QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life

In this second Annotations segment, Marion and David sit down together to discuss best writing practices and answer several listeners' questions.

Journalist and author Jill Smolowe discusses her memoir "Four Funerals and a Wedding" and the challenges she faced writing about the many facets of grief and healing.

Author and memoir writing teacher Marion Roach Smith and memorist and cookbook author David Leite kick off Season Two of QWERTY with a previerw of upcoming guests.

Two-time best-selling nonfiction author Julia Flynn Siler gives excellent advice to writers about writing what you believe in, testing your material and setting writing deadlines and goals to have a writing life.

Best-selling memoirist Elissa Altman discusses with Marion and David the hard work of writing about family, getting to the truth, and the importance of what to include and what to leave out in her latest book, Motherland.

Writer Corvette Hunt recounts how to control your personal details when writing memoir, how to get an essay published in The New York Times and then turn that into a book-length memoir.

Marion and David ask a lifetime New York Times reporter about writing on deadline and how to identify when you know enough to publish.

In this first Annotations segment, Marion and David discuss the difficult process of reporting on one's own life when writing memoir.

Author Marcia Butler's first book, The Skin Above My Knee, chronicled surviving abuse through art, which brought her national acclaim. In this moving episode, she speaks about this gorgeous, notable memoir.

Gary Taubes has turned investigative journalism into a science. With three cover stories for the New York Times Magazine and a string of books, he has brought his skeptical scrutiny to topics as diverse as high-energy physics, salt, and dietary fat.