The 7am Novelist

Today, I’m talking to Jessica Francis Kane, author of the recently released novel, FONSECA, based on a trip that acclaimed English writer Penelope Fitzgerald took in the Winter of 1952 in an attempt to inherit a personal and creative lifeline from two elderly relatives. We’ll be talking about how Jessica wove personal letters into the narrative as well as how she managed the point of view of a literary personality that many readers know and love.

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JESSICA FRANCIS KANE is the author of two short story collections, Bending Heaven and This Close, which was named a best book of the year by NPR. Her first novel, The Report, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her second novel, Rules for Visiting, was a national and LA Times bestseller. It was selected for the Indie Next List of the American Booksellers Association and was named a best book of the summer and/or year by Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture and The Chicago Tribune. Her latest novel, Fonseca, has been named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a best book of the year by Kirkus, Esquire, and BookPage.

Today, we’ve got one of our star Novel Incubator alums, Emily Ross, who has just published her second novel, SWALLOWTAIL, a book that combines mythology, teenage longing, and small-town murder. It’s one of the first books out from the new Galiot Press. We’ll be talking about how Emily, normally an intuitive writer, had to sink her teeth into the more intentional plotting and structure of a mystery thriller, while not leaving her characters behind.

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.

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

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

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Emily Ross is the author of the mystery thriller, Swallowtail, which Publishers Weekly says maintains plenty of “nerve-shredding tension” and of the International Thriller Writers Awards finalist, Half in Love with Death. She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024.

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on voice: What really is voice? How does a writer create it? Change it? How do we differentiate between the writer’s voice and that of the narrator or character? When is voice too writerly or too uninspired? And how is it different from style? We’ll talk about these questions and a whole lot more with our four authors: Juliet Faithfull, Stacy Mattingly, Andrea Meyer, and Emily Ross.

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

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

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

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.

Juliet Faithfull is a Spanish-British-American writer who grew up in Brazil. Liar’s Dice, her first novel which will be released in April, was a winner of the 2024 Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair and a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Stacy Mattingly is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Unlikely Angel, an Atlanta hostage story now a feature film, Captive. She was a 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she has collaborated with writers for more than a decade. She teaches at Boston University, where she earned an MFA in fiction, and is an associate professor at Berklee College of Music. She has led workshops for the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her recently completed first novel is set in present-day Sarajevo.

Andrea Meyer is an author, editor, writing instructor, and book coach who has written three novels, a screenplay for MGM, numerous essays and film articles, and teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at GrubStreet.

Emily Ross is the author of the mystery thriller SWALLOWTAIL (coming from Galiot Press in November 2025) and the International Thriller Writers Thriller Awards finalist, HALF IN LOVE WITH DEATH. She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime stories 2024. She is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator and lives in Quincy, MA, with her husband and Obi-Wan Kenobi, their very playful cat.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Good morning everyone. Today’s short episode is dedicated to Charles Coe, who passed away suddenly this weekend. His death is a shock to a lot of us. He was a beloved poet, educator, arts advocate, and friend to many many writers and creatives across New England and beyond. Charles helped our group Writers for Democrat Action raise funds for Kamala Harris the fall before last. As part of the event, he read a really thoughtful piece about how he approaches political writing, including two poems of his own that he shared. His words aren’t only a testament to his work, but also helpful in considering our roles as writers in the political sphere. Rest of peace, Charles. We’ll miss you.

We’ve got one of Boston’s best literary citizens with us, Jessica Kent. She’s the founder of Literary Boston, a website that covers the local literary community, marketing advice for authors, and a chance to take your own literary history tour. Today, she’ll be sharing with us a list of ways for you to connect to your literary community and be a stronger literary citizen. We’ll also talk her efforts to put literary Boston on the map, as well as how she started her work with Literary Boston in the first place.

Read Kent’s post: “How is Building Content Strategy Like Plotting a Novel?”

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

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

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

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance marketing writer by day and creative writer by night. She’s the founder of Literary Boston, a website that covers the local literary community. Other past literary roles include library assistant, bookseller, and book festival director. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson and a Master’s in Literature from Harvard, where her thesis on Moby-Dick and Calvinism won the Director’s Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in the North American Review, the Emerson Review, and others, and has received the Leah Lovenheim Award for Short Fiction. She recently graduated from GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, where she’s working on a novel about paramedics in 1970s Boston.

Photo by Tiffany Chan on Unsplash

Today, I’m thrilled to be speaking to Janet Rich Edwards, whose debut novel, Canticle, will be released in December. I’ll be interviewing her for that release on the stage at Porter Square Books in the Seaport on December 3. Today we’ll be talking about how she handled four points of view and how language conveys class and gender as well as her characters’ assumptions about how the world works.

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.

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

To find Edwards’ book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.

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Janet Rich Edwards is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. A professor of epidemiology at Harvard, Janet had written more than 300 papers for scientific journals, but was left wondering if she could convey more truth, or at least different truths, through story. When she’s not sneaking hours to write fiction, Janet’s researching facts about women’s health. Canticle is her first novel. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and never more than two cats.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

Today, I’m talking to author Nicole Graev Lipson about where fiction ends and truth begins and how she searched for answers about being a mother among her literary forebears, without being too heavy-handed with her allusions or assuming too much from the reader.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. —Simone Weil

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

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

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

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Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a USA Today national bestseller. Her writing has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays anthology, and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Millions, Nylon, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other publications. Nicole holds a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Emerson College. Originally from New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her family.

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on one of the hardest things for an author to get right: world building. Because this issue is so complex, I’m doing two world building roundtables, one for writers working on historical fiction and today for writers who are trying to establish place in a location that the reader might not know about, either in the real world or in the speculative one. In this case, how complicated does that speculative world need to be to be truly convincing? Or is simplicity the key, working through implication instead of information? And if the book is released in U.S., what is the writers responsibility for providing context for non-U.S. locales? Any at all? Maybe the reader should do the work. We’ll talk about these questions and a whole lot more with our four authors: Julie Carrick Dalton, Juliet Faithful, Shalene Gupta, and Desmond Hall.

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

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.

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A former organic farmer and beekeeper, Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of The Last Beekeeper, currently a nominee for the NH People’s Choice Award for Best Novel, as well as Waiting for the Night Song, and a forthcoming third novel, The Forest Becomes Her. She’s part of the core faculty at Drexel University’s MFA program.

Shalene Gupta is the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD (Flatiron, 2024) and the co-author of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It (Public Affairs, 2021). She’s the staff editor at Fast Company and is currently revising her first novel with her agent.

Juliet Faithfull is a Spanish-British-American writer who grew up in Brazil. Liar’s Dice, her first novel which will be released in April, was a winner of the 2024 Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair and a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Desmond Hall is the author of two award-winning YA novels, including most recently Better Must Come, which was a top ten In the Margins book pick, CariCon Award for best Caribbean YA novel, and won honors for the Massachusetts Book Award.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

Today, we’ve got a very special guest, the person I cofounded the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program with and who is a beloved teacher and writer in the Boston area, Lisa Borders. Lisa’s latest novel, Last Night at the Disco, was released on October 7. We’re talking about using an unreliable narrator, character liability, and how our dear late agent, Esmond Harmsworth, helped her with the novel’s structure. You can catch Lisa at Brooklyn’s Lofty Pigeon Books with Patricia Park tonight, October 21st, as well as Harvard Bookstore on October 27.

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.

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

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

Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.

Lisa Borders is the author of the novels Cloud Cuckoo Land, chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing’s Fred Bonnie Award and a Massachusetts Book Awards honoree, and The Fifty-First State. A frequent humor contributor at McSweeney’s, her essays and short fiction have appeared in Past Ten, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti, Black Warrior Review and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and residencies at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center and St. Nell’s. Lisa taught for many years at Boston’s GrubStreet, where she founded the Novel Generator program and co-founded the Novel Incubator program. She currently teaches her own Novel Reactor workshops and does private manuscript consulting. After growing up largely in Central Jersey – a part of New Jersey whose very existence is the topic of much debate – Lisa moved to the Boston area and now lives in Central Massachusetts with her partner and two rescue cats. Lisa’s new novel, Last Night at the Disco, will be published by Regal House on October 7, 2025.

Today, I’m talking to writers Whitney Scharer and Sonya Larson about an exciting new writing conference they’re starting up in the Boston area, the TBR conference which will be held this coming January 17th.

For more info about the conference and to register, click here.

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.

I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.

Whitney Scharer’s first novel, The Age of Light, was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller, People Pick, Amazon Book of the Month selection, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a coups de couer selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published in over a dozen other countries. Whitney has been awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship, Ragdale and VCCA residencies, a St. Botolph Emerging Artists Grant, and a Somerville Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, The Telegraph, and The Tatler. She lives with her husband and daughter in Arlington, MA, where she is at work on her second novel.

Sonya Larson’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, American Literary Review, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Chronicle, Amazon Originals, Audible.com, West Branch, Salamander, Memorious, The Harvard Advocate, Pangyrus, Solstice Magazine, Del Sol Review, Red Mountain Review, The Hub, and more. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts 2020, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and more. For 17 years she served as Director of GrubStreet‘s Muse and the Marketplace writing conference and other roles, and as an organizer for the Boston Writers of Color Group. She received her MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in New York City and is writing a novel.