The Secret Library Podcast

I saw Amy Alkon speak at the LA Times Festival of Books and was delighted with her talk on her book, Unf*ckology, which breaks down the science of building up courage. Here, I thought, was a person who can address this fear so many people have of calling themselves writers. I was right in guessing she'd have a lot to say on the topic, but we went so much further into how to trick your brain into b...

Confession: I am intimidated by poetry. If you look over the back catalog of the show, you will find a dearth of poetry represented. partly this is because I have such an abundance of novelists, essayists, and other more mainstream-length books to discuss with people. But, to be fair, I haven't gone digging for poetry. I feel vastly uneducated in that realm and I suspect many people out there feel...

Reading and Writing History When the Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta was announced for a reprint from Penguin, I was so excited to see that Diana Gabaldon wrote the foreword. In speaking with Diana both about this novel from history as well as her experience writing fiction set in a historical setting, I was hit with a variation on the classic real estate slogan: Context! Context! Context!...

Donal Ryan is the best argument for staying hopeful about writing. In this conversation, we discuss how Donal Ryan stayed optimistic as his first few books were rejected nearly 50 times before he broke in to get one published. Once he did, he was long listed for the Booker Prize. We have all heard these stories: of Stephen King impaling rejection letters on a nail driven into the wall by his desk,...

How I love speaking to writers who also teach writing!   Lucy Tan is that delightful hybrid: a novelist who also knows how to speak about the process of writing so clearly you can follow along in her footsteps. She is so smart, both in her writing and her advice about how to get it done.   Lucy began her novel, What We Were Promised, inside the safety of her MFA program, and was relieved to be pro...

We're going steady on a podcast!  So... we've had Mary-Laura Philpott (or MLP as we like to call her around here) on recommending books seasonally for the past few seasons and we decided it was time to give her a bonus episode slot. We know you are all busy and want a quick listen, so here it is! All your July reading recommendations in one convenient in-between-isode. That's a word now - I just d...

Sometimes the line between memoir and novel is thinner than others. Keith Gessen came on the show this week to discuss his latest novel, A Terrible Country. Drawing on his own experience caring for his grandmother in Russia after graduating from college, Keith originally set out to write a much bigger book than the one he ended up with. He had fantasies of covering aspects of Russian culture in be...

The best books don't center around perfect characters doing easy things. I am so excited to share this week's episode as each of these conversations was so much fun to record. Edan has been on the show before, but I wanted to have her back to talk about her love of writing difficult characters within the framework of her latest novel, Woman No. 17. Edan delights in creating tension by revealing he...

Rebecca Makkai didn't set out to write about the AIDS Crisis in Chicago. This is what I love about writing. There is the saying, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." I would say that it's just as true that "Books are what happen when you're busy making outlines." In speaking with Rebecca Makkai this week about her latest novel, The Great Believers, a book I absolutely loved, I wa...

Michelle Kuo got a call one day, telling her that her favorite student had been arrested.   After college, Michelle Kuo joined Teach for America and moved to the Arkansas Delta. She taught in a school that focused on teaching underserved youth who had been expelled from other schools. Her time there was transformative, both for Michelle and her students. But at the end of her term at Teach for Ame...

Sometimes you just want to write a lot of characters.   Chibundu Onuzo wrote her first novel surrounding two characters, so when it came time to writer her second novel, she wanted a lot of people in there to play with. In addition, she shifted into third person, a process she compared to Scooby Doo or Nancy Drew trying to figure out how to open a secret bookcase in a mystery story.   Ultimately,...

There is very little I love more than getting away. For anyone who loves to escape, this is your episode. Stephanie Rosenbloom and I talk about Alone Time, her book on solo travel. Through the four seasons, she travels to four cities (including her hometown for a staycation) and shares what she finds by traveling alone. As a fan of solo travel as much as I am of exploring with others, I was enchan...

Sometimes you just have to dive into an idea and get it done.   A little over a year ago, many of you will remember that Scott Carney came on the show to talk about his book What Doesn't Kill Us. Toward the end of that conversation, he dropped a little bit of knowledge that made a light go on in my brain. "If you write 500 words a day 5 days a week, in a year you'll have a book." Boom. When Barry...

I LOVE this pairing. I just have to say that at the outset.   Speaking with Amber Rae and Madeline Miller was an incredible privilege. I think you'll find this week's episode filled with Wonder, which is no surprise given the title of Amber Rae's book, Choose Wonder Over Worry. But this theme is woven through both conversations, from Amber's process surrendering to the way her book wanted to be wr...

It's funny how themes emerge when guests get paired together.   Most often, the date I schedule a guest appearance is based on their book pub date and so we get these funny coincidences when I sit down to write the show notes. Both Catherine Isaac and Tom Rachman have written books that have a troubled father-son relationship at the center, and both of them write novels that allowed them to explor...

Have you ever been told you can't expect to make money writing books? Me, too.   Having heard the refrain that books don't make money over and over, it was my distinct pleasure to speak with two writers who have built careers with books and writing at the center: Chris Guillebeau + Tom Hodgkinson.   I have been reading each of their work for years and was long inspired by books like The $100 Start...

A writer is faced with so many dilemmas when creating a book.   Two of the most common that I encounter in my coaching practice? "Do I go for traditional publishing OR publish as an indie author?" And "How can I write about the people in my life without damaging those relationships?" Writing is not for the faint of heart, not only because you have to tell the truth on the page, but also because it...

I don't know how else to say it. This episode is long.  But it's so good that we couldn't stand to cut anything out of it. As soon as I knew that Sarah Selecky's book, Radiant Shimmering Light, was coming out in Canada this week, I knew she was episode 100. And then I had to talk about the amazing books coming out this spring with Mary Laura Philpott. And I love talking to both of them, so we didn...

ML Longworth has one of the greatest writing stories I've heard so far.   After the tech company her husband worked for in Silicon Valley was sold in the last 1990s, ML Longworth tried something bold. Before leaving for a family vacation in France, she typed the following search term into a browser: computer-jobs-France. What followed was a series of incredible coincidences that lead to she and he...

Elaine Castillo broke my brain with something she said on the show. The book she ended up publishing, her debut novel America is not the Heart, was not even close to the same length as the book she wrote. Let me say this again: Elaine Castillo sold her debut novel to a big 5 publisher and then got to spend a year and a half editing it because they believed in the book and wanted Elaine to feel sat...

Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon wrote the book on Being Boss.   Back in January 2015, Emily and Kathleen launched a podcast called Being Boss. It was for women business owners and creative entrepreneurs. The show quickly grew from a small posse of listeners into a sensation, and then a movement. The exploration of what it meant to be boss created in-person events and a vibrant online community...

Kit De Waal didn't start writing until she was 40. I love a hot debut novel from a bright young thing as much as the next person, but there is something I love even more about a late-to-writing career trajectory. Now that I'm on the other side of 40, I feel particularly fired up whenever I read books by those who didn't start as writers the moment they finished school.   If you feel like it's too...

This week, we dive into the mysterious lure of Sweden and its literature.   As a lover of languages, I have long been fascinated with the art of translation. I am delighted to have Henning Koch on this week, who has translated Fredik Backman's work including A Man Called Ove as well as the acclaimed Every Moment We Are Still Alive. In addition to working as a translator, he's also a writer himself...

Elaine Weiss found the locus of action for her book deep in the library archives. I love this image because it is the stuff writing fantasies are made of: a writer, buried in the depths of newspapers that had been cataloged on microfilm. It was there that she discovered that a member of each of the critical political parties in her book arrived the very same night in Nashville, TN to fight the fin...

Chad Murphy is the genius behind Lord Birthday. He wasn't always out as Lord Birthday- in fact, he decided to start as an anonymous creator and kept up that goal even when he saw that his own sister was a fan and regularly sharing his posts. One of my favorite parts of this episode is the story of Chad having to tell his sister that he was Lord Birthday.   Just a few years after starting Lord Birt...