An episode about friendship, writing about friendship, and how friendship influences our writing lives. As a community-minded podcast, Write-minded has often touched upon the importance of a broader net of friendship on our writing. This week we get a bit more specific with guest Tomas Moniz, who’s written a new book about male friendship and whose entry into the writing world was shaped by his community of writer friends. This week we’re reminding you to reach out to a friend, thank a friend, be grateful for our friends, and we thank our listeners for being a friend to Write-minded!

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This week’s Write-minded show examines the nuanced and deep exploration at the heart of guest Lissa Soep’s new book, Other People’s Words. A consideration of the ways others’ voices echo in our own, her book and this episode shows us a kaleidoscope of how we conjure and recycle and tap into the words of others. There’s much to unpack here, too, from how we inner monologue in a way that is really dialogue to honoring the collective legacies we carry and give voice to. It’s easy to get philosophical with this week’s theme and guest, and we do, covering everything from death and loss, to letters written and kept, and even AI.

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Ready for a reprieve? Join Brooke and Grant and this week’s guest, Neely Tubati-Alexander, for a conversation about whether romance and rom-com writers are having more fun. We dive into questions of the success of the genre, what publishers are looking for, and how a writer gets into romance writing in the first place. A light-hearted episode in celebration of escapism and reading as brain candy and Tubati-Alexander’s latest release, In a Not So Perfect World.

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This week Write-minded wades into the important topic of writing about childhood trauma. Trauma is at the heart of many of our stories, whether you’re writing coming-of-age or only touching upon childhood stories in the context of specific memoir scenes (or raw material for fiction). Javier’s memoir, Solito, is a stunning book about his nine-week journey from El Salvador to the US as an unaccompanied minor when he was just nine years old. The original journey nearly killed him, and in this generous interview he speaks to how the journey of writing about his experience saved him.

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It's important to learn from the challenges of a failed book rather than allowing it to define your career. The publishing industry can be harsh and unforgiving to writers in this situation. Unforgiving as in agents abandoning the writer or publishers turning away future work, not because of its quality, but because of the one book that didn’t sell well. This week, we're joined by guest Ethel Rohan, whose story serves as a reminder that regardless of how brutal this industry can be, perseverance and reinvention can lead to triumph, and Ethel’s story is testament to that truth. This episode is a great reminder to keep moving forward through the challenges.

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A fun episode about aesthetic, language, and paying attention to style and taste in writing. This week’s guest K-Ming Chang talks about disorientation as a style, language as something that lives in the body, and hating plot. This is a playful interview that focuses on the experiential and reminds us that we all have an existential position on our own writing. Chang’s meditation on language is expansive and inviting, and invites us to consider all the ways we are the stories we’re told.

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Ghostwriting and work-for-hire are great ways to break into the publishing industry and to make a living as a writer. Guest Aubre Andrus shows us a side of the writing and publishing business that can seem a bit elusive. And more and more writers are taking on work for hire projects due to mass media layoffs and greater transparency by celebrities when it comes to writing collaborations. Also, this week’s book trend features Womb House Books, found online here.

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This week’s Write-minded floats into the magical and surreal world of Ingrid Rojas Contreras, who talks about her new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, about her curandera-storytelling mother and their shared history of amnesia, and about why to her magical realism is just realism. Grant and Brooke consider what gets passed down to us from our families and how our stories and histories are in our bones and lived experience, and how reading stories from writers whose lives are vastly different from our own can invigorate our writing. 

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In this gorgeous, sensualistic, tactile, provocative episode of Write-minded, we explore the senses with Janet Fitch of White Oleander fame. In this interview, Janet takes us on a tour through the senses, making the point that our language is impoverished and we can—and must—do more to become more sophisticated observers on the page. This is an episode you’ll carry with you into your next writing or reading session, keeping an eye out (and tastebuds at the ready and an ear attuned and the nose trained) for the next sensual experience or opportunity. Revel in the possibilities and ideas Janet offers to employ the superpowers each of our senses hold.

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This week's episode moves beyond inspiring and into the territory of important, essential, and recommended listening—and reading. Guest Dr. Brian H. Williams, author of the debut memoir, The Bodies Keep Coming, joins us to talk about his experience as a trauma surgeon, and what being on the hospital frontlines can teach us about racial inequities in America. On the writing side of things, Brooke and Grant talk about how hard it can be for memoirists to truly open up, especially if you’re not used to sharing your feelings, or if there’s a perception that you don’t want the book to be too much “about you.” Dr. Williams touches upon all this, and shares how, as a self-professed man of few words, he pushed himself to be so self-revealing in his memoir.

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