Today, we hear from Theresa Okokon whose memoir in essays will be released on February 4. We talk about the power of delusions, controlling what your writing means to you, and letting go of the meaning others might try to assign to you. As Okokon says: “That’s not my problem.”

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find Okokon’s latest books as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.

Want to join our January write-a-thon. Go here for more information: 7amnovelist.substack.com/p/join-our-january-group-write

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.

Theresa Okokon is a Pushcart Prize-nominated essayist whose work (and bathroom selfies!) has appeared in Elle, midnight & indigo, Hippocampus Magazine, the Independent, WBUR's Cognoscenti, and Boston.com. A Wisconsinite living in New England, she is he co-host of Stories From The Stage. In addition to writing and performing her own stories, Theresa also teaches storytelling and writing workshops and classes, coaches other tellers, hosts story slams, and frequently emcees events for nonprofits. An alum of both the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, Theresa's memoir in essays about memory, family stories, and the death of her father -- WHO I ALWAYS WAS-- is available NOW on preorder, and officially publishes with Atria Books at Simon & Schuster on February 4, 2025. Theresa Instagrams gorgeous cocktails, food porn, and pics about Blackness, fatness, and her very cute senior dog on her Instagram at @ohh.jeezzz. She believes very seriously in capitalizing the B in Black and the W in White, and you can read more about that here, with Kwame Anthony Appiah.

This January on the 7am novelist we’re interviewing authors about how they’re sticking to their writing goals despite or maybe because of recent events and their thoughts not only about how other writers might do the same but also about how we might continue to affect change and support each other in both small and large ways.

We’re also holding a large Group-Write for our listeners. That’s right, we’re going to write together over zoom every weekday morning in January from 7 to 8:30 am EST and every Tuesday night from 7 to 8:30pm EST, starting Monday, January 6. We’ll start each session with a few minutes of inspiration and sharing our writing goals on the zoom chat and end each session with turning on our mics and talking about what we accomplished. In between, we’ll have those mics off as we write together. Feel free to come late to a session or only make one or two. No problem. We just want to see you there and support each other as we continue to work in the year ahead.

If you’re interested in joining, email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you the registration link. Subscribe to this Substack page at for updates about our January writing challenge and other news, events, and interviews.

Thanks so much everyone. I hope to see you in January.

Photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash

Tonight, Writers for Blue is offering a special opportunity to learn about writing your first pages. We’ll have four award-winning authors, including myself, Aaron Hamburger, Nancy Johnson, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jayne Anne Phillips, workshopping seven first-page writing submissions in support of electing Kamala Harris, our first female president—and our 47th. We’ll also hear about ways you might use your words in the upcoming election cycle, including how to write politically-charged topics, canvassing, and more, from writers Charles Coe, Rishi Reddi, Daphne Kalotay, Julia Rold, and Gish Jen.   

All of these authors have donated their time, energy, and talents in support of this event. We’re hoping you might follow suit and consider donating to our Writers for Blue campaign. Go to writersforblue.com to get started.

And, if you’re looking for specific links and resources mentioned during the event, see below.

AUTHORS FEATURED:

Charles Coe, author of five books of poetry and one novel, teaches in the Newport MFA writing program, and is renowned both as a writer and a performer; we are honored to have him speaking as well as kindly reading aloud our sample pages.

Aaron Hamburger is author of four acclaimed books of fiction, winner of the Rome Prize and a 2023 Lambda Literary prize; his new novel HOTEL CUBA has been featured on NPR; Aaron does political activism with Swing Left and is on the faculty at Stonecoast MFA.

Author of nine acclaimed books, most recently a ‘best book’ choice by the Oprah Book Club, NPR and the New Yorker, Gish Jen writes about charged issues with humor and heart, as in her latest collection, THANK YOU, MR NIXON.

Nancy Johnson’s acclaimed debut novel THE KINDEST LIE, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Indie Booksellers choice; Nancy’s also an Emmy-nominated award-winning journalist as well as author of the forthcoming 2025 novel, PEOPLE OF MEANS.

Daphne Kalotay is the author, most recently, of the story collection THE ARCHIVISTS, winner of the Grace Paley Prize, a Boston Authors Club “Notable Book” and long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and Massachusetts Book Award. 

National bestselling author of NIGHT SWIM and WOMEN IN BED; Jessica Keener is the Co-Chair with Randy Susan Meyers and, from the start, the driving force of Writers for Blue.

From the iconic story collection BLACK TICKETS through 6 more indelible books of fiction to her 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, NIGHT WATCH Jayne Anne Phillips is—as Caroline Leavitt said on A Mighty Blaze—‘everyone’s literary heroine.’

Rishi Reddi is the PEN New England award winning author of KARMA AND OTHER STORIES and the novel PASSAGE WEST; when not writing, she is an environmental lawyer and lobbies for sound climate policy in her day-job. 

Julia Rold is a writer, playwright and Novel Incubator alum who has worked on political campaigns in Massachusetts, NH, NY, Florida, and her home state of Kentucky.

LINKS TO RESOURCES:

DIRECT LINK TO WritersForBlue DONATION PAGE.

WRITERS FOR BLUE website: https://writersforblue.com/

Our partners:

WRITERS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION (WDA)

A MIGHTY BLAZE

Markers for Democracy: https://markersfordemocracy.org/postcarding (get out the vote cards to Democratic voters. has a monthly writing bootcamp online)

Swing Blue: https://swingbluealliance.org/ (coordinating with Working America on postcard campaign focused on Healthcare for independent voters in PA)

VoteForward: https://votefwd.org/instructions (letter-writing you can download yourself. Excellent examples of positive, nonpartisan "let's go vote!" messages)

More suggested messages (specifically for postcards to swing state voters), stats to support the effort, and ways to order postcards: https://turnoutpac.org/

If folks are interested in supporting Dems in Arizona, Wednesday night at 7pm ET, my Swing Left group is hosting an Arizona Zoom Fundraiser. Sign up here.

Door-to-door canvassing resources.

Canvassing in NH:  https://www.mobilize.us/massdems/event/627702/

Canvassing in PA: https://www.mobilize.us/2024pavictory/event/645465/

https://www.31ststreet.org sends out weekly emails with canvassing, donating, phone banking, and letter writing opportunities. Sign up!

One way of targeting critical races is to think about donating to Crimson Goes Blue. It’s a Harvard group, but don’t be put off by that! They do great research, and their record in giving to races that turned out to be super tight, and where money made the difference is impressive. Highly recommended!

Here’s a Slide with a lot of resources about door-to-door canvassing. 

LISTS OF AND INFO ON BANNED BOOKS:

https://socialjusticebooks.org/booklists/banned-books/

SWING LEFT: VOLUNTEER IN A VARIETY OF WAYS— LETTER-WRITING, POST-CARDING, CANVASSING, PHONE-CALLING and MORE for DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT:

PEN AMERICA, sponsoring many activities such as WRITING LETTERS to free political prisoners around the world and teaching writing in prisons; also programs addressing online abuse and misinformation:

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Today, we hear from listeners Lesley Téllez, Kathy Tully, and Elaine Durbach for the last of this summer’s “Listener Roundups.” We hear about what they’ve learned from the past few episodes, what ideas they consider the most important, what questions or confusions they have, and their own advice and/or experience in dealing with the same issues. 

REMINDER OF OUR SPECIAL ZOOM EVENT on September 23. This is a chance for seven lucky listeners to have the first page of a piece of prose workshopped by myself as well as the authors Nancy Johnson, Aaron Hamburger, and Pulitzer Prize winner Jayne Anne Phillips. It’s also a great chance for everyone who registers to learn about what makes a first page work and strategies for how to improve their own. All those who register will receive a full recording of the event. We’ll also be hearing from Charles Coe, Gish Jen, Rishi Reddi, Julia Rold, and Daphne Kalotay about how writers can “Use Your Words” in the upcoming election cycle and more. The event is entirely free but we’re running it support of what we hope will be our first female president, Kamala Harris. Find out more at writersforblue.com.  

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

Mentioned in this episode:

Philip Gerard’s essay “Architecture of Light: Structuring the Novel and Story Collection” from Checkoway’s Creating Fiction, Story Press, 1999.

Steve Almond’s “How to Write Sex Scenes Without Shame” from his craft book Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow, Zando, 2023.

To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Lesley Téllez, a writer based in Mexico City, is a former journalist, food writer, and cookbook author, now working on a novel about Mexican food and assimilation.

Kathy Shiels Tully is a freelance writer in the Boston area who, despite an insidious case of Imposter Syndrome, has written about people, food, travel, business, plus essays, in publications including: The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Christian Science Monitor, The Writer, the Erma Bombeck Writing Workshop, and recently, her own “Tiny Love Story” in The New York Times. 

Elaine Durbach, the Zimbabwean-born, New Jersey- based author of two non-fiction books and three self-published novels, was a fact-obsessed journalist for 45 years before discovering the joys of making it all up. 

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Today, we hear from RO Kwon whose latest novel, EXHIBIT, was released in May. We’re talking to Reese about writing about what scares you.

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find Kwon’s latest and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling Exhibit, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, which published in May 2024 with Riverhead (US) and will be out in July 2024 with Virago/Little Brown (UK). Kwon’s bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, has been translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited Kink, a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of the inaugural Joy Award. Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Time, Vanity Fair, Guardian, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. Kwon was the 2024 Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.

Photo: Jesse Dittmar

Today, we hear from Jamie Quatro whose latest novel, TWO-STEP DEVIL, releases in September. We’re talking to Jamie about experimenting with form.

Sorry! There’s no audio/video version of this episode available. Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find Quatro’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. HER new novel, Two-Step Devil, is forthcoming from Grove Press in September 2024, to be followed by a story collection, Next Time I'll Be Louder. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, she is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and Maison Dora Maar in Ménerbes, France, where she will be in residence in the spring of 2025. Quatro holds an MA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program and lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Photo by National Library of Medicine on Unsplash

Today, we hear from Ann Hood whose latest novel, THE STOLEN CHILD, was released in May. We’re talking to Ann about writing multiple points of view, introducing a new point of view late in the structure of a book, and how to increase emotional tension in scenes.

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find Hood’s latest and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Ann Hood is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, The Book That Matters Most, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; and several memoirs, including the bestsellers Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was named one of the top ten books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. Her most recent book, The Stolen Child, a novel about art, secrets, love lost and found, and the nature of forgiveness set partially during the First World War was published in May. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Today, we hear from Crystal King whose latest novel, IN THE GARDEN OF MONSTERS, releases in September. We’re talking to Crystal about writing about real people, particularly really problematic people, as well as familiar stories and places.

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find King’s debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Crystal King is a novelist, culinary enthusiast, and marketing expert. Her writing is fueled by a love of history and a passion for the food, language, and culture of Italy. She has taught writing, creativity and social media at UMass Boston, Boston University, Mass College of Art, Harvard Extension School, and Grub Street. She’s a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and former co-editor of the (now defunct) online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review.  She received her M.A. in critical and creative thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in medias res. She lives in Boston but grew up in the Pacific Northwest (Spokane, Seattle, Boise). She also works in the world of social media, AI, marketing, and community management. 

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Today we get to hear from Pagan Kennedy, whose newest book, The Secret History of the Rape Kit, will be released in January. Pagan and I will be talking about the ways in which contemporary events and your own past can disrupt what you thought your book was about.

Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find Kennedy’s book and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Pagan Kennedy is a journalist and author of eleven books, most recently Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World, which was optioned for adaption into a TV show and podcast, and The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story, which will be released by Vintage in January. She has also been awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships. She is a longtime contributor to the New York Times.  

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Today, we’ve got another special “Listeners’ Roundup” episode. This is when we get to hear from some of our listeners about they’ve learned from the past few episodes, what ideas they consider the most important, what questions or confusions they have, and their own advice and/or experience in dealing with the same issues in their writing. 

So today, we’ve got listeners Karen Gruzen, Stephen Dawley, and Nancy Crochiere talking with us about what they heard, what they loved, and how it speaks to their own work. 

Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.

To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 

Karen Gruzen an avid 7am listener and graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Generator with Annie Hartnett, is writing a novel inspired by her time living in Japan, and joins us from Crested Butte, CO where she’s busily revising her Save the Cat 5-part finale.

Stephen Dawley is a lawyer living in CT who several months ago finished (and have started querying) the novel it took him ten years to write, and he’s started another one.

Nancy Crochiere is a former humor columnist whose comic debut novel, GRACELAND, published in May of 2023, was named a best book of summer by Parade, Woman’s World, and Deep South Magazines. 

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash