, Blame, Search and — most recently — Bug Hollow. Bug Hollow is a story about the Samuelsons, who lose their 18-year-old son in an accident. The book ripples out from there in a kaleidoscopic way, following the parents, siblings, girlfriend and others into the distant future and around in time to see how their lives play out. It’s told in chapters – or stories – from each character’s perspective. And it’s largely set in Altadena, where Michelle is from. It’s really a love letter to that town that was so devastated by the wildfires this past January (though written well before the fires). While in the process of publishing Bug Hollow, Michelle lost two homes in the fire.

She joins Marrie to talk about the book, as well as writing through tragedy and how she might process this event in her work. She also talks about the risks of being a perfectionist as a writer, and what helped her through that challenge. (She recommends this essay by Leslie Jamison). She shares how writing prompts led her to write this novel, the importance of having a trusted reader, the best training she received as a writer, and so much more.

After the podcast ended, Michelle shared her 76 favorite writing prompts with us. These are prompts she used to write this novel, prompts she shares with her students, and prompts she uses in her own writing practice. We’re offering those prompts (one per day) over the next 10 weeks to our subscribers on Patreon.

(Recorded on August 13, 2025)

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

Crissy Van Meter, author of CREATURES

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 17:43:21 +0000

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 Nouvella Books. She served on the board of directors for the youth-focused literary nonprofit Novelly. She lives in Los Angeles where she is the Head of Books forTeaTime Pictures.

Crissy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing climate fiction, naming characters, research, fictionalizing real places, setting, and much more.

Order Barbara’s upcoming short story collection, Pool Fishing.

(Recorded on August 15, 2025)

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

Richard Curtis, literary agent & digital pioneer

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:12:44 +0000

Literary agent Richard Curtis was a pioneer in the e-book industry. Having worked in publishing for nearly 50 years, he understands nuances, trends, and the long arc of what makes authors and publishers successful. He adapted his agenting model to accommodate the consolidations of the publishing houses and what those changes meant for agents and writers. He’s written several books on those topics, and authors the popular Substack newsletter, Inside Agenting.

But earlier this year, Richard discovered an A.I. tool that shocked even him. NotebookLM, a Google product released in 2023, turns difficult topics into engaging conversations. It can summarize PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, or Google Slides, and create realistic podcasts about the topic. We tasked it with introducing Richard on the podcast. You’ll hear that introduction, produced in less than five minutes, and what Richard thinks of it.

He talks with Marrie about what these A.I. tools mean for writers and publishers, and how writers should be reacting in the moment. He also provides his thoughts on chasing industry trends, how to target the right agent for your work, how technology has always been upending the industry, and what might happen in this next revolutionary round of upheavals.

(Recorded on July 31, 2025)

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

Stefanie Leder, author of LOVE, COFFEE, AND REVOLUTION

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 01:08:43 +0000

Stefanie Leder is a TV showrunner and writer whose credits include the MTV teen dramedy Faking It, TBS comedy Men at Work, Netflix’s Boo, Bitch, and the long-running ABC Family comedy Melissa & Joey. She is also a guest lecturer on television writing at the Low Residency MFA at UCR. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she spent a year abroad in Costa Rica and has worked for a nonprofit on Fair Trade Coffee and anti-sweatshop campaigns. Love, Coffee, and Revolution is her first novel. You can also read her award-nominated short story, “Not a Dinner Party Person” in Eight Very Bad Nights; A Collection of Hanukkah Noir, or in the upcoming The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025.

Stefanie joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett at Arvida Book Company in Tustin, California, to talk on the patio before a live audience. They talk about bringing out a project after letting it sit for many years, writing for TV, the crossover from scriptwriting to writing fiction, why she plots, structure, and much more.

(Recorded on July 20, 2025)

Barbara’s book of short stories, Pool Fishing, will be published on September 16 by Kelp Books. Read more about it and pre-order here.

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

Ed Park, author of AN ORAL HISTORY OF ATLANTIS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 17:17:14 +0000

Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams (2023), a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days (2008), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice, and has worked in newspapers and book publishing.

An Oral History of Atlantis is his debut story collection. These 16 stories are utterly original and very funny. Some were written over a period of years, others in an hour. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection and all the dozens of decisions that went into creating these stories. He also talks about his writing career, the things that made the biggest difference in his training, and his advice to writers.

(Recorded on July 2, 2025)

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

Jill Ciment, author of THE BODY IN QUESTION

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 02:22:58 +0000

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

Jill joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk the various aspects of writing, but in particular, Jill’s book, The Body in Question. Warning: There will be spoilers.

A couple of months ago Barbara let our Patreon supporters know there would be talk in depth about the book and if listeners hate spoilers, read the book first—it’s a thin novel—and then listen to the show. “I recently spent two weeks in jury duty on a criminal case,” says Barbara, “and during the first week I reread this book in which a criminal case is the B story. The A story is the affair the narrator has with a fellow juror known only by his number until three-quarters of the way through when the case ends.” Jill was on the show when this book came out around 2020. Barbara says, “I loved the book so much and wanted to bring Jill back to talk about the ending.”

(Recorded on June 27, 2025)

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

Amy Bloom, author of I’LL BE RIGHT HERE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:10:49 +0000

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 wrote the widely acclaimed New York Times bestselling memoir, In Love.

I’ll Be Right Here spans over 80 years and a kaleidoscopic cast of characters (including a few real-life historical figures). We follow them from France to Poughkeepsie, through unconventional relationships, partnerships, and family unions and Amy accomplishes it all within a compact 200 pages. As always, we want to know how she does it.

Amy joins Marrie Stone to talk about the novel and how she researched this real and fictional cast of characters. She talks about the best advice she ever received about writing from her father, her inventive use of lists, her use of different forms and structures (including using scripts, epistolary chapters, lists, and more), and why she’s always writing in different genres. She saves some of her best advice and insights for the end of the interview, so be sure to stick around.

(Recorded on July 8, 2025)

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

Richard Bausch, author of THE FATE OF OTHERS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 14:07:41 +0000

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 collection, The Fate of Others.

Richard joins Barbara to talk about his path to writing fiction, various stories in the collection as well as titling stories, arranging stories in the book, the difference between writing novels and stories, and so much more.

(Recorded on June 27, 2025)

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

Chris Whitaker, author of ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 17:36:36 +0000

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 recently had to Google “MFA” to learn what it stands for.) Chris talks about living in the U.K. but setting his novels in the U.S. and how he masters the research to write about places he’s never visited. One of those tricks is using an online dialect tool to get his dialogue just right. Chris also discusses how he writes in fragments with three computer screens in front of him, and other unconventional writing techniques.

(Recorded on June 23, 2025)

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

Caroline Fraser, author of MURDERLAND

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:24:05 +0000

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 Wilder's Little House books and has written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside Magazine, and The London Review of Books. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Hal Espen. Her new nonfiction book, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, published by Penguin Press, is the focus of today’s talk.

Caroline joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about the genesis of Murderland, how she decided on structure, the memoir aspect of the book, why she thinks readers and viewers are fascinated with crime, her relationship with research, and much more.

(Recorded on June 6, 2025)

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

Wally Lamb, author of THE RIVER IS WAITING

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:08:08 +0000

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 can be found in our archives.

The River is Waiting is his first novel in nine years. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. It’s the first time Wally has put York Correctional Institution into his fiction. And he puts other parts of himself into this novel, as well.

He talks about rendering real life experiences into fiction, how to weave politics and current events into your prose, making unsympathetic characters sympathetic to your reader, what writing in the present tense does to your prose, what Wally may have learned about writing and life from the inmates he’s worked with, a little about the writing group he’s been part of for 20 years, and much more.

(Recorded on April 28, 2025)

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

Gillian McAllister, author of FAMOUS LAST WORDS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:37:58 +0000

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 interview.

Gillian joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett from England to talk about writing a compelling first chapter, plotting and structure, subplots, twists, research and revision.

(Recorded on April 18, 2025)

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

Jess Walter, author of SO FAR GONE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 23:00:39 +0000

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 fiction, mystery, humor. And no matter what he’s up to, his works are universally terrific. But he’s also a fantastic teacher. We bill the show as a free MFA program from the masters, and Jess is a thoughtful and articulate master. Like explaining why his hilarious short story, Cheston!, never makes the cut for his collections.

Jess is the author of eight novels and two story collections. His latest, So Far Gone, is out June 10th and published by Harper. It is very much born of this time and this country. It takes place in Trump’s America, back to the familiar territory of Spokane, Washington. It’s laugh out loud funny and poignant and tragic and all the things Jess is known for. He joins Marrie to talk about it.

(Recorded on May 23, 2025)

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

Darrow Farr, author of THE BOMBSHELL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Wed, 28 May 2025 13:28:26 +0000

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 in Corsica, 1990, writing sympathetic villains, cribbing from her life, keeping track of everything that goes into your novel, the title, and more.

(Recorded on May 1, 2025)

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

Richard Russo, author of LIFE AND ART: ESSAYS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 19 May 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody’s Fool, Chances Are, Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; one previous essay collection about writing — The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank.

His latest, Life and Art, contains 13 essays touching on many of the topics we grapple with on the show. How to imagine your way into another person’s skin. When it is inappropriate to try. What should writers be making of this current moment in history and their role in it. Where and how do we find meaning in our work. It feels very much born out of the pandemic, and out of this cultural moment, so it’s got a lot of insights about our country and Richard’s unique socioeconomic experiences living in it for 75 years. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.

(Recorded on May 12, 2025)

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

Charlotte Wood, author of STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Wed, 14 May 2025 16:29:19 +0000

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 Things which won a number of prizes including The Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2023 Belvoir Theatre Company staged an adaptation of her novel The Weekend, and her novel The Natural Way of Thingsfeatured in ABC Television’s 2021 series The Books That Made Us.

Charlotte joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about pacing a quiet novel, her main character who is never named, why she set the novel at the start of the pandemic, plagues, slowing down your writing and paying attention to small details, her relationship with plot, revision, and voice, and much more.

(Recorded on April 23, 2025)

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

Vauhini Vara, author of SEARCHES: SELFHOOD IN THE DIGITAL AGE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 06 May 2025 13:35:11 +0000

Vauhini Vara grew up alongside internet startup companies. She was in middle school when AOL sent those first floppy disks 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 co-founder of OpenAI, and gained early access to ChatGPT. She used the program to write about a topic that had long eluded her — the grief she experienced over the death of her sister. “Ghosts” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021 and quickly went viral (as evidenced by its adaptation on This American Life). That piece, and several others, are part of Vara’s latest book, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age.

Vara’s 2022 novel, The Immortal King Rao — also steeped in the tech industry — was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and her story collection, This is Salvaged, came out the following year. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about how technology, including ChatGPT and other A.I. models, impact writers and where she sees things going. Her insights are both hopeful and terrifying. She also talks about writing in different genres as a journalist, a novelist, a writer of creative nonfiction and short stories. She shares her insights about playing with different structures and how to release yourself from conventional forms of storytelling.

(Recorded on April 29, 2025)

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

Jennifer Haigh, author of RABBIT MOON

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Thu, 01 May 2025 13:59:08 +0000

Jennifer Haigh’s first novel, Mrs. Kimble, won the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Mercy Street, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker and won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her short stories have been published widely, in the Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. Published in eighteen languages, her work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michener Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Boston. Her new novel, Rabbit Moon, is the focus of our talk today.

Jennifer joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. They talk about her time in Shanghai and how being there inspired the novel, why she wrote a novel about sisters, writing multiple points of view, writing minor characters, what she reads when she’s writing fiction, how much she knows going in, why she doesn’t plot, and more.

(Recorded on April 4, 2025)

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

Andrew Porter, author of THE IMAGINED LIFE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:12:20 +0000

Andrew Porter is the author of two story collections, The Disappeared and The Theory of Light and Matter. He’s also the author of the novel In Between Days. His latest, out this month, is The Imagined Life and it treads on some familiar territory as the others. Andrew joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.

His work has been compared to Richard Yates and John Cheever. He talks about those influences and his hyper-focus on the domestic realm. He also talks about the impacts his former professor, Marilynne Robinson, has on his work. They talk about writerly choices — point of view, structure, revision, and character development. And they discuss larger themes of men, boys, marriage, and sexuality in today’s culture and how literature reflects those struggles.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on April 16, 2025)

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

Tova Mirvis, author of WE WOULD NEVER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:59:55 +0000

Tova Mirvis is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation as well as three novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine and Real Simple, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She lives in Newton, MA with her family. Her most recent novel is We Would Never.

Tova joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how the idea for her new book came from a case she followed in the media, the challenges of writing her first thriller, turning real people into fictional characters, writing multiple point of views, pacing, at what point she thinks about the reader, 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on February 28, 2025)

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

Brian Selznick, author and illustrator of RUN AWAY WITH ME

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:49:29 +0000

In 2007, with his Caldecott-winning masterpiece The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick invented a new way of storytelling. The book became the basis for the 2011 Oscar-winning movie Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese.

Brian is the author and illustrator of many other books for children, including Wonderstruck (also a movie), The Marvels, Kaleidoscope, and Big Tree, which was named one of the Best Children's books of 2023 by the New York Times and the audio book, narrated by Meryl Streep, was nominated for a Grammy. His latest book, Run Away With Me, is his first YA novel.

Brian joins Marrie Stone to talk about his inventive approach to storytelling, playing with its form and structure, tapping into your own passions and curiosities to ignite passion and curiosity in your reader, building attention in our youth in the digital age, Brian’s insane love of research, the utterly unique origin story behind Run Away With Me, and so 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on April 4, 2025)

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

Colum McCann, author of TWIST

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Colum McCann first came on the podcast in 2010 to talk about his National Book Award winning novel, Let the Great World Spin. He most recently returned in 2020 with his New York Times bestseller Apeirogon. He’s back this month with a stunning new novel, Twist. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book and his inspiration.

They also discuss the need for stories in this current historical moment, why Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a book for our times, the things currently giving him hope, and how he manages to make profound statements about the world without sounding pedological. Colum also shares some of his writerly moves distinct to his style, including his weave of arcane and interesting information into his novels, his effective use of lists, his emphasis on the sound of language and sentence structure, 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on March 28, 2025)

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

Scott Turow, author of PRESUMED GUILTY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 16:13:41 +0000

Scott Turow is a writer and former practicing lawyer and the author of 13 bestselling works of fiction, including Presumed Innocent. Scott has also published two nonfiction books, including One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into movies and television projects. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and the Atlantic. His most recent novel is Presumed Guilty.

Scott joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his path to writing fiction, loving literary fiction and also loving plot, writing in the first person present tense, writing outside your culture and race, the importance of setting, and his revision process.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on March 18, 2025)

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

Charlotte McConaghy, author of WILD DARK SHORE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 17:41:37 +0000

Charlotte McConaghy is an Australian author living in Sydney with her partner and two children. She has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a number of published SFF works in Australia. Her novel Migrations was her first foray into adult literary fiction, published in North America by Flatiron Books, and by Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK. It is being translated into over 25 languages and adapted to film. Once There Were Wolves, the New York Times Bestseller, is a romantic mystery about a biologist charged with reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the landscape and bring a forest back to life. Wild Dark Shore, the focus of today’s show, continues her love of romantic thrillers set in beautiful, remote places, and explores not only what it takes to raise children in a collapsing world, but the impossible choices we make to protect those we love.

Charlotte joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about whether she comes up with the story first or the setting, what her research entails, why she chose multiple point of view narrators for Wild Dark Shore, how she knows when a novel is finished, revision, 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on February 14, 2025)

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

Eowyn Ivey, author of BLACK WOODS, BLUE SKY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:49:29 +0000

Eowyn Ivey was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for her debut novel, The Snow Child. Her latest, Black Woods, Blue Sky, offers a dark fairytale, a love story of a different kind, and depicts a mother-daughter relationship like none we’ve read before.

Ivey joins Marrie Stone to talk about the backstories behind the novel. They also chat about writing different points of view, including writing from a 6-year-old perspective, setting up the rules of magical realism, and making landscape a character in your novel. They explore how time and linearity aren’t the same thing as structure in a novel, and writing a novel that exists outside of time.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. Help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on March 4, 2025)

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

Adam Ross, author of PLAYWORLD

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 03:04:54 +0000

Adam Ross is the author of Mr. Peanut, selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He’s been a fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin and a Hodder Fellow for Fiction at Princeton University. He is editor of The Sewanee Review. Born and raised in New York City, he now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his two daughters. His new novel is PLAYWORLD.

On the show, Adam joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how the idea for PLAYWORLD became a book, why it took ten years to write, how being an actor influenced his writing, why he named his protagoinist Griffin Hurt, writing voiceover scenes, bringing his experiences as a kid into the story, his revision process, journaling, and so 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. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. Help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on February 21, 2025)

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

Laila Lalami, author of THE DREAM HOTEL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:43:24 +0000

Laila Lalami’s fifth novel, The Dream Hotel, is a dystopian story for our time. Set in Los Angeles in the near-distant future, the novel follows Sara –– a museum archivist and mother — who just landed at LAX from London and is retained by the Risk Assessment Administration for a crime they believe she might commit based on data and algorithms the government uses to track its citizens through their dreams.

Lalami, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, has been hailed a “maestra of literary fiction” by NPR. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about writing dystopian fiction during a time when reality might be moving faster than fantasy. She discusses her research process, her tendency to begin her novels in the middle and write to the outsides, how she trained to become a novelist by dissecting fiction, and much more. Along the way, Lalami references Jane Smiley’s article on revision, which can be found here.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds upon hundreds of 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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

(Recorded on February 20, 2025)

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

Tana French, author of THE HUNTER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:05:44 +0000

Tana French is the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous books, including The Searcher, The Likeness, and The Witch Elm. Her novels have sold over three million copies and won numerous awards, including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She’s been called a mystery writer for people who don’t read mysteries. She lives in Dublin with her family.

Tana French joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about her latest novel, The Hunter. They discuss her attraction to crime fiction, how her acting background helps her get into character, how characters come to her, how she’s not a plotter, and much more.

(Recorded on January 10, 2025)

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

Eric Puchner, author of DREAM STATE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Eric Puchner is the author of two story collections — Music Through the Floor and Last Day on Earth. His first novel, Model Home, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction. His latest novel, Dream State, publishes February 18. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.

They discuss controlling time in a novel, since the book takes place over generations and moves not linearly but fluidly through time. They also talk about anticipating the future, because the novel projects ahead in time. They discuss point of view, bringing real world issues like climate change and environmentalism into your work in non-moralizing ways, and what he advises his students about writer’s block. They also discuss the current world of agents and editors and what he's learned in his decades of publishing, and so much more.

As a bonus, Eric and his wife, novelist Katherine Noel, collaborated on an essay entitled I Married a Novelist, a fun, funny, and delightful read.

(Recorded on February 5, 2025)

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

Literary Agent Renee Fountain

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 20:42:33 +0000

Renee Fountain is president of Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Lit Mgmt. She’s been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years. She’s worked at Harcourt and Simon & Schuster with some of the best writers and illustrators in publishing, has managed iconic classics like Raggedy Ann and Nancy Drew, and brokered film and television options. Renee also spent five years with the CW Television Network as a book scout and story analyst for scripted television. Renèe represents fiction and non-fiction, from YA to adult but doesn’t represent picture books, middle grade, or previously published work. She attends writers’ conferences where she provides manuscript critiques, fields author pitches, and teaches masterclasses. She offers free resources for writers at Reneefountain.com/podcastjumpstart and on her Substack page. In addition to agenting, Renèe helps writers hone their craft and books with developmental editing and coaching through her company Gryphon Quill and as a faculty member of The Manuscript Academy.

Renee joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what she wishes a writer would send her, how she finds her clients, how the words on the page are more important than MFAs and a writer’s age, query letters, what to do about your bio if you have no writing credits, comps, the state of the publishing biz, social media, and so much more.

(Recorded on January 31, 2025)

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

Danielle Prescod, author of THE RULES OF FORTUNE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Danielle Prescod is a 15-year veteran of the beauty and fashion industry. She is also the author of the memoir Token Black Girl, which was one of the buzziest books of 2022, and cited as a must read by People, USA Today, Town and Country, Ebony, The LA Times, and landed her on NBC’s Today Show and elsewhere.

Her debut novel is The Rules of Fortune. It’s published by Mindy Kaling’s Book Studio, an imprint at Amazon, and hits shelves February 1, 2025. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, as well as Mindy’s Book Studio and working with an Amazon imprint, how she found her agent, how she taught herself to write fiction and what she’ll do different next time, the difference between writing her memoir and writing a novel, and so much more. You can follow her here on Instagram.

(Recorded on January 23, 2025)

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

Kim Dower, author of WHAT SHE WANTS (poetry)

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:40:38 +0000

Kim (Freilich) Dower (City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 – October 2018) has published six highly acclaimed collections of poetry all from Red Hen Press. Her newest What She Wants is called, “witty, sultry and thoughtful,” by the Washington Post. The bestselling, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom, an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist, was called a “fantastic collection” by The Washington Post, “impressively insightful, thought-provoking, and truly memorable” by The Midwest Book Review and Shelf-Awareness said, “These gorgeous gems are energized by the sheer power of her wit and irreverent style.” Air Kissing on Mars, Kim’s first collection, was described by the Los Angeles Times as, “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache.” Slice of Moon was called “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, Last Train to the Missing Planet, “poems that speak about the grey space between tragedy and tenderness, memory and loss, fragility and perseverance,” said Richard Blanco, and Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, won the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal for Poetry. Kim’s work has been featured in numerous literary journals including Plume, Ploughshares, Rattle, The James Dickey Review, and Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac," and her poems are included in several anthologies, notably, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. She teaches poetry workshops for Antioch University, UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, and the West Hollywood Library. Born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and a graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Kim lives with her family in West Hollywood, CA. To learn more about Kim visit her website: www.kimdowerpoetry.com

Kim joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about the attributes of a poet, whether studying the classic poets and traditional forms is necessary if you want to write poetry, what is poetry?, and limerence. Kim reads three poems from the collection and talks about the process of writing them.

(Recorded on January 17, 2025)

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

Bradford Morrow, author of THE FORGER’S REQUIEM

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Bradford Morrow is the author of 10 novels, as well as short stories, children’s books, essays, anthologies, and illustrated books. He is also the founder and editor of the literary journal Conjunctions, which has been in publication since 1981. Professor Morrow has taught literature at Bard College for 35 years.

His latest is The Forger’s Requiem. It’s the third in a trilogy, following The Forgers and The Forger’s Daughter. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about these novels, as well as his techniques for reading like a writer, his work at Conjunctions, his use of journals for novel-writing, his writing routine, his love of the Oxford English Dictionary, and so much more.

(Recorded on January 9, 2025)

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

Rebecca Renner, author of GATOR COUNTRY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 05:20:08 +0000

Rebecca Renner is a journalist and fiction writer from Daytona Beach, Florida. She’s a seventh-generation Floridian, and is committed to making life in her state better for everyone through writing about politics, social issues, and the environment. She has a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing from Stetson University, the oldest university in the state of Florida. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Glamour, VICE, New York Magazine and more. She’s author of the narrative nonfiction/true crime book, Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades.

On the show we talked about the misbelief about alligators, the everglades, doing research, finding sources and convincing them to be a part of your project, and more.

(Recorded on April 12, 2024)

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

Marrie Stone’s BEST OF 2024

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 14:30:00 +0000

One of the questions I often get this time of year is who were my favorite interviews and what were my favorite books? This year, the question prompted me to begin digging through my 25+ hours of recordings to find the gems from 2024. I decided to edit some of them together and share them here. Of course, this is just a small sampling and doesn’t include Barbara’s many treasures.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to try doing more reading and less watching. If you’re in that boat too and looking for some good places to start, maybe this episode will help you out. All the complete interviews can be found in our archives at www.writersonwriting.com.

Here’s a quick list of the authors and books mentioned in this episode: Steve Almond’s Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters, Kristin Hannah’s The Women, Jonathan Lethem’s Brooklyn Crime Novel, Hisham Matar’s My Friends, Joyce Maynard’s How the Light Gets In, Alice McDermott’s Absolution, Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, and Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything.

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners!

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

Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 15:52:25 +0000

I have a Christmas and Hanukah gift for you: my show with Stephen Dunn. This is one of my favorite shows and he was one of my favorite poets. He published something like 21 collections of poetry. The show you’re about to hear from 2001, the first time he was a guest on the show. Writers on Writing was on the radio then. Podcasting wouldn’t be along for four more years and it would be a number of years—I’ve lost track—before my cohost Marrie Stone joined us.

I first learned of Dunn back in the early 1980s. I was on a bus in San Francisco, looking up at the placards that lined the roof of the bus and there was a poem of his. It may have been his poem, “Contact,” which he reads during the following interview. Back then the City posted poetry on MUNI busses (I think it’s doing that again). Dunn and I never met in person but he graced me and the show with his presence a half dozen times.

Stephen Dunn was born on June 24, 1939, in Forest Hills, Queens. He graduated from Forest Hills High School in 1957. He earned a BA in history and English from Hofstra University, attended the New School Writing Workshops, and finished his MA in creative writing at Syracuse University. Dunn’s books of poetry include the posthumous collection The Not Yet Fallen World (W. W. Norton, 2022); Pagan Virtues (W. W. Norton, 2019); Lines of Defense (W. W. Norton, 2014); Here and Now: Poems (W. W. Norton, 2011); What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 (W. W. Norton, 2009); Everything Else in the World (W. W. Norton, 2006); Local Visitations (W. W. Norton, 2003); Different Hours (W. W. Norton, 2000), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry; Loosestrife (W. W. Norton, 1996), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; New and Selected Poems: 1974–1994(W. W. Norton, 1994); Landscape at the End of the Century (W. W. Norton, 1991); Between Angels (W. W. Norton, 1989); Local Time (William Morrow & Co., 1986), winner of the National Poetry Series; Not Dancing (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1984); Work & Love (HarperCollins, 1981); A Circus of Needs (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1978); Full of Lust and Good Usage (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1976); and Looking For Holes In the Ceiling (University of Massachusetts Press, 1974). He is also the author of Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry (BOA Editions, 2001), and Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (W. W. Norton, 1998).

About Dunn’s work, the poet Billy Collins has written:

The art lies in hiding the art, Horace tells us, and Stephen Dunn has proven himself a master of concealment. His honesty would not be so forceful were it not for his discrete formality; his poems would not be so strikingly naked were they not so carefully dressed.

Dunn’s other honors include the Academy Award for Literature, the James Wright Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has taught poetry and creative writing and held residencies at Wartburg College, Wichita State University, Columbia University, University of Washington, Syracuse University, Southwest Minnesota State College, Princeton University, and University of Michigan.

Dunn has worked as a professional basketball player, an advertising copywriter, and an editor, as well as a professor of creative writing. Dunn was the distinguished professor of creative writing at Richard Stockton College and lived in Frostburg, Maryland with his wife, the writer Barbara Hurd. He passed away on June 25, 2021.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for Different Hours, the focus for our talk on this day in 2001. We also talk about the poets’ state of mind, writing poems during and after the moment, existing in the world of ambiguity, being a retrospective poet, how his focus has changed over the years, how he taught poetry, good training for a poet, hearing from readers, National Poetry Month, and more.

(Recorded in 2001 in the KUCI-FM studio at University of California Irvine campus.)

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

Karl Marlantes, author of COLD VICTORY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:30:00 +0000

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.

(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, author of DAYS OF WONDER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 14:42:15 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of TWO GOOD MEN

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of DON’T BE A STRANGER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 16:58:45 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of BLUE SISTERS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of ONE OF OUR KIND

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:20:13 +0000

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.

(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, author of ABSOLUTION

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

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?

(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, author of THE HYPOCRITE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 22:44:17 +0000

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.

(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, author of WILD FAILURE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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.

(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, author of THE SEQUEL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 23:28:21 +0000

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.

(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, author of BROOKLYN CRIME NOVEL

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, literary agent and author of MADE FOR YOU

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 16:16:17 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of WHEN WE FLEW AWAY: A NOVEL OF ANNE FRANK BEFORE THE DIARY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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.)

Special show with hybrid and indie authors

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:31:43 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of TELL ME EVERYTHING

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of THE FARAWAY WORLD (stories)

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 20:20:46 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of THE HISTORY OF SOUND

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of THE WILDS

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:57:47 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of BEAR

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of TRUST HER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:32:44 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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.)

Kimberly McCreight, author of LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of the memoir, CONSENT

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:18:18 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of THE WINNER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 18:30:13 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of THE HEART IN WINTER

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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.)

Dawn Tripp, author of the novel JACKIE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 23:00:16 +0000

(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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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.)

Literary agent Dani Segelbaum

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 14:45:18 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of ROMANTIC COMEDY

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of NIGHTWATCHING

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 14:58:02 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of I’VE TRIED BEING NICE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 13:30:00 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of LEAVING

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Tue, 28 May 2024 15:38:45 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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, author of DAUGHTER OF MINE

marriestone@gmail.com (Marrie Stone) — Thu, 23 May 2024 14:57:13 +0000

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 writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. 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.)