This week Write-minded reaches broadly into the topic of intimacy to explore its many permutations—not just romantic, but innocuous, violent, collective, and more. Guest Stacey D’Erasmo invites us to consider intimacy in writing, how we do it, how we feel it as readers, and also to consider acts of intimacy, like an older actress showing her authentic self as she ages. Intimacy is felt, and not always something we know how to put words around, so this conversation is a particular treat, thought-provoking and enticing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

This week’s guest is John McMurtrie, the esteemed former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle’s book review section. Join us as we explore the transition of book reviews from traditional media like TV and radio to online outlets like Amazon and Goodreads. His is an interesting take about how things were and how things are, along with insight about what a book reviewer is looking for when considering what books to review. Join us as John shares valuable insights on breaking into book reviewing and what he considers to be the key elements of a great book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ..read more

What does it really mean to consider your own social responsibility as a fiction writer? Guest Naomi Kanakia confronted that very question as she considered her modeling as a trans author writing YA books for teens. What if hers was the first book a genderqueer or trans kid ever read? What did she owe her reader? These are some of the questions at the heart of this week’s episode, but we also look under the hood of the publishing industry a bit, too, from the perspective of an author who’s “inside/outside,” who’s writing across many genres, from sci-fi to lit fic, and who has a certain kind of ..read more

Strap on your seatbelts ’cause we’re going for a ride—into the wild world of book publishing. Guest Kathleen Schmidt is a leading voice in publishing. Her popular Substack, Publishing Confidential, is a go-to source for tell-it-like-it-is realities about the industry and what authors can and should expect. We talk shop this week, touching upon author platform, Barnes & Noble, and why advances make no sense. This is a not-to-be-missed episode for anyone who’s ever published or wants to be published. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

This week’s Write-minded show examines the nuanced and deep exploration at the heart of guest Lissa Soep’s new book, Other People’s Words. A consideration of the ways others’ voices echo in our own, her book and this episode shows us a kaleidoscope of how we conjure and recycle and tap into the words of others. There’s much to unpack here, too, from how we inner monologue in a way that is really dialogue to honoring the collective legacies we carry and give voice to. It’s easy to get philosophical with this week’s theme and guest, and we do, covering everything from death and loss, t ..read more

Ready for a reprieve? Join Brooke and Grant and this week’s guest, Neely Tubati-Alexander, for a conversation about whether romance and rom-com writers are having more fun. We dive into questions of the success of the genre, what publishers are looking for, and how a writer gets into romance writing in the first place. A light-hearted episode in celebration of escapism and reading as brain candy and Tubati-Alexander’s latest release, In a Not So Perfect World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

This week Write-minded wades into the important topic of writing about childhood trauma. Trauma is at the heart of many of our stories, whether you’re writing coming-of-age or only touching upon childhood stories in the context of specific memoir scenes (or raw material for fiction). Javier’s memoir, Solito, is a stunning book about his nine-week journey from El Salvador to the US as an unaccompanied minor when he was just nine years old. The original journey nearly killed him, and in this generous interview he speaks to how the journey of writing about his experience saved him. Lear ..read more

A fun episode about aesthetic, language, and paying attention to style and taste in writing. This week’s guest K-Ming Chang talks about disorientation as a style, language as something that lives in the body, and hating plot. This is a playful interview that focuses on the experiential and reminds us that we all have an existential position on our own writing. Chang’s meditation on language is expansive and inviting, and invites us to consider all the ways we are the stories we’re told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

Ghostwriting and work-for-hire are great ways to break into the publishing industry and to make a living as a writer. Guest Aubre Andrus shows us a side of the writing and publishing business that can seem a bit elusive. And more and more writers are taking on work for hire projects due to mass media layoffs and greater transparency by celebrities when it comes to writing collaborations. Also, this week’s book trend features Womb House Books, found online here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

This week’s Write-minded floats into the magical and surreal world of Ingrid Rojas Contreras, who talks about her new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, about her curandera-storytelling mother and their shared history of amnesia, and about why to her magical realism is just realism. Grant and Brooke consider what gets passed down to us from our families and how our stories and histories are in our bones and lived experience, and how reading stories from writers whose lives are vastly different from our own can invigorate our writing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ..read more