March 10, 2025 • 53 mins
Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure you subscribe to the companion Substack: https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome
Today's guest is Hannah Howard, author of two food memoirs, Feast: True Love in and Out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family, that transcend the genre and are also about relationships, motherhood, and finding your tribe. We discuss how an MFA application process helped her crystallize her vision for what became her first book, the difference between first and second books, her experience in a low-residency MFA program (she went to Bennington), reactions she’s gotten to writing about ED, how her niche is expanding into parenting, and more. Follow Hannah on Instagram @hannahmhoward.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
Today's guest is Hannah Howard, author of two food memoirs, Feast: True Love in and Out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family, that transcend the genre and are also about relationships, motherhood, and finding your tribe. We discuss how an MFA application process helped her crystallize her vision for what became her first book, the difference between first and second books, her experience in a low-residency MFA program (she went to Bennington), reactions she’s gotten to writing about ED, how her niche is expanding into parenting, and more. Follow Hannah on Instagram @hannahmhoward.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
- How to Build a “Platform” for Writers Who Shudder at the Thought: https://writingworkshops.com/products/how-to-build-a-platform-for-writers-who-shudder-at-the-thought-zoom-seminar
- Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns: https://writeordiemag.com/workshops/p/land-big-bylines
- Start a Newsletter to Supercharge Your Platform, Network and Business: https://writingworkshops.com/products/start-a-newsletter-to-supercharge-your-platform-network-business-zoom-seminar
- The Multi-Passionate Writer's Life: https://writingworkshops.com/products/the-multi-passionate-writers-life-zoom-seminar-with-courtney-kocak
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Part of the application was writing a I think it
was a one page summary of the memoir that you
were working on. And writing that page summary really crystallized
I had always wanted to write a book, but it
kind of put that book idea that had been floating
around in like little puzzle pieces in my brain into
(00:28):
a more singular, coherent picture, and I knew that I
wanted to write that book.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's today's guest Hannah Howard. No, you don't need an
MFA to write a book, But for her, even the
application process helped her crystallize her vision for what became
her first book, Feast.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Originally, the book was going to be so much more
of an almost journalistic less memoir, less personal primis about
these inspiring, interesting women in the food world. And as
I was working on, like really early jass of my
writers group, they were all like, Oh, we like the
personal stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We want to hear more about that. So I just
started to kind of lean into that more and more.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
She also shares how her second book evolved into a richer,
more relationship based food memoir. Plus, we discussed her experience
in a low residency MFA, the reactions she's gotten to
her writing about ed how her niche is expanding into
parenting and more. In today's episode, There's nothing to writing.
(01:32):
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Welcome to the Bleeders, a podcast and support group about
book writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Cosak,
and each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors,
(01:53):
agents and publishers about how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Hi, my name is Hannah Howard. I'm the author of
two memoirs, Feast True Love In and Out of the
Kitchen and Plenty, a memoir of food and family. And
I write about food a lot and I teach food
writing classes.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So I took Catapult's twelvemonth Essay Generator to write the
first draft of my essay collection, and at the end
of the program, we each got matched with a professional
reader to give us notes on our manuscript. Hannah was
my reader. I'm so excited to do this. I think
there's a real wisdom that I was matched up with
(02:37):
you after having read your books now in their entirety,
So I'm really grateful for that, and it really helped me.
Not like I was able to process your notes before anyway,
but like on a deeper level, I was like, oh,
and it gave me some ideas. So anyway, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Oh that's awesome, I thought so too, Like they did
a thoughtful fuftfule matchmaking with both of us.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yes, so we're going to get into both of your books.
But first let's do a quick lightning round. So when
did you first identify as a writer.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I always identified as a writer. I made my first
air Quotes book. Maybe when I could first start to write,
you know, I was putting pieces together, and I always
felt like there was something.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Magical about books.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So when I was in middle school, I had a
zine about the adventures that I had with my friends.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
It was called Power Dreams. And then I got into
a program.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I went to high school in New Jersey and I
got into this Governor School for.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
The Arts program for writing.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And that's when I felt like my writing was kind
of validated by an outside source who said that I
was somewhat good at it. And these writing friends that
I made that summer, and I loved being able to
just be a full nerd and just write and read
like that made me incredibly happy. So I think those
(04:12):
kind of things together really firmed up my identity as
a writer.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I love that. So when you went to college, did
you have that inkling in your mind that like that
would maybe be a career that you would pursue or
did you think that was unrealistic as a career.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I thought it was unrealistic as a career.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I thought it was a love that people had told me, like, oh,
if you're a great writer, maybe you could be a
lawyer because that involves communication skills or you know, ways
that you could sort of translate some aspects of writing
into something more supposedly practical.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I majored in anthropology.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I also majored in creative writing, which became I was
the first.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
It just became a major.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
At my college and I was like, oh, I'm going
to do it, And the amazing head of the department
suggested that everyone also major in something else so that
we had something to write about.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
But I kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But I think that that's kind of wise in a way,
like writers always need something to write about. And I've
somehow sometimes resented having other other jobs that weren't so
creative or that weren't so pure, But they've given me
so much sometimes in terms of material or just in
(05:32):
terms of way to like exercise my brain in other
ways that I think have come back to better and
deep in my writing.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Ultimately, that's super wise, and that wound up being true
for you too, in the way that your niche developed. Anyway,
we'll come back to that. What's your all time favorite book?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Oh my gosh, this question is hard.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I really struggle to pare down to one, but kind
of the book that blew my mind in in a
sort of adult way, with Crime and Punishment, which I
read for a psycho analytic interpretation of literature class and
just like all of the incredible layers of it really
blew my mind, even though I haven't revisited it for
(06:18):
a while.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
What's your dream writing routine? Like, if you had your druthers,
what's the fantasy version.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I am a huge coffee shop sort of ambient noise writer,
so I would love to just take my laptop somewhere
beautiful and a little like fun and full of some
good people watching when my brain needed a break and
camp out and drink a embarrassing number of lattes and
(06:46):
write my heart out.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think that that's my ideal.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Amazing and juxtaposed against your real writing routine.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Unfortunately, my real writing routine has been very hardly existed
at all recently since I've had a second baby. I've
just been so sleep deprived that when I have some
moments to write, everything feels a little fuzzy.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But that being said, so when I do get a
chance to write, I will take like any.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Really, if I do have a little bit of focus
and clarity and time, I'll do it. And you know,
whether it's like on my couch in my bed, I
am there.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You don't have to wait for the fantasy you're just
digging in.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
We'll meet it where it comes exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So quick follow up on that, because I read in
your book that you're like an on and off journaler,
which I very much am to. So how do you
apply that to your Because you have new babies and
I'm sure you have like memories you want to preserve
and stuff like that. So what's your current journaling routine.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I am the queen of buying. This is my latest.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I'm all about a nice notebook that I like fill
up like four pages of and then abandon for a
new nice notebook with the intentions of filling it to
the end, and right now I'm all about I have
all I do want to capture these memories, even though
they're like tired and hazy.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I have a million notes on my phone that are
like half thoughts.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Some of them are like four words, and I look
back on them and wonder what I could possibly have meant.
But some of them are a little bit more fully
formed than that. So yeah, and I've never done this
before until now. But I've also left some like voice
memos for myself, just if I feel even that writing
is beyond me, just to kind of get some memories
(08:45):
down and make something real by putting it somewhere, by documenting.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
It, that's great.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
So I am also, like I said, a sporadic journaler,
but being an audio person too. I have in the
last couple of years started leaving myself voice memos and
like doing kind of a diary that way too, which
you can hear like where you're at, which is kind
of fun. When you listen back, you're like, oh my god,
you have more context.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yes, I also I never had this until the pandemic,
but I have like voice memo relationships where I'll just
catch up with friends, like I guess we're our schedules
are too weird to actually have a phone call, so
we'll just leave each other these messages on voice notes,
and it feels too unwieldy for a text, and it's
some nice I've gone back and listened, and it's just
(09:33):
such a nice thing to get to hear someone's voice
and hear them chatting to you, and you can listen again,
you can listen anytime.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I find that really lovely.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, what's one piece of writing that makes you jealous?
You didn't write it.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
This is something that just came out that I just
read that. I was in awe of Melissa Phebose, who's
a writer I really love and admire, and she I
got to hang out with her a little bit when
she was at Bennington and she wrote this essay for
The New York Times magazine about her breast production surgery,
and I just found it so like everything she writes
(10:10):
so thoughtful and smart and real and vulnerable, and all
of those things together just really brought it home to me.
And I had a breast production when I was in
high school, and I've written about it like a very
little bit, and it made me.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I was like, oh, I wish I wrote this essay.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, when someone knocks it out of the park on
one of your own stories, you're like, oh, good job.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Son of a bitch, No exactly. Okay, So we'll dive
into the books, but first I want to talk about
Bennington for a second, because I know you don't have
to have an MFA to write a book, but I
(10:58):
would like to unpack, like what parts of the experience
contributed to your writing process and knowledge of the publishing industry.
And I don't know anything that didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Absolutely, So I think I had a kind of unique
experience in that I actually received my book deal and
my MFA acceptance the same week, So I ad I'm
very lucky.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I already had a book deal.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And but the book deal kind of came because I
applied to MFA MFA programs.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The year before and did not get in.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
But one of the programs I applied to, the Hunter
Memoir program, which did not I called to see what
the status was on my application and they're like, well,
we can't tell you yet, but we can't tell you
that you didn't make our short list and you didn't
make our long list, and I.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Was like, oh, like, fine, I guess telling me, but
so no shade at them, but just a little bit
of them. But I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Them because part of the application was writing a I
think it was a one page summary of the memoir
that you were working on. And writing that page summary
really crystallized I had always wanted to write a book,
but it kind of put that book idea that had.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Been floating around in like little.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Puzzle pieces in my brain into a more singular, coherent picture,
and I knew that I wanted to write that book.
I always knew I wanted to write a book, but
this was what the book that would become Feast, my
first book, and I thought, this is the book that
I want to write. So that was really really helpful.
And then you know, publishing is really slow. I had
(12:50):
been used to writing for the web, where you know,
you write something Tuesday, you edit it Wednesday, it gets
published Thursday, and then everyone forgets about it Friday. So
this whole process, like, I think, I found my amazing
agent through a coworker. He was working in video for
a website I was working on, and I discovered he
(13:13):
wrote a book about lucid dreaming and knowing that I
wanted to write a book. I was like, Oh, tell
me everything about the process.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
How did it go, what did you do?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And he's like, well, you have to get an I mean,
if you're going to do it this sort of traditional way,
you need an agent.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I think you really liked my agent.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I was like, okay, great, and so he introduced us
over email. I sent her this one page about my
memoir that I had written for Hunter, and.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
She was like, oh, I love this, Send me more.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And then I panicked because the more that I had
was a total mess of notes and ideas I didn't have,
like I certainly didn't have a book proposal. And I
asked her what she was hoping for, and she said,
just send me everything that you have, and so I did.
I sent her this mess and she ended up signing
me and really helping me turn that mess into a
book proposal, which took about a.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Year nice and then so I think.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That was around twenty fifteen. So then in twenty sixteen,
as we were shopping it and I was getting so
many rejections, many of which were like very lovely rejections
that would rave about certain things but say no, thank you.
I finally got an acceptance. And while this was going on,
I was working as a copywriter for Marie's Cheese. It
(14:27):
was a great job in some ways, in many ways,
I got to eat so much amazing cheese. But I
kind of felt like this more of the writing that
was in my voice was my side hustle.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I would pitch essays.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And stories here and there, and I really hoped to
move that more to the center of my professional life,
and so for me, the book was part of that,
and the MFA was also part of it. I had
considered an MFA for a long time but kind of
thought like, it's expensive, I don't really need it. And
then I thought like, well, I don't really need it,
(15:06):
but I really want it. It just seems like a
awesome creative opportunity to get to like spend the time
and the effort working on the writing that I cared about.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
And that turned out to be correct.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It really was, and it actually worked out so well
this timing of So I sold my book on proposal.
You can sell a nonfiction book with a proposal or
a whole manuscript, and so I had about fifty pages,
which meant I had to write the rest of the book.
I mean, if you get if anyone listening, or if
you get the opportunity to write a book with the
(15:43):
support of an MFA program. It was kind of ideal
because I remember one time getting some feedback from my
editor that was so abstract and big picture that I
had no idea what.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I actually was supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Like I was like, uh huh uh huh, Like that
sounds great, but I don't know how to implement that
at all, And so I brought it to and at Bennington,
where I got my MFA, you worked with a different
faculty advisor every term, and at that point I was
working with Joan Wickersham, who's an amazing writer, and I
just told her what my editor had said was like help,
(16:18):
and she did.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
She was like, this is what I would.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Do, and I followed her advice and it worked out.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So I feel like I was in this really.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Loving, supportive cocoon to help me write this book, which
is really daunting to write a book. So I'm really
grateful for Bennington. The timing was really cool because so
I started the program in twenty sixteen when I started
my book deal, and then the book came out in
twenty eighteen, right before I graduated from the program, and
(16:50):
so we had like a little book party for me
at the last residency, and it kind of was like
a journey that I got to do both of those
things together.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You have also like a cohort of non faculty fellow
student writers that you were able to bounce ideas off of,
and do you stay in touch with those people?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Definitely?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
That was the best part I think of the program
and what I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I signed up for it.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Because I wanted that time to focus on my writing.
And then my favorite part was meeting these fellow writers
who were just people who like loved books and words
as much.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
As I did. And yeah, they were great.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yes, I have stayed in touch with with a bunch
of them. They've just become really wonderful friends. Like they're
really cool people from all walks of life. One of
the cool things Bennington is a low residency MFA, which
means a lot of them had careers and families and
like full you know, it's adults, not necessarily like people
(17:53):
right after out of college, and so it was just fascinating,
Like my classmate, some of them were one of them
was a doctor. One of them, you know, they just
had all kinds of stories. One of them was a
French professor, one of them was like a mom of five.
You know. They all had different things going on, and
they all brought so much perspective and richness to my
(18:17):
writing life and my regular person life too.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
That's great. Yeah, that was the thing about the Catapult
thing that I did too. It was like a mini
MFA in that way, and we all got to know
each other's writing, which is so helpful. It also gives
you context for like the notes that they're giving you,
you know what I mean, When you can put it
through that filter of like, oh well, I know all
these things about this person and whatever, it gives me
(18:42):
extra information. And I just think, like in the way
that your coworker helped you, you know, by being like
I think you would love my agent so helpful to
find your writer tribe so that you can tap in
for those reasons too.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, And we've all supported each other right in the
ways that are more kind of right, just by being
a friend and by providing feedback on notes, and then
things like when I went on book tour for Feast,
I got to go see like one of the friends
of mine from my MFA was in Chicago and she
worked at a bookstore and I got to go to
her bookstore, and then her friend was worked at a
(19:19):
beer bar and I did an event at his bar
because he was doing like a beer talk over books,
and you know, it was like all very full circle
and very cool to get to. Yeah, have all these
synergies and connect with people in different ways.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Okay, so let's get into Feast. So set everybody up
with the premise of that book.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yes, So Feast Feast True Love In and Out of
the Kitchen was my first book, and it's a memoir
and it's about my experience working my way through restaurants
and falling in love with food while struggling with a
pretty brutal eating disorder and recovering from that eating disorder.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, very relatable. So you gave us a little bit
about the genesis of the idea, but I guess fill
in those gaps in the writing process. So you did
a lot of the writing in that MFA program, Like
how long did your first draft take? When did it
(20:28):
look like the version you landed on? And then I
want to talk editing process.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, it was really intimidating to me, just like I
got this book Deale, which was a dream.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
But then it's like, oh, I have to write a book.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I've never written a book before, so in the book proposal,
I think of writing a book proposal. It can be
such a great exercise because you have to write an outline,
and I hate writing an outline. I remember when they
like taught you about writing an outline.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I don't know middle school.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Maybe I would reverse engineer it so that I I
would like write the essay first and then write my outline,
because I don't I just don't think I'm someone who
thinks on the page like I think through writing. So
it didn't really make sense for me to write an outline.
And I don't think I followed it particularly closely, but
it did force me to think through like, how is
this book an unfold? What is the general arc? What
(21:19):
is the general beginning, middle, and end? So let's say,
so the book it starts like the first chapter is
my last kind of epic binge in my twenties, and
then I go back and the rest of it is
pretty much chronological order.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I work my way through various like.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Restaurants, boyfriends, and eating disorder phases and then kind of
come out the other side.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So I for me, the structure is one of the biggest.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Challenges as I was feeling daunted by this big I
think my contract said sixty thousand words. I believe Feast
is like seventy five thousand words, which is pretty much
like a.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Medium sized book.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It just sounds like a lot of words, seventy five
thousand words. But I was really good at writing a
thousand word essays, so I told myself, I just have
to write seventy five one thousand word essays.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
And of course that's not exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It, but.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It like really helped me feel like a little like, Okay,
I can do this, and I really that was a
lot of my processes like a thousand words chunks, and
I just really like sorted to write. I wrote, and
then I did a lot of the lifting of like
creating that coherence, creating that like I think that mysterious
challenge of a book where it feels connected and where
(22:41):
you like want to keep turning the page.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I feel like a lot of that for me happened
in editing.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I experienced a lot of the writing process is like
just kind of diving in and like getting.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Out as much as I could. And it was hard.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I wrote about like some really tough times in my life,
and I felt like I was writing I was in
a pretty good place when I was writing, like I was,
you know, I was in a recovery for a while,
several years under my belt. I was writing about some
really destructive exes, and I was in this really happy
relationship that is now with my husband, so like there's
(23:16):
a lot of good stuff going on, but I felt
like for me to kind of capture the toughness, I
had to really like parachute myself into the heart of
the very worst, hardest, shittiest moments. And there's like no
way around that for me. So it was really hard.
Like I started to see a therapist again for the
first time in a while. I kind of surprised myself
(23:37):
with that because people ask like, oh, is it healing?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Is a cathartic for me? What did feel healing?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And cathartic was like came later the talking about it
and kind of like getting out of the world that
was like, oh, but the doing it was just just
kind of miserable in a way. But I mean it
was like that misery like it did. It felt good
in a way, but it was it was all a
good hurt.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So okay, when you're like, you know, conjuring out these
demons from your past, did you have any methods for
tapping into that or did you just sit with it?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Were you looking through old pictures, were you looking through
old emails? Or were you just like, no, I'm going
to sit in this stillness and like remember these things
I normally try to forget.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
I think a little bit of both, but more the latter,
Like people ask me to how did you remember? And
I kind of start. I started with.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Those memories that did feel like just really visceral and
intense and like I couldn't forget them if I tried.
But then for me, I do feel like the writing
was sort of like a teleporting like the actual process
of sitting there. I mean, I'm just I'm not as
some people do are by hand kind of writers. I
have to type because I feel like I'm too slow
(24:49):
by hand. So just like in my word doc, but
all you know, really like be like I thought of
the word doc as like I'm in I'm in there,
I'm there, We're in my demons, as these said, which
is true. And then as the words and sentences and
paragraphs built upon themselves, more things would come up, which
was really interesting to me, Like the process of writing
(25:11):
about them unearthed more memories. Yeah, that was interesting, And
I did once in a while kind of poke back
into like did that person say that, can I find
some old email or something? But I think if I
know that memory is fallible, but it's a memoir, and
so it's memory is like in the title, right total
(25:32):
and so yeah, and so I feel like I'm being.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
True to Being true to the memory to me means
being true.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
To like how it felt and not necessarily like the
journalistic integrity of like.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I've gotten a lot better about my perspective about that.
But for a while I would be like is it exact?
And it's like, no, it can't be exact. So like
nobody was there beside you at the tape recorder. You know,
like there might be instances that you can find and
fact check yourself, but that's not usually how it works,
and people don't normally expect that anyway. Good thing to
(26:06):
let go of. Okay, So on that note, and I'm
curious if this came out in the edit. So there
are some landmark people and institutions in Feast Food people
and like Houston's, you know, I guess, but not all
of them are identified. And how did you choose which
(26:28):
people you could identify? And how did you figure out
which things people would have to figure out on their own.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Let's see, my general guideline was, I wanted to be
honest and kind.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I feel like it's hard to write. I don't mind.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Disclosing my own secrets so much, but it's very sensitive
to write about other people. Right, there's a legal read
that happened that informed a lot actually, like I, I
was kind of nervous like Houston's. One of the reasons
I didn't mind mentioning it by name is it's this
like big company, and I was I was expecting that
(27:02):
to maybe not be kosher according to like, I don't
know some of their they because they have lawyers. And
but the lawyer wasn't concerned with that because most of
what I said was pretty like complimentary of Houston's, which
I was like, oh okay, I was pretty miserable, but
it wasn't the institution's fault. The things that I had
(27:26):
to take out were like there was a I'll just
leave it in this broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I think that's okay.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Like I had written in a draft about an ex
boyfriend's suicide attempt, and that got mixed because unders I mean,
I can understand that that that's like a private thing,
whereas there's another X and I talk about his like
alcoholism and drug struggles.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And I was like, well, how come I can leave that?
And the lawyer said that like enough.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
People were privy to that that it was is it
necessarily privileged, whereas this suicide attempt was more of like
a there weren't so only a small number of people
knew about that.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
And when I was talking to.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
My editor about kind of planning for that, she said,
I mean, she's an editor and edits nonfiction books and
memoir all the time, and she said that even after
doing this for years and years, she never really knows,
like what's.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Going to come up with the legal read. So I'm
glad that that happened.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
But I just try, I mean, you know, I I
it's hard, it's really really hard to like write about
other people. And I just really tried my best to
like have my own integrity about it, to be as
generous but as truthful as I could muster and I
(28:45):
left it at that.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Tell me about the editing process, because in the acknowledgments
there's I believe Morgan Parker and then you're editor at
Little A also for Feast, so like, what did you
tackle in each of those rounds? And yeah, how they
leave their mark?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah. So Morgan was my acquiring editor.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
She's like an amazing poet and she was working at
Little A at the time, and I was really excited to.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Work with her.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
We knew each other from college, actually not super well,
but like we had a poetry class together. So I
was really excited about that, especially because it was such
a personal book and I felt like that kind of connection.
And Morgan was the one who gave that abstract advice
that I couldn't And I think it's because she's a
poet first, right and an editor or second maybe, and
(29:36):
it was kind of like her advice was like poetry.
So she was so helpful in thinking about the big
picture of the book. She was the one who believed
in it at first and wanted to publish it and everything.
So I owe her so much. And then I was
nervous when we had she took me to lunch and
(29:57):
she told me she was leaving to go pursue her
poetry and other writing, and I was really excited for her,
but really nervous for me. And then I just got
ended up with Laura van Derveer, who was the next
editor at Little A, who they hired and paired me with.
And I just got so lucky because Laura was an
amazing editor and also I think an editor rather than
(30:20):
a writer, and just so really adept and knew how
to communicate with authors. And I feel like toget I
got really lucky. I got the dream team, and like
they shaped it together, and she saw me through the
second round of edits, the second part of the project,
and really kind of polishing and tightening and making like
(30:41):
an almost book into an actual book.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So you mentioned like you open with this big last
binge and then you go back to the beginning and
then the rest of it's kind of chronological. So did
that come out in the proposal or did you figure
that out in the edit? That kind of structure for it.
And I have to say, Feast was so helpful because
(31:06):
you gave me a note about structure, and then seeing
it so cleanly done, I was like, ah, yes, I need.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
To because version because I struggled with it. Oh my gosh,
I don't I don't remember like where exactly I came.
I think I was a Bennington professor who was like,
when all else fails, like just chronological order is a
brilliant thing, Like that's how we usually tell stories, like
this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened.
(31:36):
So while there are other ways to tell a story,
for sure, especially when you're if you're writing essays or
something like that, there's a reason it's kind of the
the first and I think it often really works, and
it really did work for me, and it did take me.
I'm not sure like when that light bulb went off
that that was the right way, but it took me
(31:57):
a while.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I think I had some other more bouncing round.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Drafts for quite a while, and I felt like that
was a big moment in the book coming together, because
I really startled.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
With that any other big things about feast that you
think are important for people to know, or things you
learned in the process.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I mean, I was really like I decided to write
a book about my eating disorder largely, which was for
so many years like my deepest, darkest secret. And so
it was kind of a crazy thing to do in
some ways, to like take that and then be like,
this is the thing that I'm going.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
To share with the world in a really public way.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And I was really nervous about what people would think,
you know, I was at that time, I was really
building my career as a food writer.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Was I going to ruin the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Because then I would be like, and none of those
fears materialized at all, you know. I think so often
the stuff that is really hard to write about and
scary to write about is the juicy, good stuff that
is gonna move and inspire people. And so that's just
my little like ted talk. It's like, don't be afraid
(33:08):
to go there, because I feel like that's what resonated
with people. And when people said, like, you know, it
made me feel a little less alone, I was like
so moved because that was what I was trying to do.
I was kind of like writing for that eighteen year
old Hannah who felt like incredibly alone and isolated and ashamed.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
That's great. Would you say it helped with your recovery
in its own weird way.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, I think kind of like coming out with it did.
When I first started to tell people, because you know,
it's not really something you talk about, like, yeah, I
had an eating disorder, the primary response I got was
people saying me too, like they also.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Struggled with an eating disorder.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
So people I never expected, like friends or people would say, oh,
my sister.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Did, or you know, my mom did.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
My whole life where people, you know, everyone had someone,
And at first it was so heartening because it was
just that reminder that I'm not alone, which is like
I need that reminder.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
But then it became really depressing, like again, like more
people have to go through this, so you know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
But I do feel like it's kind of it's healing
to come out with it and scary, you know, and
it hasn't always been easy. I've had my moments, but
in general I felt that a lot more cathartic than
the actual writing.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So let's move on to Plenty. Set up the premise
for this one.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
So in some ways Plenty is a sequel and in
other ways it's its own thing. It's also a memoir,
but this stage in my life talks about kind of
more of living in recovery and meeting my now husband
and deciding to start a family. And then there's also
an element of me trying to create and build a
(35:02):
community of women in the food world, which I do
through profiling a chef, a somalier, a barista, cheesemaker, these
kind of women in the trenches of the food and
hospitality world who I admire.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Okay, so you wrote the proposal for this while you
were actually right before you got pregnant with your daughter,
Am I right on that?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
That's correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And so how did because that's a huge thread in
the story. So I'm curious, like what the proposal looked
like originally and when you really decided to pull that
thread through yea, because you couldn't plan. It's not like
you'd be like, and it's gonna end with me having
a baby or you know what?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I right, right, I wrote the chapter to the last time.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I was not a too big a spoiler alert, but
the last chapter is I have the baby.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
And I wrote that like I had already sent him.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
The rest of the book, and I wrote it like right,
I was deliriously postpartum. Yeah, so actually, you know Originally
the book was going to be so much more of
an almost journalistic less memoir, less personal premise about these inspiring.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Interesting women in the food world.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
And as I was working on like really early draft
with my writers group, they were all like, Oh, we
like the personal stuff. We want to hear more about that.
So I just started to kind of lean into that
more and more.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yeah. So it wasn't like I.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Didn't have the outline to the end, but I knew
that to me, like, I wanted to explore the connection
of food and family and my mom also is a chapter,
so it's kind of looking to future generations and to
past generations in my family. And I was lucky enough
so Laura, my editor from Feast, kind of also helped
(36:49):
to talk through the book with me and the idea
for the book in its early stages and what it
would be. So I had that kind of leg up.
I feel like second books are, you know. I wrote
my Bennington MFA thesis about second books because I was
like really interested in this idea. And I remember I
listened to this podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert then where she
(37:11):
said she said something I like wrote it all down
because it was so good that your first book. If
you write it when you're twenty thirty, forty, fifty sixty,
doesn't matter. This has been like marinating with you all
of those years, all of your life. It's like been
a part of you, right, and you've been like processing
and now you're putting it down and then it's like.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Oh, what is the second book? You know?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So it's just like a whole new challenge and it's
really close to my heart, and I'm really glad that
I got to. I kind of wrote in real time
about losing a pregnancy, about my miscarriage, and then about
my pregnancy, and then about these really early COVID days,
Like I was writing about them as they were happening.
So it was a really different experience than writing about
(37:51):
things that happened many years before that I had already
like thoroughly digested and reflected upon. I was really like
writing as it was happening.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, yeah, you could feel that. And I think that
is like a cool distinction between the two books. It's like, yes,
that first book has been in the incubator forever, but
there's so much possibility when the well isn't totally full,
and like, what, you know, what is it going to be. Yeah,
And as far as the profiles, like how did you
(38:23):
pick the people and how did that all come together?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
It kind of got.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
More and more about myself and my journey writing a book.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Almost.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I had originally just put together this pretty unwieldy list
of women in the food world that I admired, and
originally a lot of them were kind of like big
deal a celebrities, and I would like get a message
back from their publicist and then they said they could
set up an interview and it felt kind of like
and I did. I did a few of these interviews,
and then I remember I talked to a woman who
(38:52):
was a business owner and she was like, well, what's
your target market for the book?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
I just want to like, but I'm glad you said that,
because it kind of crystallized that, like, my target market
for this book is that I don't have a target market.
I mean, I'm sure the publisher has a target market,
but like that's I don't think that's my job as
a writer. And like I pivoted to instead of just
writing about women that were objectively like impressive, I wanted
(39:21):
to write about people that I loved, you know, people
that like I thought were really cool and like wanted
them to be part of my life.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
I think that comes across.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
In the book definitely, And it was just so much
more fun for me. And like one of the earlier
chapters is about this woman Paula, who was like a
friend I met online. She teaches cooking online and I
just like hit it off with her and I was like,
I want you. I wanted her to be my friend regardless,
and then I wanted to write about her.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So it's kind of this.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Awesome way like way in and I wrote about going
to Oslo with her, and like I probably would have
gone anyway, but knowing that I was going to write
it about it, that it was part of this book
made it feel even more kind of like legit in
my mind.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, oh I love that so much, because yeah, I
can't even imagine. I mean, I'm sure you could do it,
but braiding together, like all these things that are happening
in your personal life with these kind of sterile like
you get thirty minutes with this high profile person, it
doesn't kind of work as nicely as what wound up
(40:28):
happening in plenty. So your editor was totally cool that
it had evolved into something else.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah, she was really happy with it, and I feel
really lucky that she was so open to these evolutions.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
But I did.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I think by the time I had the proposal, I
knew it was going to be It wasn't a complete departure.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I knew it was going to be a little more personal.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I knew that the women that I was going to
talk about were going to be just people that I
personally admired, not necessarily celebrities. And she was really open
to like letting that unfolds, which I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
And then what was the editing process like this time around,
And did you feel like you were more prepared for
it or how did it go down?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Yeah, it felt a little bit less, like completely intimidating,
because I had done it once before, so I just
had that little bit of confidence, like I.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Can I have done this thing.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's still incredibly scary to like hitsend.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And then wait, wait, wait, wait wait.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I think it was a few months before I got
any word back, and I was just like, oh did
I write? What did I You have no idea? I
feel like a writer has no objectivity about their own work,
you know, and then I always get afraid to like revisit.
And also sometimes it's like it just feels kind of
(41:52):
painful to.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Like go back, go back, go back, go back. But
I had a really good ex experienced editing.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I feel like, if you're lucky enough to work with
a great editor and they have this is a great
laser vision where they see where you're going and they
get you the rest of the way there. So I
feel like she just really had a way of saying
like just like add a little more here, like you're
not quite there yet, like dig a little deeper, and
that really made.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
The book better. So I'm really grateful to the editing
process and for her.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Nice And then I saw there was like a brief
mention that a couple of the articles had been published
online before the proposal, So I was curious what pieces
those were, and then how you approached repurposing them. Is
that right? Oh?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yes, I think that's right. I yeah, that's right. I
mean I wrote, so I wrote about eat Offbeat, So
I wrote about one of the women in my book
is Manal, who has a company called eat off Beat.
The cook's food from refugee chefs, and I had wrote
a profile.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Of her for Salon. I don't know if there were more.
I think I might have been it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
But I had also written, I think for for Catapult.
Actually I wrote a little bit about like my story
of my miscarriage and everything, and a little bit about
my body image during that experience. You know, Officially, it
didn't I didn't think I had to have any notes
like that for a feast. But I almost felt kind
of guilty because I think this is true, like most
(43:28):
writers kind of revisit topics. And I had written before
about working in restaurant with an eating disorder. I wrote
before about like certain things that came up again. But
I think that that's okay. You know, we h and
they come up in different context in different ways. It's
so different when they're part of a book than when
it's like a little snippet of a short profile. I mean,
(43:49):
I think people sometimes are like afraid if they put
something out there, that that's it and they cannot like
revisit it, or that it's already that it's like done.
But I don't necessarily I think that's true. I think
most places are open to the idea that things will.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Get like rewritten or turned into something else. Yeah. Yeah,
And as a reader, I have to say it's delightful
for me. Like you know, Cheryl Straight, I can think
of a couple things that she's written about where it'll
be like, oh, and then you get another angle on
it or like a different perspective on it, and it's awesome.
As a reader, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yes, And I think sometimes as a writer, especially if
we're writing personal things, like we think that they're in
our heads so much that we think everyone is like
privy to that, but actually no one else is in
your head. And it might feel to me, I'm like
here we go again, But that doesn't feel that way
to someone else, like they're not there with me. So
I have to remind myself of that it's new to them,
(44:46):
even if it's I think there's some marketing thing about
or advertising thing that you have to see something. I
could be wrong on this seven times that you have
to see something seven seven times. Yeah, So if you
have to see something seven times, if you have like
a small echo, it's not going to I don't think
it's I think it takes a lot more than that
for it to get old.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
So with Plenty and with Feast, you narrated both books
for Audible. What was that experience? Like?
Speaker 1 (45:15):
It was really cool? Actually I had to audition to
do it. I'm not someone who's like done things. I
know you're an actor, but I've never really auditioned before.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
So I was like, oh my god, but I passed.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
They let me because you know, I thought to audition
because they had me fill out a form at the
publisher and like, what is the protagonist of the books
sound like?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
And I was like, this sounds like me.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
And then in filling this out, I'm like, well, I
should do it. So I asked if I could, and
they said maybe, if you can. I guess it's nice
that they don't want someone who sounds like terrible or
something to read the books. So for the first one,
they flew me out to this studio in Michigan, Brilliance
Publishing it it is and they sit in this tiny
booth and it's wild, Like I put on these big
(46:04):
earphones and I felt like my voice was like verberating
in my brain. And it's such a weird intimacy with
your own words, because if you mess up, you have
to go back to where before you mess up, and
so in order to not mess up, you have to
be very present. So you're just like in this very focused,
(46:25):
little tiny cocoon with your own work, which is very
strange but also kind of fun. And I really liked it.
And then when I recorded the next book, it was
COVID times and I'm so grateful that I got to
work with the same lovely director that I worked with
for Feast, and he like zoomed in to the studio
(46:46):
in Brooklyn. It was near that it was near where
I was living. I was really quite pregnant. It was
the heat, huge heat wave in summer, and the air
conditioning was broken. So it was like miserable. I have
to say, I'm a miserable experience, but for sa you know,
but it was.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Still fun in some ways.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
But in that way it was like, oh my gosh,
I had like the huge ice coffee and a huge
ice water and I was just like sweaty again with
like the slowness of publishing. So like it took, you know,
I finished writing the book. It was like I had
just had the baby. I sent in the first draft.
So that was spring of twenty twenty and it didn't
(47:27):
come out until fall of twenty twenty one. Like that's
just like kind of a normal pace for publishing. But
like by fall of twenty twenty one, I was praying
it with the next baby, so my life had changed
a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Okay, so what's next for you? And like, you've built
a brand as a food writer, but that means more
than just food. You're writing about people and relationships and
stuff too. But what is on your docket anything that
you can share? And then what's on your bucket list?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, I'm still figuring it out. I feel like, what
is the next chapter. I'm the editor in chief of
parent dot com. It's my new day job, and I'm
excited about it.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Oh congrats.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, it's like a fun it's a different I've been
working in the food world for so long and I
will always love food, but parenting is a big part
of my life as a new mom, and so it's
kind of fun to get to dig into a different
topic that also, just like food touches on so much,
(48:32):
you know, touches on culture and bodies and traditions and
you know, just anything history and parenting too. Like we
all have parents, we all like it's just this huge, juicy.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Potential of topics. So I'm enjoying that.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And I wrote a book another proposal that nobody seems
interested in, so about multi level marketing.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
If you, if you're a publisher, any interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
It's just, honestly, it's just something that I've been fascinated
with for so long, and then like the Lula Rich
documentary came out, and I just thought it would be
a really good book, and I still do.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
But no publishers think that so far. Publisher Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It's still possible that a publisher will think that, and
that's okay if not. There's so many stories to tell
and I'm not sure what the next one will be,
but I'm excited to see what it is. I mean,
I love the process of writing, and I also really
have enjoyed the process of like promoting a book.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
I know some people don't feel.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
That way, but for me, it's like, really, writing is
so solitary and it's me and the laptop, and it
feels really gratifying to be able to take it out
into the world and talk to people and like, I
get to talk to you, and that's.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
For me really exciting too.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
But It's also kind of exciting to like marinate and
think about like what are the next things and brainstorm
and be in that early phase where you're not even
working yet, you're just dreaming. So that's kind of where
I'm at right now.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
I love that, and any any like bucket list writing
goals or just keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah, keep doing I mean, I feel so lucky that
I get to write books. I would like to write
something for The New Yorker one day. That's kind of
a big dream of mine.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, Yeah, And now for the PostScript segment, just a
few final words of advice that you can put in
your pocket and take for the road. So what's one
piece of writing advice you wish you could give your
former self?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
To just keep writing. As hard as it is, it
gets easier.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Sometimes you just have to like sit there and type
and do the thing. Some of it will be amazing,
some of it will be garbage, but all of it
will be worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
That's good. One tip for writers trying to get a
book published.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
I think keep talking to writers who have gotten book published.
I feel like having those kind of people just a
few steps a front of me on the path was
really helpful to ask for advice and what it was like.
I think people can be weirdly secretive about it, so
I like to not be secretive and share about my experience.
So if you can find some people who are open
(51:21):
in that.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Way, that's great.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
And I think it's the same thing as kind of
any like artistic endeavor where you're putting yourself out there
is like just don't let the rejections go get you down.
I know it's a way a thousand times is you're
seven done because they hurt every time, but like, just
don't let them stop you. You'll have to find the
right moment, the right person, and sometimes just like luck
(51:46):
and timing, but it will happen if you keep.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
At it nice.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
What's your all time favorite piece of your own writing.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
I think it's my last book. It's Plenty.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I feel I don't know if that is a book
too long for a piece, but I feel pretty out
of it.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
I highly recommend picking up a copy of Hannah's food
memoirs Feast and Plenty. Hannah also teaches writing classes, and
I can tell you from experience she gives very thoughtful notes,
so look her up online for more info.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
My website is Hannah Howard NYC and you can find
more of my writing there and upcoming classes and everything.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Thank you so much for doing this. This is such
a good Thank.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
You for having me. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The
bleedersh writing is so much better with friends. I'm your host,
Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on social media. I
am at Courtney Kosak last name is Kocak on Twitter
and Instagram. And make sure you're signed up for the
Bleeders Companion substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives. There's
(52:50):
so much good stuff that I send out to my
free list, and I actually just launched a paid subscription
with some extra goodies where I take you behind the
scenes of all my best buylines. I published a post
about my return to stand up comedy and how I
got ready to crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs
and whether or not I think it is worth it.
(53:10):
I also did one of my favorite workshops I've ever taught.
It's a manifestation workshop that I did for the New Year,
but it's really good anytime of the year. So there's
so much good stuff for free subscribers, and even more
for paid subscribers, and there is a link in the
description for that, and join me again next time for
(53:31):
another all new episode. In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
Part of the application was writing a I think it
was a one page summary of the memoir that you
were working on. And writing that page summary really crystallized
I had always wanted to write a book, but it
kind of put that book idea that had been floating
around in like little puzzle pieces in my brain into
(00:28):
a more singular, coherent picture, and I knew that I
wanted to write that book.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's today's guest Hannah Howard. No, you don't need an
MFA to write a book, But for her, even the
application process helped her crystallize her vision for what became
her first book, Feast.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Originally, the book was going to be so much more
of an almost journalistic less memoir, less personal primis about
these inspiring, interesting women in the food world. And as
I was working on, like really early jass of my
writers group, they were all like, Oh, we like the
personal stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We want to hear more about that. So I just
started to kind of lean into that more and more.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
She also shares how her second book evolved into a richer,
more relationship based food memoir. Plus, we discussed her experience
in a low residency MFA, the reactions she's gotten to
her writing about ed how her niche is expanding into
parenting and more. In today's episode, There's nothing to writing.
(01:32):
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Welcome to the Bleeders, a podcast and support group about
book writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Cosak,
and each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors,
(01:53):
agents and publishers about how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Hi, my name is Hannah Howard. I'm the author of
two memoirs, Feast True Love In and Out of the
Kitchen and Plenty, a memoir of food and family. And
I write about food a lot and I teach food
writing classes.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So I took Catapult's twelvemonth Essay Generator to write the
first draft of my essay collection, and at the end
of the program, we each got matched with a professional
reader to give us notes on our manuscript. Hannah was
my reader. I'm so excited to do this. I think
there's a real wisdom that I was matched up with
(02:37):
you after having read your books now in their entirety,
So I'm really grateful for that, and it really helped me.
Not like I was able to process your notes before anyway,
but like on a deeper level, I was like, oh,
and it gave me some ideas. So anyway, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Oh that's awesome, I thought so too, Like they did
a thoughtful fuftfule matchmaking with both of us.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yes, so we're going to get into both of your books.
But first let's do a quick lightning round. So when
did you first identify as a writer.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I always identified as a writer. I made my first
air Quotes book. Maybe when I could first start to write,
you know, I was putting pieces together, and I always
felt like there was something.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Magical about books.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So when I was in middle school, I had a
zine about the adventures that I had with my friends.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
It was called Power Dreams. And then I got into
a program.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I went to high school in New Jersey and I
got into this Governor School for.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
The Arts program for writing.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And that's when I felt like my writing was kind
of validated by an outside source who said that I
was somewhat good at it. And these writing friends that
I made that summer, and I loved being able to
just be a full nerd and just write and read
like that made me incredibly happy. So I think those
(04:12):
kind of things together really firmed up my identity as
a writer.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I love that. So when you went to college, did
you have that inkling in your mind that like that
would maybe be a career that you would pursue or
did you think that was unrealistic as a career.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
I thought it was unrealistic as a career.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I thought it was a love that people had told me, like, oh,
if you're a great writer, maybe you could be a
lawyer because that involves communication skills or you know, ways
that you could sort of translate some aspects of writing
into something more supposedly practical.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I majored in anthropology.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I also majored in creative writing, which became I was
the first.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
It just became a major.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
At my college and I was like, oh, I'm going
to do it, And the amazing head of the department
suggested that everyone also major in something else so that
we had something to write about.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
But I kind of.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But I think that that's kind of wise in a way,
like writers always need something to write about. And I've
somehow sometimes resented having other other jobs that weren't so
creative or that weren't so pure, But they've given me
so much sometimes in terms of material or just in
(05:32):
terms of way to like exercise my brain in other
ways that I think have come back to better and
deep in my writing.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Ultimately, that's super wise, and that wound up being true
for you too, in the way that your niche developed. Anyway,
we'll come back to that. What's your all time favorite book?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Oh my gosh, this question is hard.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I really struggle to pare down to one, but kind
of the book that blew my mind in in a
sort of adult way, with Crime and Punishment, which I
read for a psycho analytic interpretation of literature class and
just like all of the incredible layers of it really
blew my mind, even though I haven't revisited it for
(06:18):
a while.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
What's your dream writing routine? Like, if you had your druthers,
what's the fantasy version.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I am a huge coffee shop sort of ambient noise writer,
so I would love to just take my laptop somewhere
beautiful and a little like fun and full of some
good people watching when my brain needed a break and
camp out and drink a embarrassing number of lattes and
(06:46):
write my heart out.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think that that's my ideal.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Amazing and juxtaposed against your real writing routine.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Unfortunately, my real writing routine has been very hardly existed
at all recently since I've had a second baby. I've
just been so sleep deprived that when I have some
moments to write, everything feels a little fuzzy.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But that being said, so when I do get a
chance to write, I will take like any.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Really, if I do have a little bit of focus
and clarity and time, I'll do it. And you know,
whether it's like on my couch in my bed, I
am there.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You don't have to wait for the fantasy you're just
digging in.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
We'll meet it where it comes exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So quick follow up on that, because I read in
your book that you're like an on and off journaler,
which I very much am to. So how do you
apply that to your Because you have new babies and
I'm sure you have like memories you want to preserve
and stuff like that. So what's your current journaling routine.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I am the queen of buying. This is my latest.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I'm all about a nice notebook that I like fill
up like four pages of and then abandon for a
new nice notebook with the intentions of filling it to
the end, and right now I'm all about I have
all I do want to capture these memories, even though
they're like tired and hazy.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I have a million notes on my phone that are
like half thoughts.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Some of them are like four words, and I look
back on them and wonder what I could possibly have meant.
But some of them are a little bit more fully
formed than that. So yeah, and I've never done this
before until now. But I've also left some like voice
memos for myself, just if I feel even that writing
is beyond me, just to kind of get some memories
(08:45):
down and make something real by putting it somewhere, by documenting.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
It, that's great.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
So I am also, like I said, a sporadic journaler,
but being an audio person too. I have in the
last couple of years started leaving myself voice memos and
like doing kind of a diary that way too, which
you can hear like where you're at, which is kind
of fun. When you listen back, you're like, oh my god,
you have more context.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yes, I also I never had this until the pandemic,
but I have like voice memo relationships where I'll just
catch up with friends, like I guess we're our schedules
are too weird to actually have a phone call, so
we'll just leave each other these messages on voice notes,
and it feels too unwieldy for a text, and it's
some nice I've gone back and listened, and it's just
(09:33):
such a nice thing to get to hear someone's voice
and hear them chatting to you, and you can listen again,
you can listen anytime.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I find that really lovely.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, what's one piece of writing that makes you jealous?
You didn't write it.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
This is something that just came out that I just
read that. I was in awe of Melissa Phebose, who's
a writer I really love and admire, and she I
got to hang out with her a little bit when
she was at Bennington and she wrote this essay for
The New York Times magazine about her breast production surgery,
and I just found it so like everything she writes
(10:10):
so thoughtful and smart and real and vulnerable, and all
of those things together just really brought it home to me.
And I had a breast production when I was in
high school, and I've written about it like a very
little bit, and it made me.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I was like, oh, I wish I wrote this essay.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, when someone knocks it out of the park on
one of your own stories, you're like, oh, good job.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Son of a bitch, No exactly. Okay, So we'll dive
into the books, but first I want to talk about
Bennington for a second, because I know you don't have
to have an MFA to write a book, but I
(10:58):
would like to unpack, like what parts of the experience
contributed to your writing process and knowledge of the publishing industry.
And I don't know anything that didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Absolutely, So I think I had a kind of unique
experience in that I actually received my book deal and
my MFA acceptance the same week, So I ad I'm
very lucky.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I already had a book deal.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And but the book deal kind of came because I
applied to MFA MFA programs.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
The year before and did not get in.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
But one of the programs I applied to, the Hunter
Memoir program, which did not I called to see what
the status was on my application and they're like, well,
we can't tell you yet, but we can't tell you
that you didn't make our short list and you didn't
make our long list, and I.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Was like, oh, like, fine, I guess telling me, but
so no shade at them, but just a little bit
of them. But I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Them because part of the application was writing a I
think it was a one page summary of the memoir
that you were working on. And writing that page summary
really crystallized I had always wanted to write a book,
but it kind of put that book idea that had.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Been floating around in like little.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Puzzle pieces in my brain into a more singular, coherent picture,
and I knew that I wanted to write that book.
I always knew I wanted to write a book, but
this was what the book that would become Feast, my
first book, and I thought, this is the book that
I want to write. So that was really really helpful.
And then you know, publishing is really slow. I had
(12:50):
been used to writing for the web, where you know,
you write something Tuesday, you edit it Wednesday, it gets
published Thursday, and then everyone forgets about it Friday. So
this whole process, like, I think, I found my amazing
agent through a coworker. He was working in video for
a website I was working on, and I discovered he
(13:13):
wrote a book about lucid dreaming and knowing that I
wanted to write a book. I was like, Oh, tell
me everything about the process.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
How did it go, what did you do?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And he's like, well, you have to get an I mean,
if you're going to do it this sort of traditional way,
you need an agent.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I think you really liked my agent.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I was like, okay, great, and so he introduced us
over email. I sent her this one page about my
memoir that I had written for Hunter, and.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
She was like, oh, I love this, Send me more.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
And then I panicked because the more that I had
was a total mess of notes and ideas I didn't have,
like I certainly didn't have a book proposal. And I
asked her what she was hoping for, and she said,
just send me everything that you have, and so I did.
I sent her this mess and she ended up signing
me and really helping me turn that mess into a
book proposal, which took about a.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Year nice and then so I think.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That was around twenty fifteen. So then in twenty sixteen,
as we were shopping it and I was getting so
many rejections, many of which were like very lovely rejections
that would rave about certain things but say no, thank you.
I finally got an acceptance. And while this was going on,
I was working as a copywriter for Marie's Cheese. It
(14:27):
was a great job in some ways, in many ways,
I got to eat so much amazing cheese. But I
kind of felt like this more of the writing that
was in my voice was my side hustle.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I would pitch essays.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And stories here and there, and I really hoped to
move that more to the center of my professional life,
and so for me, the book was part of that,
and the MFA was also part of it. I had
considered an MFA for a long time but kind of
thought like, it's expensive, I don't really need it. And
then I thought like, well, I don't really need it,
(15:06):
but I really want it. It just seems like a
awesome creative opportunity to get to like spend the time
and the effort working on the writing that I cared about.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
And that turned out to be correct.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
It really was, and it actually worked out so well
this timing of So I sold my book on proposal.
You can sell a nonfiction book with a proposal or
a whole manuscript, and so I had about fifty pages,
which meant I had to write the rest of the book.
I mean, if you get if anyone listening, or if
you get the opportunity to write a book with the
(15:43):
support of an MFA program. It was kind of ideal
because I remember one time getting some feedback from my
editor that was so abstract and big picture that I
had no idea what.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I actually was supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Like I was like, uh huh uh huh, Like that
sounds great, but I don't know how to implement that
at all, And so I brought it to and at Bennington,
where I got my MFA, you worked with a different
faculty advisor every term, and at that point I was
working with Joan Wickersham, who's an amazing writer, and I
just told her what my editor had said was like help,
(16:18):
and she did.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
She was like, this is what I would.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Do, and I followed her advice and it worked out.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So I feel like I was in this really.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Loving, supportive cocoon to help me write this book, which
is really daunting to write a book. So I'm really
grateful for Bennington. The timing was really cool because so
I started the program in twenty sixteen when I started
my book deal, and then the book came out in
twenty eighteen, right before I graduated from the program, and
(16:50):
so we had like a little book party for me
at the last residency, and it kind of was like
a journey that I got to do both of those
things together.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You have also like a cohort of non faculty fellow
student writers that you were able to bounce ideas off of,
and do you stay in touch with those people?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Definitely?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
That was the best part I think of the program
and what I didn't like.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I signed up for it.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Because I wanted that time to focus on my writing.
And then my favorite part was meeting these fellow writers
who were just people who like loved books and words
as much.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
As I did. And yeah, they were great.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yes, I have stayed in touch with with a bunch
of them. They've just become really wonderful friends. Like they're
really cool people from all walks of life. One of
the cool things Bennington is a low residency MFA, which
means a lot of them had careers and families and
like full you know, it's adults, not necessarily like people
(17:53):
right after out of college, and so it was just fascinating,
Like my classmate, some of them were one of them
was a doctor. One of them, you know, they just
had all kinds of stories. One of them was a
French professor, one of them was like a mom of five.
You know. They all had different things going on, and
they all brought so much perspective and richness to my
(18:17):
writing life and my regular person life too.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
That's great. Yeah, that was the thing about the Catapult
thing that I did too. It was like a mini
MFA in that way, and we all got to know
each other's writing, which is so helpful. It also gives
you context for like the notes that they're giving you,
you know what I mean, When you can put it
through that filter of like, oh well, I know all
these things about this person and whatever, it gives me
(18:42):
extra information. And I just think, like in the way
that your coworker helped you, you know, by being like
I think you would love my agent so helpful to
find your writer tribe so that you can tap in
for those reasons too.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, And we've all supported each other right in the
ways that are more kind of right, just by being
a friend and by providing feedback on notes, and then
things like when I went on book tour for Feast,
I got to go see like one of the friends
of mine from my MFA was in Chicago and she
worked at a bookstore and I got to go to
her bookstore, and then her friend was worked at a
(19:19):
beer bar and I did an event at his bar
because he was doing like a beer talk over books,
and you know, it was like all very full circle
and very cool to get to. Yeah, have all these
synergies and connect with people in different ways.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Okay, so let's get into Feast. So set everybody up
with the premise of that book.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yes, So Feast Feast True Love In and Out of
the Kitchen was my first book, and it's a memoir
and it's about my experience working my way through restaurants
and falling in love with food while struggling with a
pretty brutal eating disorder and recovering from that eating disorder.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, very relatable. So you gave us a little bit
about the genesis of the idea, but I guess fill
in those gaps in the writing process. So you did
a lot of the writing in that MFA program, Like
how long did your first draft take? When did it
(20:28):
look like the version you landed on? And then I
want to talk editing process.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, it was really intimidating to me, just like I
got this book Deale, which was a dream.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
But then it's like, oh, I have to write a book.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I've never written a book before, so in the book proposal,
I think of writing a book proposal. It can be
such a great exercise because you have to write an outline,
and I hate writing an outline. I remember when they
like taught you about writing an outline.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I don't know middle school.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Maybe I would reverse engineer it so that I I
would like write the essay first and then write my outline,
because I don't I just don't think I'm someone who
thinks on the page like I think through writing. So
it didn't really make sense for me to write an outline.
And I don't think I followed it particularly closely, but
it did force me to think through like, how is
this book an unfold? What is the general arc? What
(21:19):
is the general beginning, middle, and end? So let's say,
so the book it starts like the first chapter is
my last kind of epic binge in my twenties, and
then I go back and the rest of it is
pretty much chronological order.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I work my way through various like.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Restaurants, boyfriends, and eating disorder phases and then kind of
come out the other side.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So I for me, the structure is one of the biggest.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Challenges as I was feeling daunted by this big I
think my contract said sixty thousand words. I believe Feast
is like seventy five thousand words, which is pretty much
like a.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Medium sized book.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It just sounds like a lot of words, seventy five
thousand words. But I was really good at writing a
thousand word essays, so I told myself, I just have
to write seventy five one thousand word essays.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
And of course that's not exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It, but.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It like really helped me feel like a little like, Okay,
I can do this, and I really that was a
lot of my processes like a thousand words chunks, and
I just really like sorted to write. I wrote, and
then I did a lot of the lifting of like
creating that coherence, creating that like I think that mysterious
challenge of a book where it feels connected and where
(22:41):
you like want to keep turning the page.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I feel like a lot of that for me happened
in editing.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I experienced a lot of the writing process is like
just kind of diving in and like getting.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Out as much as I could. And it was hard.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I wrote about like some really tough times in my life,
and I felt like I was writing I was in
a pretty good place when I was writing, like I was,
you know, I was in a recovery for a while,
several years under my belt. I was writing about some
really destructive exes, and I was in this really happy
relationship that is now with my husband, so like there's
(23:16):
a lot of good stuff going on, but I felt
like for me to kind of capture the toughness, I
had to really like parachute myself into the heart of
the very worst, hardest, shittiest moments. And there's like no
way around that for me. So it was really hard.
Like I started to see a therapist again for the
first time in a while. I kind of surprised myself
(23:37):
with that because people ask like, oh, is it healing?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Is a cathartic for me? What did feel healing?
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And cathartic was like came later the talking about it
and kind of like getting out of the world that
was like, oh, but the doing it was just just
kind of miserable in a way. But I mean it
was like that misery like it did. It felt good
in a way, but it was it was all a
good hurt.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So okay, when you're like, you know, conjuring out these
demons from your past, did you have any methods for
tapping into that or did you just sit with it?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Were you looking through old pictures, were you looking through
old emails? Or were you just like, no, I'm going
to sit in this stillness and like remember these things
I normally try to forget.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
I think a little bit of both, but more the latter,
Like people ask me to how did you remember? And
I kind of start. I started with.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Those memories that did feel like just really visceral and
intense and like I couldn't forget them if I tried.
But then for me, I do feel like the writing
was sort of like a teleporting like the actual process
of sitting there. I mean, I'm just I'm not as
some people do are by hand kind of writers. I
have to type because I feel like I'm too slow
(24:49):
by hand. So just like in my word doc, but
all you know, really like be like I thought of
the word doc as like I'm in I'm in there,
I'm there, We're in my demons, as these said, which
is true. And then as the words and sentences and
paragraphs built upon themselves, more things would come up, which
was really interesting to me, Like the process of writing
(25:11):
about them unearthed more memories. Yeah, that was interesting, And
I did once in a while kind of poke back
into like did that person say that, can I find
some old email or something? But I think if I
know that memory is fallible, but it's a memoir, and
so it's memory is like in the title, right total
(25:32):
and so yeah, and so I feel like I'm being.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
True to Being true to the memory to me means
being true.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
To like how it felt and not necessarily like the
journalistic integrity of like.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I've gotten a lot better about my perspective about that.
But for a while I would be like is it exact?
And it's like, no, it can't be exact. So like
nobody was there beside you at the tape recorder. You know,
like there might be instances that you can find and
fact check yourself, but that's not usually how it works,
and people don't normally expect that anyway. Good thing to
(26:06):
let go of. Okay, So on that note, and I'm
curious if this came out in the edit. So there
are some landmark people and institutions in Feast Food people
and like Houston's, you know, I guess, but not all
of them are identified. And how did you choose which
(26:28):
people you could identify? And how did you figure out
which things people would have to figure out on their own.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Let's see, my general guideline was, I wanted to be
honest and kind.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I feel like it's hard to write. I don't mind.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Disclosing my own secrets so much, but it's very sensitive
to write about other people. Right, there's a legal read
that happened that informed a lot actually, like I, I
was kind of nervous like Houston's. One of the reasons
I didn't mind mentioning it by name is it's this
like big company, and I was I was expecting that
(27:02):
to maybe not be kosher according to like, I don't
know some of their they because they have lawyers. And
but the lawyer wasn't concerned with that because most of
what I said was pretty like complimentary of Houston's, which
I was like, oh okay, I was pretty miserable, but
it wasn't the institution's fault. The things that I had
(27:26):
to take out were like there was a I'll just
leave it in this broadway.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I think that's okay.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Like I had written in a draft about an ex
boyfriend's suicide attempt, and that got mixed because unders I mean,
I can understand that that that's like a private thing,
whereas there's another X and I talk about his like
alcoholism and drug struggles.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And I was like, well, how come I can leave that?
And the lawyer said that like enough.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
People were privy to that that it was is it
necessarily privileged, whereas this suicide attempt was more of like
a there weren't so only a small number of people
knew about that.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
And when I was talking to.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
My editor about kind of planning for that, she said,
I mean, she's an editor and edits nonfiction books and
memoir all the time, and she said that even after
doing this for years and years, she never really knows,
like what's.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Going to come up with the legal read. So I'm
glad that that happened.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
But I just try, I mean, you know, I I
it's hard, it's really really hard to like write about
other people. And I just really tried my best to
like have my own integrity about it, to be as
generous but as truthful as I could muster and I
(28:45):
left it at that.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Tell me about the editing process, because in the acknowledgments
there's I believe Morgan Parker and then you're editor at
Little A also for Feast, so like, what did you
tackle in each of those rounds? And yeah, how they
leave their mark?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah. So Morgan was my acquiring editor.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
She's like an amazing poet and she was working at
Little A at the time, and I was really excited to.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Work with her.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
We knew each other from college, actually not super well,
but like we had a poetry class together. So I
was really excited about that, especially because it was such
a personal book and I felt like that kind of connection.
And Morgan was the one who gave that abstract advice
that I couldn't And I think it's because she's a
poet first, right and an editor or second maybe, and
(29:36):
it was kind of like her advice was like poetry.
So she was so helpful in thinking about the big
picture of the book. She was the one who believed
in it at first and wanted to publish it and everything.
So I owe her so much. And then I was
nervous when we had she took me to lunch and
(29:57):
she told me she was leaving to go pursue her
poetry and other writing, and I was really excited for her,
but really nervous for me. And then I just got
ended up with Laura van Derveer, who was the next
editor at Little A, who they hired and paired me with.
And I just got so lucky because Laura was an
amazing editor and also I think an editor rather than
(30:20):
a writer, and just so really adept and knew how
to communicate with authors. And I feel like toget I
got really lucky. I got the dream team, and like
they shaped it together, and she saw me through the
second round of edits, the second part of the project,
and really kind of polishing and tightening and making like
(30:41):
an almost book into an actual book.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So you mentioned like you open with this big last
binge and then you go back to the beginning and
then the rest of it's kind of chronological. So did
that come out in the proposal or did you figure
that out in the edit? That kind of structure for it.
And I have to say, Feast was so helpful because
(31:06):
you gave me a note about structure, and then seeing
it so cleanly done, I was like, ah, yes, I need.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
To because version because I struggled with it. Oh my gosh,
I don't I don't remember like where exactly I came.
I think I was a Bennington professor who was like,
when all else fails, like just chronological order is a
brilliant thing, Like that's how we usually tell stories, like
this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened.
(31:36):
So while there are other ways to tell a story,
for sure, especially when you're if you're writing essays or
something like that, there's a reason it's kind of the
the first and I think it often really works, and
it really did work for me, and it did take me.
I'm not sure like when that light bulb went off
that that was the right way, but it took me
(31:57):
a while.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I think I had some other more bouncing round.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Drafts for quite a while, and I felt like that
was a big moment in the book coming together, because
I really startled.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
With that any other big things about feast that you
think are important for people to know, or things you
learned in the process.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I mean, I was really like I decided to write
a book about my eating disorder largely, which was for
so many years like my deepest, darkest secret. And so
it was kind of a crazy thing to do in
some ways, to like take that and then be like,
this is the thing that I'm going.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
To share with the world in a really public way.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And I was really nervous about what people would think,
you know, I was at that time, I was really
building my career as a food writer.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Was I going to ruin the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Because then I would be like, and none of those
fears materialized at all, you know. I think so often
the stuff that is really hard to write about and
scary to write about is the juicy, good stuff that
is gonna move and inspire people. And so that's just
my little like ted talk. It's like, don't be afraid
(33:08):
to go there, because I feel like that's what resonated
with people. And when people said, like, you know, it
made me feel a little less alone, I was like
so moved because that was what I was trying to do.
I was kind of like writing for that eighteen year
old Hannah who felt like incredibly alone and isolated and ashamed.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
That's great. Would you say it helped with your recovery
in its own weird way.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, I think kind of like coming out with it did.
When I first started to tell people, because you know,
it's not really something you talk about, like, yeah, I
had an eating disorder, the primary response I got was
people saying me too, like they also.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Struggled with an eating disorder.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
So people I never expected, like friends or people would say, oh,
my sister.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Did, or you know, my mom did.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
My whole life where people, you know, everyone had someone,
And at first it was so heartening because it was
just that reminder that I'm not alone, which is like
I need that reminder.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
But then it became really depressing, like again, like more
people have to go through this, so you know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
But I do feel like it's kind of it's healing
to come out with it and scary, you know, and
it hasn't always been easy. I've had my moments, but
in general I felt that a lot more cathartic than
the actual writing.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So let's move on to Plenty. Set up the premise
for this one.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
So in some ways Plenty is a sequel and in
other ways it's its own thing. It's also a memoir,
but this stage in my life talks about kind of
more of living in recovery and meeting my now husband
and deciding to start a family. And then there's also
an element of me trying to create and build a
(35:02):
community of women in the food world, which I do
through profiling a chef, a somalier, a barista, cheesemaker, these
kind of women in the trenches of the food and
hospitality world who I admire.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Okay, so you wrote the proposal for this while you
were actually right before you got pregnant with your daughter,
Am I right on that?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
That's correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And so how did because that's a huge thread in
the story. So I'm curious, like what the proposal looked
like originally and when you really decided to pull that
thread through yea, because you couldn't plan. It's not like
you'd be like, and it's gonna end with me having
a baby or you know what?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I right, right, I wrote the chapter to the last time.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I was not a too big a spoiler alert, but
the last chapter is I have the baby.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
And I wrote that like I had already sent him.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
The rest of the book, and I wrote it like right,
I was deliriously postpartum. Yeah, so actually, you know Originally
the book was going to be so much more of
an almost journalistic less memoir, less personal premise about these inspiring.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Interesting women in the food world.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
And as I was working on like really early draft
with my writers group, they were all like, Oh, we
like the personal stuff. We want to hear more about that.
So I just started to kind of lean into that
more and more.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yeah. So it wasn't like I.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Didn't have the outline to the end, but I knew
that to me, like, I wanted to explore the connection
of food and family and my mom also is a chapter,
so it's kind of looking to future generations and to
past generations in my family. And I was lucky enough
so Laura, my editor from Feast, kind of also helped
(36:49):
to talk through the book with me and the idea
for the book in its early stages and what it
would be. So I had that kind of leg up.
I feel like second books are, you know. I wrote
my Bennington MFA thesis about second books because I was
like really interested in this idea. And I remember I
listened to this podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert then where she
(37:11):
said she said something I like wrote it all down
because it was so good that your first book. If
you write it when you're twenty thirty, forty, fifty sixty,
doesn't matter. This has been like marinating with you all
of those years, all of your life. It's like been
a part of you, right, and you've been like processing
and now you're putting it down and then it's like.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Oh, what is the second book? You know?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So it's just like a whole new challenge and it's
really close to my heart, and I'm really glad that
I got to. I kind of wrote in real time
about losing a pregnancy, about my miscarriage, and then about
my pregnancy, and then about these really early COVID days,
Like I was writing about them as they were happening.
So it was a really different experience than writing about
(37:51):
things that happened many years before that I had already
like thoroughly digested and reflected upon. I was really like
writing as it was happening.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, yeah, you could feel that. And I think that
is like a cool distinction between the two books. It's like, yes,
that first book has been in the incubator forever, but
there's so much possibility when the well isn't totally full,
and like, what, you know, what is it going to be. Yeah,
And as far as the profiles, like how did you
(38:23):
pick the people and how did that all come together?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
It kind of got.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
More and more about myself and my journey writing a book.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Almost.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I had originally just put together this pretty unwieldy list
of women in the food world that I admired, and
originally a lot of them were kind of like big
deal a celebrities, and I would like get a message
back from their publicist and then they said they could
set up an interview and it felt kind of like
and I did. I did a few of these interviews,
and then I remember I talked to a woman who
(38:52):
was a business owner and she was like, well, what's
your target market for the book?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
I just want to like, but I'm glad you said that,
because it kind of crystallized that, like, my target market
for this book is that I don't have a target market.
I mean, I'm sure the publisher has a target market,
but like that's I don't think that's my job as
a writer. And like I pivoted to instead of just
writing about women that were objectively like impressive, I wanted
(39:21):
to write about people that I loved, you know, people
that like I thought were really cool and like wanted
them to be part of my life.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
I think that comes across.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
In the book definitely, And it was just so much
more fun for me. And like one of the earlier
chapters is about this woman Paula, who was like a
friend I met online. She teaches cooking online and I
just like hit it off with her and I was like,
I want you. I wanted her to be my friend regardless,
and then I wanted to write about her.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So it's kind of this.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Awesome way like way in and I wrote about going
to Oslo with her, and like I probably would have
gone anyway, but knowing that I was going to write
it about it, that it was part of this book
made it feel even more kind of like legit in
my mind.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, oh I love that so much, because yeah, I
can't even imagine. I mean, I'm sure you could do it,
but braiding together, like all these things that are happening
in your personal life with these kind of sterile like
you get thirty minutes with this high profile person, it
doesn't kind of work as nicely as what wound up
(40:28):
happening in plenty. So your editor was totally cool that
it had evolved into something else.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah, she was really happy with it, and I feel
really lucky that she was so open to these evolutions.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
But I did.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I think by the time I had the proposal, I
knew it was going to be It wasn't a complete departure.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I knew it was going to be a little more personal.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I knew that the women that I was going to
talk about were going to be just people that I
personally admired, not necessarily celebrities. And she was really open
to like letting that unfolds, which I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
And then what was the editing process like this time around,
And did you feel like you were more prepared for
it or how did it go down?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Yeah, it felt a little bit less, like completely intimidating,
because I had done it once before, so I just
had that little bit of confidence, like I.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Can I have done this thing.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's still incredibly scary to like hitsend.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And then wait, wait, wait, wait wait.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I think it was a few months before I got
any word back, and I was just like, oh did
I write? What did I You have no idea? I
feel like a writer has no objectivity about their own work,
you know, and then I always get afraid to like revisit.
And also sometimes it's like it just feels kind of
(41:52):
painful to.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Like go back, go back, go back, go back. But
I had a really good ex experienced editing.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
I feel like, if you're lucky enough to work with
a great editor and they have this is a great
laser vision where they see where you're going and they
get you the rest of the way there. So I
feel like she just really had a way of saying
like just like add a little more here, like you're
not quite there yet, like dig a little deeper, and
that really made.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
The book better. So I'm really grateful to the editing
process and for her.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Nice And then I saw there was like a brief
mention that a couple of the articles had been published
online before the proposal, So I was curious what pieces
those were, and then how you approached repurposing them. Is
that right? Oh?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yes, I think that's right. I yeah, that's right. I
mean I wrote, so I wrote about eat Offbeat, So
I wrote about one of the women in my book
is Manal, who has a company called eat off Beat.
The cook's food from refugee chefs, and I had wrote
a profile.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Of her for Salon. I don't know if there were more.
I think I might have been it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
But I had also written, I think for for Catapult.
Actually I wrote a little bit about like my story
of my miscarriage and everything, and a little bit about
my body image during that experience. You know, Officially, it
didn't I didn't think I had to have any notes
like that for a feast. But I almost felt kind
of guilty because I think this is true, like most
(43:28):
writers kind of revisit topics. And I had written before
about working in restaurant with an eating disorder. I wrote
before about like certain things that came up again. But
I think that that's okay. You know, we h and
they come up in different context in different ways. It's
so different when they're part of a book than when
it's like a little snippet of a short profile. I mean,
(43:49):
I think people sometimes are like afraid if they put
something out there, that that's it and they cannot like
revisit it, or that it's already that it's like done.
But I don't necessarily I think that's true. I think
most places are open to the idea that things will.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Get like rewritten or turned into something else. Yeah. Yeah,
And as a reader, I have to say it's delightful
for me. Like you know, Cheryl Straight, I can think
of a couple things that she's written about where it'll
be like, oh, and then you get another angle on
it or like a different perspective on it, and it's awesome.
As a reader, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yes, And I think sometimes as a writer, especially if
we're writing personal things, like we think that they're in
our heads so much that we think everyone is like
privy to that, but actually no one else is in
your head. And it might feel to me, I'm like
here we go again, But that doesn't feel that way
to someone else, like they're not there with me. So
I have to remind myself of that it's new to them,
(44:46):
even if it's I think there's some marketing thing about
or advertising thing that you have to see something. I
could be wrong on this seven times that you have
to see something seven seven times. Yeah, So if you
have to see something seven times, if you have like
a small echo, it's not going to I don't think
it's I think it takes a lot more than that
for it to get old.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
So with Plenty and with Feast, you narrated both books
for Audible. What was that experience? Like?
Speaker 1 (45:15):
It was really cool? Actually I had to audition to
do it. I'm not someone who's like done things. I
know you're an actor, but I've never really auditioned before.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
So I was like, oh my god, but I passed.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
They let me because you know, I thought to audition
because they had me fill out a form at the
publisher and like, what is the protagonist of the books
sound like?
Speaker 3 (45:36):
And I was like, this sounds like me.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
And then in filling this out, I'm like, well, I
should do it. So I asked if I could, and
they said maybe, if you can. I guess it's nice
that they don't want someone who sounds like terrible or
something to read the books. So for the first one,
they flew me out to this studio in Michigan, Brilliance
Publishing it it is and they sit in this tiny
booth and it's wild, Like I put on these big
(46:04):
earphones and I felt like my voice was like verberating
in my brain. And it's such a weird intimacy with
your own words, because if you mess up, you have
to go back to where before you mess up, and
so in order to not mess up, you have to
be very present. So you're just like in this very focused,
(46:25):
little tiny cocoon with your own work, which is very
strange but also kind of fun. And I really liked it.
And then when I recorded the next book, it was
COVID times and I'm so grateful that I got to
work with the same lovely director that I worked with
for Feast, and he like zoomed in to the studio
(46:46):
in Brooklyn. It was near that it was near where
I was living. I was really quite pregnant. It was
the heat, huge heat wave in summer, and the air
conditioning was broken. So it was like miserable. I have
to say, I'm a miserable experience, but for sa you know,
but it was.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Still fun in some ways.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
But in that way it was like, oh my gosh,
I had like the huge ice coffee and a huge
ice water and I was just like sweaty again with
like the slowness of publishing. So like it took, you know,
I finished writing the book. It was like I had
just had the baby. I sent in the first draft.
So that was spring of twenty twenty and it didn't
(47:27):
come out until fall of twenty twenty one. Like that's
just like kind of a normal pace for publishing. But
like by fall of twenty twenty one, I was praying
it with the next baby, so my life had changed
a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Okay, so what's next for you? And like, you've built
a brand as a food writer, but that means more
than just food. You're writing about people and relationships and
stuff too. But what is on your docket anything that
you can share? And then what's on your bucket list?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, I'm still figuring it out. I feel like, what
is the next chapter. I'm the editor in chief of
parent dot com. It's my new day job, and I'm
excited about it.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Oh congrats.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, it's like a fun it's a different I've been
working in the food world for so long and I
will always love food, but parenting is a big part
of my life as a new mom, and so it's
kind of fun to get to dig into a different
topic that also, just like food touches on so much,
(48:32):
you know, touches on culture and bodies and traditions and
you know, just anything history and parenting too. Like we
all have parents, we all like it's just this huge, juicy.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Potential of topics. So I'm enjoying that.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And I wrote a book another proposal that nobody seems
interested in, so about multi level marketing.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
If you, if you're a publisher, any interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
It's just, honestly, it's just something that I've been fascinated
with for so long, and then like the Lula Rich
documentary came out, and I just thought it would be
a really good book, and I still do.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
But no publishers think that so far. Publisher Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It's still possible that a publisher will think that, and
that's okay if not. There's so many stories to tell
and I'm not sure what the next one will be,
but I'm excited to see what it is. I mean,
I love the process of writing, and I also really
have enjoyed the process of like promoting a book.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
I know some people don't feel.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
That way, but for me, it's like, really, writing is
so solitary and it's me and the laptop, and it
feels really gratifying to be able to take it out
into the world and talk to people and like, I
get to talk to you, and that's.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
For me really exciting too.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
But It's also kind of exciting to like marinate and
think about like what are the next things and brainstorm
and be in that early phase where you're not even
working yet, you're just dreaming. So that's kind of where
I'm at right now.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
I love that, and any any like bucket list writing
goals or just keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah, keep doing I mean, I feel so lucky that
I get to write books. I would like to write
something for The New Yorker one day. That's kind of
a big dream of mine.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, Yeah, And now for the PostScript segment, just a
few final words of advice that you can put in
your pocket and take for the road. So what's one
piece of writing advice you wish you could give your
former self?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
To just keep writing. As hard as it is, it
gets easier.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Sometimes you just have to like sit there and type
and do the thing. Some of it will be amazing,
some of it will be garbage, but all of it
will be worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
That's good. One tip for writers trying to get a
book published.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
I think keep talking to writers who have gotten book published.
I feel like having those kind of people just a
few steps a front of me on the path was
really helpful to ask for advice and what it was like.
I think people can be weirdly secretive about it, so
I like to not be secretive and share about my experience.
So if you can find some people who are open
(51:21):
in that.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Way, that's great.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
And I think it's the same thing as kind of
any like artistic endeavor where you're putting yourself out there
is like just don't let the rejections go get you down.
I know it's a way a thousand times is you're
seven done because they hurt every time, but like, just
don't let them stop you. You'll have to find the
right moment, the right person, and sometimes just like luck
(51:46):
and timing, but it will happen if you keep.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
At it nice.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
What's your all time favorite piece of your own writing.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
I think it's my last book. It's Plenty.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I feel I don't know if that is a book
too long for a piece, but I feel pretty out
of it.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
I highly recommend picking up a copy of Hannah's food
memoirs Feast and Plenty. Hannah also teaches writing classes, and
I can tell you from experience she gives very thoughtful notes,
so look her up online for more info.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
My website is Hannah Howard NYC and you can find
more of my writing there and upcoming classes and everything.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Thank you so much for doing this. This is such
a good Thank.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
You for having me. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The
bleedersh writing is so much better with friends. I'm your host,
Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on social media. I
am at Courtney Kosak last name is Kocak on Twitter
and Instagram. And make sure you're signed up for the
Bleeders Companion substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives. There's
(52:50):
so much good stuff that I send out to my
free list, and I actually just launched a paid subscription
with some extra goodies where I take you behind the
scenes of all my best buylines. I published a post
about my return to stand up comedy and how I
got ready to crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs
and whether or not I think it is worth it.
(53:10):
I also did one of my favorite workshops I've ever taught.
It's a manifestation workshop that I did for the New Year,
but it's really good anytime of the year. So there's
so much good stuff for free subscribers, and even more
for paid subscribers, and there is a link in the
description for that, and join me again next time for
(53:31):
another all new episode. In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
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