Talking Writing

Author Ramona Ausubel sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her new craft book and write's guide. In Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page , Ramona lays out exercises and strategies to maintain momentum throughout a writing project. Much of the advice centers around a few different themes, such as forging a relationship with the ever-present self...

For this week's episode, author Brian Trapp sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Brian's 2025 novel Range of Motion (Acre Books). The book is semi-autobiographical fiction about twin brothers, one of whom was born with cerebral palsy and severe intellectual disabilities, an experience paralleling Brian's own with his twin brother Danny. The novel is written with tenderness,...

For this episode musician and filmmaker Michael Sanchez sits down with TW creative director John Vogel. Michael grew up in Newcastle, Delaware, where he started playing and recording music. One of his bands from that time, the New Death Show, eventually pared from four-piece to duo and migrated to Seattle. Later Michael would move to Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago, and then Philly, settling into...

Lisa Borders, author of three novels, talks with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her newest book. Last Night at the Disco (Regal House Publishing, 2025) is a fictitious memoir framed as a letter to the former editor of Rolling Stone , Jann Wenner. That context gives the audience their first clue about the book’s narrator, Lynda Boyle. The introduction to the letter also gives us a fe...

For this episode TW creative director John Vogel sat down with television writer and showrunner Michael Jamin about his collection of personal essays, A Paper Orchestra . Michael’s television career started in the mid-90’s with an episode of Lois and Clark , followed by more involved work on Just Shoot Me! and King of the Hill . Other writing and production credits include Beavis and Butthead , Ru...

Author and musician Antonio Michael Downing sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Antonio Michael's books Black Cherokee and Saga Boy , music audience expectation regarding race and incorporating varied genres, and the disregard of the tech industry when it comes to profiting off of the work of artists without compensation. If his memoir Saga Boy is a personal story grapplin...

Multidisciplinary writer Joanna Walsh sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters . When Joanna first started writing, lacking IRL community and instruction, she turned early Twitter to find likeminded others to share work with. It wasn’t until after she’d been working as an artist that the schooling aspect came into play,...

Pia Leichter , founder of Kollektiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club, talks with TW creative director John Vogel about her experience transitioning from the advertising world to the artistic path. A big shift happened in her life about ten years ago, and Pia delves into some very personal details about the events that brought about that shift. As she said in our conversation: “I w...

In today’s episode author Molly Gaudry sits down with TW founder and publisher Martha Nichols. Molly holds degrees in fiction, poetry, and experimental prose, and her new book that just came out last week is aptly titled Fit Into Me: A Novel, A Memoir . The book weaves a fictional narrative into Molly’s own story along with fragments from a wide range of other authors in an effort to create a sens...

In this week's episode, TW Creative Director John Vogel sits down with drummer and author Nic Brown to talk about his memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023). Despite being accepted to Ivy League colleges, Nic opted to pursue his band Athenaeum straight out of high school. They signed to Atlantic Records, landed a few hits, and played extensively before Nic decided to leave to group in 2001 to...

Victor Manibo, a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, sits down with TW Community Manager Neva Talladen to discuss the drafting process for his 2022 science fiction novel, The Sleepless . Manibo and Talladen connect over their shared Filipino heritage and roots in New York, as they explore the rise of “hustle culture.” The Sleepless portrays a society where sleep is no longer necessary or...

TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Tom McAllister about his new essay collection It All Felt Impossible (Rose Metal Press, 2025). For the book, Tom challenged himself to write an essay a day that corresponded to each year of his life, keeping within a 1500 word limit. The result is a kind of mosaic memoir through snapshots across time with some tangential thoughts instigated by the...

TW Creative Director John Vogel talks with Andrew Boryga, author of the satirical novel Victim . The two talk about the autobiographic backdrop to the novel, balancing creative time with parenthood, and the addictive and distancing natures of social media.

TW Community Manager Neva Talladen talks with visual artist and graphic designer Sasha Wizansky about her experience starting Pencil Magazine . The magazine, created entirely out of work made with pencil and paper, brings attention to the physicality of writing and drawing with pencil, as well as the slowing down that writing and reading handwriting can cause.

In our last episode of the season, TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Athena Dixon, our first repeat guest for the podcast. A year and a half ago we released Neva’s interview with Athena , which focused on her book The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023). This time around, in January 2025, John asked her questions from his Perfect Recognition project focusing on intense aesthetic exp...

TW proofreader Jess Barnett hosts award-winning Minnesotan food writer, Steve Hoffman, for a conversation about the unique joys and challenges of travel. Hoffman, a lover of French cuisine and culture, discusses traveling to the picturesque south of France, not as a tourist, skimming the surface of trending destinations, but as a humble guest, ready to immerse himself and his family in the cultura...

TW Podcast Production Manager Sarah Tulloch interviewed author Jeanne Blasberg this past September. Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. The two discuss her latest book, Daughter of a Promise , a modern retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba, completing the thematic trilogy she began with Eden and The Nine .

TW Creative Director John Vogel interviewed author Mary Carroll Moore this past November. Mary pursued a decades-long career as a food and cookbook writer before pivoting into writing instruction and self-releasing Your Book Starts Here in 2011. The two discuss her latest book, Last Bets , and her lifelong career as a creative with multiple mediums.

TW ’s Community Manager Neva Talladen talks to the CEO and Co-Founder of Pique Publishing. In 2022, she was inspired to launch The Editor's Half Hour podcast—a monthly podcast that focuses on the craft of editing, industry trends, and editorial resources for advanced editors. The two discuss Nadia’s move from book coaching to starting her own publishing company, where she and her team help authors...

Last May, TW founder Martha Nichols spoke with Laura Hartenberger , author of the definitive 2023 essay “What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing” in Noema . Laura, who’s a lecturer in the Writing Programs at University of California at Los Angeles, is an essayist and fiction writer herself. When she spoke with Martha, they were both finishing up a turbulent spring semester that included protests for...

TW ’s Neva Talladen talks to writer Naomi Cohn about her book The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on Altered Sight and the reclamation of self it explores for her as a legally blind person. A 2023 McKnight Artist Fellow in Writing, her previous publications include a chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity (Red Dragon-fly Press, 2013) , and pieces in Baltimore Review , Fourth River, Hippocampus...

TW ’s Neva Talladen talks to author Jianna Heuer about blown-up whale parts, opening a bookstore during the 2020 pandemic, and writing a revenge novel as catharsis. Her creative nonfiction and personal essays have been published in The Inquisitive Eater , Midsummer Dream House , Across The Margin , and other literary journals. Her flash non-fiction has appeared in two books, Fast Funny Women and F...

TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews writer Maris Kreizman, creator of the Tumblr blog and book Slaughterhouse 90210 and the podcast turned Substack newsletter, The Maris Review . Maris's work mixes together humor and serious poignancy to talk about a wide range of topics, from the publisher industry to politics and social justice to prime time soap operas. It's all on the table. Her forthco...

TW 's Creative Director John Vogel interviews Philadelphia punk trio Northern Liberties. The band consists of brothers Justin and Marc Duerr on vocals and drums and Kevin Riley on bass and occasional vocals. The band’s most recent album, Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe , was recorded in March 2022 with the legendary engineer and producer Steve Albini , who passed away in May of this year. The a...

TW Managing Editor Neva Talladen interviews Dr. Tamara Mitchell-Davis, award-winning author of #GoalGetter: Strategies for Overcoming Life’s Challenges (self-published, 2017) and chief executive officer of TM Davis Enterprises, LLC, a coaching practice that empowers aspiring authors to bring their books and business visions to life through storytelling. In this week’s episode, Tamara joins us from...