The Bleeders: about book writing & publishing

Today's guest is Emmy Olea. I first discovered Emmy's writing through her podcast Crumbs about Emmy's dating experiences as a trans woman recovering from alcoholism whose mom was a coyote and whose grandma ran drugs for the Tijuana cartel. It's a wild story so well-written and poignantly told. When I learned that Crumbs was actually just a sliver of her larger memoir, I knew I had to have her on W...

Today's guest is Chelsea Martin. I adore indie queens like Chelsea. She has been incredibly prolific thus far in her literary career, and I love her "just do it" approach to publishing. We talk about how to balance perfectionist tendencies with being productive and putting out a lot of work, how to deal with a shitty publisher, the joys of having a good agent, and more. Follow Chelsea on Instagram...

Today's episode is a great interview about book writing and publishing from another show. The Book I Had to Write is hosted by book coach Paul Zakrzewski. He interviews memoir writers, journalists, and other coaches about writing their most compelling books. In this episode, he interviews Lilly Dancyger, author of the memoir Negative Space and the editor of the anthology Burn It Down: Women Writin...

Today’s guest Bridgette Bianca is a fantastic spoken word poet with a Grammy nomination on her bucket list, and it was so interesting to hear her describe the interplay between performance and her writing process. She also shared a valuable lesson she learned in grad school. Plus, she took us to Howard for an education on the legacy of Black poetry, explained how essential community was to her pub...

Today's guest is Hannah Howard, author of two food memoirs, Feast: True Love in and Out of the Kitchen and Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family, that transcend the genre and are also about relationships, motherhood, and finding your tribe. We discuss how an MFA application process helped her crystallize her vision for what became her first book, the difference between first and second books, her ex...

Amanda McNeil wrote a draft of an essay collection during the first year of the pandemic.... and then sat on it. Now she’s gearing up to write another draft and wondering if maybe it’s a memoir, or at least she’s wondering if that will help sell the book. We talk about all this and the necessary evil of querying in the first edition of Work in Progress featuring Amanda McNeil and her essay collect...

Chloe Caldwell has forged her own unique path in the literary scene, and it’s one that I really admire. She gives us the play by play for how she became the author of four books — Legs Get Led Astray, Women, I’ll Tell You in Person, and The Red Zone — in today’s episode. We cover everything from cold queries to agents to small presses to trusting your vision. Follow Chloe on Instagram @chloeeeecal...

Today’s guest is feminist noir crime writer Halley Sutton. She wrote the first draft of her debut novel, The Lady Upstairs, while getting her MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. So we got into the pros and cons of MFAs for writers. And we also talk book #2 since Halley’s currently in the home stretch with her second novel. Halley shared how Pitch Wars helped her first book find i...

Samantha Allen is the author of Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States and the upcoming novel Patricia Wants to Cuddle (pub date June 28th). Samantha shared so many nuggets of wisdom for writers. We talked shop about writing and publishing start to finish, book advances, audiobooks and her Audible Original, her foray from nonfiction to fiction, and more. Follow Samantha on Twitter @SLAwr...

Introducing... The Bleeders! Welcome, writers and book lovers. Thanks for tuning in to the trailer for my new podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure you subscribe to the companion Substack: https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome About the host: Courtney Kocak is a Los Angeles-based writer, podcaster, and comedian. She graduated from UCLA's Professional Program in Screenwriting and...