I first met Leyla Kazim almost ten years ago, in 2015, at a ski resort of all places. I was working for Condé Nast at the time, she was a renowned blogger, and we were invited to review a new ski company (I was writing a piece for Glamour magazine.) I’m so glad our paths crossed. Since then, we’ve stayed friends and it’s been so fun to be on this new(ish) Substack adventure together.

In this chat, we discuss her Substack A Day Well Spent with Leyla Kazim and all the twists and turns of her creative career, from software engineer to award-winning food presenter and writer. I always learn a lot from Leyla: whether it’s how to do face yoga, how to avoid toxic chemicals in everyday products, or growing vegetables at home, she’s a very good egg — someone who creates a life she loves with intention and good vibes. Hope you enjoy our chat!

Links:

* Leyla’s Instagram page.

* Leyla’s Substack

* Leyla’s OG blog The Cutlery Chronicles

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Haley Nahman’s newsletter “Maybe Baby” was the first Substack I properly started reading back in 2020. Every week I loved receiving her emails that made me think, laugh and reflect. My intrigue around Substack as a platform grew in tandem. She is also the first person who I followed who turned her newsletter into a full-time writing job after leaving her media job, and the first person I saw who opted for the support of her paid subscribers during her maternity leave. I’ve been following Haley since the Man Repeller days where she wrote and edited the site for four years before 2016-2020 and it was a joy to speak to her for this Creative Coffee hour.

In this episode, we discuss how Haley runs her successful newsletter, her previous experience at a small but intense media company, being authentic in your work, managing your newsletter business, the loneliness of freelance work, thinking about the reader, how to come up with ideas, the benefits of working with an editor behind-the-scenes, where she writes, and having boundaries regarding email. Hope you enjoy!

Things discussed:

* Haley Nahman’s Substack Maybe Baby

* Haley’s Instagram @halemur

* How Haley is changing up her newsletter schedule

* How Haley’s paying subscribers supported paid maternity leave as part of Maybe Baby

* Natalie Wynn on Patreon: “Contrapoints”

* The Debrief website aims to be more than 'BuzzFeed for girls'

* For people who loved Man Repeller: Leandra Medine’s venture cafeleandra.com

* Man Repeller's Leandra Medine | British Vogue

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Is a good story worth something? JP Watson thinks so.

A few years ago, I made a new friend in Birmingham-born writer JP Watson. He is probably most well-known for being the founder of The Pound Project which has sold thousands of books to more than 100+ countries worldwide, is known for paying authors an equal share and a former winner of The Bookseller's Futurebook Startup of the Year award.

The company started with a frustration with the industry and has grown into a really incredible place that allows writers and creatives to thrive. The Pound Project is a publisher but it’s also a movement. It cares about the environment by only printing what is sold, and cares about authors getting paid. The tagline says it all: “small change, one story at a time”.

In 2018, I published a book called Sabotage through The Pound Project. Back then, the money was raised via Kickstarter, and we had over 1,300 backers and raised over £10k+ to bring the book to life. It felt new, exciting and really creatively fulfilling. Following that project, I got a book deal to turn Sabotage into a slightly longer book with publisher Hodder & Stoughton.

Publishing with The Pound Project, from my perspective as an author, is such a fun and joyful experience. I wrote about all the surprising joys of indie publishing here including the financial share (50:50 split), the creative control, the transparency and a whole lot more.

This year, I published a new book with The Pound Project called A Year of Nothing, a short memoir split across two books chronicling my burnout year underground. We got press in The Guardian, i, ELLE, Australian TV plus tons more and sold 3,000 copies. It proved that there is a market for smaller books and we had a ton of fun doing it.

ps. If you missed out on the publication of A Year of Nothing, make sure you’re following The Pound Project and The Hyphen newsletter in case it is ever re-released (which it might be!)

Things discussed:

* My original interview from 2018 with JP Watson on Ctrl Alt Delete podcast

* Sign up to The Pound Project newsletter (and stay tuned for A Year of Nothing re-release)

* Find out more about A Year of Nothing here.

* My article on The Hyphen: “The surprising joys of indie publishing”.

* Dolly Alderton speaking on the Amazing if podcast (celebrating the Pound Project’s Gremlins book)

* A piece about “Enshittification”

* How ‘F**k You Pay Me’ is empowering creators

Hope you enjoy the episode!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe

I really enjoy Emily McDowell’s honest take on creative grief, career identity, life transitions and quitting. She has a brilliant podcast called Quitted that she hosted with her pal and fellow Substacker Holly Whitaker. One of my favourite episodes is titled ‘Emily McDowell quits being a human brand.' (On that note, Emily and Holly have just launched a new workshop on how to help you navigate “the deep shitty middle” of transitions. These are two women who know the score, who have been there in the thick of it, and I’m excited that they are bringing their wisdom forth in this way.)

I love Emily’s views on how we can reframe quitting as a negative thing and instead embrace the bravery it takes to say goodbye to something. Quitting something can be painful but it can allow us to move forward into a new space. She recently wrote an excellent Substack post about the word ‘completion’ when it comes to quitting a job/project/thing: “in conversations about quitting, failure, and walking away, there’s a word and concept I think is underused: completion.”

I also like this line she wrote: “What if, instead of a line that goes perpetually up and to the right, with the goal of reaching a future point of “success” — the point of being alive is expansion?”

I don’t know about you, but the words ‘completion’ and ‘expansion’ make so much more sense to our human psyches, right? More so than arbitrary ‘success’ and ‘achievement’ and ‘climbing’? Maybe there’s an easier way to look at things.

Hope you enjoy this conversation with Emily! This episode is focused on the process of melting down a career and re-building it, slowly. If you like it, please consider leaving a little review on Apple podcasts, it helps more people discover this newsletter and podcast. Thank you! Toodles! ♡It’s Nice That: creative grief and how to deal with itYou can follow Emily’s Substack here. Check out Emily’s new workshop here.Check out A Year of Nothing here.

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I read the book Matrescence in two days. It was as though I was reading a thriller, I really couldn’t put it down. I felt a compulsion to keep reading that I hadn’t felt in years. It is a book about motherhood, written by Lucy Jones, but more than that, it’s a book about metamorphosis. You don’t need to be a mother to find it utterly captivating, and yet it is clearly a book that will make those who have given birth feel specifically seen.

It’s a book about change, transition and how we become new people with each and every catalytic event we go through in life. I loved this honest book which reads as part-memoir part-science/nature writing — on what actually happens to the human female body and psyche pre-, during and post- birth.

The book feels incredibly fresh and radical — many books are written about motherhood but this is the only book I’ve read thus far that zooms intimately into the personal memoir aspect and zooms out to see the bigger animal-kingdom territory and beautifully captures the way in which women break apart and are put back together again anew. It made me see my friends who are mothers in a new brutal and beautiful light, and it made me want to spotlight these honest conversations between women no matter what stage of life we are at.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Lucy. We talk about writing, motherhood, creativity, child-like wonder and how to keep a fresh perspective on the world.

Articles we mention in the podcast:

— Lucy’s book Matrescence (out now in paperback)— My book A Year of Nothing— Elena Ferrante talks to Marina Abramović — Motherhood is no threat to creativity, author Zadie Smith says— Don’t Play With Your Kids - New York Times

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Jenn Romolini and I are kindred spirits across the pond. In 2016/2017, we both wrote a memoir/guide about our respective online careers and how to navigate a world when you feel slightly ‘different’ to everyone else around you who seems to follow the sensible path. Mine was called Ctrl Alt Delete: How I Grew Up Online and hers was called Weird in a World That’s Not. Cut to now, all these years on, we released similar books around the same time again. I wrote The Success Myth all about how jaded and confused I felt when outside success didn’t match up with how I felt on the inside; and Jenn wrote Ambition Monster, a forensic memoir that deep-dives into her childhood trauma and how this turned into a life of hamster-wheel workaholism. The memoir is fast-paced, wise, vulnerable, gritty, retrospective and funny. It also has moments that feel spiritual and full of satisfying epiphanies— it is a woman awakening, and it is a wake up call to the reader. Our work and life experiences are, of course, very different on paper — but I always felt like we were tapped into the same sort of themes, albeit living totally different lives in London and LA.

I’m thrilled that I got to sit down for a chat with Jenn for this podcast, and I got to spend time with her in New York too. I hope you enjoy this episode and grab a copy of the book, too! xoxo

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the first episode of my new podcast exclusive to The Hyphen: Creative Coffee with Emma Gannon. This is a Substack-only podcast focusing on writers and their creative process, discussed over a laid back coffee.

My first conversation is with the brilliant Farrah Storr, head of writer partnerships at Substack who runs Things Worth Knowing, a newsletter always full of interesting essays, tips and guest columns that reaches over 40k readers weekly. I wanted to interview Farrah for multiple reasons — one being that our newsletter readers have a big crossover on this platform (according to the geeky stats) so we thought our readers would enjoy this collaboration, and plus Farrah genuinely cares about writers having success on Substack. She works behind the scenes at the company and runs her own (thriving) newsletter on the side. She is also, like many of us, really over the endless onslaught of short form content.

“Writing suddenly got rechristened ‘content’. And ‘content’ felt just wrong. I didn’t want listicles. I didn’t want as much ‘content’ as you my optic nerve could handle. I didn’t want another ‘hot take’. I wanted to connect. I wanted nuance. I wanted honesty and I wanted points of view that were perhaps not always reflected in the mainstream press. But more than that, I wanted a community.” — Farrah Storr

From the decades working at the top in women’s media, she is really in-the-know on how to grow a writer’s brand, how to stand out and generate ideas, how to spot trends, and plus she is generous in sharing hidden gems. I am someone who is very bad at doing prior research before going anywhere so I use Farrah’s newsletter as a place for quality recommendations. For example, the most useful things to pack in your suitcase, or all the best spots to visit in Paris that haven’t yet been TikTokified, or the best UK cosy staycation places that resemble that cottage in The Holiday. She also writes in tandem with cultural moments, such as how her and husband are the real “One Day” story when the Netflix series aired, which then got picked up as a big mainstream media piece a few days later.

Reminder: This new podcast is only accessible to my Hyphen members, I made it for you and your support means it will remain ad-free. The premise is super simple: coffee and chat with a guest on the topic of creativity. If you want access to all upcoming episodes, then make sure you’re signed up as a paid subscriber to The Hyphen.

A housekeeping note: Most people voted for these podcast updates to be included in the Sunday Scroll emails you already receive instead of dedicated posts — so I will honour that for any new episodes! For the other half of you who wanted weekly updates instead, make sure you keep an eye on the app if you want to be notified on every new post I publish. ♡

The Creative Coffee podcast series is going to be pretty cosy and intimate for the most part (I wanted it to be something I could make from home) — however: when I was offered the wonderful chance to host a live recording of the podcast in central London (in a library room in Conway Hall no less!) I, of course, said yes!

Thank you so much to everyone who attended the event, it was so lovely to see you in person and raise a glass to the magic of the Substack community. This episode is slightly different in ~vibe~ to the other episodes (because we are literally on stage; my usual set-up is me at home in a massive jumper) — but I absolutely loved it, it felt so special to bring you along with me as I recorded the first one. Enjoy!

Links to a few things discussed in the episode:

* Farrah’s book The Discomfort Zone

* Farrah’s Substack Things Worth Knowing

* Farrah’s post about how gardening helps her grow

* My books A Year of Nothing and The Success Myth

* Farrah on BBC Radio 5 live speaking about a lack of friendship

* May Sarton’s journal: At Eighty-Two published in 1997

* My post experimenting with a journal style piece

* Salman Rushdie’s new memoir

* On Aaron Sorkin taking six showers a day

* The list of NYC co-working spaces we discussed was in a thread on the Maybe Baby Substack but sadly I can’t find it! I’ll add here once I do.

Thanks for tuning in! Excited to share this series with you. Please do share with a friend if you think they’d like it!

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I’m back with a new podcast!

18 months after closing down my previous show Ctrl Alt Delete, I’m back in a different way.

I’m starting from scratch, which may surprise some people. Why not launch my new podcast to an existing RSS feed that over the years reached thirteen million people?

Because I’m not interested in reaching as many people as possible— I’m interested in building this community here on Substack, as organically as possible. I’m interested in sharing honest conversations, making something a bit rougher round the edges; less of a formal interview, less of a script/schedule and just embracing more of an open dialogue on how we make creative work in this economy. (You know everything I wrote in my book The Success Myth about my definitions of success changing… I meant it.)

This new podcast will be for Hyphen paid subscribers only. Even the most basic of podcasts usually require some upfront investment (artwork design, illustration, editing services, music license, occasional travel expenses for guests etc) so your support is how this newsletter keeps its lights on (thank you!) The illustration is the work of Natalie Harney and the design is by Paul Storrie.

The new podcast is called Creative Coffee because that’s simply what it is: I will be talking to my guests about creativity as though we are having a coffee together. It’s all about the big and small things that make up a creative life. You can listen to the trailer here and the first episode will be shared on Sunday.

(If you want to receive and listen to the first episode — sign up as a member to The Hyphen now.)

This is a laid back, honest, no-frills podcast with fellow creatives/writers— simply an extension of this newsletter on the themes of The Hyphen: creativity, wellbeing, work, how to live a fulfilling and content life.

Writing is my number one love and my creative priority — but it’s also pretty solitary being a writer and can be a bit lonely at times when you’re in the middle of a difficult project, so it’s really nice to chat away with a fellow writer over a coffee — and it turns out I don’t want to leave podcasting behind completely.

The first episode will be available on Sunday. It was recorded live on stage with writer and former editor-in-chief Farrah Storr — with many brilliant Hyphen readers in attendance. It was a really special evening, so thank you to everyone who came along. We recorded it in a beautiful library room at Conway Hall in central London. It’s been a while since I’ve done something of that nature, and everyone was so kind and welcoming. A friend produced it, who recorded my first ever live episode of Ctrl Alt Delete in the basement of Tottenham Court Road Waterstones back in 2016. I’m so lucky to have amazing friends who I’ve met along the way, who I am so grateful for. It’s all a bit full circle, really.

Now — some housekeeping! Do you want to receive each new episode as a standalone post in your inbox — or would you just prefer me to tell you about new episodes in my Sunday Scroll round-ups (i.e less emails for you). I’ll go with the most popular vote:

Excited to bring you this! ♡

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehyphen.substack.com/subscribe