Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers kicked off in September 2018 and airs every week. We are a podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, two friends and colleagues who bring a community-minded sensibility to the writing journey, each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional. Write-minded f ...
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The Nonfiction Authors Podcast is packed with actionable advice from expert guests that help you write, finish, market, publish, promote, and profit from your books. Brought to you by the Nonfiction Authors Association, a professional organization for nonfiction authors.
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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 t…
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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 ar…
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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, …
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Self-Exposure and Writing the Story You Have to Write, featuring Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito
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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 o…
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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 conversati…
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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 f…
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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 doi…
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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 inte…
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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 litera…
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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 p…
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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 c…
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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. pl…
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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 h…
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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 wh…
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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 packag…
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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…
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We’re living through a golden age of memoir, and guest Jennifer Leigh Selig’s Deep Memoir is a new contribution to the “how-to” space for memoirists who want to explore the how and the why of memoir writing. This episode will help listeners consider their own “why” when it comes to that age-old question of why to keep at it, and also to celebrate a…
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This week’s Write-minded takes on grief, and why, as our guest Claire Jiménez says, “it’s where language collapses.” Jiménez’s new book deals with loss and grief and what happens in a family in the aftermath of a disappearance of a child, and yet, she weaves in humor and the history of American colonization of Puerto Rico and so much more. Grant an…
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This week Write-minded is interviewing an established writer whose star is on the rise. Elwin Cotman’s new story collection blew us away for how he played with form and takes readers on an expected journeys. His stories don’t fit into any box—including length, and we loved it! On this week’s show Grant also announces his departure from NaNoWriMo an…
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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 authen…
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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…
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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 …
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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 auth…
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An episode about friendship, writing about friendship, and how friendship influences our writing lives. As a community-minded podcast, Write-minded has often touched upon the importance of a broader net of friendship on our writing. This week we get a bit more specific with guest Tomas Moniz, who’s written a new book about male friendship and whose…
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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, fro…
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