Episodes
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Today, we get to hear from Mark Cecil whose debut novel, BUNYAN AND HENRY; OR, THE BEAUTIFUL DESTINY, was released in March. We’ll be talking about ways in which an author can deliver deeply personal/private stories from secondary characters even while writing in 3rd person limited.
Watch a recording here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Cecil’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
MARK CECIL is host of The Thoughtful Bro show, for which he conducts interviews with an eclectic roster of award-winning and breakout storytellers. Formerly a journalist for Reuters, he is Head of Strategy for literary social media startup A Mighty Blaze and has taught writing at Grub Street in Boston. Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny is his first book.
By the way, Mark and myself are just a few of the hundreds of authors involved in WRITERS FOR BLUE. If you’re interested in contributing, go here.
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credit: Janna Giacoppo
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Today, we hear from Shi Naseer whose debut novel, THE CRY OF THE SILKWORM, was released in June. We’re talking to Shi/LILY about how to handle multiple timelines and settings in her book as well as how to write (or not) for a Western audience.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Naseer’s book, try Amazon/UK. To find books by our other authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Chinese-Australian-Pakistani author Shi Naseer has lived in nine countries and backpacked to over seventy. She recently moved with her husband and young son from Uppsala, Sweden, to Stamford CT, the USA, and spends her winters in Punjab, Pakistan. She aims to connect people by telling stories from different cultures. Her debut novel, The Cry of the Silkworm, was released in June 2024 with Atlantic Books/Allen&Unwin. A coming-of-age revenge story of a young girl in turn-of-the-century China, it reveals the devastating consequences of the one-child policy. Shi Naseer holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Harvard University.
Photo by Muspi Merol on Unsplash
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Episodes manquant?
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Today, we hear from Thérèse Soukar Chehade, whose second novel, WE WALKED ON, will be published in September. We’re talking to Therese about truth in historical fiction.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Chehade’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Born in Beirut, Thérèse Soukar Chehade moved to the United States in 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War. Her first novel, Loom, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 Arab American Award for fiction. It portrays a Lebanese-American family struggling to reckon with their memories of the civil war during a Vermont blizzard in which the family’s matriarch ventures out to help a mysterious neighbor, forcing everyone in the family to follow. Her second novel, We Walked On, will be published by Regal House in September. It tells the story of a thirty-something Arabic teacher and his bookish student as their lives spiral out of control following the outbreak of the war in 1975. Thérèse lives in Granby, Massachusetts.
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Today’s is a special bonus episode in which we get to hear from some of our listeners about they’ve learned from the past few episodes, what ideas they consider the most important, what questions or confusions they have, and their own advice and/or experience in dealing with the same issues in their writing. Welcome listeners and writers Cat Green, Carol Willis, and Judy Kessler.
By the way, we still have one more spot for YOU to take part in a listener’s roundup. If you’re interested, email me at [email protected].
Also, I’ll be teaching at a writing retreat in the Himalayas this April and you’re welcome to join. For more info, go to https://www.himalayanwritingretreat.com/event/international-retreat-with-michelle-hoover/
A few of the craft books mentioned in this episode:
* David Jauss’s chapter “From Long Shots to X-Rays: Distance and Point of View in Fiction” from his craft book Alone with All that Could Happen: On Writing Fiction
* Robert Boswell’s chapter “On Omniscience” from his craft book The Half-Known World
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find all of my fave craft books plus books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Cat Green (they/them) is a graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Immersive for Queer and Trans Writers, and their debut hybrid chapbook, I Am Never Leaving Williamsburg, is out with fifth wheel press in February 2025.
At age sixty, Carol Willis is a recovering physician with an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has published numerous short stories and written several novels, whose current work-in-progress is a contemporary midlife coming-of-age story, HERE COMES THE SUN.
Judy Kessler retired from her career as a technical writer in 2015 to focus on fiction; since then she's drafted 2 novels (one complete, one in progress), published 2 short stories, taken MANY writing classes at GrubStreet and beyond, and volunteers at The Muse and the Marketplace and as a fiction reader for Pangyrus, a Boston-based literary magazine.
Photo by Amber Kipp on Unsplash
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Today, we hear from Jessica Anthony whose latest novel, THE MOST, will be released in July. We’re talking to Jessica about how to cover a large amount of time by using time itself as your organizing principal, especially when writing a short novel or novella.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Anthony’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Jessica Anthony is the author of three books of fiction, The Convalescent, which won the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award from McSweeney’s, Chopsticks, which she coauthored with graphic designer Rodrigo Corral, and most recently the novel Enter the Aardvark, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature, Anthony wrote The Most while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Photo: Matt Cosby
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Today, we hear from Joseph Moldover whose second novel, JUST UNTIL, will be released in October. We’ll be talking about the psychology of creative writing and the mental challenges of bringing a story or book to publication.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Moldover’s latest and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Joseph Moldover is the author of Every Moment After (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019) and of Just Until (Holiday House, October 29, 2024). He is also a clinical psychologist. He works with children and adolescents and specializes in learning and developmental challenges. He is the author of The Empowered Parent, a short guide for parents of children with special needs. He lives with his wife and four children outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
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Today, we hear from Alison Langley, whose debut novel, ILONA GETS A PHONE, was released in the UK in April. We’re talking to Alison about the use of specific language, when to use scene vs summary, and what to do when readers misread your book.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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As a foreign correspondent, Alison Langley's stories appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian and Deutsche Welle. She freelanced for The Wall Street Journal Europe in Budapest from 1990-94. That experience forms the backdrop of her first novel, Budapest Noir: Ilona Gets A Phone, now published by Dedalus Books, UK. It was a finalist of the Irish Writer’s Centre Novel Prize 2022. Alison Langley is an avid gardener, mushroom hunter, and proud mother of three amazing adults. Langley lives in the Swiss Alps with her husband and dog.
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Today we hear from Shalene Gupta whose new book, THE CYCLE: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD, was released in February. Shalene and I will be talking about the ways authors can get past their fear of conducting interviews when writing about deeply personal material.
Watch a recording here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Gupta’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Shalene Gupta is a reporter whose work has appeared in Fortune, The Atlantic, ESPN, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review. She is the coauthor of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It with Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher. In 2022, she was identified as a thinker to watch out for and made the Thinkers50 Radar list. She’s also the host of the Trustonomy podcast. She has an MS from Columbia Journalism School and is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program. Shalene has taught writing classes in the Boston area, and speaks regularly at conferences about trust and diversity issues.
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Today we get to hear from Henriette Lazaridis whose novel, LAST DAYS IN PLAKA, was released in April 2024. Henriette and I will be talking about her choice to use the omniscient point of view and how she tackled the notoriously tricky narrative perspective.
Watch a recording here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Lazaridis’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Henriette Lazaridis' novel TERRA NOVA was published by Pegasus Books in December, 2022 and was called "ingenious" and "provocative" by the New York Times. She is the author of the best-selling novel THE CLOVER HOUSE. Her short work has appeared in publications including Elle, Forge, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, New England Review, The Millions, and has earned her a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant. Having taught English at Harvard, she now teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece. She also writes the Substack newsletter The Entropy Hotel, about athletic and creative challenges at henriettelazaridis.substack.com. Her new novel, LAST DAYS IN PLAKA, was released in April 2024.
photo credit: Sharona Jacobs
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Today we get to hear from Jennine Capo Crucet whose newest novel, SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, was released in March. Jennine and I will be talking about writing in a voice and POV that originates in a sense of place.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Crucet’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Jennine Capó Crucet is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. She’s the author of three books, including the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award, was named a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice book, and was cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, the Guardian, the Miami Herald, and other venues; it has been adopted as an all-campus read at over forty U.S. universities. Her other books include the story collection How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the John Gardner Book Award, and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, which was long-listed for the 2019 PEN America/Open Book Award. A former Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times, she’s also a recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Picador Fellowship, and the Hillsdale Award for the Short Story, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her writing has appeared on PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and in publications such as the Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, and others. She’s worked as a professor of Ethnic Studies and of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska and at Florida State University. She’s also worked for One Voice Scholars Program as a college access counselor to first-generation college students and as a sketch comedienne (though not at the same time). Born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, her fourth book, a novel titled Say Hello To My Little Friend, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. She lives in North Carolina with her family.
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Today, we’ve got a special bonus episode which I’m calling our “Listener’s Roundup” with listeners Anne Buckley, Jean Carlton, and Anna Carvlin. We’re going to do a few of these over the course of the summer. This is when we get to hear from some of our listeners about they’ve learned from the past few episodes, what ideas they consider the most important, what questions or confusions they have, and their own advice and/or experience in dealing with the same issues in their writing.
And by the way, we still have one more spot for YOU to take part in a listener’s roundup. If you’re interested, email me at [email protected].
Also, I’ll be teaching at a writing retreat in the Himalayas this April and you’re welcome to join. For more info, go to https://www.himalayanwritingretreat.com/event/international-retreat-with-michelle-hoover/
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
Also mentioned in this episode: Mavis Gallant’s short story “Mlle. Dias de Corta” and Michael Noll’s craft book, The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction. (psst: you can find all my fave craft books on the Bookshop page too!)
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Anne Buckley is a self-confessed stalker of debut novelists for all the right reasons, and is currently revising her own debut novel, Friendship Falls.
Jean Smith Carlton self-published her first novel, Nothing Else Matters, in 2022 through Amazon KDP at the age of 76.
Anna Carvlin lives with her family on the far South Side of Chicago, where she is writing fiction, including a novel and short stories, and pursuing a master's degree in English.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
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Today, we hear from Colwill Brown whose debut novel, WE PRETTY PIECES OF FLESH, is forthcoming in 2025. We’ll be talking about the art of sentences and how Colwill had to wrangle with their own to make the unique voice of the book work.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Brown’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Colwill Brown is the author of the novel We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, forthcoming in 2025 from Holt/Macmillan (North America), Chatto & Windus (UK & Commonwealth) and Sellerio (Italian trans.). Born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK, Colwill holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in English literature from Boston College. Recipient of a James A. Michener Fellowship, scholarships to the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a 2022 Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and top-fifty placing in the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award, Colwill’s writing has also received awards and support from Hedgebrook, the Ragdale Foundation, the Anderson Center, and elsewhere.
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Today, we hear from Bryan VanDyke, whose debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS, will be published in September. We’re talking to Bryan about what to do when gatekeepers consider your writing “too quiet” and ways an author can make some noise with their new work without sidelining their own vision and style.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find VanDyke’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Bryan VanDyke is a former staff writer at The Millions. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Northwestern. His debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS is forthcoming from Little A this September. He is also the author of a book-length essay, ONLY THE TRYING: OR, HOW TO LIVE AFTER NOT QUITE DYING, a meditation on the nature of illness and recovery. His fiction has appeared in The Rumpus, Carve and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
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Today, we hear from Tessa Fontaine whose latest novel, THE RED GROVE, was released in May. We’re talking to Tessa about how to bring a shy, attention-avoiding character to life on the page by discovering the many aspects of her situation and her past that gets her moving forward.
By the way, on July 19 Tessa will be at Newtonville Books with authors Clare Beams, Rufi Thorpe, and Annie Hartnett.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Fontaine’s debut novel and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Tessa Fontaine is the author of THE ELECTRIC WOMAN: A MEMOIR IN DEATH-DEFYING ACTS, a New York Times Editors' Choice, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and best book of 2018 by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors', and The New York Post. Other writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, AGNI, The Believer, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, and more. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa is a former professor and has taught in jails and prisons for five years. She co-founded and teaches the Accountability Workshops with writer and pal Annie Hartnett, and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, goofy dog and sassy cat. THE RED GROVE is her first novel. It is a best book of May from Amazon and People Magazine, and on most anticipated lists from The Rumpus and Alta Magazine.
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Want to join the podcast? Come together with other listeners in a deep dive into this summer’s episodes, discussing ideas, asking questions, and sharing your experiences about issues brought up in our interviews. Perfect for writers at every level. Only a few spots available. Email [email protected] for more info.
Today we get to hear from Annie Weatherwax whose much-lauded novel, All We Had, was adapted by Katie Holmes for her directorial debut. But Annie and I will be talking about how her career as a visual artist inspires her writing and vice versa, particularly as a writer and artist with dyslexia.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Weatherwax’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Annie Weatherwax is an author and artist who spent her early career sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters for Nickelodeon, DC Comics, and Pixar. Winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction, her debut novel All We Had, was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award and is now a major motion picture from Tribeca films. In 2017, she received The Hamilton Life Achievement Award for individuals with dyslexia. In 2021, she was the inaugural fellow at New Yorker Cartoonist, James Stevenson’s Lost and Found Lab. Character sketches and stories from her collection, “Odd Balls and Relationships,” appeared in the winter 2023/24 issue of Ploughshares Magazine. Her work exploring the relationship between language and vision, visual art and literature has been published in the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. Her most recent endeavor is "Monster in a Dress”—an animated short about her journey with gender, identity and personhood.
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Today we hear from Sarah Tomlinson whose novel, The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, was released in February. Sarah and I will be talking about red herrings and how to make them work in a character-driven novel rather than letting them be a mere plot contrivance.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Tomlinson’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Sarah Tomlinson, a former music journalist, has been a ghostwriter since 2008, penning more than 20 books, including five New York Times bestsellers. In 2015, she published the father-daughter memoir, Good Girl (Gallery Books). She wrote The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, her first novel, in-between assignments for a who’s who of celebrity clients.
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Today, another special bonus episode of our “Listener’s Roundup” with Alison Langley, Patricia Manuel Go, and Erica Ferencik. The Listener’s Roundup is when we get to hear from some of our listeners about they’ve learned from the past few episodes, what ideas they consider the most important, what questions or confusions they have, and their own advice and/or experience in dealing with the same issues in their writing.
By the way, we still have a couple more open spots for YOU to take part in a listener’s roundup. If you’re interested, email me at [email protected].
So today, we’ve got listeners Alison Langley, Patricia Manuel Go, and Erica Ferencik with us.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version (unedited) is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Patricia Manuel Go is the author of a short story, “Pig,” which was published in the US in the anthology Growing up Filipino 3 (2022)—she has since turned it into a novel with much help from GrubStreet, especially her mentor, Henriette Lazaridis.
As a foreign correspondent, Alison Langley freelanced for The Wall Street Journal Europe in Budapest from 1990-94. That experience forms the backdrop of her first novel, Budapest Noir: Ilona Gets A Phone, published by Dedalus Books, UK.
Erica Ferencik is the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling novels, The River at Night and Into the Jungle. Film rights for her latest release, Girl in Ice, have been optioned by Netflix.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
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Today we get to hear from Steve Almond, whose latest book on the process of writing, TRUTH IS THE ARROW, MERCY IS THE BOW, was released in April. Steve and I will be talking about writer’s block, how to convey a character’s inner life, and what that heavy word, ART, might really mean.
Watch a recording here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Almond’s new book and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His recent books include the novel All the Secrets of the World, which has been optioned for television by 20th Century Fox, and his first novel, co-written with Julianna Baggott, WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU, is now a major motion picture, filmed with actress Lucy Hale. For four years, Steve hosted the New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. He is the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant in fiction, and his short stories have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. He also publishes crazy, DIY books.
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Today, we hear from Laura van den Berg whose latest novel, STATE OF PARADISE, will be released on July 9. We’re talking to Laura about writing a book that combines autofiction and speculative fiction and what to do when another novel you’re writing is asking for attention.
Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find van den Berg’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her next two novels, State of Paradise and Ring of Night, are forthcoming from FSG in 2024 and 2026. She is the author of two previous story collections, The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013) and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), and the novel Find Me (FSG, 2015). She is currently a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard University. Laura lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband, the writer Paul Yoon, and their dog, Oscar.
Photo by Paul Yoon
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Today we get to hear from Kate Woodworth whose novel, Little Great Island, will be released in May of 2025. Kate and I will be talking about managing multiple points of view—the book has eleven!—which she refers to “as playing three dimensional chess in the dark.”
Watch a recording here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Woodworth’s debut and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.
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Kate Woodworth’s first book, Racing into the Dark, came out in 2009 from Dutton and has been optioned for film. Booklist called it “a compelling exploration of mental illness.” She later went into a career as a medical writer before receiving her MFA from Boston University. Her second novel, Little Great Island, will be released in May 2025 from Sibylline Press, a woman-owned independent press publishing work by women over 50.
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