Write-minded Podcast

On the heels of Mother's Day, tune into Memoir Nation this week for a conversation about *mother as character*—among many other potential characters any one of us might be on the page. Guest Nicole Graev Lipson explores the idea of where fiction ends and truth begins when you're a woman through this fascinating conversation prompted by her recent memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters. If you've ever thought about the boundaries between truth and fiction as a writer or a reader, or the confines certain roles limit women to or within—girl, mother, wife—you won't want to miss this episode. Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters. Her writing has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays anthology, and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Millions, Nylon, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Memoir Nation, Jill Ciment joins us to talk about what it means to reconsider a previously written memoir, and what that says about the nature of truth. We're diving into the unreliability of truth, how we see things differently over time, and the nature of memoir as a flawed container for our stories. We're also two weeks into the rebrand of this podcast, and Brooke and Grant invite you to check out Memoir Nation at www.memoirnation.com and sign up to join us at any level of membership—including free. We're excited for what's in store! Jill Ciment is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Body in Question, Heroic Measures, and The Tattoo Artist, as well as two memoirs—Half a Life and her most recent, Consent. Born in Montreal and based in both Brooklyn and Gainesville. Her work has been adapted for film and widely anthologized, and she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Jill is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've been waiting a long time to make this announcement, and the day is finally here. Write-minded is rebranding as Memoir Nation—and along with Memoir Nation the podcast comes Memoir Nation the community and website, and an annual event we'll be kicking off in January called JanYourStory. On this week's episode, Grant and Brooke share the news, and talk about why they're going this direction, and why they're both so moved and inspired by memoir. The show won't change all that much, though the focus may be a little more refined. Please visit www.MemoirNation.com to see what we're up to, and if you're a long time listener, we're asking for your support by way of donations at: https://buymeacoffee.com/memoirnation. This helps us get off the ground with this new endeavor. And we thank you for listening and for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writers, authors, you do not want to miss these great insights about reading on stage, taking up space, and generally being yourself—only amplified—when you read your work in public. Guest Jorah LaFleur brings a wealth of encouragement and permission, along with some great tips to improve your presence when you perform or read aloud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're featuring longtime agent and publishing pro Betsy Lerner on her debut novel, Shred Sisters. We talk about being an industry insider and whether that gives you a leg up, as well as the old adage to write what you know. Betsy shares with us how her lived experience shows up in this book, noting that Freud would have a field day—and before it's all over, she offers generous and tactical marketing tips for authors. This episode has got it all! On this week's Substackin, we're giving a shoutout to Sub Club, which you can and should subscribe to at https://subclub.substack.com. Sub Club offers many great resources for writers—on where to submit, who's looking for submissions, and best practices for getting your work out into the world. Highly recommended resource for writers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks back, Grant suggested Write-minded dedicate a whole episode to All Fours, by Miranda July—and we decided to do it. This week Brooke and Grant explore All Fours as a novel of a generation, and talk about who Miranda July is, why the book has hit such a zeitgeist moment, and whether publishers can anticipate or make these kinds of successes. Brooke has suggested that All Fours is the Fear of Flying of this generation, and we're diving into why the book matters, some of its controversies and uncomfortable moments, and why we think you should read it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Write-minded delves into publishing again in this week's show, specifically focused on traditional publishing and the feelings that are part of the journey. Brooke and Grant connect with literary Kate McKean about her new book, Write Through It, which really is a roadmap to everything you want to know about how to stay the course on your publishing journey, and how to work through your feelings. There's tons of good advice and cheerleading and straight-shooting in this book to help you understand and to demystify the whole publishing process. Kate is a generous guest, and whether you've published, want to publish, or feel daunted by publishing, you'll benefit tons from her wisdom! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we invite one of our favorite authors, Lidia Yuknavitch, back to Write-minded to discuss her new book, Reading the Waves, as well as how we can re-envision and reimagine our past experiences through the practice of asking questions and reconsidering what we think we know. “Shapeshifting” is Lidia's word, and the book (as well as this conversation) considers ways we can re-enter our own memories and rearrange the pieces so that we might change and grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode tells the story of a dramatic and traumatic story, and how writing played a central role in recovery and changing the outcome of one author's life. This week's episode is an epic tale as much as it is interview, and it will change the way you think of the power of writing to charge your neurons and heal your mind—not to mention the way you think about willpower, writers' block, and why writing is both personally and universally life-changing and life-saving. This week's harrowing and fascinating story-episode is not to be missed.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If part of why you write is because you have some things to share from a life well- or hard- or fully lived, then you're in good company. Personal writing is about connection, and making sense of our experience, and this week's guest, Sari Botton, knows a thing or two about what brings writers to the page. She is a champion of personal writing and memoir, and is going to share about contributing, about her own writing process and why it's hard to put personal things into the world, and so much more—including how to stay the course during these insane times we're living in and through. To read Sari's piece that's part of Writing Co-Lab's 100 Days of Creative Resistance, visit here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a caveat out the gate here, which is that in this week's interview, Tom Perrotta stipulates that he writes about people and communities and the dramas that unfold—in places that just happen to be the suburbs. That said, we're bringing you a great and often funny conversation with Perrotta about his decades of work, how his character Tracy Flick got caught up in the backlash of #MeToo, how he thinks about recurring characters, and his reminiscences about early books on tape when they used to be ten or more cassettes in a giant plastic case. Lots to sink your teeth into in this week's show. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's guest is Jean Kwok, a writer known for writing literary thrillers, which is the blending of literary writing and mystery, resulting in tension-filled books with exciting twists. Jean brings fantastic insights into complex literary structures and the importance of knowing what you're doing. A fun listen for anyone who loves their mysteries and thrillers wrapped up in a literary package. And this week's episode comes with a dose of Agatha Christie on the side, for reasons that will become clear when you listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Grant and Brooke talk with Dennis James Sweeney about his new book, How to Submit. If you've ever felt intimidated by the submissions process; wondered what some of the common pitfalls are when it comes to submitting, or if you need a reframe about how to think about submitting, this show is for you. Dennis has an encouraging and helpful way of submitting—thinking about it as based on community, conversation, and through the lens of trying to find the best home for your work—whether it's an op-ed, an essay, a poem, or a book. Dennis is one of the most encouraging guests we've had in a while—and if you're wanting to get published, this is an episode you'll come back to again! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're focusing on a little celebrated but much important aspect of storytelling: your story's scope. How much ground are you trying to cover and how do you execute the pacing? These are the questions you must answer if you know and understand your scope. This week's guest, Tara Dorabji, has a new novel, Call Her Freedom, that spans more than five decades, and yet, it's a relatively short book. And so, it packs a punch. Books can cover a single day or a hundred years, and consideration for how to unfold stories of such extremes and everything in between originates with the author. Join us for a bit of a deep dive into this fascinating conversation, and Tara Dorabji's insights about writing, publishing, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're looking into the stories that inspire and move us, focusing on those that focus on everyday characters who are extraordinary in their very ordinariness. We speak to guest Sadeqa Johnson about the characters who've called to her, those voices that became well-rounded characters who she brought to life. This episode touches on a bit of magic, and what it's like to listen to and get to know the characters who end up in the books we want to write. There's much to love about this episode, not the least of which is Sadeqa's energy and enthusiasm for her craft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you considering doing a writers' retreat this year? Whether you want to create your own, find something far-flung and exotic, or consider the writing retreat's bigger cousin, the writers' conference, this episode gives insights, definitions, and parameters for retreating. Guests Ellen Sussman and Connie Hale are both writing retreat leaders who share about their own programs and so much more. There are a lot of resources in this episode, so we're offering these URLs for you to explore more: • Artist Communities Alliance Network • Sonoma County Writers Camp • Oahu Writers Retreat On Substackin' this week, we salute our friend and colleague, Dan Blank, for the great and encouraging work he's doing at The Creative Shift, and point you to his Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, we're recognizing and honoring how far we've come in the world of fiction in the past decades since everyone in this week's conversation remembers a time when there was no such thing as a gay protagonist. Guest Lee Wind talks to us about his new novel and his LGBTQ advocacy—for writers and readers. We also talk about James Bond, great books for queer youth, and why we love the Independent Book Publishers Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we touch upon the struggle that presents itself for memoirists who can't or won't let the past stay in the past, especially when other people wish you would. Guest Susan Lieu shares powerfully in this week's show about how her mother became the central force and inspiration for her work after she died due to complications from a tummy tuck. In the process of writing about her mother and making sense of what happened, Susan discovered so much about her family's silence, their trauma, and about her living parent—her father. If you are looking for a case study for how memoir heals and reveals, don't miss this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We welcome you to 2025 with a show that explores the exploration of form. In this conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Forrest Gander, we consider the nature of the writing journey—and its connection to landscape, the multiplicity of selves, and the kaleidoscopic experience of bringing together multiple eras of a lived life. Gander calls his new book a novel poem, and you'll find out why, along with other beautiful insights about love and loss and the journey of being a writer—and a human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Write-minded's 7th New Year's show—where Grant and Brooke always circle around their challenge with resolutions, even as they make them and break them and every so often vow not to bother with them. This year they look back to certain resolutions declared and uncompleted, and grapple with the reckoning that must come when you assert such intentions out loud. And yet, Write-minded is also all about the fact that this writing business takes the time it takes, and this show comes around each year to help unpack goals asserted and achieved, goals shifted and morphed, goal posts moved and realigned, and much more. Happy 2025, dear writers, listeners, and creatives. Happy to be on this journey with you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's show focuses on endings, and beginnings. Guest Zahid Rafiq, who's written a short story collection whose endings serve the stories and his characters, speaks to how he thinks about endings, including those that others might find less than satisfying. We're defending a particular type of ending, those in which writers may feel less than compelled to tie their story in a bow for readers. Brooke points to a series of YouTube shorts she did on beginnings and endings in memoir that we invite memoirists to check out, and we close the show with a Substackin' post Brooke wrote inspired by Salman Rushdie's keynote at the Kauai Writers Conference in November. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's show features guest Faith Adiele, who's just released two chapbooks that are in conversation with one another. These books are a springboard for a conversation about hybrid writing, hybrid memoirs, the popularity of chapbooks, and hybrid forms. If you're a writer who's been told “you can't do that,” this episode will be validating, if not vindicating. The publishing world is playing catch-up to all the creativity writers are bringing to the fore, and Faith Adiele is at the forefront of a movement of writers who are playing, creating, and breaking both rules and boundaries. Tune in for an interesting, fun, and permission-giving show. And if you're interested in residencies, check out Faith's tutorial, “Residencies 101” on the homepage of her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week guest Jeannine Ouellette returns to Write-minded to share some specific teachings and practical tips for writers who want to better curb their own impulses to tell and/or to overwrite. This episode is a little more craft-focused than we normally do, and there's no better person than Jeannine to showcase actionable ideas and student case studies. If you don't already subscribe to her Substack, Writing in the Dark, get on her list asap—and this week's Substackin' highlights a recent post we loved that's on point for the themes of this week's show: From Playful to Profound, which you can read in its entirety here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's Write-minded delves into our cultural and literary relationship with drugs, examining the role drugs play in creativity and among creatives. We also look at novels and memoirs that center drugs and alcohol, and talk to author Emily Witt about her own foray into this territory with her latest memoir, Health and Safety. Join us for this inquiry into the intersections between drugs and art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode is a deep conversation that covers love, embracing contradiction, and guest Carvell Wallace's journey to and through memoir. This is an enlightening interview for anyone who's ever contemplated paradox, or how to tackle big, tangly ideas in your writing. Writing a memoir is an ambitious act of the heart, and we honor that journey this week in all its complexity and bigness. On Substackin', we're pleased to be sharing some of our favorite memoir writers' Substacks, and hope you'll take a look. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Write-minded is exploring listening—as a practice, as an experience, as something that interacts with our writing. Guest Elizabeth Rosner's new book is Third Ear, a book that she describes as a hybrid memoir. Listen in to find out why, to consider your own relationship with listening, and to consider all the ways that listening drives and inspires our writing. On Substackin' this week, we revisit Grant's post about being patient with impatience, with themes resonant to the episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode is inspired by guest Barbara Ridley's new novel, Unswerving, whose central protagonist is gay and disabled. We explore the dearth of disabled characters in fiction, and hear from Barbara how choosing to write about a character who was doubly “othered” drew critiques that she was perhaps going a bridge too far. This episode examines sensitivities to consider when writing “the other” in fiction, and also why it's important to write characters who don't often get an opportunity to be centered—as it creates empathy and opens our eyes to the broad range of human experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It could be said of this week's guest that she, like the title of this week's show, is fascinating and daunting. And that this is a pull toward the things we're interested in, that we want to dive more deeply into, is the subject of this week's show. Edwidge Danticat is a powerhouse in the literary world who's written about immigration and poverty, exile and political upheaval, and so much more. There's much to learn from the wisdom of a writer like Danticat who has been well and widely published for three decades, and who offers up insights across form—from memoir, to fiction, to essay. Tune in to hear from a literary force of nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Write-minded is wont to do, we bring you another tell-it-like-it-is reality bites episode about book publishing. And while the news isn't all good, it's also not all bad—and guest Michael Castleman is living, breathing proof that it's worth it, as long as you're ready to do the work and understand what you're getting yourself into. Join us on this journey from the Gutenberg Press to modern-day publishing. Whether you're a reader, writer, author, or industry person, you're bound to learn something new from this week's show.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's Write-minded is a thoughtful conversation about where writers' values meet public persona and the writing life. Guest Maggie Tokuda-Hall treats us to her thinking about career, ambition, and why she writes what subjects and characters she writes, and why she doesn't write for adults. We get into the important topic of what's at stake when writers speak up and out—touching upon the tensions that exist between standing up for what you believe in and a literary world that doesn't always make those choices easy. Substackin' this week takes a look at Brooke's post about genre and category, “Your Story Is More Important Than Your Category.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A rocking ride through punk influence on prose and story, this interview with guest Joshua Mohr is, more than anything, about pushing your limits and getting out of your comfort zone. In his new book, Saint the Terrifying, Josh does a few things he's never tried—and he walks us through why that's been so invigorating, and how it's pushed his limits as a writer. We delve into not outlining and the power of alternative histories, and get to hear about why Josh wrote this book wanting it to feel like it might fall apart at any moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne Lamott joins Write-minded this week to talk about so many things—what she writes about; how she kills her darlings; her process with her early readers and editors; and more. On the question of being compulsively readable, she shares with us some of the ideas from Bird by Bird that have stood the test of time, why to cut your darlings, and how she thinks about those early first shitty drafts. Write-minded and Anne Lamott also invite you to join us the last weekend in October for a special writing retreat in Los Angeles. Visit WritersRising.com and enter code writeminded10 to get 10% off. And this week's Substackin' is drawn from Brooke's Substack, Why You Maybe Should Write a Memoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, to draw attention to Banned Books Week and to stand in solidarity with publishers, authors, and all industry professionals who fight to keep diverse voices on library shelves, Write-minded features guest Amanda Jones, an educator and librarian whose book, That Librarian, is necessary reading. Amanda shares her more than two-year journey of being bullied, harassed, and smeared because she dared to stand up for diverse books and diverse voices. The phenomenon of canceling librarians or get them fired is not singular, and Amanda Jones's story serves as a stark reminder about what's at stake in our country right now. She draws attention to efforts to defund libraries and shares why representation in literature matters so much. Listen and take action. And check out Grant's Substack about another kind of banning—banning the story we want to tell—in this week's Substackin'.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode is inspired by Grant's recent rejection journey. Yes, listeners, Grant's book about rejection has been roundly rejected—so we're taking an excursion into the world of rejection, how we deal with it, and what some options might be for a book that doesn't get picked up by a publisher. Grant and Brooke explore their relationship with and to rejection—and unpack all the ways in which rejection is interconnected to the publishing journey—and not just for authors. This goes for publishers, agents, editors, and other publishing-adjacent folks too. This week's Substackin' gets into self-pity, which we might take straight up, or neat, or on the rocks with our rejection. Grant and Brooke are drawing from their own Substacks and others for these features, and we invite you to find us at https://grantfaulkner.substack.com and https://brookewarner.substack.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's guest, Brontez Purnell, is the kind of writer who's either hard to pin down, or just won't be. As such, he's inspired an episode about who gets to draw outside the lines and why in the realm of book publishing. Whether you love your lane, feel confined by your lane, or insist on busting out of your lane, we invite you to consider what it means to be classifiable and contained, and whether or not it suits you to be so—or to refuse the categories and labels publishing loves to put on authors. An existential episode inspired by an author who's blowing up the boxes and having fun doing it. This week's Substackin' is based on Brooke's post, “Why You Can't Equate Your Substack Posts to a Book: On the Staying Power of the Book.” Grant and Brooke are drawing from their own Substacks and others for these features, and we invite you to find us at https://grantfaulkner.substack.com and https://brookewarner.substack.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We kick off a new season with the brilliant Jane Alison and a wide-ranging conversation about form and structure in fiction and memoir. Brooke and Grant were so inspired by Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane's her book about craft and the theory of writing, that this episode is dedicated to the ideas around structure and form that are at the heart of that book. This is a nerdy, writerly deep dive to welcome listeners to a new season. Also of note is a new feature, Substackin', which will be rounding out each episode this season. This week's Substackin' is inspired by Brooke's post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our final summer round up of our favorite shows, Write-minded chose Maggie Smith and Shze-Hui Tjoa, highlighting two bright lights in the Memoirsphere who are elevating the genre and showcasing new ways of thinking about memoir. It's an exciting time to be a memoirist and a memoir reader, and if you missed these two interviews the first time around—or even if you didn't—make sure to catch the insights and inspiration of these two groundbreaking writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In celebration of the kind of fiction readers love but the industry doesn't always know what to do with comes two past episodes honoring fan fiction and gothic fiction, respectively. Revisiting these episodes is a reminder of the vast world of fiction outside the narrow confines of upmarket or commercial or historical fiction. Our two past guests, Rainbow Rowell and Isabel Cañas, take us on a journey through their respective inspirations, views of the industry, and insights into the world of writing fiction that exists in the margins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this second week of Write-minded's August mashups, we bring back the heartfelt interviews with Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito, both of whom spoke so honestly and supportively about writing and sharing stories they've carried with them their entire lives. Javier's harrowing journey from El Salvador to the US border when he was just nine years old, traveling as an unaccompanied minor is the subject of his memoir, Solito, and Susan's I Would Meet You Anywhere centers her adoption story, touching upon themes of longing, abandonment, identity, and more. Both authors grapple with exposure in these soul-searching stories of identity and survival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every August Grant and Brooke share their summer plans and writing aspirations and hopes and fails, along with some mashups of their favorite interviews of the year. Write-minded kicks off this best-of series with two beloved industry experts—agent Lisa Leshne and publicist Kathleen Schmidt. There's real wisdom and straight-talk in these conversations that writers and authors will want to take in and absorb. So even if you heard these the first time around, take it in again—and have a wonderful start to your August. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most writers either have or will have a failed or abandoned book project—or two, or three, or four—over the course of their lifetimes. The more you write, the more crisis moments you'll face. It can be hard to come back from those moments, which is why this week's episode with Paolo Bacigalupi is so encouraging. He shares with us his journey back from the edge of despair, having lost all motivation to write—and how he found his way to his latest book, Navola. This inspiring episode closes out our fifth season, and includes tips for world-building and wise words about this existential question so many of us face: why write. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode airs Brooke in conversation with Naomi Klein at this year's Bay Area Book Festival. While this interview does not hew to Write-minded's effort to offer weekly doses of inspiration for writers, Brooke and Grant decided to make this available both because our listeners requested it and because we admire the work Naomi Klein is doing in the world. This is a conversation about Israel/Gaza, Jewish heritage and history, American politics, and about Doppelganger, Klein's 2023 book, which was Brooke's favorite book of last year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Secrets come in all forms, big and small. We inherit secrets, carry the secrets of others, and struggle with the burden of all they hold and how they sometimes fester within us. This week's episode with guest Margaret Juhae Lee explores the difference between people who want to keep the past buried and those who want to set it free. We explore intergenerational trauma and how that's often its own form of carrying secrets forward from the past. This week's trend is about book festivals, so please follow the link to find a festival near you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's guest, Jayne Anne Phillips, is a Pulitzer prize-winning author for her latest book, Night Watch, which gives Write-minded an opportunity to muse about awards—why they matter, what we make of them and do with them, and where we might find awards from things we seek out in addition to those we receive. Join us for this wide-ranging literary conversation about storytelling, language, flash fiction, reading, and, of course, awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's Write-minded centers questions, and how questions guide writers, drive fiction, and unearth important stories. Guest Rachel Khong shares how the big and provocative question of who's a “real American” informed her new novel and why she writes without an outline. We also talk about ambition and drive, why novelists have to grapple with people speculating what in their fiction is “real,” and much more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Write-minded is celebrating memoir as an evolving form this week, tackling the difference between imaginative writing in memoir and writing in memoir that might not be true. Memoir is increasingly embodying its rightful spot in the realm of creative nonfiction, in that there's allowance for writers to explore ideas and truths within the realms of creative devices, imagined conversations, different points of view, and more—and yet how do we keep that within the container of Truth? Listen in to this episode to find out more, and to hear from a rising talent, guest Shze-Hui Tjoa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we take on The Big Novel and unpack our thoughts on novel length, the very concept of The Great American Novel, advances, and more. Guest Garth Risk Hallberg joins us to talk about his own long works of fiction, as well as his writing process that involves seeing where his characters want to take him. We touch upon characterization vs. plot, the nature of long stories, and finding what motivates your characters in fiction. There's a lot to take away from this episode, so tune in! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Write-minded's 300th episode! And we're celebrating by bringing listeners the esteemed Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose novel, The Sympathizer, was adapted for HBO Max and started streaming in April. In this interview, Nguyen addresses didacticism as a craft choice, the mindset of writers who, like him, find themselves between two languages, and how his desire to capture the Vietnamese perspective on the Vietnam War (and more) made him a writer. Nguyen's generosity and enthusiasm for his work and his craft shine through in every answer, and Write-minded is grateful to cap this milestone with such a beloved author and guest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's episode is one for book lovers, book collectors, aspiring authors, and every kind of writer. It's always helpful to know what booksellers know—because bookstores do so much more than just provide a place for browsing and buying books. Join us to talk with Josh Cook of  Porter Square Books about his new book, The Art of Libromancy, and why bookselling is political, what authors should think about when speaking to booksellers, and what you need to know about Amazon and Bookshop and the landscape of buying books. Plus, Grant and Brooke swap stories about their time working in bookstores, and Brooke promised to share in the show notes a link to her essay about her months spent working (and bunking) at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's extra-inspiring show, guest Dhonielle Clayton treats us to a generous conversation about effecting change in the industry and how that inevitable comes with backlash. We talk about representation in publishing, Penguin Random House's recent firing of two high-profile publishers, and book bans—among other important topics, like packaging and IP and how kids seeing characters that look like them in fiction opens up unimagined possibilities for their futures. We also encourage you to check out the work being done at We Need Diverse Books as supplemental to this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What will other people think? What will be the consequences of sharing my truth? These are among some of the questions that hold memoirists back, and their realities post-publication can cause “vulnerability hangovers.” Exposure, fear of fallout, concern for people we love—memoir doesn't make it easy. With very recent experience informing her, this week's guest, Susan Kiyo Ito, generously wades into the territory of these themes. If you're grappling with exposure pre- or post-publication, you won't want to miss this show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices