Finding the Throughline with Kate Hanley
Finding the Throughline: Conversations about the Creative Process invites you into the minds of writers and other creatives as they open up about their process, their doubts, and what kinds of changes they’re thinking about making. The questions are mildly invasive, honestly, and the answers are unvarnished…and so refreshing! Whether your creative work is writing, painting, making music, parenting, or simply living, Finding the Throughline can help you get—and stay—inspired. Invigorated, even. For detailed show notes on each interview, visit katehanley.substack.com. And if you’d like to hear these interviews in one ad-free episode (as opposed to broken up into three shorter episodes with a few ads sprinkled in to keep the lights on), become a paid subscriber once you’re there. .
Episodes
In this third and final installment of my interview with Donna Russo, author of “Vincent's Women, the Untold Story of the Loves of Vincent Van Gogh,” as well as 10 other award-winning and internationally bestselling historical novels, we get a peek at what’s coming up next for her and she answers my fast five questions about what she’s stayed up too late reading and watching.
How she’s feeling now that she’s on the verge of becomin...
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In this second part of my conversation with Donna Russo, author of “Vincent's Women: the Untold Story of the Loves of Vincent van Gogh, as well as 10 other award winning and internationally best selling historical novels, we explore the thoughts, ideas, and attitudes that influence her work.
We talked about:
Why the time period just before your book comes out is the most nerve-wracking, “like walking out naked and the world gets to...
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Up this week is Donna Russo, an internationally best-selling author of 11 multiple award winning historical novels, including “Gilded Dreams” and “Gilded Summers”, a trio of books about Leonardo da Vinci, including “Portrait of a Conspiracy,” “The Competition,” and “The Flames of Florence.” Her newest book, “Vincent’s Women” is just out, and tells the story of everyone's favorite tortured artist through the lens of the women in his...
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In part three of my interview with Marlon Weems, author of the prize-winning essay "How Starting an Investment Business Almost Landed Me in Federal Prison" and founder of The Journeyman Substack, where he covers American culture and anti-Black racism, we get a peek at where his throughline is leading him next.
I had to leave out the meandering and enlightening and fun conversation we had about the upcoming presidential election, bu...
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In this second part of my interview with Marlon Weems, founder of The Journeyman newsletter on Substack, where he covers American culture, anti-Black racism, and growing up Black in the Deep South, we talk about the mindset side of writing, including:
- The best place to look for your closing paragraph
- How having to make cold calls for a living is excellent training for dealing with (read: ignoring) trolls
- The story of how he a...
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This week I am talking with Marlon Weems, a former Wall Street trader who started his career in finance in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he founded the first Black-owned asset management firm and the first Black-owned venture capital firm in the state.
Since leaving the industry in 2012, Marlon has transitioned to writing. His essay, "How Starting an Investment Firm Almost Landed Me in Federal Prison, was named one of the best stori...
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In this final part of my interview with Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, we get a look at what's coming up for her--and how that might not involve being in the public eye at all after 11 years of being 'the tip of the spear' as a common sense gun law advocate. I also ask her what's she's reading, watching, listening to, drinking in her morning cup, and what she'd have for dinner tonight if she could have anything in the wo...
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In the second part of my interview with Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, author of "Fight Like a Mother, and host of the Substack newsletter "Playing with Fire" (where she addresses overlooked topics head on, such as ADHD in women and girls and the benefits of hormone therapy for relief of menopause symptoms), we get into the mindset side of writing.
We covered:
- Reckoning with the enormity of needing to produce 60,00...
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This week I am talking with badass advocate, author, Substacker, and "summoner of women's audacity," Shannon Watts.
Shannon is the founder of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots movement for common sense gun reform that grew to include more than 10 million members who have helped pass over 500 gun safety laws across the country. She's also the author of "Fight Like a Mother", and her opinion pieces have been published in the Washing...
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In the final part of my interview with maritime history author Eric Jay Dolin, we get a tantalizing look at his next book, which he's working on now, about a shipwreck in the Pacific that involves a clash of East and West.
We also covered:
- Why his kids hate going to museums with him
- Using a desire to travel as motivation for selling more books
- The PBS show Eric considers comfort viewing
- Why Friday is the perfect day
- The b...
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In the second part of my conversation with Eric Jay Dolin, (author of "Left for Dead," a true story about a captain of a sealing ship who was marooned on the Falkland Islands for 18 months in the early 1800s), we talk about the squishier side of writing, including dealing with your inner critic, getting through the parts of sharing your work that you'd really rather avoid, and managing your own expectations for how many copies your...
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Calling all lovers of true tales about the sea! This week I'm talking with Eric J. Dolin, bestselling author of numerous books that explore some aspect of American history, generally as it relates to the sea. His latest book is "Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World." Eric has a really interesting through line that started with him studying to be a marine biologist, then morphed into studying en...
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In this final section of my conversation with "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth," Kate Schapira, we cover:
- Finding ways to bring her work to groups that are already gathering for another reason (hint: need to a professional development speaker or workshop leader to talk on working with climate anxiety?)
- Using the concept of cross-pollenization as a guiding principle
- The writers whose work has changed Kate's l...
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In this second part of my conversation with Kate Schapira, author of "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth," we cover the squishier parts of writing, including:
- The process of deciding just how vulnerable to be in your writing
- The emotional difference between writing poetry and writing prescriptive non-fiction
- How her inner critic is a salty SOB
- How a writing group holds you accountable to write despite what yo...
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This week I'm talking with Kate Schapira, author of "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth," which takes readers through the practical skills and emotional shifts needed to navigate our way to a more livable future.
Kate is also the author of six books of poetry, and her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and other places. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches nonfiction writing at Brown Uni...
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In part three of my conversation with multiple New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of "A Very Inconvenient Scandal" and "The Deep End of the Ocean," among many other titles, we talk about how having writer friends is so important, even if you "jealous them", the vision of the future that's fueling her to keep writing, and the recent books that made her swoon.
- The writers--and books--that make Jacquelyn je...
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In this second part of my interview with the brilliant and hilarious Jacquelyn Mitchard, we talk about the squishier side of creativity–the thoughts, ideas, and attitudes that affect your work, even if you're not fully conscious of it, including:
- The specific reader Jacquelyn imagines as she writes
- Why she's devoted to social media, and why she thinks of it like having a hamster
- How some of her books have 'missed the mark' (b...
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This week I am thrilled to be talking with Jacquelyn Mitchard, the New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers. Her newest novel is "A Very Inconvenient Scandal," and her first novel, "The Deep End of the Ocean" was the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey book club and has sold more than 3 million copies and been translated into 34 languages.
We covered:
- How losing her husband in her late thirties put...
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In the final installment of my interview with generous and prolific writing goddess Sari Botton (she publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism on Substack, authored And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen X Weirdo, Goodbye to All That, and Never Can Say Goodbye, and was the essays editor at Longreads), we talk about what's coming up next for her, as well as her favorite shows, books...
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In part two of my interview with Sari Botton, founder of Oldster Magazine and author of And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Gen X Weirdo, we dive deep into the inner stuff, including:
- Her favorite part of sharing her work with the world
- How she navigates the ethics of including other people in her personal writing
- How her inner critic loves to tell her she doesn’t haven’t permission to write about what she wants to wr...
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