Writing with empathy: Charlie Jane Anders's writing advice on character

This episode of the Epilogue...writing podcast I talk to Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders! In this interview, we discuss how she gets inside her characters' heads, challenging the traditional ideas of protagonist and antagonist, and writing your way through personal challenges. In addition to writing advice we discuss examples from her work including All the Birds in the Sky, City in the Middle of the Night, as well as her latest book, Lessons in Magic and Disaster.

Episode Timeline & Chapters: 

• (00:00) - Intro

Charlie Jane's Information:

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster, coming August 2025 from Tor Books. Her other novels include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night and the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times.

She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she's currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

charliejaneanders.com

buttondown.email/charliejane

Charlie Jane's Books Mentioned:

• All the Birds in the Sky
• City in the Middle of the Night
• Victories Greater than Death (first in the Unstoppable Trilogy)
• Never Say You Can't Survive
• Even Greater Mistakes
• Lessons in Magic and Disaster

Charlie Jane Anders Photo credit: Sarah Deragon/Portraits to the People

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