This week Write-minded wades into the important topic of writing about childhood trauma. Trauma is at the heart of many of our stories, whether you’re writing coming-of-age or only touching upon childhood stories in the context of specific memoir scenes (or raw material for fiction). Javier’s memoir, Solito, is a stunning book about his nine-week journey from…

It’s important to learn from the challenges of a failed book rather than allowing it to define your career. The publishing industry can be harsh and unforgiving to writers in this situation. Unforgiving as in agents abandoning the writer or publishers turning away future work, not because of its quality, but because of the one…

A fun episode about aesthetic, language, and paying attention to style and taste in writing. This week’s guest K-Ming Chang talks about disorientation as a style, language as something that lives in the body, and hating plot. This is a playful interview that focuses on the experiential and reminds us that we all have an…

Ghostwriting and work-for-hire are great ways to break into the publishing industry and to make a living as a writer. Guest Aubre Andrus shows us a side of the writing and publishing business that can seem a bit elusive. And more and more writers are taking on work for hire projects due to mass media…

This week’s Write-minded floats into the magical and surreal world of Ingrid Rojas Contreras, who talks about her new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, about her curandera-storytelling mother and their shared history of amnesia, and about why to her magical realism is just realism. Grant and Brooke consider what gets passed down to us from…

In this gorgeous, sensualistic, tactile, provocative episode of Write-minded, we explore the senses with Janet Fitch of White Oleander fame. In this interview, Janet takes us on a tour through the senses, making the point that our language is impoverished and we can—and must—do more to become more sophisticated observers on the page. This is an episode…

This week’s episode moves beyond inspiring and into the territory of important, essential, and recommended listening—and reading. Guest Dr. Brian H. Williams, author of the debut memoir, The Bodies Keep Coming, joins us to talk about his experience as a trauma surgeon, and what being on the hospital frontlines can teach us about racial inequities in America….

Hidden stories are at the heart of many a novel and memoir, driving writers, often from very young ages, toward exploration, uncovering, and the desire to seek for and know truths. Vanessa Chan’s new novel, The Storm We Made, is one such story, spawned by the unlikeliest of spies—a discontent mother and wife in 1930s…

Books were just books for hundreds of years, but in the past 20 years, we’ve experienced major shifts in how we read and write. Plus, we’re on the brink of another revolution with AI that will change what we know and think we know about book publishing. This week’s guest, Maja Thomas, is the Chief…

Happy New Year! On this week’s Write-minded, Brooke and Grant take stock of last year’s resolutions and hold their own feet to the fire on what was cast out for resolutions, and what was accomplished (or not). We’re probing the resolution, therefore, as we head into 2024—assessing its pros and cons, musing about who we’d…