Open Book with Narratively Academy

Thanks so much to everyone who joined yesterday for our live “Ask Me Anything” session about the 2026 Narratively Memoir Prize and our brand-new Personal Essay Sprint. We had a fantastic conversation about what we look for in essay submissions, how to give and receive great feedback on your essay drafts, and much more.

Miss it live? Click play above to watch the full thing.

The writers who have already joined the Personal Essay Sprint have been busy sharing their essay ideas, getting feedback from peers, and diving into their drafts.

Haven’t signed up yet? There’s no time like the present! Join now and you’ll be able to be with us live tomorrow for the first of six intimate conversations with memoir experts. On Thursday, October 22 at 1pm ET, Narratively’s Brendan Spiegel will be chatting with Sari Botton, publisher of Memoir Land and Oldster Magazine, about what makes a personal essay great.

PS: We’re super excited about this sprint, but participation is not required in order to enter the 2026 Narratively Memoir Prize. Head here to learn more about the prize and submit your story.

I had so much fun chatting with Janna Marlies Maron this week! It was wonderful hearing about how Janna found her calling as a book coach working with everyone from New York Times bestsellers to self-published newcomers. And it was absolutely freeing to hear her philosophy on how writers can stop listening to the rules about how we’re supposed to write and start finding the process that’s right for us. I walked away with a tip that I can’t wait to incorporate into my writing routine, and I know quite a few viewers did too. If you missed it live, click play above to watch the full thing.

And if you’re ready to identify your own best writing process, join Janna next week for The Aligned Writer: A 4-Week Coaching Experience. This is a very unique chance for just 10 writers to work closely with Janna to help you understand your creative patterns, overcome roadblocks, and build a writing practice that truly works for you. Class starts on Wednesday, October 7—sign up now!

Our Open Book chats here at Narratively Academy are all about trying to pull back the curtain on some of the more elusive areas of the literary world. So, when we came across Brendan O’Meara’s work with The Creative Nonfiction Podcast and his newsletter Pitch Club, both with similar missions to ours, collaborating seemed like a no-brainer. On his pod, Brendan has inspirational conversations with literary powerhouses about the craft of writing, and his newsletter features real pitches from real writers with their added commentary on how they came to their ideas, found the right editor to email and more. Did we mention he’s also an author who has written two standout books about sports, and that his latest, The Front Runner, was nominated for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting for Best Sports Book category?

We get into it all in our conversation, from how to build a lasting platform, to how to reframe rejection on small and big scales, the truth behind six-figure advances and so.much.more. If you missed it live, be sure to check the recording of this one. And if you’re not already a paying subscriber to Narratively Academy, I can’t think of a better reason to join than to get to listen to conversations like this one (and to get 20% off every Narratively Academy class, and to check out all our informational craft posts, join our write-together-apart community, and…)

Of all the things writers want to know about, the one that often feels the most mysterious — even if you know something about the process — is how to find an agent. Probably because what agents are looking for is always changing, so much of it is about taste and preference, (i.e., what you feel like spending oodles of your time working on), because it’s a bit harder than we want it to be… But this is not meant to discourage. After all, we’re here to help demystify the things we all have questions about.

Here helping us do that this week was Kate McKean, longtime agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, author of the book Write Through It: An Insider’s Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life, and creator of the wonderfully informative and eye-opening newsletter Agents + Books. We talked about where to start when looking for an agent, the ways in which platform does matter (but is not as scary as you think!), what she’s looking for personally and much more. Paid members can watch the full conversation above. And thank you to everyone who joined us live — what a fun conversation!

Not a member yet? Sign up now to access our full library of “Open Book” videos, read all our StoryCraft articles, and get 20% off every Narratively Academy class. ❤️

There’s so much to know about book publishing and the world surrounding it, that it can feel hard to have a firm understanding of it all. Take book reviews, for instance. Have you ever wondered why some books get reviewed and others don’t, how libraries know which books to stock their shelves with, how to break into reviewing yourself and what the process really looks like? Us too.

Which is why, for our latest Open Book chat, Creative Nonfiction founder Lee Gutkind had Booklist editor-in-chief, Donna Seaman, on to answer these questions and more. Click play above to watch a recording of the whole conversation.

Become a paid member today to watch our entire archive of Open Book video conversations, get 20% off writing classes, and much more.

If you’re a fan of flash nonfiction, there’s no way you haven’t heard of — and most likely are a huge fan of — Dinty W Moore. After almost 30 years as the lead editor at Brevity, Dinty recently announced that he would be stepping down from his perch. Have no fear, he will be succeeded by the inimitable Zoë Bossiere, Brevity’s former managing editor, and Dinty will remain on the editorial team at The Brevity Blog.

If this news finds you needing an immediate Dinty W. Moore/flash essay fix, well, us too. And so we’re re-sharing our excellent interview with Dinty, conducted by none other than Lee Gutkind, in which they talk about — among other things, like Dinty’s garden and their long history together — what the heck a flash essay is! If you’re wondering yourself, this one’s for you.

Open Book recordings are usually for paying subscribers, but we’re making this one free for a limited time so everyone can check it out. If you feel inclined to become a paying subscriber to support all the independent content we create, we would so greatly appreciate it. Thank you for considering! 🙏❤️

A few days ago, Creative Nonfiction founder Lee Gutkind sat down with Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild and the Authors Guild Foundation, for a robust conversation about the forces reshaping the writing world—and what writers can to protect ourselves.

Mary and Lee talked about how the Authors Guild helps writers navigate contracts, legal disputes, copyright questions and other challenges that arise throughout a writing career. Click play above to watch the full video.

Become a paid member today to watch our entire archive of Open Book video conversations, get 20% off writing classes, and much more.

The New York Times’ Modern Love column is an institution. It falls at the top of many writers’ bucket lists, and there are even classes — several! — about how to write your own. So, when someone writes two Modern Loves, well, that feels like a huge feat. And when that someone is a writer who you have worked with before and whose essays you love, well, even better.

Yes, we’re talking about Elizabeth Laura Nelson and her recent Modern Love — about meeting her current boyfriend through her best friend, brief lover and, ahem, the subject of her first ML — you can read here if you haven’t already.

And if you want to read the piece she wrote for us — exploring similar themes and people! — you can head here for that.

With her piece top of mind, we wanted to re-share our interview with her in which she talks all about her first Modern Love journey. Watch above to find out Elizabeth’s tricks to submitting, what the whole process was like and more.

Open Book recordings are usually for paying subscribers, but we’re making this one free for a limited time so everyone can check it out. If you feel inclined to become a paying subscriber to support all the independent content we create — and that we’ve been creating since 2013! — we would so greatly appreciate it. Thank you for considering! 🙏❤️🥳

Happy weekend, writers! What did you work on this week? Don’t forget to share your #WeeklyWins over in the Narratively Academy Chat.

The best thing I did this week was my chat with Susan Saulny, the writer behind one of the most impressive feature articles I’ve read this year, the epic story, “A Family Secret No More,” published in The New York Times a few weeks ago.

In her story, Susan explores the dual life stories of her grandfather, George, who lived in the Jim Crow South as a Black man, and his lighter-skinned brother, Edward, who moved to Chicago and “crossed the line” to live as White. It’s a remarkable reported essay that I can only imagine took an immense amount of researching, reporting, and navigating complicated family dynamics to put together.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Susan’s story yet, here’s a gift link for you to catch up this weekend. Click play above to dive into our full conversation about how Susan put this incredible piece of storytelling together.

This Open Book conversation with Melissa Petro, author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, is one that has been particularly helpful for a lot of writers in our community. So many of us have lots of material for a memoir but no firm concept about how that material comes together into a marketable book.

Melissa chatted with us about how she re-conceptualized her memoir into a hybrid book that feels very of-the-moment — and got a publisher’s attention with her new proposal. Give it a watch by clicking play above.

BTW, we have just a couple seats left in Melissa’s Nonfiction Book Development Boot Camp, which starts next week. If you’re ready to take on a full-length book—memoir, narrative nonfiction, or something in between—but you’re not totally sure how it takes shape, this two-day workshop is designed to help you transform your idea into a structured, strategic vision you can confidently pitch, write and publish.

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