As Told To

"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...

This episode was first aired on Dec. 14, 2021. Veteran journalist and author Robert Sabbag joins the podcast to share the story behind the story of one of the greatest books ever written about drug smuggling— Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade , a classic example of collaborative memoir that helped to establish him as one of the most esteemed chroniclers of his generation. No less an a...

This episode originally aired Nov. 30, 2021. "William Novak had the career I hadn't even known I wanted," host Daniel Paisner says of this episode's guest, who for a time seemed to have his have his hand in every major celebrity autobiography on bookstore shelves. Starting with the publication of the genre-defining best-seller Iacocca , by Lee Iacocca—the best-selling book of 1984 and 1985—Novak e...

This episode originally aired October 19, 2021. Laura Zigman is one of our leading voices in contemporary fiction. She's the author of five novels, including her genre-defining debut, Animal Husbandry , which enjoyed a second life on the screen as the Hugh Jackman/Ashley Judd starrer " Someone Like You ," as well as her most recent novel, Separation Anxiety , which is currently being developed as...

"It's a weird job, isn't it?" So says veteran ghostwriter Stephanie Krikorian, who started in on her ghostwriting career after a long run as a television news producer. In fact, she sees a through-line from the work she used to do as a producer to the work she's doing now as a writer, especially in her many collaborations with some of our leading health and wellness experts. For her very first boo...

Peter Golenbock has written more books about baseball than just about anybody. He's also written about basketball, football, stock car racing and popular culture. His account of the New York Yankees' 1978 World Championship season, The Bronx Zoo , written with Sparky Lyle, was a runaway best-seller. Coming on the heels of his own history of the Yankees, Dynasty , that book helped to establish Pete...

If there's anyone who knows what it's like to be invited into "the kingdom of knowing," to borrow a phrase from journalist Richard Ben Cramer, it's podcast guest Barbara Feinman Todd, who graduated from The Washington Post Style desk to work as a researcher, book doctor, editor and spirit guide on books with Bob Woodward ( Veil ) and Carl Bernstein ( Loyalties ), and Ben Bradlee ( A Good Life ), l...

Two-time Emmy Award-winner Bruce Vilanch has written jokes for Bob Hope, Lily Tomlin, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and virtually every Hollywood star to grace the Academy Awards stage from 1989 – 2014.  As one of the entertainment industry's most sought-after joke writers, the actor, comedian and songwriter was perhaps best-known to audiences for his work behind-t...

"I look in the mirror and I see a storyteller trying to make a living," says Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, founder and editor-in-chief of StoryMade, a boutique storytelling studio, when asked if she sees herself as a journalist, an editor, a ghostwriter, or a content strategist. As the author of In Her Own Sweet Time: Egg Freezing and the New Frontiers of Family , Rachel established herself as a leading v...

George Vecsey has been writing about sports for the past 60 years—mostly about baseball, and soccer, and tennis, but also about hockey, and basketball, and football, and boxing. (Have we missed anything?) He wrote the Sports of the Times column for The New York Times for nearly 30 years, until his "retirement" in 2011, although he continues to contribute to the newspaper on a regular basis. Like m...

"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 chemistry, it should not be fucked with… Every gr...

"Basically, if there is a book in you that just has to come out, I'm your surgeon? Mid-wife? Sorcerer? Shrink?" notes prolific ghostwriter Valerie Frankel. "Whichever metaphor works for you, that's the best one ever." Val knows what it takes to discover the story in a life well-lived—and, how to reach for just the right metaphor to ensure that the story lands in just the right way. As the author o...

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 readers have come to accept the wit and wisdom and w...

Andrew Neiderman is perhaps the world's most prolific ghostwriter, and, the most widely-read. Since 1987, he's been writing under the pen name of V.C. Andrews, helping to sustain one of publishing's most successful franchises, following the death of Cleo Virginia Andrews in 1986. Andrews is best-known to millions of readers as the author of Flowers in the Attic , a surprisingly dark family saga th...

Bruce Weber has led a rich and varied writing life. He has been a fiction editor, a magazine editor, a national arts correspondent and theater critic, and a metro reporter…oh, and for good measure, a ghostwriter. For many years, he wrote obituaries, weighing in with the final word on more than 1,000 notable deaths, which in his hands sprang from the page like notable lives, well and purposefully l...

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 editor, a screenwriter and playwright. She's even pu...