THIS WEEK: JULY 22, 2024
Being a Voice for Causes That Matter, featuring Naomi Klein

This week’s episode airs Brooke in conversation with Naomi Klein at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival. While this interview does not hew to Write-minded’s effort to offer weekly doses of inspiration for writers, Brooke and Grant decided to make this available both because our listeners requested it and because we admire the work Naomi Klein is doing in the world. This is a conversation about Israel/Gaza, Jewish heritage and history, American politics, and about Doppelganger, Klein’s 2023 book, which was Brooke’s favorite book of last year.

Secrets come in all forms, big and small. We inherit secrets, carry the secrets of others, and struggle with the burden of all they hold and how they sometimes fester within us. This week’s episode with guest Margaret Juhae Lee explores the difference between people who want to keep the past buried and those who want to set it free. We explore intergenerational trauma and how that’s often its own form of carrying secrets forward from the past. This week’s trend is about book festivals, so please follow the link to find a festival near you: https://www.writersdigest.com/publishing-insights/list-of-book-fairs-and-book-festivals-by-state.

This week’s guest, Jayne Anne Phillips, is a Pulitzer prize-winning author for her latest book, Night Watch, which gives Write-minded an opportunity to muse about awards—why they matter, what we make of them and do with them, and where we might find awards from things we seek out in addition to those we receive. Join us for this wide-ranging literary conversation about storytelling, language, flash fiction, reading, and, of course, awards.

This week’s Write-minded centers questions, and how questions guide writers, drive fiction, and unearth important stories. Guest Rachel Khong shares how the big and provocative question of who’s a “real American” informed her new novel and why she writes without an outline. We also talk about ambition and drive, why novelists have to grapple with people speculating what in their fiction is “real,” and much more.

Write-minded is celebrating memoir as an evolving form this week, tackling the difference between imaginative writing in memoir and writing in memoir that might not be true. Memoir is increasingly embodying its rightful spot in the realm of creative nonfiction, in that there’s allowance for writers to explore ideas and truths within the realms of creative devices, imagined conversations, different points of view, and more—and yet how do we keep that within the container of Truth? Listen in to this episode to find out more, and to hear from a rising talent, guest Shze-Hui Tjoa.

This week we take on The Big Novel and unpack our thoughts on novel length, the very concept of The Great American Novel, advances, and more. Guest Garth Risk Hallberg joins us to talk about his own long works of fiction, as well as his writing process that involves seeing where his characters want to take him. We touch upon characterization vs. plot, the nature of long stories, and finding what motivates your characters in fiction. There’s a lot to take away from this episode, so tune in!