As Told To

This episode originally aired February 1, 2022. Amy Ferris writes like a dream. About love. Also: strength, humanity, depression, aging, inspiration, resilience. But mostly about love. It's kind of her thing—a thing that led her to her first gig as a collaborator, a dual memoir from Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons and Justine Simmons called  Old School Love . Amy's worked primarily as an essayist, an edi...

This episode originally aired March 15, 2022. Eugene Pack knows a thing or two about what it takes to write a compelling celebrity memoir – and yet he's never actually written one. As the creator and co-producer of the hit theatrical revue " Celebrity Autobiography ," developed with Dayle Reyfel, he has pushed audiences to consider what it means to live a book-worthy life and how it is that reader...

"I love the process, and the craft of writing, and helping people who have a real deep yearning to put their own story on the page," reflects best-selling author and collaborator Debra Ollivier, who has helped to develop, ghostwrite, and edit more than 20 titles, with a broad and eclectic mix of authors.  Debra, who lived and worked in Paris at the front end of her writing career, is the author of...

"The more you try, the luckier you get…" Words to live by, from podcast guest Arthur Smith, the pioneering television producer behind some of the longest-running unscripted series in history, and author of the just-published motivational memoir Reach: Hard Lessons and Learned Truths from a Lifetime in Television . Arthur's long-running hit "Hell's Kitchen," with Gordon Ramsey, helped to forge the...

First-time author David Jacks, a veteran video editor and music supervisor, ran into legendary music producer Peter Asher at a Santa Monica taco joint in 2003 and asked if he could interview him. Jacks, a long-time admirer of the man said to be the inspiration for Mike Myers' "shagadelic" Austin Powers character, who first came to prominence as one-half of the hit-making British pop vocal duo Pete...

Literary agent Madeleine Morel has made a career out of representing ghostwriters and collaborators—and only ghostwriters and collaborators. Through her Manhattan-based agency 2M Communications , she has successfully paired her clients with top celebrities, thought leaders, health and fitness experts, business executives and change agents on hundreds of book projects, including more than 60 New Yo...

"Songwriting is kind of where my heart is," says former Second City music director Tara Trudel, a versatile songwriter and composer based in Los Angeles. Tara's unique talents popped on podcast host Daniel Paisner's admittedly limited radar during the launch of Post  in Fall 2022, when she created a mini-musical based on the early days and growing pains of the new social media site. Tara started h...

"The idea of 'chasing the panther' is that the panther serves as this metaphor for art, and so it's something that you chase after even thought it is in some ways very, very dangerous, and I think Carolyn would say that is one hundred percent the story of her life, chasing art." That's writer and filmmaker Gregory Collins explaining the title to his very first collaboration, Chasing the Panther: A...

"A strong argument can be made that Fernando Valenzuela brought more new fans to the game of baseball than anyone going back to probably Babe Ruth's era," notes baseball historian and New York Times bes t -selling collaborator Erik Sherman, author of Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers . Before tackling the (largely) untold story of the phenom haile...

"Writing is not what you start," writes podcast guest Nell Scovell in her scathingly funny memoir Just the Funny Parts . "It's not even what you finish. It's what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see." Indeed, Nell offers this observation from a place of hard-won experience. A veteran television writer ("Newhart," "The Simpsons," "Late Night with David Letterman," "The Smother...

"When you're in that flow, it's the most magical feeling ever," reflects the noted fine artist and graphic designer Jay Alders. "It feels like the colors are shooting out of my palette, it's just right there, and all I have to do is scoop up a glob of light that's emerging from my palette. If I can have someone look at my paintings and feel some of that, to me that's success." Jay joins us on the...

"I'm always writing the book I most want to read in that particular moment." That's a line from novelist Ellen Meister, offered in an exchange with podcast host Daniel Paisner. The two recently shared a stage at the Port Washington Public Library – a couple of Long Island authors talking about craft and career in front of a local audience. The event went so well, we've decided to repurpose the dis...

"Kendrick Perkins doesn't just have one voice, he has many." That's a line from the book proposal for The Education of Kendrick Perkins , the thrillingly unconventional new memoir from the ESPN basketball analyst and former NBA star, co-written with podcast guest Seth Rogoff, who helps to give voice to his subject's "many voices" in astonishing ways. A cultural critic and professor of history and...

"I moved on to the next thing I was going to write," says the noted dramatist and television writer Winnie Holzman, recalling the cancellation of her critically-acclaimed series " My So-Called Life ," after just one season. "That's what we do as writers.  We move on to the next thing."  Indeed. In Winnie Holzman's case, one of those "next things" turned out to be the book for the hit Broadway musi...

Veteran speechwriter and communications strategist Dan Gerstein has been a champion of ghostwriters and collaborators for the past decade. As founder and CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters , an industry-leading agency that matches writers with clients seeking help telling (and selling!) their stories, he brings unique insight into what it takes to write a successful book, screenplay, white paper or family...

"I'm interested in projects to which I feel I can make a genuine contribution and from which I can learn," Ellen Daly writes—and to look at the bookshelf of titles she's assembled over the years as one of the publishing industry's leading collaborators, she's put herself in a position to learn a whole lot. As a co-author, editor and book coach, Ellen has helped to write over thirty books, with lum...

What's in a name? Quite a lot, according to Amy Ephron, Maia Wapnick and Anna Ephron Harari, co-authors of The Amazing Baby Name Book: A (Possibly) Helpful and Slightly Amusing Guide from A to Z , a witty and wise and altogether wonderful compendium of baby names for would-be parents. And when that name is Ephron , and it comes attached to a writing family that's lived by its wits and wisdom and a...

This episode originally aired April 12, 2022. "Nobody should ever take a band for granted," writes the justly-celebrated rocker, songwriter, actor, producer, activist and music impresario Steven Van Zandt in his wild ride of a memoir, Unrequited Infatuations: Odyssey of a Rock and Roll Consigliere (A Cautionary Tale) . "Bands are miracles. They're rarely perfect, but if a band has that magical che...

Frank Santopadre is a veteran comedy writer and the longtime co-host of " Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast ," with the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. Prior to working with Gilbert, Frank helped to write jokes and supporting material for numerous awards shows (including the Daytime Emmys, the TV Land Awards, and the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize). He has also written comics for Bazook...

Jen Singer is a ghostwriter, speechwriter, writing coach and developmental editor with a whole bunch of stories to tell.  As a writing coach at TEDx Cambridge , one of the world's largest independently-organized TED platforms, she has helped dozens of speakers get their stories "on their feet" in front of an audience. Whether writing for the page or the stage, she believes the message is the mediu...

Jodi Lipper is the co-author of over twenty books with some of our leading influencers and game-changers in the fields of health and wellness and personal empowerment, including six New York Times best-sellers. Perhaps the biggest "game changer" among her clients is the "father of biohacking" and founder of Bulletproof Coffee Dave Asprey, with whom Jodi has collaborated on The Bulletproof Diet , S...

"He knew how pain kept inside multiplies, and how pain shared subtracts," writes podcast guest Jon Sternfeld in the opening bars of Michael K. Williams's haunting new posthumous memoir Scenes from My Life . Jon was midway through his work with the electrifying actor, known to television audiences for his career-defining turns as Omar Little in "The Wire" and Chalky White in "Boardwalk Empire," as...

"You need to have a lot of things go right in your life before you can become as miserable as Anthony Bourdain," writes noted journalist and biographer Charles Leerhsen in his headline-making new book, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain , hailed by Dwight Garner of The New York Times as "an unvarnished account of a turbulent life." The "unvarnishing" of our legendarily turbulen...

"The same skills that allowed me to uncover a bid-rigging scandal in local government also are applicable to Jennifer Aniston's latest haircut," says veteran reporter and collaborator Danelle Morton. "A journalism skill is a journalism skill." Indeed it is—especially when it is practiced at the crosshairs of journalism and celebrity, where Danelle worked for many years at The New York Times ,  The...

"When you can't make sense of what you're seeing, don't stare harder. When you're confused by what you're hearing, don't listen harder. Stand back, give yourself some space, and let things come into focus." That's a line from rapper/songwriter/force-of-nature Rick Ross's empowerment manifesto The Perfect Day to Boss Up , as filtered through the pen of his collaborator Neil Martinez-Belkin, who joi...