Writer's Voices

In regards to her protagonist, Bernhard explained that Doc comes from a medical family, with a father who’s a doctor and a mother who worked as a midwife. However, she was orphaned at a young age and had to manage life on her own. In terms of her development, “…she goes through something really terrible and harrowing and ends up… on the other side of respectability…. now she can take all these incredible talents that she has and this approach that she has and use it in this world… that was what I was creating Doc to embody, someone who really could be extremely giving, but also on her own journey of healing and change.”

Imagine a powerful political syndicate comes to power and is secretly abusing and trafficking girls, 150 years ago and today.” -drawing on the parallels between past and current events

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

Regarding the purpose of her book, Young aimed to give readers a practical guide to help them determine whether the organization they belong to is using toxic, manipulative tactics. She noted, “I wrote it as a tool and it’s not for you to be like, ‘Everything I am is a cult.’ In my opinion, you’ve got to have all ten of these things to be a cult, and they all hook into each other. However, if you have 3-5 of them and you’re looking to make your group less toxic, start with those, and so I say at the end of the day, I don’t care what we call a group… I just want people to have that information up front because we are all, in all of our groups, are problematic. All of our systems are problematic.”

A cult is a religion with no political power.”

The collaboration between Dr. Bush and Dr. Braaten came about in January 2023 when she approached Dr. Braaten to adapt Bratten’s book, Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less , into a companion guide. She reflected, “I am such a fan of her work and her writing and Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less in particular that I knew that there was something really, really special here and a workbook seems like a really practical way into getting it into more hands and to helping even more kids…” While the book is designed for students to write their thoughts directly onto the pages, it is also available as an e-book which allows readers to complete the activities digitally. Additionally, “This is a book where we fully expect and encourage people to make copies of it… it is our sincere hope that a teacher or a counselor might have this book and then make 20 copies and distribute it to their class so that they can write and fill in. This does, I think, lend itself to individual, therapeutic, and coaching situations, but I think it lends itself to larger group ones too.”

Aptitude – the things that you are good at, pleasure – the things that you enjoy doing, and then practice – the things that you actually spend your time doing.” -Regarding the 3 guiding principals to help teens discover what they love to do.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Regarding the setting of The Hostess , Psak noted that she chose Southampton because the beauty of the location and estate created a misleading sense of comfort and security for the protagonist. She reflected, “…people idolize wealth and privilege… If you were to walk into a run-down house and weird things were happening, you’d get out immediately, but for some reason, we all have this facade like, ‘Well, if it’s maintained and it’s nice and it’s expensive, then everything must be fine…” And as readers find out, Sadie, who is incredibly affluent and well-off when we first meet her, was not always so privileged growing up. This important detail highlights the story’s overall theme: “Really, it doesn’t matter how well-off you are or not, no one can escape just basic human emotions. There’s no way to escape heartbreak, and jealousy, and insecurity. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you come from, we all have these natural emotions and we’re really not all that different from each other when you strip it down.”

The first run is just very straightforward, make sure everything makes sense. The next round will be focusing on the characters and making sure that their motivations are clear, then the third is focusing on the description and the scenery.”

To heal is to touch with love that which was previously touched by fear.”

With over twenty years of experience in film and television advertising, Pennington originally set out to write The Othello Club with streaming audiences in mind. Yet, he remarked, “Once I started writing in the novel form and falling in love with it, I forgot all about that. I forgot all about the commercial, trying to get in through the back door to get my story onscreen, and I just wanted to write the best novel I possibly could then.” Fortunately for people in the UK and Ireland, his book was adapted into a television series and viewers can catch The Othello Club – titled The Revenge Club for television – on Paramount Plus, which began streaming on December 12, 2025. American audiences will have to wait a little longer for it to make its way to U.S. platforms.

I love being able to tap into the sensorial aspect of novel writing – the smells, the sounds, and then and also, best of all, getting into people’s heads.”

“Revenge is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence…”

While many readers may find the horror and dark fantasy genres unsettling, Henry is drawn to them and shares why these forms of fiction appeal to her as a writer. “I think that it’s just a place where my brain goes to. When I was young I read a lot of fantasy and I scooted sideways into reading horror from fantasy… and then when I started writing, it just seemed a natural place for me to go.” She goes on to explain why readers can’t help but be drawn to this genre. “I think horror ultimately is about emotions. I think that the point and purpose of horror is to raise and or confront emotions. A lot of horror is about trauma, dealing with trauma, confronting your fears… I think it does help people. I mean, it’s like you can process your emotions in a safe place. The danger isn’t really there with you.”

I think The Place Where They Buried Your Heart isn’t about a monster house. I think it’s about love – the love of a parent for her child, people who love each other who are trying to protect that love from a monster. The house is just a vehicle for emotion.”

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

Shaped by her family’s immigrant experience, Angoe’s writing often reflects her African-American culture and Ghanaian heritage. Many of her characters are African-American, and at times, she has introduced a character with a Ghanaian background into her stories as well. She explained, “Just because I like all these different types of stories and sometimes I don’t necessarily see myself in those stories, not that I necessarily have to, but sometimes it’s just fun… I’m proud of my culture and have always been but didn’t know quite how to show my pride, and so in my books is where I show my pride and my culture, even if it’s just this little snippet. There’s always something in there, mostly food because I just really love food, but there’s always something that will be Ghanaian in my books.”

Once I’ve got the story in my head, honestly I can type it up, I can write it really quickly because it kind of just comes out.” -regarding her writing process

When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.”

Returning back to the topic of true crime, Threadcraft examines how this type of media brings attention to Black femicide in a negative light. While many people find true crime interesting, she noted that it tends to humanize the serial killer, while the victims, most often women, are seen as just bodies. “…they are there in the narrative because of the violence and it is the violence that makes them relevant, and when they are on the ground and murdered they are literally objects and he is the subject… The femicide activists and the people who are doing it the right way, I think, are the people who are trying to highlight and elevate the lives of the women who died. Anytime someone tells you the name of a murderer, you should repeat loudly the names of his victims.”

But, if you look at Toni Morrison’s book, she is very much concerned with the forms of intimate and reproductive violence that is constitutive and foundational to the problem of femicide.”

The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

With respect to his writing process, Kardos strives to work on some portion of his manuscript daily. He finds that if he misses too many days, the day that he does return to his writing is a frustrating one. “I try to get to it as much as I can… if I’m in the early phase of it… I might not even go to the computer. It might be more like writing on paper or something like that, and then once I’m pretty far along it’s much easier to sit there for a pretty good amount of time and write pages…” When it comes to advice for aspiring writers, Kardos jokingly responded, “Marry another writer because it’s like cheating! You have someone you can read your stuff and you can talk about in the car… No, the best advice… take a book you really love, get a bunch of yellow stickies, and stick them in there with every time there’s something that has to do with structure or something that you thought was kind of cool, and just try to analyze it.”

Joke was that I was one of the only people to say, ‘Hey mom and dad, I’m going to go back to school for creative writing,’ and their response was, ‘Oh good, something safe!'” -regarding his career change from professional drummer to writer

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.”

While ospreys have made a notable comeback, they now face a new challenge – the overfishing of menhaden, which are the fish that ospreys most depend on. As Gessner explains, “What that has led to in the Chesapeake Bay is ospreys starving, the osprey numbers going back to the battle days of DDT, and plummeting numbers…the good news is that people are pissed off, and people are fighting back against this and trying to outlaw that fishing in Maryland.” And after all the research that Gessner has gathered on this fascinating animal, what is his key takeaway? “This book for me was about how ospreys, which I learned about, changed my life. I mean, they changed my life by making me a more of an observer, making me being able to watch and notice, but also, like, thinking about home…”

A small group of Long Islanders read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and decided to fight back against the local mosquito commission in the 60’s that was spraying DDT.”

Yes, as everyone knows meditation and water are wedded forever.”