Anne Enright, author of “The Wren, the Wren”

Anne Enright is the author of eleven novels, including the 2007 Booker Prize winner The Gathering. She’s written many short stories and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood. She also served as the first Laureate of Irish fiction from 2015 – 2018.

Anne joined Marrie Stone from Galway, Ireland to talk about her latest novel, The Wren, the Wren, forthcoming by Norton later in September. The book has been named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions and Literary Hub. They talk about poetry – writing poetry as a non-poet and how Anne used it to structure the novel. They discuss the Irish literary tradition (and what national literary traditions really mean). Anne talks about rendering characters from different generations, how her novels are in conversation, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. A big thanks to new patrons Amy Brown and Mariah Martin. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on August 23, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Halley Sutton, author of THE HURRICANE BLONDE

Halley Sutton is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. She graduated from Otis College of Art and Design with a master's degree in writing, and from University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in creative writing. Her first novel, The Lady Upstairs, was published by Putnam in 2020, and was nominated for a Lefty award. Her second novel, The Hurricane Blonde, was published by Putnam in August 2023. Her writing has appeared in Ms., The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, CrimeSpree Magazine, and more.

Halley Sutton joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about Hollywood history, writing backstory, naming and creating characters, revision, what to leave out, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 21, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Dennis Palumbo, author of Writing from the Inside Out & the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year, Welcome Back, Kotter), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist whose work with creative people has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

He’s also the author of the popular nonfiction book, Writing From The Inside Out. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Strand, and is collected in From Crime to Crime. His series of award-winning mystery thrillers (the latest of which is Panic Attack) feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. Recently, Dennis served as consulting producer on the Hulu TV series The Patient.

Dennis joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about the why writers procrastinate, self-worth, the habit of endlessly revising, finding time to write, the writers strike, and writers’ worries.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 21, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Julie Schumacher, author of “The English Experience”

Julie Schumacher is the author of nine novels, including five for younger readers. Three of her adult novels follow Jason Fitger, an English professor at an obscure midwestern liberal arts college known as Payne University. Dear Committee Members, The Shakespeare Requirement and, now, The English Experience all shine satirical light on academia and our cultural shift away from the humanities.

Julie joins Marrie Stone to talk about the state of satire and how she was able to satirize a profession she’s still working in (and the people involved in that profession). She also discusses the challenges and constraints she sets up for herself when writing, handling a big cast of characters, using letters and essays in fiction, and how she organizes her written notebooks. They also discuss Julie’s thoughts on MFAs, turning real life events into fiction, 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.

(Recorded on August 9, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

T.C. Boyle, author of BLUE SKIES

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of thirty books of fiction, including, most recently, The Harder They Come (2015), The Terranauts (2016), The Relive Box (2017), Outside Looking In (2019), Talk To Me (2021) and I Walk Between the Raindrops (2022). 

He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. 

His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney's, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Prise for best novel of the year (World's End, 1988); the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story (T.C. Boyle Stories, 1999); and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Curtain, 1997). He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.

His most recent novel is Blue Skies.

T.C. Boyle joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about writing climate fiction, dealing with heavy themes while keeping it light and not didactic, his influences, short stories, revision, crickets, and more.

A shout-out to our patrons: thank you, as always, for your support. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 30, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Ellen Keith, author of “The Dutch Wife” and “The Dutch Orphan”

Ellen Keith is the author of the international bestselling novel, The Dutch Wife and, most recently, The Dutch Orphan. Both novels take place during the WWII occupation of The Netherlands.

Ellen joined Marrie Stone from her home in Amsterdam. They discussed finding new stories in saturated literary topics, why third person works well for historical fiction, the benefits of multiple points of view, working with dark material, managing backstory, how to humanize unsympathetic characters, and much more.  

A shout-out to our new July patrons — Lodi, Anne, Erin, Dawn, and Thomas. Thank you for your support. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on July 26, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Gary Phillips (South Central Noir) & Molly Odintz (Austin Noir)

Today we’re focusing on noir and Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is with the perfect guests to talk about it: Molly Odintz and Gary Phillips. Molly is senior editor for CrimeReads and editor and contributor to Austin Noir (Akashic). She grew up in Austin and was a bookseller at BookPeople. Gary Phillips has published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including the Anthony-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir and South Central Noir, recently published by Akashic. The Washington Post named his novel One-Shot Harry as one of the best mysteries of 2022, and it’s been nominated for a Nero and Macavity awards. He was also a staff writer and co-producer on Snowfall, streaming on Hulu about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. And Barbara edited and contributed a story to Palm Springs Noir, also published by Akashic.

Molly and Gary joined Barbara to talk about noir (what it is, it's history), putting together an anthology, the Writers Guild strike, beginning stories, the role of an editor when putting together an anthology, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on May 26, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Kelly McMasters, author of “The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays”

Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, and former bookshop owner. She is the co-editor of This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017) and the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023).

Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top 5 summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film ‘The Atomic States of America,’ a 2012 Sundance selection.

Kelly joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest release, The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton, 2023). They discuss how this form mirrors the novel-in-short-story form and its differences. They discuss flash versus conventional essays, discovering what your essay is really about, and one piece of advice Kelly always uses during her revision process. Kelly also shares her insights about making a living as a writer and artist, what it requires, and why she won’t compromise. There are also references to advice Kelly gave in her TedX Talk about experiencing “voice block” (as opposed to “writer’s block”).

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 28, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Candi Sary, author of MAGDALENA

Candi Sary is a graduate from the University of California, Irvine. Her novel, Black Crow White Lie, won a Reader Views Literary Award, a Chanticleer International Book Award, and was First Runner-Up in the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her new novel, Magdalena, will be released by Regal House Publishing on July 11. A mother of two adult children, Sary lives in Southern California with her husband, a dog, a cat and several ducks. 

Candi Sary joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about Magdalena and the path to publication. She also talks about creating a playlist to put you in the head of your protagonist and the world of your story, her influences, ghosts, taking your time, how Magdalena affected the writing of her current novel, and more

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on June 16, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Andrew Porter, author of the collection “The Disappeared”

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the short story collection The Disappeared, which was published in April 2023.

Andrew’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Andrew is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Andrew joins Marrie Stone to talk about The Disappeared. He talks about the state of the short story in contemporary fiction (with references to Rebecca Makkai’s article about why we should be reading short stories), and what short stories can do for readers that novels cannot. He shares insights from his former professor, Marilynne Robinson, about endings. He talks about how he approaches flash fiction. He discusses why three is such a magical number of characters for a story, 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.

(Recorded on June 13, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Jude Atwood, author of MAYBE THERE ARE WITCHES

Jude Atwood is the author of the new novel, Maybe There Are Witches. Jude grew up on a farm in small-town Illinois. After graduating from Bradley University and Chapman University, he became a community college professor in Orange County, California. His first novel, Maybe There Are Witches, published by Regal House, won the Kraken Prize for Middle Grade Fiction.

Jude joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about creating a fictional town, how plotting allows you to write chapters out of order, beginning with character, writing side characters, submitting to publishers, book banning and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

An eternal thanks to our patrons. Your support enables us to do what we do. We appreciate every one of you. Thank you.

(Recorded on June 16, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Janelle Brown, author of “I’ll Be You”

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. Her books have been sold in two dozen countries around the world. Pretty Things - named a Best Book of 2020 by Amazon - and I’ll Be You are both currently being adapted for television.

Janelle joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest, I’ll Be You. She talks about her former journalism career and how it serves her fiction, why she enjoys working with characters afflicted by addiction, how winding back to a character’s childhood often unlocks their psychology, the writing challenges and exercises she gave herself to find her characters’ voices, 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.

Thank you to our new patrons — Dan Conway, Dina Andre, Kelly Gates, and Jan Mannino —who joined us in June. Thank you to our May patrons Judi Ulrey, Susan Nolen and Robert Leming. And a very special thanks to our longtime and loyal patrons who have been with us and stayed with us — Maureen Dunphy, Helena Touseull, Deana Pink, Valerie Kurita, Stephanie King, Elizabeth Duran, Maura Conlon-McIvor, Jace Burgess, Elizabeth Benedict, Lacey Beattie, Connie Nash, Lisa Cupolo, Holly Norton, Victor Mariano, Aimee Wing, Tanya, Patti Jazanoski, Leslie Archibald, Candi Sary, Melora Leiser, Robin Kalota, Craig Elbe, Debra Cross, Amy Muia, Deborah Gaal, Anne Dunham, Kathleen Peterson, Annabel Daguerre, Maggie Ginsberg, Richard Polt, Dennis McNamara, Kimber Grey, and Nathan Sandiford. Your support enables us to do what we do. We appreciate every one of you. Thank you.

(Recorded on June 6, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Andre Dubus III, author of SUCH KINDNESS

Andre Dubus III is the author of The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, Bluesman, and the New York Times bestsellers, House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. He’s been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, Two Pushcart Prizes, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books have been published in more than 25 languages, and he is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His new novel is Such Kindness, published by Norton.

On the show, Andre Dubus and Barbara DeMarco-Barrett discuss how ideas take form, how much he knows about his characters before he begins, writing interiority, writing in his car, having a father who was a writer, why he’s haunted by his novel The House of Sand and Fog, and his big problem with social media.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on May 12, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Lisa See, author of “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women”

Lisa See’s twelfth book, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, follows the life of Tan Yunxian, a 15th century doctor during the Ming Dynasty in China (a relatively unheard of concept back then). It explores marriage, motherhood, and medicine through her eyes, as well as the lives of the women around her (midwives, concubines, her powerful mother-in-law, and even the Chinese empress).

Lisa joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book, and how her research and writing process changed as a result of the pandemic. She talks about how much she outlines the story before beginning to write, how she approaches the research, how she tackles “cringy” scenes, how she accesses her minor characters, how losing her own mother (the writer Carolyn See) has impacted her subsequent novels, and how she’ll approach future writing differently in light of what this book taught her.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on May 31, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Danya Kukafka, author of NOTES ON AN EXECUTION

Danya Kukafka is the author of the nationally bestselling novels Notes on an Execution and Girl in Snow. Her books have been reviewed favorably in outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. Notes on an Execution recently won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and is currently in development as a feature film. Danya works as a literary agent with Trellis Literary Management.

Danya joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about using a time lock, keeping a process journal, point of view, how being an agent affects her own writing, genres and categories, 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.

(Recorded on May 26, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Cathleen Schine, author of “Künstlers in Paradise”

Cathleen Schine is the author of 13 novels, including The Love Letter, which was made into a movie starring Kate Capshaw, Rameau’s Niece, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and The Grammarians. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. Her essays have been included in Best American Essays 2005, an Anthology of New Yorker Humor, and elsewhere.

Cathleen joins Marrie Stone to talk about her latest novel, Künstlers in Paradise. She talks about writing during the pandemic and how it influenced this novel, as well as whether humor can still be an appropriate tone, given world events. Cathleen shares insights about writing dialogue and dialect across cultures and generations, how addressing problematic things within the novel can help solve the problem, her research process, organizing her materials, 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.

(Recorded on April 28, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Anthony Chin-Quee, author of “I Can’t Save You"

Anthony Chin-Quee is a board certified Otolaryngologist (Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon) with degrees from Harvard University and Emory University School of Medicine. He has done multiple performances for The Moth, where he’s won their local Story Slam, placed as a runner-up in the Detroit Grand Slam, and performed on their NYC mainstage. He was a medical consultant for ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and a member of the writing staff of FOX’s The Resident for two seasons, distilling complex medical and social issues into palatable and understandable mainstream storylines. His memoir, I Can’t Save You: A Memoir— a candid account of the ways in which medical residency training shattered the mind of an empathetic, well-intentioned doctor, and the arduous task of piecing it back together again through painful and overdue self-discovery—was released by Riverhead Books on April 4th, 2023 to critical acclaim. He has published opinions in Forbes and been interviewed by NPR on the topic of systemic racism in medical education. Anthony currently resides in England with his wife and daughter.

Tony talked with Barbara about the path to publishing his debut memoir, nailing the voice, finding an agent, dealing with rejection, honesty in memoir, writing with a reader in mind, and more

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on May 12, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Ann Napolitano, author of “Hello Beautiful”

Ann Napolitano’s latest novel, Hello Beautiful, was an instant New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s 100th Book Club pick. Her last novel, Dear Edward, was published by Dial Press in January 2020 and was also a New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna selection, and was released on February 3rd as an Apple TV+ series. You can find an interview with Ann about that novel in our archives.

Ann is also the author of A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach. She was the Associate Editor of One Story literary magazine from 2014-2020.

Ann joins Marrie Stone to talk about Hello Beautiful. In addition to the book’s backstory, they talk about the many months Ann forces herself to spend on a book before beginning to write, how to pay attention to your unique inner magnetic board as a writer, the advice about endings she follows from George Saunders, 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.

(Recorded on May 3, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Kenan Orhan, author of the collection “I Am My Country”

Kenan Orhan’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Common, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His story collection, I Am My Country and Other Stories, is published by Random House. Kenan teaches literature and creative writing at the Kansas City Art Institute and lives in Kansas.

He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, his relationship with Turkey, how his approach to the short story form has changed over time, how his stories exemplify and depart from the Joy Williams’ rules of short stories, and much more. Kenan also talks about finding his agent and his path to publication.

A reminder that April is the one-year anniversary of our Patreon page, and 2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the show. We’re winding down the month, but still offering some additional perks and incentives through the end of April. To learn more, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on April 11, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett

Idra Novey, author of TAKE WHAT YOU NEED

Idra Novey’s new novel is Take What You Need, published by Viking. She is also the author of Those Who Knew, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her first novel Ways to Disappear, received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian, The Next Coun­try, and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writ­ers Mag­a­zine, the PEN Trans­la­tion Fund, and the Poetry Foundation. Her works as a translator include Clarice Lispector’s novel The Pas­sion Accord­ing to G.H. She teaches fiction at Princeton University.

On the show Barbara talked with Idra about being a genre misfit, the lack of quotation marks, subtext, the crossover from poetry and translation, welding, and much more.

A reminder that April is the one-year anniversary of our Patreon page, and 2023 is the 25th anniversary of the show. To celebrate, we’re offering some additional perks and incentives all month long. To learn more, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded on April 15, 2023) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett