Jayne Anne Phillips has been on the podcast at least three times. First in 2000, with her novel MotherKind . Again in 2014 with Quiet Dell , and the last time in 2023 with Night Watch , before it was announced as the Pulitzer Prize winner. Raymond Carver pronounced her first story collection 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 published that collection in 1979 when she was only 26. ...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 1 min
T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of thirty books of fiction, including The Tortilla Curtain , Talk to Me , I Walk Between the Raindrops , and most recently, No Way Home. He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977 and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974. His work has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian, Farsi, and Vietnamese. His stories have appeared i...
Apr 28, 2026•54 min
Louise Erdrich in one of those relatively rare authors who has won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She’s authored 19 novels as well as story collections, poetry collections, children’s books and nonfiction. Her first novel, Love Medicine , was the only debut ever to with the National Book Critic Circle Award for Fiction. The Round House won the National Book Award in 2012. The Night Watchman won the Pulitzer in 2021. Her latest story collection is Python’s Kiss. It contains 13 s...
Apr 20, 2026•59 min
Dylan Landis is the author of three works of fiction in the Rainey Royal Cycle, set in 1970s Greenwich Village: List of All Possible Desires , a novel in stories; the novel Rainey Royal , a New York Times Editors’ Choice; and the novel in stories Normal People Don’t Live Like This . Her work has appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading , and she has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction. In a past life she wrote six books on interior des...
Apr 14, 2026•1 hr
Anne Enright has written eight novels, most recently The Wren, The Wren , for which she was on the show in 2023. She won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. Her latest collection of essays is Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World . These 24 essays cover a lot of ground, but one big theme is how Ann...
Apr 06, 2026•56 min
Allegra Goodman’s new book, This Is Not About Us, is a Late Show With Stephen Colbert Book Club Selection. Her novels include Isola (a Reese’s Book Club selection and Libby award winner), Sam (a Read With Jenna Book Club selection), The Chalk Artist (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), and more. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy a...
Mar 31, 2026•38 min
Kate Schatz is the New York Times bestselling author of the "Rad Women" book series, including Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, and Rad American History A-Z , as well as "Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book" co-written with W. Kamau Bell. Her latest is Where the Girls Were . She joins Marrie Stone to talk about bringing history and culture alive in your fiction; how to introduce a big cast of characters to your reader; creating and maintaining suspense and momentu...
Mar 23, 2026•58 min
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling novels The Nest (named a best book of the year by People , the Washington Post , and NPR) and Good Company (a Read wit h Jenna selection). She has been a guest on Today, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and NPR’s All Things Considered . Her work has been translated into more than 28 languages, and The Nest is in development as a limited series with AMC Studios. Cynthia holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. S...
Mar 17, 2026•51 min
Jordy Rosenberg is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He’s the author of the 2018 novel, Confessions of the Fox , which was the NYT Editors’ Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Lambda Literary Award and a recipient of a number of other accolades. His latest, Night Night Fawn , is part novel, part autofiction, part unauthorized fictionalized memoir of a character inspired by Jordy’s mother. It tackles transgender...
Mar 09, 2026•58 min
Larissa Pham’s writing has appeared in The Nation , the New York Times Book Review, Aperture , Bookforum , Art in America , Granta , the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her essays and short fiction have been anthologized in Kink (Simon and Schuster, 2021); Wanting: Women Writing on Desire (Catapult, 2023); and Critical Hits , an anthology of writing on video games (Graywolf, 2023). She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School. Her deb...
Mar 07, 2026•50 min
Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This , as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi . He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer . His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic , Esquire , The Paris Review , The Best American Short Stories , and elsewhere. After directing the creative writing program at Harvard Universi...
Feb 23, 2026•1 hr
Reena Shah is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her work has been featured in the Masters Review , Electric Literature , Joyland , BBC, the American Prospect , National Geographic and the Guardian , among other publications. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Millay Arts, Tin House, and the Fulbright Foundation. She received an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center for Writers, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature. For many years, she was a kathak dancer in New York...
Feb 16, 2026•1 hr 6 min
Mark Haddon might be best known for his 2003 breakout novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . But it’s only the tip of a body of work that stretches across genres and artforms. He’s the author of three other adult novels, including The Porpoise and two collections of short stories. Dogs and Monsters came out last year. He’s also written poetry and plays. Before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time , Mark wrote over a dozen children’s books. He’s also an illustrato...
Feb 16, 2026•58 min
Richard Lange is the author of the story collections, Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing, and the novels, This Wicked World , Angel Baby , The Smack, Rovers , and Joe Hustle . He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Prize, The Short Story Dagger from Great Britain’s Crime Writers Association, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles. Richard joins Barbara DeMarco-Barre...
Feb 03, 2026•58 min
When Ann Packer’s latest novel, Some Bright Nowhere , was chosen by Oprah for her book club last November, we saw what an impact this book was making on so many folks and their experiences with dying loved ones. The book was written in a record four months – in contrast to her novel The Dive from Clausen’s Pier which took nearly 10 years. It’s a masterclass in subtle conflict, in putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, in compressed dialogue that heightens tension, in character c...
Jan 26, 2026•59 min
Andrea Bartz is a journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here, The Spare Room, The Lost Night, and The Herd . Her thrillers have been optioned by Netflix, Hulu, and other production companies, and more than half a million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her work has appeared in The New York Times , Marie Claire , Vogue , and she's held editorial positions at Glamour , Psychology Today , and Self . She was also a lead plainti...
Jan 20, 2026•52 min
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of nine books across several genres — novels, short story collections, autofiction, and now a craft book about writing. Her novel, The Giant’s House , was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1996. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the Story Prize in 2015 and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She’s appeared in five editions of The Best American Short Stories . And she has taught fiction off and on (mostly on) since 1989 including at the Univer...
Jan 12, 2026•57 min
Last year, I compiled my first-ever “Best Of the Year” show . It was such fun to make, and received such a great response from listeners, that I decided to make it an annual tradition. While I could only include a handful of authors from the past year, this episode provies a fun Whitman’s Sampler of the kinds of conversations available in our archives. Listen as Adam Johnson, Wally Lamb, and Chris Whitaker tell us where their stories come from. Laila Lalami teaches us to read like a writer. Amy ...
Dec 29, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Nicholas Boggs is the New York Times bestselling author of Baldwin: A Love Story , the first major biography of the iconic figure in more than three decades. He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as residencies at Yad...
Dec 22, 2025•47 min
We’ve been following A. Muia and her writing journey for several years. She’s been a longtime listener of the podcast and supporter of the show. We chatted in 2022 about getting an agent, the frustrations of the publishing industry and how to break into it, and all the things talented writers who have a strong manuscript but few publishing contacts encounter when trying to get their work published. Basically, most of us. A Desert Between Two Seas published in September. It’s a novel told in 14 l...
Dec 15, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Tod Goldberg is the author of the new novel, Only Way Out , published by Thomas & Mercer. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of 16 books including the acclaimed Gangsterland quartet. His short fiction and essays appeared widely and have been selected in Best American Mystery & Suspense and Best American Essays. Tod is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and Writing ...
Dec 09, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Megha Majumdar’s A Burning came out in 2020. It was an instant NYT bestseller and was nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the National Book Award, and was named one of the best books of that year by a number of media outlets. Her latest, A Guardian and a Thief , is enjoying perhaps even more success. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and was Oprah’s pick for October. Like A Burning , A Guardian and a Thief is set in contemporary India (this one in the near-distant...
Dec 01, 2025•53 min
Eric Beetner has been hailed as “the new maestro of noir,” by Ken Bruen and LitReactor said he’s “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson.” He has written more than 30 novels and his 100+ short stories have been featured in over 35 anthologies, including Palm Springs Noir, the Akashic anthology I edited that includes a story of Eric’s, one of my favorites. Along the way he’s been nominated for two International Thriller Writer awards, a Shamus, Derringer and four Anthony awards. He’s won none ...
Nov 25, 2025•55 min
Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his novel, The Orphan Master’s Son . He won the National Book Award in 2015 for his story collection, Fortune Smiles . He also authored Parasites Like Us and Emporium . Every novel and story is unlike anything that’s come before it. His latest, The Wayfinder , is no exception. Set over 1,000 years ago in the South Pacific, it weaves together the stories of two families and two islands and their opposing views of the world. Adam joins Marrie Stone t...
Nov 17, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Paul Trammell lives on a sailboat, currently at anchor in Bocas del Toro, Panama. He is the author of ten books and co-author of three more. His latest, Identity Crisis , is a nautical thriller inspired by his taking on a sailing hitchhiker and his mother’s resulting fear for his safety. This follows his psychological thriller Until They Bury Me , which explores the dangers of falling in love too fast and assuming your college sweetheart is still the person you loved years ago . Paul has also wr...
Nov 11, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction, as well as The Art of Time in Fiction which looks at how fiction is shaped and determined by time, with examples from world writers. She’s been on the show three times in the past to talk about Fools , which was longlisted for the National Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; Secrets of Happiness , which was a Washington Post Best Book of the year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of the Year; and Improvement , which won The Natio...
Nov 03, 2025•59 min
Melissa Bank, who passed away in 2022, was a fabulous writer and an incredible person. We met a few times in person, out here in Southern California when we were both speakers at the Literary Guild, and in NYC when I traveled there for conferences. She came on the show a couple of times, for Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot. Her output was modest though her books became bestsellers. She received an MFA from Cornell University and won the Nelson Algren Award for short ficti...
Oct 28, 2025•50 min
Gish Jen describes her childhood as “a master class in perseverance.” The daughters of withholding mothers learn to reject rejection, she writes. And that’s proven great training for a writer. Jen’s 10th book — Bad, Bad Girl — is part novel, part memoir, part autofiction. When her mother passed in 2020, Jen began keeping a journal, and writing notes to her mother in an attempt to understand her. She also wanted to create a record of her life for her children and grandchildren. Not believing she ...
Oct 20, 2025•58 min
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 ...
Oct 13, 2025•59 min
Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels I’ll Be You, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything , and This Is Where We Live . Pretty Things— named a Best Book of 2020 by Amazon—is currently being adapted for television. Before becoming a novelist, Janelle worked as a senior writer at Salon, and began her career as a staff writer at Wired, working on seminal Web sites like HotWired and Wired News. In the 1990s, she was also the editor and co-...
Oct 06, 2025•54 min
