Virginia Evans and the story behind the story of her runaway debut novel, The Correspondent, is one of those that helps us writers keep getting out of bed in the morning and back to the page. It’s an anomaly on every level. But it’s embedded with the lessons we talk about every day on this show — perseverance, resilience, and immunity from rejection, the importance of writing the story only you can tell and writing for writing’s sake and not publication’s sake. In many ways, The Correspondent breaks some conventional writing rules. But in its breaking, its tapped into something universal, relatable, and loved by well over 2 million readers and counting.

When The Correspondent came out in April of 2025, it was not an instant NYT bestseller. It gained momentum by word-of-mouth, by wonderful booksellers, book clubs, and maybe some Ann Patchett pixie dust. The book had been out for eight months before hitting the NYT bestseller list, where it’s been for 41 weeks and counting. Usually it’s Oprah who boosts a book with her book club picks. This time, Oprah ran to catch up to The Correspondence success. It’s now being turned into a film starring Jane Fonda. It also won the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.

Beyond the publication story is the book itself and what it has to teach us writers. This may be Virginia’s debut, but it’s hardly the first book she’s written. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. We find out what she’s learned – especially from some of the wonderful professors she’s had along the way like Claire Keegan. We talk about the pleasures and perils of the epistolary novel, tackling voice from a bunch of different and challenging perspectives, managing time in fiction, writing your fears, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interview on our website.

(Recorded on September 2, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Ariel Delgado Dixon. Ariel was born in Trenton, New Jersey and is the author of the novels Sourland and Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she teaches writing and works in farming.

Ariel joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about why she chose Humboldt County in Northern Calfornia for the setting of Sourland, writing side characters, naming characters, how much she knew before she started writing, what she does when she hits a wall, and how she comes up with her stellar verbs, because in my opinion, she presently is the the verb queen.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interview on our website.

(Recorded on July 24, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Téa Obreht is the author of four works of fiction. Her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller. Inland was an instant New York Times bestseller, won the Ballard Prize and the BRLA Southwest Book Award. In 2024, The Morningside, was a finalist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize. She was on the show in 2024 when she did a deep dive into her unique childhood and how that informs her fiction. You can find that interview here.

Her latest, Sunrise, came out last month by Random House. It’s complicated on every level. It bends and blends genre. It spans three different time frames. It raises philosophical questions about stories, myths, and legends while using the structure of stories, myths, and legends. All that with edge-of-your seat mysteries and propulsive narrative. Sunrise defies easy descriptions. And the origin story behind this novel is something I know you’re going to want to hear.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on August 25, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kimberly McCreight is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards and was called Entertainment Weekly’s Favorite Book of the Year. A Good Marriage was named a Best Book of the Summer by the New York Times, People, and Publishers Weekly. It was also an Amazon Best Mystery of the Month. A TV adaptation of A Good Marriage is coming soon from Amazon and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. A national bestseller, also currently being adapted for television, Like Mother, Like Daughter was named a CBS New York book club pick and was a Book of the Month selection. McCreight’s most recent book is Someone Else’s Husband. A Katie Couric Book Club selection, Someone Else’s Husband was named a best book of the summer by People, the Boston Globe and Forbes, among others, and an Amazon Best Book of the Year So Far. It has been optioned for television by Lionsgate and 3Arts. She attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her two daughters.

Kimberly joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how she keeps things moving and how she kept going after dealing with rejection, being a literary writer writing thrillers, writing different point of view characters, inserting flashbacks, twists, perfectionism, how running and training relates to writing, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on July 24, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)  

Daniel Mason is the author of six books of fiction, including The Piano Tuner, the story collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth — which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — and North Woods, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dublin Literary Award. He’s also a physician and a professor in Stanford’s Psychiatry Department.

His latest is Country People, published by Random House and out last month. It’s a Good Morning America summer book club pick and a NYT bestseller. It’s contemporary, it’s hilarious and, for us procrastinators who would rather fall down research rabbit holes than write, it’s very relatable.

It also gives writers a bunch of craft lessons to sink our teeth into. How to use your text to teach readers how to read your novel. Embedding content into form (this novel is a master class in that). Using different textures and kinds of writing to enhance your storyline, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interview on our website.

(Recorded on August 13, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Maria Whelan is an agent at Mushens Entertainment, in London. Prior to that, for more than 8 years she worked as an assistant and agent at InkWell Management in New York. She began her career in publishing as a Foreign Rights Assistant at Janklow & Nesbit in New York. Maria graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in English and Drama, then obtained her Master’s in Literature and Modernity from the University of Edinburgh. Maria represents both fiction and nonfiction writers, including USA TODAY bestsellers, a Lammy Finalist, a Discoveries Women’s Prize shortlist winner, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Finalist, a Simon & Schuster Books Like Us first novel winner, NPR’s Best Books of The Year authors, a James Beard Award winner, Barnes & Noble picks authors, and MacDowell Fellows.

 Maria joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how she finds her clients, query letters, hands on agenting, comparison titles, submitting to editors, ageism in publishing, the difference in agents in NY vs the UK, selling memoirs, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on 7, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)  

Debut Welsh author Liam Higginson has written an atmospheric, psychologically suspenseful, creepy novels told in gorgeous literary prose. It’s also steeped in Welsh mythology and tradition but manages to also grapple with contemporary issues. The Hill in the Dark Grove will keep you up at night, whether you’re compulsively turning the pages or you can’t sleep after what you’ve just read.

Liam was born and raised in the deepest hinterlands of rural North Wales. Before writing this knockout novel, he was an extremely bored accountant, helped out at a B & B in a French watermill, ran errands for the CEO of a large consultancy firm, spent lockdown in an empty holiday cottage while a herd of goats took over the town, and now works with his wife at Llandudno Pier.

The Hill in the Dark Grove gives us much to dissect as writers. Bringing place to life. Writing effective suspense and how to leverage the reader’s rich imagination to do a lot of work for you. Managing time and backstory. Grappling with contemporary issues like wealth inequality and our housing crisis in the context of ancient mythology, and so much more. He also shares his unconventional but brillant approach for teaching himself to write.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on July 30, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)  

Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Bishop, California and raised in the Mojave Desert on the Amargosa River. A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno, she earned her MFA from the Ohio State University in 2010. Claire is the author of three novels—Gold Fame Citrus, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness, and Yellow Pine—and the short story collection Battleborn. She has received the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, as well as fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Alta, One Story, The Believer, The Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeny’s, BOMB, The New Republic,Either/Or, Freeman’s, New York Magazine, The Nevada Independent, The New York Times and elsewhere. She is was included in Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists” and the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” Claire is on the board of the Amargosa Conservancy and a professor in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Orange County and the Mojave Desert.

 Claire joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about voice, perfectionism, weaving in backstory, plotting, writing climate fiction, maintaining stamina, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guests, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of Travis Barrett’s typewriter music like what you hear on the show. There’s no lyrics, making It perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on June 12, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)  

Michael Cunningham is the author of eight novels, including the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Hours and his 1990 novel, A Home at the End of the World. Both of these novels were adapted to screen and The Hours was made into an opera that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022. He’s also the author of the story collection, A Wild Swan and Other Tales.   Unsayable: A Life in Writing is his latest. It feels written just for this audience, the folks who listen to this podcast. Unsayable goes from the specific stuff on the word-level (lessons on finding the right descriptions and opening lines) to the macro of living as a writer (like dealing with bad reviews and doing things in your personal life that make you seem more interesting).

Michael takes us inside his process of choosing the right words and phrases. Inside his teaching process to how he guided one student to find a resonant ending. And inside his thinking process of becoming a writer in the first place. It’s extremely personal and therefore surprisingly universal. It’s all the things we love in the very best of our writers, and an embedded MFA experience cherried on top. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it.  

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on July 16, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)  

Teddy Wayne is the author of the novels The Au Pair, The Winner, The Great Man Theory, Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A former columnist for the New York Times and McSweeney’s and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Teddy joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about what he needs to know before he begins writing, voice, fiction that makes a big statement, stakes, plotting via character relationships, the midpoint, finding sources, theme, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded on June 19, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)