Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

In this gorgeous, sensualistic, tactile, provocative episode of Write-minded, we explore the senses with Janet Fitch of White Oleander fame. In this interview, Janet takes us on a tour through the senses, making the point that our language is impoverished and we can—and must—do more to become more sophisticated observers on the page. This is an episode you’ll carry with you into your next writing or reading session, keeping an eye out (and tastebuds at the ready and an ear attuned and the nose trained) for the next sensual experience or opportunity. Revel in the possibilities and ideas Janet offers to employ the superpowers each of our senses hold.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Janet Fitch is the bestselling author of White Oleander, an Oprah book club pick, Paint it Black, and the historical novels The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, set during the Russian Revolution. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Noir, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing widely online and in person.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

This week’s episode moves beyond inspiring and into the territory of important, essential, and recommended listening—and reading. Guest Dr. Brian H. Williams, author of the debut memoir, The Bodies Keep Coming, joins us to talk about his experience as a trauma surgeon, and what being on the hospital frontlines can teach us about racial inequities in America. On the writing side of things, Brooke and Grant talk about how hard it can be for memoirists to truly open up, especially if you’re not used to sharing your feelings, or if there’s a perception that you don’t want the book to be too much “about you.”  Dr. Williams touches upon all this, and shares how, as a self-professed man of few words, he pushed himself to be so self-revealing in his memoir.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Dr. Brian H. Williams is an Air Force Academy graduate, a Harvard-trained surgeon, a former congressional health policy advisor, and a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of public policy and structural racism, gun violence, and health equity. He has treated gun violence victims for more than two decades. Williams has served as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine and as a professor of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine. His memoir, The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal, came out in September of last year.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

Hidden stories are at the heart of many a novel and memoir, driving writers, often from very young ages, toward exploration, uncovering, and the desire to seek for and know truths. Vanessa Chan’s new novel, The Storm We Made, is one such story, spawned by the unlikeliest of spies—a discontent mother and wife in 1930s British Malaya who, in becoming a spy for the Japanese, unwittingly ushers in the most violent war her country has ever seen. Vanessa talks about her novel, its journey, and the idea that she herself is a hidden story. This is a not-to-be-missed interview with an exciting debut author whose book is getting tons of buzz. 

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Vanessa Chan’s debut novel, The Storm We Made, is out now! Her other work has been published in Esquire, Conjunctions, Electric Lit, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction has been spotlighted in Best Small Fictions and selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. Vanessa grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

Books were just books for hundreds of years, but in the past 20 years, we’ve experienced major shifts in how we read and write. Plus, we’re on the brink of another revolution with AI that will change what we know and think we know about book publishing. This week’s guest, Maja Thomas, is the Chief Innovation Officer at Hachette, and her job, essentially, is to figure out the future of the book. She’s the only Chief Innovation Officer in all of publishing, so it’s a treat to hear what she has to say about trends, disruptions, innovations, and yes, AI. Don’t miss her insights! Also, in the trend we mention this Foreign Policy article from Dave Karpf about the future of AI maybe not being as disruptive as we all think. Worth a read!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Maja Thomas is a graduate of the University of California in San Diego and of Princeton University. She began her career at Time Warner as an audiobook producer and director, and joined Hachette in 2006 as Vice President of Hachette Digital and Digital Publishing, and was appointed Senior Vice President of Hachette Digital of Hachette Book Group a year later. She continued her professional development with courses at Simmons College in Boston, and Henley and Insead Business schools in England and France. After a three-year stint with advising start-ups and working as a consultant specializing in digital technology and publishing in Silicon Valley, Maja returned to Hachette in 2017 as Director of Hachette’s Innovation Program, and she’s now their Chief Innovation Officer.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

Happy New Year! On this week’s Write-minded, Brooke and Grant take stock of last year’s resolutions and hold their own feet to the fire on what was cast out for resolutions, and what was accomplished (or not). We’re probing the resolution, therefore, as we head into 2024—assessing its pros and cons, musing about who we’d be without a goal, and considering whether all the resolution really needs is not to be bound by such a tight timeline. Tune in to probe, explore, turn over, and consider your own relationship with resolutions as we head into a new year.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

This week we’re slowing down, inviting listeners to contemplate another world both far and not far away from this one where there’s no electricity, no internet, no immediate access to all the information of the world at your fingertips. This was the world our guest Baron Wormser occupied for nearly twenty years, and the subject of his memoir, The Road Washes Out in Spring. We’re channeling a state of mind, beckoning listeners to attune to your surroundings, to what calls and what moves you. And maybe you’ll emerge out the other side of today’s show having reached a meditative, ruminative state. We hope so.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Baron Wormser is the author of twenty books and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. From 2000 to 2005 he served as poet laureate of the state of Maine. He is the founding director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Essays of his were included in Best American Essays 2014 and 2018. His most recent books are The History Hotel: Poems and the reissue by Brandeis University Press of The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

This week on Write-minded we’re coming back to a well-loved topic: Community! Only we’re tackling it from some new angles, like the notion that not every community will be the right community for you, and the fact that there are shadow sides to community, and how we and others behave in community. Guest Alexa Bigwarfe talks about her experience in the community of writers and within the publishing community—what it was like to be new to this space, how she grew into her leadership role, and why it’s so meaningful to take advantage of what publishing has to offer authors, from trade shows, to industry events, to writing and publishing conferences. Tune in to start to think about one event you might attend in 2024!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Alexa Bigwarfe is a USA Today best-selling author, publisher, and founder and CEO of Write|Publish|Sell, a company dedicated to helping authors professionally self-publish and market their books. Her courses and training focus on author platform growth and fun, creative ways to market books. She is also the founder and host of the Women in Publishing Summit, dedicated to providing education and growth opportunities, and building community for authors and professionals in the publishing industry. To learn more, check out @womeninpublishingsummit on IG, Facebook, and TikTok.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

Join Grant and Brooke this week for a conversation about truth—emotional truth, essential truth, truth as the core driver of all stories. Plus, they share how many words they wrote during November—not nearly as many as either had hoped. Guest Jamila Minnicks speaks about her novel Moonrise Over New Jessup and its powerful protagonist, sense of place, and homage to her ancestors, all of which delivers on this show’s promise of weekly inspiration.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Jamila Minnicks’s debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is a finalist for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was longlisted the 2023 Crook’s Corner Book Prize. Her short stories and essays are published, or forthcoming, in Ploughshares, The Sun, CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Jamila’s work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference Minnicks is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

This week’s guests are the coeditors (and contributors to) Letters to a Writer of Color. Listen in to hear the profound insights and inspirational origin story that led to Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro’s collaboration on their powerful anthology. Contributors to this collection include Kiese Laymon, Myriam Gurba, Madeleine Thien, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and others. Our conversation this week circles how writers of color write and talk about and translate their experiences, the ways writers can get hemmed in and how they refuse to be hemmed in, and also the power of commonalities across experiences, even when those experiences are so varied. Not to be missed!

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Deepa Anappara grew up in Kerala, southern India, and worked as a journalist in cities including Mumbai and Delhi. Her debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and NPR. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Indian Literature. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Taymour Soomro was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He has worked as a corporate solicitor in London and Milan, an agricultural estate manager in rural Pakistan, and a publicist for a luxury fashion brand in London. His short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, and he is the author of the novel Other Names for Love.

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

Pep Talk alert! Whether you’re writing a ton or writing a-none, this week’s episode is geared toward writers who are feeling the strain of the Muddy Middle. Grant and Brooke talk about strategies for staying on track and offer up encouragement for ways to keep with it—including how to break the wall. The Esther Perel podcast episode that Brooke mentions, “Breaking News Is Breaking Us,” can be found here.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner are writer-authors and heads of writing communities, but most relevant to this week’s show, they’re the cohosts of Write–minded, and they’re both in the Muddy Middle of NaNoWriMo this week.