Hilary Leichter’s debut novel Temporary, tells the story of a woman’s adventures in the gig economy, something with which she has years of experience. Now a lecturer at Columbia University, she talks about the precariousness of temp work, the desire for permanence, and how time is an engine that drives fiction. In Terrace Story, her most recent novel, she returns to time in a story of three generations, expanding spaces, a fable, extinction, and the way we so often fear the wrong thing.  

Hilary grew up in New Jersey and settled in New York, where she initially hoped to be an actress. Not until grad school did she realize she preferred creation to interpretation, and began publishing short stories in outlets like  n+1, The New York Times and The New Yorker. In 2020, her novel Temporary was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Prize. Terrace Story, her most recent novel, was named a best book of 2023 by Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and the LA Times. 

Just doors away from the apartment where she lived while writing Terrace Story, Hilary joined Pamela in the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio for this conversation.

Novels on Hilary’s time travel syllabus include:

• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• They Will Drown in Their Mother’s Tears by Johannes Anyuru
• The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

About I Felt the End Before it Came:

"With great candour and disarming self-awareness, Cox takes readers on a journey from his early days as a solicitous door-to-door preacher in Montreal to a stint in New York City, where he’s swept up in a scene of photographers and hustlers blurring the line between art and pornography. The culmination of years spent both processing and avoiding a complicated past, I Felt the End Before It Came reckons with memory and language just as it provides a blueprint to surviving a litany of Armageddons.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRAND PRIX DU LIVRE DE MONTREAL*

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2023

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since 2008, Daniel Allen Cox has published four novels and a memoir-in-essays. He was a finalist for the 2023 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal for his memoir, I Felt It Before the End Came: Memoirs of a Queer ex-Jehovah’s Witness, a nominee for a National Magazine Award for his essay “You Can’t Blame Movers for Everything Broken”, and a contributor to both the Best American Essays and Best Canadian Essays anthologies.   

Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, Daniel describes the religion as a cult for its use of coercive control and shunning, and for denying him the right to live as a queer man. His observations are adeptly woven into Shuck (2008), shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and the ReLit Award; Krakow Melt (2010), shortlisted for the Lambda and ReLit awards as well as the American Library Association Over the Rainbow List; Basement of Wolves (2012) and Mouthquake (2015). From Montreal to Brooklyn to Krakow and back, Daniel finds his way among artistic and activist communities. In I Felt It Before The End Came, he steps away from fiction to tell his personal story. 

Follow us on Instagram @howiwrotethisthepodcast. Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Listen to our conversation now.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennifer Egan reads from her New York Times Bestseller The Candy House.

About The Candy House:

"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes.

In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love."

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennifer Egan is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist of A Visit from the Goon Squad and the author of six other books as well as many nonfiction articles including a year-long series about homelessness in New York. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction while her latest, The Candy House, was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favourite reads that year. 

Growing up in San Francisco, Jenny moved to New York after completing her MA at Cambridge in the UK. She began writing while working several jobs and attending a workshop hosted by the poet Philip Schulz, where participants read their work aloud and she developed the habit she practises to this day. 

In 1996, Jenny was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and in 2012 won the Pulitzer Prize. She served as President of PEN America from 2018-2021. She met me at the Brooklyn studio for this conversation. 

Listen to our conversation now.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discover the life and legacy of L.M. Montgomery in this insightful 7-part podcast, in which we explore her childhood, literary journey, and the timeless impact of Anne of Green Gables on generations of readers.

In this episode, we explore the formative years of author Lucy Maud Montgomery. We delve into her early life in Prince Edward Island and discuss the influences and experiences that shaped her writing, including the loss of her mother and the complexities of growing up in a strict household. Join us as we uncover how Montgomery’s youth laid the foundation for her beloved novels.

Regional Mental Health Resources.

Written & Hosted by Ryan Barnett

Produced by Ryan Barnett & Sonia Gemmiti

Associate Producers Maia Foster-Sanchez & Kristi Prophet

Recorded by Tyler Rauman

This series features interviews with Kate Macdonald Butler, Kate Scarth, Jessica Young, Laura Robinson & Yuko Matsumoto.

Additional voices by Candace Amarante & Matthew Barnett

A Knockabout Media Production

This podcast was made possible thanks to funding from the Government of Canada.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 2024 Giller Prize shortlist was announced on October 9 and five books and authors remain. Four of the shortlisted authors join Pamela to read excerpts from their books and tell her more about them: Eric Chacour (What I Know About You), Deepa Rajagopalan (Peacocks of Instagram), Conor Kerr (Prairie Edge), and Anne Fleming (Curiosities).

Listen to our conversations now.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re working our way through the finalists for the 2024 Giller Prize. In Episode 2 of this three-episodeseries, we hear from: Claire Messud (This Strange Eventful History), Jane Urquhart (In Winter I Get Up at Night), Corinna Chong (Bad Land), and Shashi Bhat (Death by a Thousand Cuts).

Listen to our conversations now.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 2024 Giller longlist celebrates the best in Canadian fiction. Twelve titles were selected from 112 books published between Oct.1. 2023 and Aug. 16, 2024. In this mini-series, which is a departure from our usual format, you’ll hear readings from the nominated books and brief conversations with their authors.

In this first episode, Pamela is joined by: Caroline Adderson (A Way to be Happy), katherena vermette (real ones), and Loghan Paylor (The Cure for Drowning).

Listen to our conversations now.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media. 

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.