THIS WEEK: SEPTEMBER 9, 2024
Unclassifiable and Uncontainable: In Celebration of Art That Can’t Be Pinned Down, featuring Brontez Purnell

This week’s guest, Brontez Purnell, is the kind of writer who’s either hard to pin down, or just won’t be. As such, he’s inspired an episode about who gets to draw outside the lines and why in the realm of book publishing. Whether you love your lane, feel confined by your lane, or insist on busting out of your lane, we invite you to consider what it means to be classifiable and contained, and whether or not it suits you to be so—or to refuse the categories and labels publishing loves to put on authors. An existential episode inspired by an author who’s blowing up the boxes and having fun doing it. This week’s Substackin’ is based on Brooke’s post, “Why You Can’t Equate Your Substack Posts to a Book: On the Staying Power of the Book.” Grant and Brooke are drawing from their own Substacks and others for these features, and we invite you to find us at https://grantfaulkner.substack.com and https://brookewarner.substack.com.

We kick off a new season with the brilliant Jane Alison and a wide-ranging conversation about form and structure in fiction and memoir. Brooke and Grant were so inspired by Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane’s her book about craft and the theory of writing, that this episode is dedicated to the ideas around structure and form that are at the heart of that book. This is a nerdy, writerly deep dive to welcome listeners to a new season. Also of note is a new feature, Substackin’, which will be rounding out each episode this season. This week’s Substackin’ is inspired by Brooke’s post: https://brookewarner.substack.com/p/structure-deconstructed

For our final summer round up of our favorite shows, Write-minded chose Maggie Smith and Shze-Hui Tjoa, highlighting two bright lights in the Memoirsphere who are elevating the genre and showcasing new ways of thinking about memoir. It’s an exciting time to be a memoirist and a memoir reader, and if you missed these two interviews the first time around—or even if you didn’t—make sure to catch the insights and inspiration of these two groundbreaking writers.

In celebration of the kind of fiction readers love but the industry doesn’t always know what to do with comes two past episodes honoring fan fiction and gothic fiction, respectively. Revisiting these episodes is a reminder of the vast world of fiction outside the narrow confines of upmarket or commercial or historical fiction. Our two past guests, Rainbow Rowell and Isabel Cañas, take us on a journey through their respective inspirations, views of the industry, and insights into the world of writing fiction that exists in the margins.

In this second week of Write-minded’s August mashups, we bring back the heartfelt interviews with Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito, both of whom spoke so honestly and supportively about writing and sharing stories they’ve carried with them their entire lives. Javier’s harrowing journey from El Salvador to the US border when he was just nine years old, traveling as an unaccompanied minor is the subject of his memoir, Solito, and Susan’s I Would Meet You Anywhere centers her adoption story, touching upon themes of longing, abandonment, identity, and more. Both authors grapple with exposure in these soul-searching stories of identity and survival.

Every August Grant and Brooke share their summer plans and writing aspirations and hopes and fails, along with some mashups of their favorite interviews of the year. Write-minded kicks off this best-of series with two beloved industry experts—agent Lisa Leshne and publicist Kathleen Schmidt. There’s real wisdom and straight-talk in these conversations that writers and authors will want to take in and absorb. So even if you heard these the first time around, take it in again—and have a wonderful start to your August.