10 Minute Writer's Workshop

Conventional, linear narratives are not really Jennifer Egan’s thing. She's a shape-shifter of fiction – jumping through time, space, voices and forms. She's written a graphic novel, a short story composed of tweets, and, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, a kind of novel-as-concept album. Jennifer Egan takes on historical fiction in her newest novel, Manhattan Beach. We called her at her home in Brooklyn to ask about her process and how she begins her unpredictable novels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, co-creators of the phenomenally popular Welcome to Nightvale podcast, the “Nightvale Presents” series of podcasts, and New York Times bestselling co-authors of the new novel, It Devours, their second book set in the fictional world of Nightvale. We caught up with them at the 2017 Boston Book Festival. Episode Music by Disparition Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The blockbuster 2003 thriller The Da Vinci Code launched Dan Brown into the best-selling stratosphere. More than 200 million copies of his books have sold worldwide since. Three of his novels have been made into films starring tom hanks as fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Brown is a disciplined writer, rising at 4am to a breakfast smoothie and "bulletproof" coffee, writing every day, and throwing himself into his research. He spent four years researching Origin, his latest novel, which again thrusts Langdon into a 24-hour scavenger hunt for keys, codes and symbols in spectacular European locations. The breathless action drives bigger questions about faith, conspiracies, and organized religion. The question of whether contemporary notions of god can withstand scientific scrutiny is at the heart of Origin. We caught up with him just before discussing the book at The Music Hall in Portsmouth for Writers on a New England Stage. Music in this episode by Gregory W. Brown, used with permission by PARMA Recordings, and Podington Bear. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For many writers, hitting their stride means finding their voice. Success for Sarah Hurwitz is in creating a voice for others. Sarah was candidate Hillary Clinton’s chief speechwriter during the 2006 Presidential primary, and was quickly snatched up by the Obama campaign team. She landed in the White House, soon being named First Lady Michelle Obama’s head speechwriter. We asked Sarah about her work and confirmed that she worked on that 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention that was plagiarized by then candidate Trump's wife, Melania at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Virginia Macgregor, author most recently of Wishbones, has a knack for capturing the voices of children and young adults and projecting her novels through their lenses, giving us young narrators with accurate levels of experience and naivety - and a perspective not often found in adult literature. Our conversation with her centered around that: how she conjures the voices of young people, insures they are three-dimensional, and navigates those voices around complicated adult situations. Episode music by Broke for Free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Atul Gawande is a surgeon, professor at Harvard Medical School, and writes about medicine and ethics for the New Yorker. He’s author of several best-selling books, most recently, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. The book questions the human cost of miraculous medicine, and urges a shift from the prevailing thought that human decline and death are signs of failures to instead think about how to make old age and the experience of dying better. Despite the grave topic, Gawande views it as a book about living. We spoke to him in the greenroom at The Music Hall in Portsmouth before a Writers on a New England Stage live event. Episode music by Uncanny Valleys. Please take a moment to take our listener survey at survey.megaphone.fm   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Celeste Ng came out of the gate strong. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller and Amazon's #1 Best Book of 2014. Her latest, Little Fires Everywhere, continues her exploration of family dynamics and the effect of being included or excluded from belonging. She has said in the past that her stories begin with images, so we began by asking her where those images come from. Episode Music by Cheetara Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Louise Penny was well into her forties when she published Still Life, the first in what has become the wildly popular Armand Gamache mystery series. The novels are set in Québec, where Gamache is Chief Inspector of the provincial police force. They are meticulously plotted, part police procedurals, part exploration of human nature - and the precarious balance between good and evil. Louise Penny is now out with the thirteenth in the series, Glass Houses. Episode Music by Dana Boulé. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howard Axelrod was a junior at Harvard when an accident left him blind in one eye. The loss left him feeling shattered and isolated, eventually leading to a two-year stint living in the solitude of the Vermont woods. His memoir from that time is called The Point of Vanishing, named one of the best books of 2015 by Slate, The Chicago Tribune, and others.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alice Fogel is Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, and the author of six collections of poetry, including Interval: Poems Based on Bach's Goldberg Variations. Her most recent work is A Doubtful House.  Episode Music by Little Glass Men Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael Cunningham is best known as the author of The Hours, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, which imagines a fateful day in the life of Virginia Woolf and its modern parallels. Nicole Kidman won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in a film adaptation of the book. But he's a man of many genres - he's also co-written a screenplay, walked readers through Provincetown, Mass with a travelogue, and turned fairy tales on their heads, as he does in his recent collection of short fiction, A Wild Swan and Other Tales. Episode Music by Blue Dot Sessions Ad Music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode, we speak to Roxane Gay, author, essayist, teacher, and all around-superwoman. The author of New York Times bestsellers Bad Feminist and Difficult Women, her latest, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, is a candid and personal account of life inside her body, of weight, trauma, and self-care. We spoke to Roxane by phone from her home. Episode music by Blue Dot SessionsAd music by Uncanny Valleys  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author, outspoken vegetarian, social media abstainer and writing teacher Jonathan Safran Foer is author of three novels: Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am, which follows four generations of a Jewish family grappling with identity, connection and disaster. His nonfiction book about factory farming, Eating Animals, was also a New York Times best-seller. Episode music by Broke For Free Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ian Rankin is best known for two characters: Inspector John Rebus, the protagonist of now 21 mystery novels, and the city of Edinburgh, whose dark corners come alive in Rankin’s hands. Rebus made his debut in the 1987 crime novel Knots & Crosses. In Rankin’s newest novel - Rather Be the Devil - a retired Rebus returns to a case that has haunted him for decades. Episode music by Podington Bear Ad music by Uncanny Valleys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Krista Tippett is probably best known as the host & creator of the public radio program On Being. But she's also the author of three books that pull from her decades of interviews with a broad variety of thinkers and seekers, exploring the intersections between spirituality, science, and living. The most recent is called Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery & Art of Living. We spoke to her backstage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH before a Writers on a New England Stage event. Music: Podington Bear - "Daydreamer" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices