From debut authors to Pulitzer Prize winners, Writers on Writing tackles a little of everything — novels, short stories, memoir, poetry, and more, as well as interviews with agents and publishers.

Unlike other shows dedicated to discussing books, we focus on the art, craft, and business of writing. Writers appreciate the opportunity to talk about the artistic elements of their job — the thousands of decisions that must be made to produce a manuscript. There’s no aspect of craft, creativity, and publishing we don’t explore.

We’ve hosted well over 1,500 authors on the show including Elizabeth Strout, S.A. Cosby, Ann Patchett, Amor Towles, and George Saunders. Expert advice from some of the industry’s top writers allows us to offer a show that’s been called “your own personal MFA program” (with no financial strain).

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, host
Marrie Stone, co-host

Music and sound editing by Travis Barrett

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, or your favorite podcast app.

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EPISODES

(2001 - present)

Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Katherine Heiny, author of “Games and Rituals”

Katherine Heiny has traveled one of the more interesting roads into publishing we’ve heard in a while. She was published by The New Yorker at the incredible age of 25. Praised as a prodigy, her work appeared in an anthology alongside Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. And then she disappeared.

She popped back up two decades later when she published her first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow – followed by two novels, Early Morning Riser and Standard Deviation, and now she’s back with another story collection. In those intervening years, she married a former spy, wrote 25 young adult books under a pen name, and emerged the hilarious and gut-punching writer she is today.

Games & Rituals came out last year. Katherine joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, what writing YA brought to her fiction, the situation versus the story and finding the aboutness of your story, what the short story form allows her to do that the novel does not, how to weave backstory into your short stories, fictionalizing real life events, Katherine’s thoughts about publishing 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. You can also 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 you can 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 20, 2024) 

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

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Literary agent Madeline Ticknor

Madeline is an agent and assistant at Janklow & Nesbit looking for fiction that bridges the gap between commercial and literary, upmarket thrillers and grounded speculative stories that explore the ideas of family and home, and queer stories. She's also looking for select narrative nonfiction. Madeline began her agenting career in 2018 as an intern at Curtis Brown, and soon after began working as an assistant at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. In 2021, she joined Writers House as an agent associate and in 2022 Madeline joined Janklow & Nesbit Associates where she works with senior agent PJ Mark and is actively building her own list. A graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Madeline now lives in Brooklyn. Prior to publishing, she worked in a children's library, at a few different advertising agencies, and as a barista in coffee shops around NYC. 

Madeline joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss the dreaded novel synopsis and how agents and editors use it, query letters, comps, how perfect a manuscript needs to be for her to take it on, mistakes writers make, 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. You can also 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 you can 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 1, 2024) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Téa Obreht, author of “The Morningside”

Téa Obreht is the international bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award when she was only 25. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Téa’s latest is The Morningside, out later this month by Random House. It has all her signature magical realism elements alongside exploring big contemporary issues like climate change and immigration, all spun around some compelling mysterious figures living in an evocative place. Téa joins Marrie Stone to talk about finding her characters, constructing her setting, and settling on her structure and point of view. They also talk about how to weave non-POV character’s backstory into a first-person narrative, her color-coded system of keeping track of her symbols, prologues, and her advice to writers just entering the field.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also 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 you can 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 7, 2024) 

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

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Grant Faulkner, author of THE ART OF BREVITY

Grant Faulkner, the former Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and the co-host of the podcast, Write-minded. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York TimesPoets & WritersLiterary HubWriter’s Digest, and The Writer. His stories have appeared in The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short FictionFlash Fiction AmericaBest Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. His new book is The Art of Brevity, published by the University of New Mexico Press.

Grant joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about The Art of Brevity and why writing good flash fiction can be difficult to get right, the role of dialogue in flash, what you want to leave a reader with at the end of a story, how writing flash fiction influences his longer prose, the most common mistake he encounters in flash, 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. You can also 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 you can 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 1, 2024) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Mona Simpson, author of “Commitment”

Mona Simpson is the bestselling author of seven novels including Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, Casebook and, most recently, Commitment.

Mona studied poetry at Berkley. She got her MFA from Columbia. During grad school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years. She also teaches at UCLA. She knows the industry from several angles and has worked in it for decades.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about Commitment and writing multiple point-of-view novels. They talk about maintaining momentum in a novel’s middle, bringing bygone eras back to life, breathing life into your characters, playing the role of psychologist as writer, the role of research and much more.

In many ways, Commitment might be considered a “what-if” novel. Some aspects bear resemblance to Mona’s life and other aspects are very different. Mona and Marrie also discuss the generative idea of “what-if” novels, how writing one novel sometimes begets another, and other ways to generate ideas for your fiction.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also 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 you can 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 February 9, 2024) 

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

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Literary agent CeCe Lyra

CeCe Lyra, a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, represents adult fiction and nonfiction. She is especially looking for clients with whom she can build fruitful, lasting relationships. CeCe believes that stories are empathy-generating machines capable of healing, connecting, and enacting true change. As a mixed-race Latinx immigrant, CeCe understands the power of seeing oneself reflected in books, hence her passion for championing under or misrepresented voices and narratives. She is also the co-host of the popular podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which has over two million downloads.

CeCe joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about query letters, conversations writers should have with prospective agents, interpreting rejection letters, how much of a submission an agent will read before they stop, googling writers, mistakes writers make, 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. You can also support the show by buying books at our new 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 you can 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 Feb. 1, 2024) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Louise Kennedy, author of “Trespasses” and “The End of the World is a Cul De Sac”

Louise Kennedy may not have been a name you’d heard five years ago. Since 2021, she’s had both a debut novel and a collection of short stories published. Trespasses was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Her story collection The End of the World is a Cul De Sac came out to great acclaim.

Louise spent 30 years working as a chef and didn’t come to writing until her 50s. She grew up Catholic on the outskirts of Belfast in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. A bomb detonated in front of her grandmother during a walk to the bank, resulting in several hundred stitches. The pub that her grandfather ran suffered two bombing attempts. After the second one, they moved to Ireland where she still lives today.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about both books, her approaches to short stories versus novels, what coming to writing later in life gave to her fiction, why Irish is such a dynamic language, the importance of her writing shed, 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. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can 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 January 31, 2024) 

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

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Andrew Ewell, author of SET FOR LIFE

Andrew Ewell, the author of the new novel, Set for Life. He’s received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and VCCA France. His stories and essays have appeared in Salon, the Chattahoochee Review, Five Chapters, and TriQuarterly, among others. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Boston University and taught creative writing at numerous other universities before writing Set for Life.

Andrew joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss autofiction, unnamed protagonists, unlikeable characters—a popular topic these days, keeping track of characters and plot, writing about academia, endings, 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. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can 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 January 19, 2024) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Kristin Hannah, author of “The Women”

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale. She also authored the NYT bestsellers The Great Alone, The Four Winds and, most recently, The Women, which shares the largely untold tales of women in the Vietnam War who served in the nursing corp. Warner Brothers already acquired the film rights even before the book’s release. (An interview with Kristin regarding The Great Alone can be found here.)

Kristin joins Marrie Stone to talk about The Women and why it took more than 20 years before she felt ready to tackle this topic. She talks about her approach to writing trauma and war without overwhelming the reader, and why writing about Vietnam was so different from writing about WWII. She also discusses what goes into researching a book like this and how she knows when she’s done enough. In addition to other writing advice, Kristin shares how Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones impacted her writing, why she writes in longhand, 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. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can 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 January 18, 2024) 

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

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Literary agent Emma Dries

Literary agent Emma Dries is a writer and editor, and an agent at Triangle House Literary, where she represents literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and academic crossover, with a special interest in climate writing. She began her career in editorial, working with bestselling and award winning authors at Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday,  Ecco, and Flatiron Books. She has a BA in History from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins, where she also taught undergraduate fiction and poetry. Her writing has been published in Lit HubBookforumOutside and Dwell and she was the finalist for the Boston Review 2021 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest.

Emma joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about about unlikeable characters in fiction, query letters, MFAs, when you know a manuscript is ready to send out, ageism, a conversation you should have with an agent before signing, 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. You can also support the show by buying books at our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. Finally, on Spotify you can 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 January 20, 2024) 

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



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Hisham Matar, author of “My Friends”

Pulitzer Prize winning author Hisham Matar’s debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and The Guardian First Book Award and won numerous international prizes. His prize-winning memoir, The Return, published in 2016, received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. It was one of The New York Times' top 10 books of the year. He’s also the author of Anatomy of a Disappearance and A Month in Siena, which was named One of the Best Books of the Year in 2019 by The Washington Post and Evening Standard.

My Friends is his latest. The New York Times recently said of it, “Readers encountering Matar for the first time will find in My Friends a masterly literary meditation on his lifelong themes. For those who already know his work, the effect is amplified tenfold. In the dark house Matar continues to explore, the rooms are full of echoes: The further in you go, the louder they get.”

Matar joins Marrie Stone to talk about these lifelong preoccupations, and the sources from which they stem. He discusses his literary influences, why he believes literature is critical in times of despair, and what he hopes to achieve in his fiction. They also discuss structure, points of view, how time can work in fiction, and other issues of craft.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 January 8, 2024) 

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

 

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Melissa Broder, author of DEATH VALLEY

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels, Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in ten languages. She has written for the New York Times, Elle.com, and New York Magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles.

Melissa chats with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett about her new novel, Death Valley. She talks about how when the first line came to her, she put aside what she was working on because she knew this was the book she needed to focus on. They discuss making tragedy funny, the Best Western hotel chain, magic cacti, process, plotting, and externalizing the internal life of characters.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We also have an affiliate bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 December January 5, 2023) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of “The Waters”

Bonnie Jo Campbell, known as the “master of rural noir,” is the author of eight books. Her story collection, American Salvage, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. Her 2011 novel, Once Upon a River, was made into a film in 2020.

In this episode, Bonnie chats with Marrie Stone about her highly anticipated novel The Waters, which comes out next week. It’s Bonnie’s first novel in over a decade and it’s already receiving rave reviews. The Waters follows three generations of women in the swamplands of Michigan. Herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook is the matriarch and the area’s healer, homeopath, or witch, depending on the way the town looks at her. Meet Hermine (played by Bonnie’s mother) here.

Bonnie talks about the architecture of this novel, and how she struggled to find something beyond the traditional three-act structure. She shares her discovery of Sharon Blackie, and the realization that structure can take different forms. The conversation also references Jane Alison’s  Meander, Spiral, Explode.

They talk about character development and what makes characters unique, referencing both Jungian psychotherapists Robert A. Johnson and James Hillman (author of The Soul’s Code).

Bonnie also discusses fairy tales in literary fiction, how to talk about contemporary and divisive issues like abortion and gun control in accessible ways, how to make the most of your settings, breathing life into mysterious characters, her revision process and much more. She also shares additional advice to writers (particularly short story writers) here.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 December 27, 2023) 

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

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Kathleen Schmidt, Publishing Confidential

Kathleen Schmidt, founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, has experience in all aspects of the industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, and ghostwriter. Her career encompasses 30 years of creating and directing impactful and strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-List celebrities, athletes, and high-profile personalities. To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM. Kathleen writes the Publishing Confidential Substack.

Kathleen joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss what sells books, blurbs, brands, Substack, book clubs, and more.

To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page.

(Recorded in September 2023) 

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

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Lisa Gornick, author of “Ana Turns”

Lisa Gornick has been hailed by NPR as “one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America…immensely talented and brave.” She is the author of four previous novels—most recently The Peacock Feast and Louisa Meets Bear.

In this episode, Lisa chats with Marrie Stone about her latest novel, Ana Turns. Ana is turning 60, which is cause for reflection on her sexless marriage, her 7-year affair, her worries about her only child who’s doing some reflecting of their own, her arguably cruel and emotionally unavailable mother, and much more. In addition to unpacking how Lisa rendered these characters and their chorus of voices, they chat about how to manage time and backstory in a novel, dealing with contemporary issues in sensitive ways, thoughts on sensitivity readers (with a brief reference to Ian McEwan’s thoughts on the same),  and weaving in subplots, among other topics.

Lisa also shares some psychotherapeutic wisdom from her days as a practicing therapist including unpacking writers’ fears about telling their own stories authentically because of who it might hurt, the right to tell ones’ stories, and how to protect others along the way. She also shares some additional insights about how her work in psychotherapy impacts her writing process on Patreon. To read more, or for more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page.

To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 December 6, 2023) 

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

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Literary Agent Matthew Carnicelli

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.

Matthew joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what he’s looking for, comps, query letters, the author bio, ageism, interpreting rejection, how he finds his authors, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 December 1, 2023) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Jayne Anne Phillips, author of “Night Watch”

Jayne Anne Phillips’s first book of stories, Black Tickets (published in 1979 when she was only 26), won the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Featured in Newsweek, Raymond Carver pronounced Black Tickets “stories unlike any in our literature…a crooked beauty” and established Jayne Anne as a writer “in love with the American language.” She was praised by Nadine Gordimer as “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty” and Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre. 

Since then, she’s written an additional collection of short stories and six novels. Her latest, Night Watch, was longlisted for the National Book Award. It’s considered part of a trilogy of war novels alongside Machine Dreams (about Vietnam) and Lark and Termite (about Korea). Others include Quiet Dell, Shelter, and Mother Kind. All of these works have garnered prizes, praise and critic attention.

Jayne Anne Phillips joins Marrie Stone to talk about Night Watch. They discuss writing a Civil War story that speaks to our times, the research required of historical fiction and how to organize it, accessing the voices of another time, writing difficult scenes, how to manage the element of surprise for both the reader and the writer, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 November 30, 2023) 

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

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Literary agent Mark Tavani

Mark Tavani started his publishing career in 2000 with Ballantine Books and spent more than 23 years with Penguin Random House, Bantam, Del Rey, and G.P. Putnam's Sons. He edited bestsellers and award-winners across numerous categories of fiction and nonfiction, including books by Jim Abbott, Steve Berry, C.J. Box, Justin Cronin, Clive and Dirk Cussler, Jeffery Deaver, Lisa Gardner, Jack McCallum, Lisa Scottoline, Bill Simmons, and R.L. Stine. He recently joined the David Black Literary Agency, where he represents both fiction and nonfiction. Mark has a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He is an adjunct professor with NYU's School of Professional Studies and lives with his wife, his daughters, and a headstrong dog in Rutherford, New Jersey. 

Mark Tavani joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what he’s looking for, the dreaded comps, the category of bookclub fiction, submitting memoir, ageism in publishing (or not), why MFAs and the literary community involvement are important, how to know if an agent is the right fit for you, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 November 17, 2023) 

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

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Marrie Stone Marrie Stone

Nathan Hill, author of “Wellness”

Nathan Hill first came on the show in 2017 with his ­best-selling debut novel, The Nix, which was named the #1 book of the year by Audible and Entertainment Weekly, and one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others.

Wellness came out this year. It’s also a New York Times bestseller and was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club in September. Nathan joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, along with how his characters reveal themselves to him, how he manages time in a novel, how he weaves copious amounts of research into the narrative, how he plays with unconventional points of view, and much more. He also shares his thoughts on getting an MFA, how he found his agent, and his advice to aspiring novelists who feel stuck on the outside of the publishing industry.

Along the way, the conversation references an article Nathan wrote for Oprah’s Magazine, “How to Write a Novel in 7 Easy Steps.” It’s funny, irreverent, but has some great advice.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 November 21, 2023) 

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

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Matt Coyle, author of ODYSSEY’S END

Matt Coyle, author of the new novel, Odyssey’s End, is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. He knew he wanted to be a crime writer when he was 14 and his father gave him The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. He graduated with a degree in English from University of California at Santa Barbara. His foray into crime fiction was delayed for 30 years as he spent time managing a restaurant, selling golf clubs for various golf companies, and in national sales for a sports licensing company. His tenth crime novel is Odyssey’s End. Matt lives in San Diego, where he’s at work at his next novel.

Matt joined Barbara to talk about writing a series versus a standalone, being a pantser, how he keeps the tension going, writing about emotional experiences he hasn’t personally gone through, time locks, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can 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 October 20, 2023) 

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

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