Writers on Writing

We don’t have many guests return to the show six times. Jess Walter is now one of them. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett has interviewed him three times — for his novels Beautiful Ruins and The Financial Lives of the Poets, as well as his story collection We Live in Water. He’s been on with Marrie Stone for The Cold Millions and the story collection The Angel of Rome. There are a few reasons we’re always eager to talk to him. First, he’s always trying something different — short stories, novels, historical fiction, mystery, humor. And no matter what he’s up to, his works are universally terrific. But he’s also a fantastic teacher. We bill the show as a free MFA program from the masters, and Jess is a thoughtful and articulate master. Like explaining why his hilarious short story, Cheston!, never makes the cut for his collections. Jess is the author of eight novels and two story collections. His latest, So Far Gone, is out June 10th and published by Harper. It is very much born of this time and this country. It takes place in Trump’s America, back to the familiar territory of Spokane, Washington. It’s laugh out loud funny and poignant and tragic and all the things Jess is known for. He joins Marrie to talk about it. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on May 23, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Darrow Farr is a Salvadoran-American writer who was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 2017-2019 and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The Michener Center at the University of Texas.  She was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, where she now lives with her husband and son. The Bombshell is her debut novel. Darrow joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about why she chose a 17-year-old female protagonist and single POV—until the ending of the book, placing the story in Corsica, 1990, writing sympathetic villains, cribbing from her life, keeping track of everything that goes into your novel, the title, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on May 1, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody’s Fool, Chances Are, Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; one previous essay collection about writing — The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank. His latest, Life and Art, contains 13 essays touching on many of the topics we grapple with on the show. How to imagine your way into another person’s skin. When it is inappropriate to try. What should writers be making of this current moment in history and their role in it. Where and how do we find meaning in our work. It feels very much born out of the pandemic, and out of this cultural moment, so it’s got a lot of insights about our country and Richard’s unique socio-economic experiences living in it for 75 years. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on May 12, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It was described by the UK Guardian as ‘a quiet novel of immense power’ and has been praised by authors Anne Enright, Tim Winton, Karen Joy Fowler, Hannah Kent and Paula Hawkins among others. Her previous books include The Luminous Solution, a book of essays on the creative process; the international bestseller, The Weekend; and The Natural Way of Things which won a number of prizes including The Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald andThe Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2023 Belvoir Theatre Company staged an adaptation of her novel The Weekend, and her novel The Natural Way of Thingsfeatured in ABC Television’s 2021 series The Books That Made Us. Charlotte joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about pacing a quiet novel, her main character who is never named, why she set the novel at the start of the pandemic, plagues, slowing down your writing and paying attention to small details, her relationship with plot, revision, and voice, and much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 23, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Vauhini Vara grew up alongside internet startup companies. She was in middle school when AOL sent those first floppy discs to our homes, inviting us to dial up to the world wide web. A graduate of Stanford and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she became a tech writer for The Wall Street Journal and a business reporter for The Atlantic, The New Yorker and other publications. In 2017, Vara profiled Sam Altman, a cofounder of OpenAI, and gained early access to ChatGPT. She used the program to write about a topic that had long eluded her — the grief she experienced over the death of her sister. “Ghosts” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021 and quickly went viral (as evidenced by its adaptation on This American Life). That piece, and several others, are part of Vara’s latest book, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age. Vara’s 2022 novel, The Immortal King Rao — also steeped in the tech industry — was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and her story collection, This is Salvaged, came out the following year. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about how these technologies, including ChatGPT and other A.I. models are impacting writers and where she sees things going. Her insights are both hopeful and terrifying. She also talks about writing in different genres as a journalist, a novelist, a writer of creative nonfiction and short stories. She shares her insights about playing with different structures and how to release yourself from conventional forms of storytelling. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 29, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jennifer Haigh’s first novel, Mrs. Kimble, won the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Mercy Street, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker and won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her short stories have been published widely, in the Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. Published in eighteen languages, her work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michener Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Boston. Her new novel, Rabbit Moon, is the focus of our talk today. Jennifer joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. They talk about her time in Shanghai and how being there inspired the novel, why she wrote a novel about sisters, writing multiple points of view, writing minor characters, what she reads when she’s writing fiction, how much she knows going in, why she doesn’t plot, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 4, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Andrew Porter is the author of two story collections, The Disappeared and The Theory of Light and Matter. He’s also the author of the novel In Between Days. His latest, out this month, is The Imagined Life and it treads on some familiar territory as the others. Andrew joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. His work has been compared to Richard Yates and John Cheever. He talks about those influences and his hyper-focus on the domestic realm. He also talks about the impacts his former professor, Marilynne Robinson, has on his work. They talk about writerly choices — point of view, structure, revision, and character development. And they discuss larger themes of men, boys, marriage, and sexuality in today’s culture and how literature reflects those struggles. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 16, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Tova Mirvis is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation as well as three novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine and Real Simple, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She lives in Newton, MA with her family. Her most recent novel is We Would Never. Tova joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how the idea for her new book came from a case she followed in the media, the challenges of writing her first thriller, turning real people into fictional characters, writing multiple point of views, pacing, at what point she thinks about the reader, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on February 28, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

In 2007, with his Caldecott-winning masterpiece The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick invented a new way of storytelling. The book became the basis for the 2011 Oscar-winning movie Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese. Brian is the author and illustrator of many other books for children, including Wonderstruck (also a movie), The Marvels, Kaleidoscope, and Big Tree, which was named one of the Best Children's books of 2023 by the New York Times and the audio book, narrated by Meryl Streep, was nominated for a Grammy. His latest book, Run Away With Me, is his first YA novel. Brian joins Marrie Stone to talk about his inventive approach to storytelling, playing with its form and structure, tapping into your own passions and curiosities to ignite passion and curiosity in your reader, building attention in our youth in the digital age, Brian’s insane love of research, the utterly unique origin story behind Run Away With Me, and so much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 4, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Colum McCann first came on the podcast in 2010 to talk about his National Book Award winning novel, Let the Great World Spin. He most recently returned in 2020 with his New York Times bestseller Apeirogon. He’s back this month with a stunning new novel, Twist. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book and his inspiration. They also discuss the need for stories in this current historical moment, why Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a book for our times, the things currently giving him hope, and how he manages to make profound statements about the world without sounding pedological. Colum also shares some of his writerly moves distinct to his style, including his weave of arcane and interesting information into his novels, his effective use of lists, his emphasis on the sound of language and sentence structure, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find 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 [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on March 28, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)