Freelance Writing Direct with Estelle: Conversations with authors, journalists, agents, novelists, memoirists, niche writers, publishers, writing teachers, assigning editors and media experts.

What does it take to unlearn the messages you were raised with and reshape them into a publishable memoir?

In this episode of Freelance Writing Direct, Estelle Erasmus chats with Anna Rollins about the internal and structural shifts that reshaped her debut memoir, Famished.

Anna reveals how expanding the scope of her manuscript, incorporating reporting, and strengthening her platform repositio...

What do you do when your son's first birthday party becomes the same day you lose your mother?

In this episode, Estelle Erasmus sits down with Jocelyn Jane Cox, author of Motion Dazzle, the award-winning memoir that follows a single day when celebration and grief collided. It's a day that would forever contain both darkness and light, joy and devastating loss.

Here's what makes this conversati...

What does it take to turn a viral essay about longing into a deeply researched memoir and a book deal?

For Amanda McCracken, it took 11 years, multiple agent rejections, a pandemic, creative platform-building, and an unwavering commitment to her story.

In this episode, Estelle Erasmus sits down with Amanda McCracken, author of When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejecti...

Great writing doesn't come from inventing drama. It comes from putting characters in situations where something meaningful is at stake.

In this episode of Freelance Writing Direct, Estelle talks with fiction writer and essayist Peter Mountford about his short story collection Detonator and the craft choices that make stories propulsive. Mountford discusses how place shapes his fiction, drawing from lived e...

Family loyalty can push ordinary people toward unimaginable choices.

Estelle Erasmus chats with novelist and memoirist Tova Mirvis about her latest book, We Would Never, a gripping murder mystery inspired by a true crime case. While real events sparked the novel, the plot ultimately emerged from the emotional choices her characters make, with each decision setting off the next.

Tova reveals th...

Did you know that cats have, in their feline way, shaped some of the greatest writing careers in literary history?

Bob Eckstein and Nava Atlas join Estelle Erasmus to talk about their collaboration on Inspired by Cats: Writers and Their Mews(es), a visually rich book exploring the creative bond between writers and their feline companions. The conversation traces how the idea evolved from a shareable litera...

Forgiveness doesn't erase the past. It changes who gets to control your present.

In this episode of Freelance Writing Direct, Estelle Erasmus talks with filmmaker, writer, and coach Gayle Kirschenbaum and her 102-year-old mother, Mildred Kirschenbaum, about their volatile, funny, and hard-won evolution from conflict to connection. Gayle shares the story behind her debut memoir, Bullied to Besties: A Daught...

After years of writing literary fiction, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, author of Pool Fishing, saw her work shift when she turned to noir.

Estelle Erasmus chats with Barbara about the genre shift that reignited her fiction and led to publication. Barbara shares how stepping into noir forced her to embrace plot, tension, and consequence, without sacrificing voice or depth.

They touch on the big craf...

In this solo recap episode, Estelle Erasmus reflects on a year shaped by creative momentum, personal loss, and professional growth. As she approaches 200 podcast episodes, expands her teaching at NYU and Writer's Digest, and leads small-group workshops, she considers what this season revealed and what she is carrying forward into 2026.

She also revisits major moments including her TEDx talk, How to Get Not...

Memoir often begins where certainty ends, and that is exactly where Abigail Thomas feels most alive on the page. In this thoughtful conversation between friends, Estelle Erasmus and Abigail explore what it means to write through uncertainty, follow curiosity, and let small surprising moments become the heart of a story.

This episode is for writers who crave honesty on the page, who wrestle with self-doubt,...

Estelle Erasmus sits down with award-winning author Melissa Fraterrigo, whose latest book, The Perils of Girlhood, is a memoir in essays that examines identity, fear, body image, motherhood, memory, and the cultural touchstones that shaped so many girls growing up in the '80s and '90s. 

Together, Estelle and Melissa explore the moments that define girlhood, from fear and body image to parenting, consent, p...

Some lives resist easy summary, and Heather Sweeney's was one of them. After two decades inside a military marriage, marked by relocations, solo parenting, and a gradual loss of personal direction, she knew she had a story, but not yet a shape.

Estelle Erasmus talks with Heather about how she translated that long, complicated stretch of living into her memoir, Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of ...

Leslie B. Blanchard joins Freelance Writing Direct for a conversation about developing her Modern Love essay, finding the line that anchored the piece, writing honestly about anticipatory grief, discovering structure through revision, clarifying metaphor, understanding what makes a submission stand out, and learning what the story truly wanted to say.Modern Love essays aren't accidents, they're built from a bold hook, ...

Queer history is family history, and Alysia Abbott's Fairyland proves how one father-daughter story can illuminate an entire era. In this conversation, Estelle Erasmus talks with Alysia about her acclaimed memoir of growing up with her single gay father in 1970s and 80s San Francisco, and how that  memoir found new life as a feature film more than a decade later. In this discussion, they explore the love, art, grief, a...

Electric Literature is where emerging writers become working authors—and in this conversation, I'm taking you behind the scenes with Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris (who I spoke with last week about her debut novel) to unpack exactly what they publish, how they edit, the pitches that stand out, the craft mistakes that make editors stop reading, and the kinds of stories they want to run next.

Electric ...

I loved diving into this conversation with Denne Michele Norris, author, and Editor in Chief of Electric Literature. Her insight into writing every character with depth, presence, and main character energy is both generous and deeply human, and this is just Part 1 of our two part discussion.

In this illuminating episode, Denne shares the craft behind her stunning debut, When the Harvest Comes, a sweeping q...

What if the truest recovery story isn't about redemption—but restoration? What if healing means learning to live inside the messy middle?                

Estelle Erasmus talks with journalist and professor Mallary Tenore Tarpley, author of SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.  Mallary shares how she wrote from the in-between—the liminal space between illness and full recovery—crafting a na...

What happens when your life unravels up in the middle of writing your book — your marriage ends, fertility treatments stop, your identity shifts, and you have to rewrite the story you thought you were living?

In this episode, Estelle Erasmus interviews acclaimed author Chloe Caldwell about her new book, TRYING, a radically honest, formally innovative memoir about fertility, longing, divorce, sexuality, and...

Ever wonder what's really happening behind closed doors in the publishing industry?

In this solo episode, Estelle Erasmus pulls back the curtain on the People of Publishing Conference, held on September 17, 2025, and hosted by the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA). Featuring top CEOs, editors, and agents, the event revealed key trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping today's book world.