Writers on Writing

Latest Episodes:

Nicola Yoon, author of ONE OF OUR KIND Nov 12, 2024

Show notes

Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Instructions for Dancing, Everything, Everything, The Sun Is Also a Star, and a co-author of Blackout and Whiteout. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient, a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner and the first Black woman to hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult bestseller list. Two of her novels have been made into films. She’s also the co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.

Nicola joins Barbara DeMarc-Barrett to talk about her path to writing YA and the transition to writing adult fiction, trigger warnings, categorization of genres, writing horror, revising, theme, POV, titles, The Stepford Wives, 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. 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 support independent bookstores and our show when you purchase books through the store. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 September 20, 2024)

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

Nicola Yoon, author of ONE OF OUR KIND Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Download

Alice McDermott, author of ABSOLUTION Nov 04, 2024

Show notes

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy(winner of the National Book Award), That Night, As Weddings and Wakes, and After This (which were finalists for the Pulitzer). She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her most recent novel, now out in paperback, is Absolution. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, her door into the Vietnam War, and many of the lessons she applies to her own work which appear in What About the Baby?

(Recorded on October 23, 2024)

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

Alice McDermott, author of ABSOLUTION Marrie Stone Download

Jo Hamya, author of THE HYPOCRITE Oct 29, 2024

Show notes

Jo Hamya was born in London in 1997 where she now lives. After living in Miami for a few years, she completed an English degree at King’s College London and a MSt in contemporary literature and culture at Oxford University. There, she divided her research between updating twentieth-century cultural theory into twenty-first-century digital contexts, and the impact of social media on form and questions of identity in contemporary women’s writing. Since leaving Oxford, she has worked as a copyeditor for Tatler and edited manuscripts subsequently published by Edinburgh University Press and Doubleday UK. She has also written for the Financial Times. The Hypocrite is her new novel and the focus of today’s show.

Jo joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss writing dual point of views, writing interiority, the lack of quotation marks in dialogue, poetry’s influence on her writing, changing publishers, and much more. And if you prefer watching interviews instead of listen, check out my youtube channel @inkmama. This interview, along with a few others, is up there.

(Recorded on October 10, 2024)

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

Jo Hamya, author of The Hypocrite Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Download

Zoe Whittall, author of WILD FAILURE Oct 21, 2024

Show notes

Zoe Whittall is a Canadian poet, novelist, and TV writer. She has published five novels including The Fake, The Spectacular, The Best Kind of People which is being adapted for film by Sarah Polley, the Lambda-winning Holding Still for as Long as Possible, and her debut, Bottle Rocket Hearts. She has film and TV credits on the Baroness von Sketch Show, Schitt’s Creek, and others. She’s also a poet, authoring three poetry collections to date.

Her latest, Wild Failure, is a collection of 10 stories that capture the queer experience, exploring power dynamics, gender roles, shame, desire, insecurity, aging, and other universal themes that make us all human. It came out a few months ago by Ballantine and she joins Marrie Stone to talk it. They discuss writing across various genres and how they feed each other, getting into and out of a story, writing sex (both consensual and nonconsensual), and so much more. They also chat about the business side of writing -- getting your work published, MFAs, agents, and editors.

(Recorded on October 18, 2024)

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

Zoe Whittall, author of WILD FAILURE Marrie Stone Download