QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life

Writer and author Scott Eden is an investigative reporter whose work has focused on crime, corruption, injustice, business, science, technology, and the dark side of sports. His work has appeared in Wired, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, The Atavist Inc., and The Believer’s best-of collection Read Hard. The author of Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame. His new book is A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder an...

Marion Winik is a writer and author whose memoir, First Comes Love, was originally published 30 years ago, featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and loved by reviewers and readers everywhere. Perhaps the words most often used for it were "pioneering" and "groundbreaking." The Kirkus review said of it, “Romance, comedy, tragedy, terrible truth, and extraordinary love, as straight woman marries gay man, bears children, and watches...

Writer and author Huda Al-Marashi writes for both children and adults. She is a coauthor of the middle grade novel Grounded, which won the Walter Dean Myers Honor award, and the author of the memoir First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and al Jazeera. She is a fellow and mentor with the Highlights Foundation Muslim Storytellers ...

Award-winning journalist and author, Matti Friedman has worked as a reporter in Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. A former Associated Press correspondent, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He's currently writes from Israel for The Free Press. The author of five nonfiction books that have been translated into a dozen languages and have so...

Shelley Noble is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Well-known for her gripping historical novel, The Tiffany Girls, in which the author unearths the previously little-known true story of the women artists responsible for much of Tiffany’s glasswork, as well as for her historical mysteries, Shelley Noble is a former professor, dancer and choreographer. Her new historical novel could not be more timely. Titled ...

Antonio Michael Downing is the author of the memoir Saga Boy, My Memoir of Blackness and Becoming, in which he show us how he had become, like his father and grandfather before him, a Saga boy, a Trinidadian playboy and almost loses everything of value himself until he rescues himself and becames the musician and writer he was born to be. In his new book, a novel entitled Black Cherokee, we meet the unforgettable Ophelia Blue River...

Father and son, Ruchin and Neil Kansal, are co-authors of the new book, The Kansal Clunker: The Car That Rebuilt Us, just out from Khoeler Books. It is getting rave reviews, including one from Kirkus proclaiming it “"An endearing and thought-provoking road odyssey." And it is just that – and odyssey, and more, that received a number one rating as a new release on Amazon in family travel guides. But it’s not like a...

Writer and author Tarpley Hitt is a New York journalist and an editor and contributor at The Drift magazine. She has previously reported on culture and money for The Daily Beast and Gawker. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Air Mail, Deseret Magazine, and Miami New Times. Her debut book is Barbieland, The Unauthorized History, just out from Simon & Schuster’s One Signa...

Melissa Fraterrigo is the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press), as well as the story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies from storySouth and Shenandoah to Indiana Review and The Millions. She teaches fiction writing at Purdue University and is the founder and executive director of the Lafayette Writers&rs...

Today my guest is writer and author Jane Hamilton. Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel and was a selection of the Oprah Book Club. Her second novel, A Map of the World, was an international bestseller, and the fine novels kept on coming so that now comes the publication of her eighth book, The Phoebe Variations, just out from Zibby Publishing. Listen in as we discuss...

Matthew White is an author, interior designer, antiquarian, preservationist, and a former ballet dancer. He is the author of Italy of My Dreams: The Story of an American Designer’s Real-life Passion for Italian Style. He is an emeritus board member and former chairman of Save Venice Inc. His new book is New York Minute: Public Clocks that Make the City Tick, just out from Abbeville Press. Listen in as he and I discuss how to ...

Winnie M Li is an American author and activist who has written for travel guidebooks, produced independent feature films, programmed for film festivals, and developed eco-tourism projects. Her first novel Dark Chapter was nominated for an Edgar Award and translated into ten languages, followed by the critically acclaimed Complicit. A survivor and advocate against gendered violence, she is an assistant professor of creative wriiting...

Writer and author Kyle Austin Young has a debut book that is for anyone who has ever dreamed of having a side-hustle, starting a business or following a dream. The book, Success is a Numbers Game: Achieve Bigger Goals by Changing the Odds, is just out from Hay House Business. Clear, practical, fun and a terrific read, this book will show you how to make your idea happen. The book includes a simple test for knowing which of our bigg...

Jon Kinally is a long-time writer for television who, along with his writing partner, Tracy Poust, has written for such TV shows as Will & Grace, Ugly Betty, 2 Broke Girls as well as many others. Over the years, they have received several Emmy nominations as well as a Writer’s Guild Award for Outstanding Writing in Episodic Comedy. Jon Kinnally has now turned his eye to memoir, and has just published his debut book, I&rsq...

Khadijah VanBrackle's debut novel, Fatima Takes the Cake, brings us to the intersection of culture, gender and religion and throws in some baking, which is a very fun addition. Her new novel, My Perfect Family, gives us an intergenerational narrative that covers the complex relationships mothers and daughter and explores what it means to be a Black Muslin woman in America. As a Black Muslim woman in America and as the mother of fiv...

The author and writer J. E. Thomas is an award-winning freelance journalist, whose first bok, Control Freaks, was a People Magazine Summer Must-Read as a Best of the Best pick by the Black caucus of the American Library Association. Her new book is The AI Incident, just out from Levine Quierido, and distributed by Chronicle Books. Listen in as she and I discuss how to create a surprise opening to a book, how to write into what's co...

Writer and author Joanna Choi Kalbus was born in North Korea and emigrated in wartime to The United States as a child, speaking no English. She was immersed in the California school system before the existence of English as a second language programs. She succeeded and eventually earned her PhD in Educational Administration from the University of California and served as a teacher, principal, and regional superintendent for 35 year...

Tia Levings is a New York Times bestselling author, whose debut book is a memoir entitled A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, recently published by St Martin’s Press. Along with being a New York Times bestseller, the book is an Audible Canada best of the year for 2024 and a Goodreads Reader’s Choice. She maintains an educational platform on social media, speaking engagements, an anti-fundamentalist...

Calliope Nicholas is the Co-Director and Manager of Residency Programs at Millay Arts, the artists residency program situated at the former home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, in Austerlitz, New York. The mission of Millay Arts is to support "the work and creative process of multidisciplinary artists through a range of residencies that enrich lives and communities locally and globally.” For those who do not know, a residency is ...