The Bleeders: about book writing & publishing

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Victoria Kielland, Norwegian author of My Men , which was translated to English by Damion Searls. Follow Victoria on Instagram @vkielland and find out more via Astra Publishing House's website . SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Frances Badalamenti, author of I Don't Blame You and Salad Days . Follow Frances on Instagram @franbad and connect via her website francesbadalamenti.com . SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a new...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Jon Small, host of the Write About Now podcast, editor-at-large for Entrepreneur.com , and, in a past life, Glamour’s “Jake.” Follow Jon on Instagram @thejonsmall and Twitter @kidfinesse. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and boo...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Laura Cathcart Robbins, author of Stash: My Life in Hiding . Follow Laura on Instagram @lauracathcartrobbins and Twitter @TheOnlyOnePodc1. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a new podcast about boo...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Antonia Crane, author of Spent . Follow Antonia on Instagram @antoniacrane and Twitter @antoniacrane. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a new podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure y...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Rachel Kramer Bussell, author of How to Write Erotica and editor of over 70 anthologies of erotica. Follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelkramerbussel and Twitter @raquelita. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Ble...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Andrew Bomback, author Doctor and Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting . Follow Andrew on Instagram @andrewbomback and Twitter @asbomback. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Samantha Mann, author of Putting Out: Essays on Otherness and editor of the anthology I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy . Follow Samantha on Instagram @samantha.mann05 and Twitter @Sdmann0502. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and...

Summer school is officially in session, Bleeders! Today's instructor is Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto . Follow Zachary on Instagram @zacharyzane_ and Twitter @ZacharyZane_. SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW BLEEDERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR FULL-LENGTH INTERVIEWS . https://www.youtube.com/@bleederspodcast Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a new podcast about book writing an...

Opportunities of the Week is the brilliant brainchild of our guest today, Sonia Weiser. It’s the type of newsletter that I’ve seen gets recommended a lot in the writing scene because it’s a compilation of all the current pitch calls available on social media. If you are trying to build up your bylines or find a home for some writing work on the internet, I highly recommend you subscribe. In today’...

Today’s guest is Carmen Rita Wong, and she has a doozy of a story — it’s memoir meets family mystery, and it’s so freaking good! In this episode, Carmen shares how her magnum opus finally came together after decades in the making, plus writing and publishing wisdom she's gleaned through publishing FIVE books. She also introduces us to the concept of flashbulb memories... There are so many gems in...

I found Marina through a Twitter thread she wrote about querying, so today, I’m bringing you the first Work in Progress, with an emphasis on publishing. Marina shares how she landed her agent, her top querying tips, how her fantasy novel Beheaded is doing out on submission, the importance of protecting your mental health, and more in today’s episode. This episode is very apropos for me at the mome...

I’m so excited to have Allie Rowbottom on the show today! Allie is the author of the memoir/family history/cultural commentary Jello Girls, which I love, and the new novel Aesthetica, which is incredibly zeitgeisty in its subject matter and has been getting rave reviews. Not only is Allie Rowbottom a super hot lit queen who can string together a hell of a sentence, but she’s also really nice and g...

The new year is upon us, which has got me thinking about my writing-related resolutions, and how to accomplish them. So today’s episode is all about writing practice — the daily grind of it, the unsexy truth about how we manifest our writing goals by showing up and allowing ourselves to get words on the page, however messy they might be at first. And we’re diving into this topic with the perfect g...

Alissa Wilkinson wrote her book Salty during the first year of the pandemic, which left its mark on both the process and the content. Alissa tells us about how "Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women" and her first book came to be and a little bit about her current Joan Didion-related project. We also talked about how book writing fits in amid her daily journalism...

Today's guest is Matt Bell, who wrote his novel-writing craft book Refuse to Be Done between drafts of his latest novel Appleseed , and perhaps both books were the better for it. Matt has an exhausting yet enviably productive novel-writing process, and he's taking us to church today with this sermon and many others. He's a writer's writer and knows all about creating the best writing and publishin...

Elle Griffin set out to query her gothic novel and, in the process, made some disappointing discoveries about the publishing industry that led her to serialize it on Substack. Today she's going to share her journey down this unconventional path that definitely has some upsides, like making $19K her first year on Substack and retaining the rights to her work. Elle also shares why Anne Lamott's shit...

In today's episode, Write or Die Tribe founder Kailey Brennan DelloRusso explains what she's learned while writing her untitled novel-in-progress (which got its start during NaNoWriMo!). We discuss the benefits of having a writing accountability buddy, the thought (and plot)-provoking questions she gleaned from "The 90-Day Novel'' by Alan Watt, as well as the sublime Zen of "holding it loosely." K...

Bassey Ikpi’s “I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying” is one of my all-time favorite books. She grew up thinking authors were magicians, but it turns out she knows how to cast the spell too! In this episode, Bassey shares how the book proposal was a totally different book but working on it amid a mental health crisis led her down a more authentic path. Bassey talks about having an emotional memory,...

If you love writing and publishing advice as much as I do, this episode is going to make you horny, baby! To celebrate our 13 amazing guests from this summer, I'm dropping the first Bleeders anthology — chock-full of sage wisdom on building community, establishing a daily practice, editing yourself, and all kinds of helpful writing and publishing mindset tips. Big thanks to the following authors f...

Today's guest is Shelby Hinte. I know Shelby because we took a Chloe Caldwell workshop together this spring (all roads lead back to Chloe on this podcast, lol). In this episode, Shelby explains her writing process and query experience for her work-in-progress, Howling Women. There are so many priceless little takeaways from this interview — like the importance of interpreting notes through your ow...

Omar Mouallem wrote the historical travel memoir "Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas." However, he struggled to tackle that subject matter without finding a new relationship with the religion he'd grown up with and apart from. Omar dives into the whole book writing process, from getting his start as a ghostwriter to how he landed his book deal, how he found extra funding to cover...

Today’s guest comes all the way from Africa! Ghanaian author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has such a cool story about how she used her blog as a launch pad for publishing her first book. Nana shares the whole process, including conducting the interviews, writing a book proposal, how she landed her agent, and more. Plus, her best tip for writers trying to get published and how listening back to her interv...

Today's guest is Caroline Shannon-Karasik. I know Caroline because we took Catapult’s 12-Month Essay Generator together, led by Chloe Caldwell. In this episode, she fills me in on what she’s done with the manuscript since then. Caroline drops some serious wisdom on her writing process, how to approach a rewrite, and giving yourself guilt-free time to research. She also reads an excerpt from her Wo...

Today's guest is Elle Nash, author of Animals Eat Each Other, Nudes, Gag Reflex, and the upcoming novel Deliver Me. This episode is an interesting peek into Elle's creative process as we talk through her body of work, the North star of writing to your taste, developing her voice alongside her editing chops, how she landed the coolest agent ever, and more. Follow Elle on Instagram and Twitter @sade...