The Book I HAD to Write

Paul interviews author and cultural critic Stephen Marche about his new book On Writing and Failure. We delve into the challenges faced by writers in the digital age, and the evolving landscape of publishing, and discuss the inherent failures that are part of writing process, and the struggle to bridge the gap between intention and reception. 

Discussed on this Episode

“The End of the English Major,” by Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, Feb 27, 2023

CanLit's Colonial Habit: Literature in the age of Reconciliation and ‘peak’ diversity, Literary Review of Canada, November 2017

Death of an Author is an AI-generated novella published in April 2023 by Stephen Marche and Pushkin Industries.

Buy the Book

On Writing and Failure is available from Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Credits

This episode was edited and produced by Chérie Newman at Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. 

About this Episode

In Canada, essayist Susan Olding is well-known as the author of smart, beautifully crafted essays on topics like parenting, illness, our changing relationship to reading & more. In this episode, Susan discusses her journey as an essayist, and her newest essay collection Big Reader. She also discusses the power of writing essays, the challenges of writer's block, the power of re-reading classics as an adult, and the use of experimental forms in storytelling. 

Key Takeaways:

Susan emphasizes the importance of making connections in essay writing, whether through traditional or experimental forms.

Susan talks about how self-doubt and perfectionism can contribute to writer's block, but that finding a way through is crucial to developing one's own writing

Susan describes finding inspiration in the essay tradition that blends criticism and autobiography or memoir

She discusses how rereading literary classics she loved when younger, like Anna Karenina, can lead to new insights and perspectives

She discusses experimental forms in essays and how they offer fresh perspectives and help writers explore challenging topics.

Discussed:

Banff Literary Journalism Program

Brenda Miller on Braided Essays & playing with form

Buy the Book   

Big Reader: Essays is available from Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon |  Indigo (Canada)    

Credits

This episode was edited and produced by Chérie Newman at Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. 

Overview

In this episode of "The Book I Had to Write" podcast, Paul interviews Josh Lambert, author of The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature.  Josh shares the story of how the term 'Jewish literary mafia' came about in the 1950s and 1960s. They delve into the problems of gatekeeping and publishing's lack of diversity, and ask whether a 'literary mafia' could point to ways to make the industry more inclusive.

Discussed

       Editor Gordon Lish, most famous for cutting Raymond Carver's stories, but who was instrumental in championing Jewish writers like Cynthia Ozick

       The concept of the Jewish literary mafia, the evolution of literary representation, and the importance of diversity.

       The experiences of Jewish women writers in the 20th century publishing industry

       The phenomenon of "whisper novels" as a way for women to address their experiences in the publishing industry

       Exploring tokenism and lack of diversity in the publishing industry

Buy the Book

The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature is available from Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Credits

This episode was produced by Chérie Newman at Magpie Audio Productions. The theme music is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. 

Thoughts? Drop Paul a line at [email protected]

If you like the show, please leave a review on the platform of your choice or  www.thebookihadtowrite.com!

Paul is back with a new season of The Book I Had to Write!

This time around, the show explores nonfiction writers and stories from Canada.

Upcoming interviews will be published every other Tuesday starting on May 9, 2023.

Highlights include: 

• Josh Lambert (The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature) on the story of Jewish editors and writers who helped to shape many 20th century American literature, and how the idea of a “Jewish literary mafia” could actually help increase diversity in publishing.
  
  
• Susan Olding (Big Reader) on the power of hybrid forms in writing essays, on the changing nature of identity, and what she learned when she went back to re-read classics like Anna Karenina that she’d loved when younger.
  
  
• Stephen Marche (On Writing and Failure) on why the current moment is so challenging for writers trying to make a living, on the rise of AI in writing, and why authors need to embrace failure.
  
  
• Julija Šukys (Siberian Exile) on the power of discovering your real subjects during archival research, and on the impact of gun culture on campuses and beyond today.

Just like on Season 1, you’ll learn tips and secrets to getting your own book done, and why publishing one will change your life.

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. And go to www.thebookihadtowrite.com to see transcripts, show notes, and more.

If you like the show, please leave a review on your podcast app or at www.thebookihadtowrite.com!

Thoughts? Guest Ideas? Drop Paul a line at [email protected]

Big Thanks

This season would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the following people: Seth Wilson, Tony Bleasdale, Ron Gleiberman, Amy Hayes, Rebecca Spence, Mark Childs, Sari Botton, Karen Propp, Daniel Hochman, Nelly Reifler, Anonymous (2), Andy Ingall, Jennifer Mattson, Cherie Newman, Monica Steiner, and Elizabeth Bobrick. My heartfelt thanks to each of you.

Credits:

This trailer was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. The theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

In this episode, I talk with writer and editor Sari Botton. Back around 2010, Sari started an interview series at The Rumpus called “Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me.” At the time, as a writer of first-person nonfiction, she felt paralyzed by the fear of hurting those closest to her.

 By definition, memoir and essays inevitably include stories about the people in our lives. But figuring out what the lines are – who we feel we can write about and how to do it – that takes time. And lots of real-world practice.

Over the past 12 yrs, Sari has grappled extensively with how to give herself permission to write about herself and others. As her new memoir-in-essays, And You May Find Yourself..., started coming together, she landed on a different way to understand this issue.

 Writing about herself is really an act of defiance, she says. Women, and particularly women writing memoir, are often derided for first-person writing. Or, as she writes in the foreword to her new book: “I remembered that my voice matters. I’m using it now, to take up space, to say, ‘I was here.’”

In this interview, we also talk about Gen X identity, and about Sari’s newest project, Oldster magazine, a Substack newsletter aimed at exploring of how we live inside our aging bodies.

 Sari Botton is also the editor of two anthologies, the award-winning GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: WRITERS ON LOVING & LEAVING NY, as well as the NYT bestselling followup NEVER SAY GOODBYE: WRITERS ON THEIR UNSHAKEABLE LOVE FOR NY. She teaches nonfiction at Catapult and in the MFA program at Bay Path University.

 Discussed in this episode:

And You May Find Yourself...  available from Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

After Fifteen Years, I Stopped Panicking, Started Declawing, and Finally Published My Memoir, by Sari Botton (Catapult)

Conversations with Writers Braver than Me by Sari Botton (The Rumpus)

 Oldster Magazine

 Additional resources for writing about others:

A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing about Other People, by Melissa Febos

Other People’s Secrets: An Interview with Kerry Cohen by Paul Zakrzewski, (Brevity Magazine)

The Truth of Memoir: How to Write about Yourself and Others with Honesty, Emotion, and Integrity, by Kerry Cohen Bookshop | Amazon

“Other People’s Secrets” (essay) by Patricia Hampl, collected in I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory

 Credits:

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

This week, we’re featuring an episode from a great new show called The Bleeders.

The Bleeders is a podcast (and support group) about book writing and publishing. The podcast emphasizes “transparent conversations with authors, agents, and people in the publishing industry about how to write and sell books.”

The title is a wry nod to the famous Hemingway quote: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

This episode features an interview with author Chloe Caldwell. Reminiscent of writers like Cheryl Strayed and Meghan Daum, but with a gritty, funny tone all her own, Chloe Caldwell is the author of three essay collections including Legs Get Led Astray, Women, and I’ll Tell You in Person, along with her latest book The Red Zone: A Love Story.

In this interview, host Courtney Kocak talks with Caldwell about her rather unique path to publishing, as the pair talk about everything from cold queries to agents to small presses to trusting your vision.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, I encourage you to listen to the rest of The Bleeder episodes and subscribe in your favorite app! https://pod.link/1628014529">https://pod.link/1628014529

And make sure to sign up for The Bleeders companion Substack! https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome">https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome

I'll be back next week with an all-new episode of TBIHTW, which will wrap up Season 1 for me!

About this episode

It can be difficult for writers to learn to put our stories front and center. That was originally the case with today’s guest, Lilly Dancyger. She originally set out to memorialize her father, Joe Schactman, through a book that would feature artwork and stories she’d collected from friends.

Schactman was a highly original artist and sculptor who was part of the same 1980s East Village art scene that included David Wojnarowicz and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He was a loving father but also struggled with addiction; he died when Dancyger was only 12.

“I kept saying the book I was writing was an artist monograph, but every day the words stared back at me, so clearly, defiantly, a memoir,” she writes an essay entitled “Not a Memoir.” Through a long process spanning several years, however, she decided to foreground her own story, alongside that of her father.

One big shift was learning to think of her memoir as more of a detective novel, where her 10+ year search to find out more about her father led to think of each interview or event as a “clue” that furthered the plot, and added “stakes” to the story.

Lilly Dancyger is the author of the memoir, Negative Space, as well as the editor of the anthology Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger. She lives and works in NYC.

Discussed on this episode

Negative Space (memoir) Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Memoir as Detective Novel (essay)

Writing & Publishing Addiction Narratives Workshop (with Erin Khar)

Not a Memoir (essay)

Melissa Febos: Abandon Me (Excerpt)

LillyDancyger.com

Credits

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

About the episode:

Today’s guest on TBIHTW is Brad Listi, best known as the creator of the OTHERPPL with Brad Listi podcast. Hailed by everyone from The New Yorker to Electric Literature as a go-to literary podcast, OTHERPPL boasts over 770+ episodes, making it also one of the longest running literary podcasts as well.

Brad Listi’s new book, Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, is a work of autofiction which follows a middle-aged LA writer and podcaster (also called Brad Listi) who grapples with life in Los Angeles, the meaning of adulthood and marriage, along with a series of very challenging events including the death of a close friend, several miscarriages, and raising a child with disabilities.

Despite the premise, the book is poised, generous, and funny, partly because the narrator is so open about describing the challenges he has with finishing his book. In real life, it took Brad over 12 years, and many different versions, to finally land on the book he had to write.

He has a lot to say about that journey, about not forgetting your the reader, about the lessons of creative failure, and what it takes to finish a book. 

Brad’s other books include the novel Attention. Deficit. Disorder., an LA Times bestseller, and Board, a work of nonfiction collage, co-authored with Justin Benton. He is the founding editor of The Nervous Breakdown, an online literary magazine.

Discussed on the episode

Be Brief and Tell Them Everything – available from Bookshop | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

OTHERPPL with Brad Listi

Steve Almond Interviews Brad Listi on OTHERPPL

Cynthia Ozick’s essay, “A Drugstore In Winter” (originally published in the NYT, later collected in Art & Ardor)

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Credits

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

About this episode

If you’ve spent time in the world of creative nonfiction, chances are you’ve come across today’s guest Allison K. Williams

As the “Unkind Editor,” she builds on a decade of experience with hundreds of clients to dole out straight talk on writing and publishing.

And as Brevity.com’s social media editor and cofounder of “The Writer’s Bridge,” she uses her expertise to help writers build their author platform.

In today’s episode we talk about how Allison’s background as a street performer shapes the way she looks at writing.

And we explore her new book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. It’s based around a breakthrough she had at a writer’s conference, when she realized writers could tackle every stage of writing and publishing if they thought of their work as a series of successive drafts.

In addition to working as a freelance editor, Allison is also a popular conference speaker and writing coach. As an author and storyteller, her work has appeared in the New York Times, on NPR, and on CBC-Canada. She lives in Dubai with her husband.

Discussed on this episode

* Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book (includes free sample)

* The Unkind Editor

* Rebirth Your Book retreats

* The Writers' Bridge

* HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers

* Brevity Magazine (flash nonfiction and craft essays)

Credits

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.

About this episode

Growing up, Gayle Jessup White had heard that her African American family was somehow related to Thomas Jefferson. But it wasn’t until advances in DNA technology, along with methods pioneered by historians exploring the African American experience in the U.S., helped her uncover her direct link to not only Thomas Jefferson, but also Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson had had 6 children.

The result is a new book, Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, And A Descendant's Search For Her Family's Lasting Legacy. If you are writing (or thinking of writing) about your family — especially a story with national and historic significance—this episode will have lots to say to you.

In this episode, we also discuss:

* How truths embedded in her family lore helped Gayle to direct her genealogical research

* How do you go about researching your ancestors, especially as an African-American

* The complexities of America’s history of enslavement, as illustrated by the story of “Old Sal” – the enslaved woman, owned by the Jefferson family, who started as Thomas’s wet nurse, but later became his own slave when Thomas’s father died.

* Writing in the “flow state” & more

Gayle Jessup White is the Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer at Monticello, and a former award-winning television reporter and anchor, and she’s documented her search for ancestors on NPR, in the New York Times, theroot.com, CNN, and other places.

Discussed on this episode

Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, And A Descendant's Search For Her Family's Lasting Legacy (HarperCollins Publishers)

A Black Descendant of Thomas Jefferson Explores Her Ancestors’ Legacy, NPR

Cousins, Across the Color Line by Tess Taylor, NYTimes, Jan 22, 2014.

Historian Cinder Stanton

Getting Word: African American Oral History Project at Monticello

Credits

This episode was edited by Paul Zakrzewski and produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions.