Open Book with Narratively Academy

Thanks so much to everyone who joined yesterday for our live “Ask Me Anything” session about the 2026 Narratively Memoir Prize and our brand-new Personal Essay Sprint . We had a fantastic conversation about what we look for in essay submissions, how to give and receive great feedback on your essay drafts, and much more. Miss it live? Click play above to watch the full thing. The writers who have a...

I had so much fun chatting with Janna Marlies Maron this week! It was wonderful hearing about how Janna found her calling as a book coach working with everyone from New York Times bestsellers to self-published newcomers. And it was absolutely freeing to hear her philosophy on how writers can stop listening to the rules about how we’re supposed to write and start finding the process that’s right fo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Our Open Book chats here at Narratively Academy are all about trying to pull back the curtain on some of the more elusive areas of the literary world. So, when we came across Brendan O’Meara’s work with The Creative Nonfiction Podcast and his newsletter Pitch Club , both with similar missions to ours, collabor...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Of all the things writers want to know about, the one that often feels the most mysterious — even if you know something about the process — is how to find an agent. Probably because what agents are looking for is always changing, so much of it is about taste and preference, (i.e., what you feel like spending o...

There’s so much to know about book publishing and the world surrounding it, that it can feel hard to have a firm understanding of it all. Take book reviews, for instance. Have you ever wondered why some books get reviewed and others don’t, how libraries know which books to stock their shelves with, how to break into reviewing yourself and what the process really looks like? Us too. Which is why, f...

If you’re a fan of flash nonfiction, there’s no way you haven’t heard of — and most likely are a huge fan of — Dinty W Moore . After almost 30 years as the lead editor at Brevity , Dinty recently announced that he would be stepping down from his perch. Have no fear, he will be succeeded by the inimitable Zoë Bossiere, Brevity’s former managing editor, and Dinty will remain on the editorial team at...

A few days ago, Creative Nonfiction founder Lee Gutkind sat down with Mary Rasenberger , CEO of the Authors Guild and the Authors Guild Foundation , for a robust conversation about the forces reshaping the writing world—and what writers can to protect ourselves. Mary and Lee talked about how the Authors Guild helps writers navigate contracts, legal disputes, copyright questions and other challenge...

The New York Times’ Modern Love column is an institution. It falls at the top of many writers’ bucket lists, and there are even classes — several! — about how to write your own. So, when someone writes two Modern Loves, well, that feels like a huge feat. And when that someone is a writer who you have worked with before and whose essays you love, well, even better. Yes, we’re talking about Elizabet...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Happy weekend, writers! What did you work on this week? Don’t forget to share your #WeeklyWins over in the Narratively Academy Chat. The best thing I did this week was my chat with Susan Saulny , the writer behind one of the most impressive feature articles I’ve read this year, the epic story, “ A Family Secre...

This Open Book conversation with Melissa Petro , author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification , is one that has been particularly helpful for a lot of writers in our community. So many of us have lots of material for a memoir but no firm concept about how that material comes together into a marketable book. Melissa chatted with us about how she re-conceptualized her memoir...

This was such a fun one! It was so inspiring to hear Laurie Garnier’s story of how, at age 40, she decided to change everything in pursuit of a better life—and how, at age 75, she finally wrote that life story and got it published. The book is And Then There Was Paris and for those who didn’t have the chance to join us live, we’re making the recording free for everyone. Here’s to always chasing yo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Hello, writers! Hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing long weekend—or at least a not-so-miserable Monday if you weren’t lucky enough to have yesterday off. On Thursday we had a fantastic conversation with Amy Gabrielle , author of the just-published memoir Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hoo...

This week’s Open Book was one of my favorite yet. The great Lee Gutkind keeps reeling in fascinating guests, and the latest is veteran New York Times obituary writer Michael Roswenwald, who told us all about the craft of obituary writing—how he decides what to include, what to leave out, and how this work shapes the way we think about narrative, memory, and meaning. Paid subscribers can watch the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Everyone likes to fancy themselves a freelance writer, but the reality of it can be kind of intimidating. Can you actually earn real money, where do you even begin, and once you do, how do you keep track of all your projects? We had a lot of questions. Lucky for us (and you!), one of our favorite successful fr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com Any writer knows that if you plan to work on a book — even if you’re just thinking about it — at some point the matter of whether to get an agent or not (or at least to try!) will come up. Some writers forego the whole agent-querying process altogether. With that in mind, we spoke to authors Bonnie Chau and Kr...

As many of you know, Jane Friedman is a leading voice in the publishing industry. Her newsletter, The Bottom Line , provides nuanced, transparent market intelligence to thousands of authors. This week, Lee Gutkind chatted with Jane about the state of the publishing industry and how writers can find the right balance of focusing on writing and focusing on business. Jane also answered your questions...

Thanks to everyone who joined us for yesterday’s live interview with Jasper “Jaz” Joyner about magical realism and memoir. If you weren’t able to join, just click play above to watch the full interview. And if you’re ready to dive into this world, don’t miss Jaz’s upcoming class, How to Write a Memoir with Magical Realism , an intensive six-week workshop in which students will learn how to shape a...

In this week’s episode of “Open Book” author Rafael Frumkin tells us why they decided to write an autobiographical novel instead of a memoir—and explains how nonfiction writers can get started with turning their true experiences into fiction. If you didn’t get the chance to join us live, just click play above to watch the whole thing, or listen in your favorite podcast player. We’re making this ep...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com I’m still pinching myself that I got to chat with the brilliant Nicole Graev Lipson yet again , this time for our Open Book series about one of my favorite topics, the essay collection, or more specifically, the memoir-in-essays. Nicole wrote one of my favorites, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters , which...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com We love seeing writers expand their Narratively articles into published books! In this week’s episode of our Open Book video/podcast series, Ethelene Whitmire shares how she leveraged her article, The Gay Black American Who Stared Down Nazis in the Name of Love , to land a significant book deal with a major pu...

Thanks so much to everyone who joined our live chat on Friday with Creative Nonfiction founder Lee Gutkind and New York Times features writer Steven Kurutz. Steven has written so many fantastic articles over the years, and it was incredible to get his insight into how to find great stories—and figure out how and where to tell each one. (We had a few technical difficulties which meant Steven had to...

What an honor it was to chat with Caroline Rothstein this afternoon and hear all about how she handles the logistical, creative and emotional complexities of working on multiple writing projects at once. Even if you’re not an essayist-poet-performer-educator-filmmaker-screenwriter-playwright-novelist like Caroline is, if you always wish you had more time and energy to get creative, her insights he...

You may have noticed that this video with Kern Carter was one of our top 10 most-read Narratively Academy posts of the year , and it’s not hard to see why. We really appreciate it when a successful author can be wholly honest and transparent about all of the ups and downs of the industry, and Kern is nothing if not that. Kern has landed six separate book deals (yes, we said five when we promoted t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com I could sing Christopher Blackwell’s praises all day long. He’s a beautiful writer — he won the 2023 Narratively Memoir Prize, after all, for his moving essay, “ Chaos and Noise: One Man’s Harrowing Stint in Solitary Confinement ” — a podcaster, executive director of an organization that works to empower incar...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narrativelyacademy.com For someone as successful as Susannah Cahalan — she’s among a small pool of writers who actually once got to answer the question everyone always ponders, Who would play you in a movie? (Chloë Grace Moretz!) — she’s very humble. She’s this year’s Narratively Memoir Prize judge , and she’s not doing it merely as...