DIY MFA Radio

  Hey there Word Nerd! Today I have the great pleasure of hosting Julie Duffy on the show. Julie is the founder of the StoryADay May creative writing challenge, which is basically like the short story version of NaNoWriMo. This challenge happens in May, which is only a few short weeks away, and it's an incredible experience. More personally, though, Julie and I both started our respective projects...

  Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Anna Harwell Celenza, a music professor of Georgetown University where she teaches courses in music history, radio journalism and the music industry. She has written several scholarly books, is a writer/commentator for National Public Radio's Performance Today, and her work has been featured on nationally syndicated radio and TV programs like BBC's "Mu...

Hello, hello word nerds! I'm so excited to share today's DIY MFA Radio episode with you! I'm speaking with Anders Ericsson and his co-author Robert Pool about their new book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise  (affiliate link). Anders Ericsson is a Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, where he studies how people become experts in various fie...

  Hey there Word Nerds! This is our last solo show before the Storytelling Superpower Summit in June. We just rolled out the Storytelling Superpower Quiz and we'll be having a series of podcasts in June that dig deeper into the storytelling superpower archetypes. We're focusing on figuring out what type of character really drives you so that you can dive in and get the most out of the story you de...

Hey there Word Nerds! I'm so glad you can join me for today's interview with Jen Calonita. Jen is a YA and Middle Grade author, and in this episode, she and I talk about writing what you know (and what you don't know) and also how to make the shift from one writing niche to another. We dig into the various twists and turns of her writing career and discuss Charmed,  the next installment of her  Fa...

  Welcome, welcome Word Nerds! Today I'm delighted to host Lisa Gardner on the the show. Lisa is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seventeen previous novels, including her most recent, Crash & Burn . Her Detective D. D. Warren novels include Fear Nothing, Catch Me, Love You More , and The Neighbor , which won the International Thriller of the Year Award. She lives with her family in New...

  Hey there word nerds! I'm so excited to share today's episode with you. It's not often that I have an author on the show where I've read almost their entire body of work. Carolyn Mackler is one of those rare authors. As an MFA student, I wrote a term paper for my YALit class examining the mother-daughter relationships in her first four novels. Since then I've been an avid reader of her work and...

Hey there word nerds,  I'm so glad you're here! We're doing something different for this episode of DIY MFA Radio. This week I'm speaking with Steve Berry and Raymond Khoury about the art of collaboration. As you may remember,  Steve Berry has appeared on this show before , and this time I'm thrilled to welcome him back with a twist. Today I'm talking both with him and with fellow thriller author...

  Hey there Word Nerds! Today I'm talking to Nicholas Petrie, author of the  stunning debut THE DRIFTER, an explosive thriller written with a strong literary sensibility. In our conversation, we tackle a topic that many authors often struggle with: how do we write about something when we have no first-hand experience with it? This question goes deeper than "how do you write what you don't know?" A...

  Hey there Word Nerds! I'm so glad you're here with me today. I am so excited to talk to you about this topic today, about the power of starting small and embracing the power of zero. A lot of people resist starting at all because we have to start and zero. There are so many mental blocks that get in the way of starting small, and for good reason. Going from small to big, from rough to polished,...

  Hi there Word Nerds! Thanks for joining me for today's episode of DIY MFA Radio. Today I'm talking to Meredith Maran about her latest book:  Why We Write About Ourselves. Following up on her previous collection: Why We Write , Meredith's most recent book is a collection of essays from memoirists, talking about why they write memoir in the first place. The lineup of authors featured in this book...

Hey there Word Nerds! I'm so happy you're here! Today I'm talking to Rachel Hulin, photographer and writer. Her photographs have been shown at Jen Bekman Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wallspace Gallery, The New York Photo Festival, and ClampArt Gallery, by which she is represented. She's also worked as a photo editor in New York for many years at places like Rolling Stone, Radar Magazine,...

  Hey there, Word Nerds! So excited to have you here for a new episode of DIY MFA Radio. Today I'm interviewing the New York Times bestselling thriller author, Brad Taylor. We'll be talking about the fiction vs. reality. As writers, we've all been told to "write what you know" but as with everything, there are pros and cons to incorporating our real-life experiences into our stories and novels. Br...

Hey there Word Nerds! Welcome back to DIY MFA Radio. Today I'm talking to Kirsten Oliphant, a writer with an MFA in fiction from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been blogging for eight years and has a lifestyle blog focusing on food and parenting. This year she launched the Create If Writing blog and podcast, which provide inspiration and authentic platform building tools for w...

Hello there Word Nerds! Today I'm interviewing the awesome Zachary Petit. Zac is the editor of the National Magazine Award-winning publication PRINT . He is also a freelance journalist, a lifelong literary and design nerd, and a friend. Formerly, he was the senior managing editor of HOW magazine and PRINT, the longtime managing editor of Writer's Digest magazine, and executive editor of the newsst...

Hey there Word Nerds! So glad you could be here with me for this awesome episode of DIY MFA Radio! Today we're here with pop culture and sci-fi guru, Ryan Britt, talking about his new book Luke Skywalker Can't Read, And Other Geeky Truths . This book is a blend of nerd-ilicious, mind-bending awesomeness, and fall-out-of-your-chair hilarity and as soon as I heard about it I just  knew I had to have...

Hey hey! Thanks for joining me for our very last episode in 2015. Today I'm talking about why I stopped making New Year's resolutions and what I do instead. It's been an amazing year here at DIY MFA. I've interviewed some awesome people this year and have gotten to share some major milestones with you, not the least of which is the DIY MFA book! OMG, word nerds, I wrote the book this year! How cra...

Hey there Word Nerds! It's the week before Christmas, and I wanted to do something a little bit different from the interviews we've had these many weeks. This week's topic is something I've been wanting to talk about for a while and then I received a question via email from one of our listeners and I decided it was time to dive in. Shout-out to Kayla for sharing a great question. I'll paraphrase i...

Hey there, Word Nerds. Thanks for joining me for another installment of DIY MFA Radio. Today I'm talking to Drew Chapman. Drew is a thriller author. His debut novel, The Ascendant, was published in 2014 and the sequel The King of Fear is currently being released as a serialized eBook and will be out in paperback come February 2016. A fellow New Yorker, Drew grew up in NYC, got a BA in History from...

Hey there word nerds! Thanks for joining me today for DIY MFA Radio. I'm so excited to share this episode because I'm interviewing literary agent Janet Reid, AKA the Query Shark. *Cue shark music from  Jaws in 3... 2... 1...* Janet is a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management in NYC, where she represents mostly crime novels and thrillers, with some narrative non-fiction in history and biog...

Hello hello Word Nerds and welcome to Episode 71 of DIY MFA radio. Today I'm talking with Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review  and we'll be talking about literature and reading, and what makes stories great. We'll also be discussing the book he recently edited called  The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review . Lorin joined The Paris Review as its third editor in 2010. Du...

Hey there Word Nerds. I'm so excited to bring you this interview today with Robert Crais, a #1 New York Times bestselling author of crime fiction. In this episode, we talk about how to persevere as a writer, and let me tell you, if anyone can speak to this subject it's Robert Crais. He began his career as a TV writer, working on some of the biggest crime dramas. This experience has shaped his pers...

Hey there Word Nerds! I'm so excited to share with you today my conversation with Mark McGuinness. Today we're talking about motivation and creativity, two very important topics here at DIY MFA. About Mark McGuinness Mark is a poet and coach for creative professionals. He's based in London, UK, and coaches creative professionals worldwide via the magic of the internet. He has also published a popu...

Hello Hello Word Nerds! I'm so excited to share my interview with author Elizabeth George. Today we'll be talking about writing psychological suspense and what it takes to build a great suspense novel with a lot of interesting psychological twists and turns. I hope you enjoy our conversation. In this episode Elizabeth and I discuss: Why it's important to know where your story needs to start. Writi...

Welcome, welcome Word Nerds! I am so excited to share today's interview with author Ken Murray with you all. Ken Murray is a writer and creative writing teacher. He teaches multi-genre, using fiction, nonfiction and poetry to help students get started, listen to their work, and amplify the opportunities therein. Ken teaches at University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and also at Haliburt...