The 7am Novelist

It’s not as hard as you think—and far more integral than you might know. Dariel Suarez helps us break down the important of context for writers and readers both.

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Dariel Suarez was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. He is the author of the novel The Playwright’s House (Red Hen Press), finalist for the Rudolfo Anaya Fiction Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, and the story collection A Kind of Solitude (Willow Springs Books), winner of the Spokane Prize and the International Latino Book Award for Best Collection of Short Stories. Dariel is an inaugural City of Boston Artist Fellow and the Education Director at GrubStreet. 

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Mixing reality and invention in fiction and nonfiction might just allow you to say something even more “true.” We discuss how you can you deepen your prose by understanding your character’s interior world, how that interior world makes itself known in exterior details, while also offering vulnerability and honesty to your reader. Authors Alysia Abbott and Lise Haines join us.

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Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice an ALA Stonewall Award winner, and winner of the Madame Figaro Prix Heroine in France. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Triquarterly, Solstice, NPR, and elsewhere. Last year, she was awarded an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Earlier this year the film version of her memoir Fairyland  premiered at Sundance and later this month will be showing at the Sarasota Film Festival. She currently teaches at Emerson college and leads the Memoir Incubator program at GrubStreet. 

Lise Haines’s fifth novel, Book of Knives, was out by Sourcebooks in 2022. Her four earlier books are When We Disappear (Unbridled Books); Girl in the Arena (Bloomsbury USA), a 2011 South Carolina Book Award Nominee, optioned by HBO; Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (Unbridled Books), named a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by San Diego’s NPR station; and In My Sister’s Country (Penguin/Putnam), which The Rocky Mountain News selected as one of twelve “Stellar Debuts” for 2002.

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Keeping the faith through the (sometimes long) agent hunt, asking the right questions, working with a developmental editor, finding patience during the submission process, and what to expect from your agent or editor. Novelists Rita Woods and Nancy Crochiere offer their experience and wisdom about the journey.

For a list of my fave craft books and the most recent works by our guests, go to our Bookshop page.

For thirteen years, Nancy Crochiere chronicled the ups and downs of family life—including her obsession with George Clooney—in her humorous newspaper column, “The Mother Load.” Then her children grew up and left home, and she ran out of material. This left her no choice but to try fiction. Quitting her job in educational publishing, Nancy took courses at GrubStreet and graduated summa cum lucky from the Novel Incubator program in 2019. Her debut novel, Graceland, a comic road trip involving three generations of women, will be published by Avon/HarperCollins on May 30, 2023.

Rita Woods was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She received a BS in Microbiology from Purdue University before graduating from Howard University College of Medicine. She completed her training at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and currently serves as Medical Director of a Wellness Center that provides care for members of one of the largest Trade Unions in the nation. Rita lives in suburban Chicago with her family, where she also serves as Trustee on her local library board.She loves magic, books, history, coffee and traveling, not necessarily in that order. She is the author of the award-winning novel Remembrance. Her newest novel, The Last Dreamwalker, was published in September 2022.

Shocking beginnings, the predictable versus the unpredictable, character vulnerabilities, and much more. Director and screen-writer Devi Snively lays out the techniques common to horror movies that can help spark your stories and deepen them as well.

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An award-winning screenwriter/filmmaker, modestly published short fiction author and contributor to Beyond the Bechdel (a feminist cinema blog), Devi Snively is an alumnus of AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women and Fox Studios Filmmakers Lab, and scholarship winner of the Nostos Screenwriting Retreat and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She recently graduated from GrubStreet's Novel Incubator and is currently revising her first novel and working on a collection of short speculative stories.

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When you’re stuck with your book, sometimes it’s better to step back from the words and find a different way of seeing what’s happening on the page. Author Henriette Lazaridis gives us loads of tricks to give you new insight into your novel or story through maps, objects, and other non-narrative visuals and spatial representations.

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Henriette Lazaridis' novel TERRA NOVA (Pegasus Books) was called "ingenious" and "provocative" by the New York Times. Her debut novel The Clover House was a Boston Globe bestseller and a Target Emerging Authors pick. Her short work has appeared in publications including Elle, Forge, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, New England Review, The Millions, and elsewhere, and has earned her a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant. Henriette earned degrees in English literature from Middlebury College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in Greece.

Why are middles so difficult? And what can we do to avoid losing our readers interest in our story? Hank Phillippi Ryan gives us a series of five steps to help you think through the muddle, PLUS, a whole lot of ideas for creating obstacles for your characters that remain true to your book.

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the USA Today bestselling author of 14 psychological thrillers, winning the genre's most prestigious awards: five Agathas, five Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She’s also investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV, winning 37 EMMYs. National book reviewers call her “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her newest is the page-turning standalone THE HOUSE GUEST – a story of psychological manipulation exploring the dark heart of marriage and friendship—it’s Gaslight meets Thelma & Louise! Publishers Weekly says, “Ryan is a master of suspense!” and the Library Journal starred review calls it "Binge-worthy.”

How to (and how not to) give and receive feedback, with authors and teachers Daphne Kalotay and Margot Livesey.

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Margot Livesey grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands.  She is the author of nine novels, a collection of stories and a book of essays about the craft of fiction. She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and spends much of the year in Cambridge, Ma.

Daphne Kalotay is the author of the story collection, Calamity and Other Stories, as well as the novels Russian Winter, Sight Reading, and Blue Hours. Her bestselling work has been published in twenty languages and won her numerous national and international awards. Her forthcoming collection, The Archivists, won the  the 2021 Grace Paley Prize and will be published in Spring 2023.Daphne lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and teaches at Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing.

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Feeling stuck? Caught in the dregs of self-doubt and too-much planning? AE Osworth is here to save us all with Joy First Drafting (seriously, give it a try).

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A.E. Osworth is a transgender novelist whose debut, WE ARE WATCHING ELIZA BRIGHT was long listed for The Center For Fiction First Novel Prize, The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and The Tournament of Books; it was a finalist for The Oregon Book Award. They are currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University, where they teach both fiction and nonfiction. Their next book, AWAKENED, about a coven a transgender witches fighting artificial intelligence with magic, is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in March 2025.

How to forgive yourself for not writing and how to get back to it in both big and small ways. Author Stephanie Gayle helps us out.

Stephanie Gayle is the Immediate Past President of Sisters in Crime and the author of Idyll Threats, Idyll Fears and Idyll Hands. She works at MIT and shares a home with the world’s cutest bunny, Bao.

To find a list of my favorite craft book and the most recent books by our guests, go to our Bookshop page.

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Today we hear from author Katherine Sherbrooke about how to make your reader root for your protagonist and why you should even need to try. What if your character is an awful person? What if they don’t want to do anything? We talk about navigating these complexities in order to keep the reader engaged.

Katherine Sherbrooke is the author of a family memoir called Finding Home and three novels: the New York Times notable Leaving Coy’s Hill, which was selected for 2022 MA Book Award’s Honors in Fiction prize, and Fill the Sky, the winner of a 2017 Independent Press Award and finalist for the Mary Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her newest novel, THE HIDDEN LIFE OF ASTER KELLY is coming out on April 4th from Pegasus Books. She just ended her term as Chair of the Board of GrubStreet but will forever be a Grubbie. 

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