We’re speaking with novelist and academic Elizabeth Graver about writing about her Sephardic family’s history as fiction, even as she incorporated facts and archival finds. Graver also talks about maintaining a creative process, alongside her academic position, and about moving between fiction and non-fiction genres.

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We’re speaking with UConn Associate Professor of History Andy Horowitz, who also serves as the Connecticut State Historian. We talk about Andy’s first book, Katrina: A History, 1915-2015 (Harvard University Press, 2020) which won a 2021 Bancroft Prize in American History, and was named the 2021 Humanities Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and a 2020 Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. He has also written for The Atlantic, Time, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times.

We talk about what it means to write about disasters and about the place where you live; writing about people who are currently alive; being a presentist historian; and what it means to write “important books.”

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We’re speaking with Jim Loeffler, Felix Posen Professorship in Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University about how our public persona affects the stories we tell and pitch to editors. We talk about Loeffler’s publishing experience with academic presses, academic-trade, and why moving to trade press has been so different. We talk about some of the challenges involved in Loeffler's forthcoming book about antisemitism and free speech, which includes contemporary material about Charlottesville 2017, which Loeffler experienced as a UVA Jewish Studies professor, a Jewish community member, and then as a reporter, who covered the Charlottesville trial for the Atlantic. We also discuss the challenges of changing institutions, and the benefits of editing an academic journal and gaining a wider perspective on readers’ reports.

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We’re talking with Emory Professor Miriam Udel about lessons from a career full of writing highs and challenges, beginning with the realization that the dissertation will not become the first book. We talk about learning how to understand the gradations of rejection letters; the value of pitching editors in person; why spending time on works of translations may be highly worthwhile even when they do not count for tenure and promotion; when hiring a book publicist is useful for academics; writing Op-Eds; mentoring younger scholars; and having a memoir-in-progress in the drawer.

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We’re talking with Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University about building a scholarly foundation for future historians of art through writing and then moving in a new direction with more popular writing. We talked about writing for Smithsonian Magazine; writing about artists who are still alive; how to surmount the challenges of getting your editor to include images in your book; and when cold-calling really pays off.

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We’re talking with Dr. Claire Sufrin, editor of Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Senior Editor at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America about writing choices and how they affect our academic lives. We talk about choosing to leave a traditional academic position and how that affects our writing; writing about personal matters; deciding not to turn the dissertation into a book; and about the schedule of an editor.

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We’re speaking with Dr. Elizabeth Arleo, Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC), an Attending Radiologist at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH), and Editor-in-Chief of the radiology journal Clinical Imaging about writing the books we feel called to write. For Liz, this meant writing self-help and children’s books. We talk about using National Novel Writing Month (November) to kick-start writing habits, and about moving from academic-style writing to a more accessible style of writing. We also talk about getting an agent and fitting writing into busy career and family schedules.

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We’re talking with Mark Oppenheimer, author, professor, podcaster, and editor of the online journal Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera, about a varied writing career defined by openness to the next interesting project (one of those current projects is writing Judy Blume’s biography). We talk about writing a great sentence; how academics can best position their research and ideas for the popular press; when a university press is the best option for a project; writing biography; rejection; how to teach writing; and the freelancing life.

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We talk with historian and film critic J.E. Smyth about her most recent book, Mary C. McCall Jr.: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter. We talk about writing the kinds of books called “recovery projects,” and how commitment to the subject helps us get beyond discouragement from the publishing world. In speaking about writing biography, we talking about finding your writing voice; the challenges of subjects who are political moderates; weighing the advantages of trade press v. academic press; at what stage of your project to approach an editor/agent about your project (and the advantages of holding the ms. book until it’s done; and how best to approach the children/family members of your subject.

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We’re talking with historian and journalist Tim Shenk about creating a professional relationship with our writing. In addition to being an assistant professor of history at George Washington University, Tim is a senior editor at Dissent magazine, and has written for the New York Times, the Nation, the New Republic, and Jacobin, among other publications. He is also the author of three books, most recently, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics. Tim talks with us about balancing academic and journalistic writing; a typical writing day; how academics come to write op-eds in publications such as the NYT; what it means to shift away from a grad student mentality about writing; why good writing begets more good writing; what an academic can expect from a trade press editor; why academic move back and forth between academic and trade presses for different kinds of projects; and why it’s a good idea for academic writers to sometimes curb our inner Norman Mailer.

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