Defend, Publish & Lead Podcast

In Episode 288, host Christine Tulley describes a variety of ways to start a writing session and encourages self-study of starting processes with strategic questions. Resources Mentioned Five Entry Points to Writing free webinar!   Join our Summer 2026 Writing Accountability Group - just $25 for entire summer and sessions are recorded - email me if you want to join us every Monday ( christine@defe...

In Episode 287, host Christine Tulley describes how she's planning for her upcoming office move and the decision-making process for what stays and what goes. Resources Mentioned Five Entry Points to Writing free webinar!   Join our Summer 2026 Writing Accountability Group - just $25 for entire summer and sessions are recorded - email me if you want to join us every Monday ( christine@defendpublish...

In Episode 286 of the Defend, Publish, and Lead podcast, host Christine Tulley describes five tasks to update everything from your CV to your ORCID ID. Resources Mentioned Five Entry Points to Writing free webinar!   Join our Summer 2026 Writing Accountability Group - just $25 for entire summer and sessions are recorded - email me if you want to join us every Monday ( christine@defendpublishlead.c...

In Episode 285 of the Defend, Publish, and Lead podcast, host Christine Tulley tackles the anxiety of being scooped, when another scholar is about to publish something strikingly similar to your work-in-progress. She offers four practical strategies: carefully examine the competing project to assess how it truly differs from yours; consider whether the overlap signals a hot topic with room for mul...

In Episode 284 of the Defend, Publish, and Lead podcast, host Christine Tulley interviews productivity author Laura Vanderkam about her newly released book Big Time . In this book, Vanderkam centers on the idea of viewing time as abundant rather than scarce. She introduces the concept of "golden hours", the four to five hours between work and bedtime on weeknights,  arguing that these underutilize...

In this episode host Christine Tulley builds on Episode 281 to walk listeners through the transition from finishing one writing project to launching the next. She introduces the idea of thinking in two buckets: short-term, temporary projects (like an upcoming conference presentation) and the next substantive writing project, and shows how she maps both onto a Summer 2026 Project Progress Tracker u...

  In Episode 282 of the Defend, Publish, and Lead podcast, host Christine Tulley interviews Dr. Bryan Alexander about how AI is reshaping textbook and academic publishing. Alexander is a futurist, Georgetown senior scholar, and keynote speaker for the TAA Summer Institute. He offers a broad, forward-looking view, beginning with the larger forces already destabilizing higher education: shifting dem...

In Episode 281 of the Defend, Publish, and Lead podcast, host Christine Tulley shares a practical post-project workflow for academics who have just completed a major writing project — drawing directly from her own experience of turning in a book manuscript days earlier. She outlines five key steps. First, genuinely celebrate and resist the urge to immediately dive into the next project. Second, wr...

In Episode 280 host Christine Tulley interviews Dr. Greg Lewbart, a veterinarian and board-certified zoological medicine specialist at NC State, about his three-decade journey as a textbook author and editor. Lewbart traces his path from working as a corporate fish veterinarian in the 1980s to publishing his first book on fish clinical cases in 1998 — now in its third edition — and editing contrib...

In Episode 279 of Defend, Publish, and Lead , host and Executive Writing Coach Christine Tulley tackles one of the most common struggles for faculty: the summer that gets away from you. With the best intentions but little structure, academic summers often slip by before meaningful writing or scholarship gets done. Christine explains exactly why that happens, from kids home from school to family tr...

In Episode 278 of Defend, Publish, and Lead, host Christine Tulley talks with Dr. Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Dr. Jenna Morton-Aiken about their co-edited book, Parenting While PhDing (Rutgers University Press). The book tackles a topic largely ignored in academic literature — what it's really like to become a parent while pursuing a PhD. Jackie and Jenna speak from personal experience. Their book...

In Episode 277 of Defend, Publish, and Lead , host Christine Tulley sits down with Dr. Pat Goodson, health education professor turned prolific academic writing coach, to explore practical strategies for building a sustainable writing life. Dr. Goodson shares how her journey into academic writing began not from an English background, but from listening to struggling graduate students and eventually...

In Episode 276 Christine Tulley sits down with Dr. Wendy Tietz from Kent State University and Dr. Tracie Miller from Franklin University to talk about textbook authoring careers. This is a path many academics never consider, yet one that can become a defining and decades-long creative endeavor. Both guests share how they stumbled into their first textbook deals not through deliberate planning, but...

In Episode 275 of Defend, Publish, and Lead, Christine Tulley tackles the particular chaos of April in the academic calendar — a month packed with grading, end-of-year wrap-up, graduation requirements, and summer prep, all while writing obligations quietly fall by the wayside. Using the image of a pile of empty Easter eggs still sitting on her office floor, alongside an unpacked conference bag and...

In Episode 274, Christine Tulley addresses the familiar end-of-March crunch that faculty and graduate students face — a point in the semester when obligations to others have quietly piled up. Her solution is a "catch-up list" of everything she owes other people, which she walks through in detail: back grading for two writing classes, course substitution memos for graduating students, a tuition rem...

In Episode 273, host Christine Tulley looks at how long it really takes to start writing—and why it matters. She tracked her own startup time over four days. After a multi-day break, it took about 15 minutes to get back in. She reread five pages and made notes. On back-to-back days, it took as little as 2 minutes. What made the difference? Simple strategies like leaving her document open, using Wo...

In this episode Christine Tulley guides academic authors through the process of selecting the right university press for their work, a high-stakes decision particularly for tenure-track faculty at research institutions. She walks through key strategies: using the Association of University Presses' subject grid (available in Excel or PDF) to identify presses active in your field, visiting press web...

In Episode 271 of Defend, Publish, and Lead , host and executive writing coach Christine Tulley shares a practical productivity strategy she calls the "Next 30 Days" plan, designed to help academics avoid the common springtime trap of giving up or procrastinating as the semester winds down. Drawing from her own schedule — which includes two workshops, a final book manuscript due April 7th, and lim...

In Episode 270, Christine Tulley describes dissertation support efforts at Defend, Publish and Lead this month.  Resources Mentioned Sign up for our free Dissertation Rescue sessions on Eventbrite Sign up for a free writing coach hour to support your dissertation or dissertation writers at christine@defendpublishlead.com Check out our playlists Academic Writing Pregame I Academic Writing Pregame 2...

In Episode 269, Christine Tulley walks through all four "big picture" problems that might cause a dissertation to be derailed. Episode Resources Slides Shown in this Episode Sign up for our free Dissertation Rescue sessions on Eventbrite   Consider attending this year's  Textbook and Academic Authors Association Summer Institute DPL Resources Tuesday Toolbox - contact christine@defendpublishandlea...

In this remix of an earlier episode, Christine Tulley invites you to start thinking about writing as an event—something you actually look forward to rather than squeeze in between everything else. She shares how she treats her writing sessions like a "hot date," complete with a fancy coffee, a favorite playlist, and a trip to the library to get into the right mindset. Even when writing at home, sh...

In Episode 266, Christine Tulley walks through ways faculty developers can show faculty writers some love including programming, resources, and support strategies and how faculty writers can support themselves with free resources and writing organizations. Slides used in Episode Resources Mentioned: Get a free past webinar on us! Select PAST to view all of our past events on Eventbrite and select...

In Episode 266, Christine Tulley walks through the process of creating a "book completion battle plan" when facing a tight deadline, sharing her real-time approach to finishing a book manuscript due March 1st with only 23 days remaining. She demonstrates how to audit your available time by identifying writing days versus non-writing days, distinguishing between "big block days" (2+ hours), smaller...

In Episode 265, Christine Tulley offers practical advice for overwhelmed academic writers on how to make progress when time is limited by focusing on completing just one paragraph. She explains that paragraphs can serve various purposes—proposing new frameworks, introducing evidence, synthesizing literature, or challenging established views—and that working on a single paragraph is a manageable, n...

In Episode 264, Christine Tulley explores alternatives to traditional time blocking for academic writers who struggle with scheduling designated writing periods. While acknowledging that time blocking works for some people, she presents three alternative approaches: dedicating entire days to writing rather than small time slots, blocking time for specific tasks instead of general "writing hours,"...