This week we touch upon the struggle that presents itself for memoirists who can’t or won’t let the past stay in the past, especially when other people wish you would. Guest Susan Lieu shares powerfully in this week’s show about how her mother became the central force and inspiration for her work after she died due to complications from a tummy tuck. In the process of writing about her mother and making sense of what happened, Susan discovered so much about her family’s silence, their trauma, and about her living parent—her father. If you are looking for a case study for how memoir heals and reveals, don’t miss this episode.

We welcome you to 2025 with a show that explores the exploration of form. In this conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Forrest Gander, we consider the nature of the writing journey—and its connection to landscape, the multiplicity of selves, and the kaleidoscopic experience of bringing together multiple eras of a lived life. Gander calls his new book a novel poem, and you’ll find out why, along with other beautiful insights about love and loss and the journey of being a writer—and a human.

Welcome to Write-minded’s 7th New Year’s show—where Grant and Brooke always circle around their challenge with resolutions, even as they make them and break them and every so often vow not to bother with them. This year they look back to certain resolutions declared and uncompleted, and grapple with the reckoning that must come when you assert such intentions out loud. And yet, Write-minded is also all about the fact that this writing business takes the time it takes, and this show comes around each year to help unpack goals asserted and achieved, goals shifted and morphed, goal posts moved and realigned, and much more. Happy 2025, dear writers, listeners, and creatives. Happy to be on this journey with you!

This week’s show focuses on endings, and beginnings. Guest Zahid Rafiq, who’s written a short story collection whose endings serve the stories and his characters, speaks to how he thinks about endings, including those that others might find less than satisfying. We’re defending a particular type of ending, those in which writers may feel less than compelled to tie their story in a bow for readers. Brooke points to a series of YouTube shorts she did on beginnings and endings in memoir that we invite memoirists to check out, and we close the show with a Substackin’ post Brooke wrote inspired by Salman Rushdie’s keynote at the Kauai Writers Conference in November: https://brookewarner.substack.com/p/writing-is-a-mess

This week’s show features guest Faith Adiele, who’s just released two chapbooks that are in conversation with one another. These books are a springboard for a conversation about hybrid writing, hybrid memoirs, the popularity of chapbooks, and hybrid forms. If you’re a writer who’s been told “you can’t do that,” this episode will be validating, if not vindicating. The publishing world is playing catch-up to all the creativity writers are bringing to the fore, and Faith Adiele is at the forefront of a movement of writers who are playing, creating, and breaking both rules and boundaries. Tune in for an interesting, fun, and permission-giving show. And if you’re interested in residencies, check out Faith’s tutorial, “Residencies 101” on the homepage of her website: https://www.adiele.com/home.

This week guest Jeannine Ouellette returns to Write-minded to share some specific teachings and practical tips for writers who want to better curb their own impulses to tell and/or to overwrite. This episode is a little more craft-focused than we normally do, and there’s no better person than Jeannine to showcase actionable ideas and student case studies. If you don’t already subscribe to her Substack, Writing in the Dark, get on her list asap—and this week’s Substackin’ highlights a recent post we loved that’s on point for the themes of this week’s show: From Playful to Profound

This week’s Write-minded delves into our cultural and literary relationship with drugs, examining the role drugs play in creativity and among creatives. We also look at novels and memoirs that center drugs and alcohol, and talk to author Emily Witt about her own foray...

This week’s episode is a deep conversation that covers love, embracing contradiction, and guest Carvell Wallace’s journey to and through memoir. This is an enlightening interview for anyone who’s ever contemplated paradox, or how to tackle big, tangly ideas in your writing. Writing a memoir is an ambitious act of the heart, and we honor that journey this week in all its complexity and bigness. On Substackin’, we’re pleased to be sharing some of our favorite memoir writers’ Substacks, and hope you’ll take a look.

This week Write-minded is exploring listening—as a practice, as an experience, as something that interacts with our writing. Guest Elizabeth Rosner’s new book is Third Ear, a book that she describes as a hybrid memoir. Listen in to find out why, to consider your own relationship with listening, and to consider all the ways that listening drives and inspires our writing. On Substackin’ this week, we revisit Grant’s post about being patient with impatience, with themes resonant to the episode.