Talking Writing

Ramona Ausubel's Practical Advice 11.06.2026 1u 12min

Author Ramona Ausubel sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her new craft book and write's guide. In Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page, Ramona lays out exercises and strategies to maintain momentum throughout a writing project. Much of the advice centers around a few different themes, such as forging a relationship with the ever-present self-doubt, deeper exploration of the internal world of the artwork, and keeping the fun alive during the writing process.Ramona has written three novels and two short story collections while maintaining an active teaching schedule, with a faculty position at Colorado State University and teaching summer workshops for several organizations including Writing by Writers and the Breadloaf Environmental Conference.Unstuck is published by the Tin House imprint, which was recently acquired by independent publisher Zando. Ramona also attended the Tin House Writing Workshop at Reed College shortly after finishing graduate school, and taught there during the online era of COVID.During the interview we talk about more about Tin House, how her short story writing both fueled and provided respite from her novel-writing, and other personal experiences behind the strategies.

Brian Trapp Writes His Twin into Literature 27.05.2026 38min

For this week's episode, author Brian Trapp sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Brian's 2025 novel Range of Motion (Acre Books). The book is semi-autobiographical fiction about twin brothers, one of whom was born with cerebral palsy and severe intellectual disabilities, an experience paralleling Brian's own with his twin brother Danny.The novel is written with tenderness, humor, and celebration centering twin brothers Michael and Sal, their parents Hannah and Gabe, and the whole family’s experience balancing care, work, school, and social lives.In 2009, while enrolled in a master’s program for creative writing at the University of Cincinnati (UC), Brian started to write a fictional story based on a week that he and Danny spent at Camp Cheerful in Ohio. He wrote about a hundred pages for his thesis before losing steam. To regain momentum, he backtracked to the twins’ childhood, starting when they were five and going forward from there to catch up to the scenes at the camp when they were 18.Brian earned his PhD in creative writing and disability studies from UC, and has accumulated a list of grants, fellowships, and residencies, including a Tin House Residency, Borchardt Scholarship, and Steinbeck Fellowship. In 2017, Brian moved with his partner—novelist Marjorie Celona—to Eugene, where the University of Oregon was just starting up a disability studies program. A product of good timing, he “lucked into” a position as director of the program, while teaching fiction and nonfiction and editing the Northwest Review.

Michael Sanchez Looks Behind the Curtain 05.05.2026 1u

For this episode musician and filmmaker Michael Sanchez sits down with TW creative director John Vogel.Michael grew up in Newcastle, Delaware, where he started playing and recording music. One of his bands from that time, the New Death Show, eventually pared from four-piece to duo and migrated to Seattle. Later Michael would move to Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago, and then Philly, settling into different artistic projects along the way, including his band The Way It Is and a solo project, Electric Dylan. In San Francisco he started trying out comedy, which started to become more serious during his time in Chicago. There, he and four other comedians started a showcase called Comedians You Should Know, which ran at a local pub every Wednesday starting in 2010. In 2015 and 2016 the showcase expanded to LA and New York.Throughout this time period, Michael was also creating videos both for himself and as a contractor for different artists and corporate institutions. Early on he and his friends filmed a no-budget superhero movie called The Return of Great Guy, which stalled due to hard drive issues.For this interview, Michael fields questions from John's Perfect Recognition project.

Lisa Borders on the Sustenance of Art in Dark Times 26.03.2026 45min

Lisa Borders, author of three novels, talks with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her newest book. Last Night at the Disco (Regal House Publishing, 2025) is a fictitious memoir framed as a letter to the former editor of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner. That context gives the audience their first clue about the book’s narrator, Lynda Boyle.The introduction to the letter also gives us a few other vague references to crimes, the loss of a teaching position, and a “coke-fueled disco queen” that help fill in a few blanks while raising many more questions.Although humor had always been a part of Lisa’s personality and writing, for a time she leaned away from it. Her first two books, Cloud Cuckoo Land and The Fifty-First State, reflected this shift, but starting around 2016—as she developed the tone for what would become Last Night at the Disco—she started focusing on humor, including writing a submission for McSweeney's Internet Tendency over the course of a year. That piece was accepted and published as “Signs That You Are a Gen-Xer Going Through Menopause,” which went viral.In this interview the two discuss narrator Lynda Boyle, satirizing avant-garde poets, and her need to make art as the world falls apart.

Michael Jamin and the Importance of Small Moments 04.03.2026 39min

For this episode TW creative director John Vogel sat down with television writer and showrunner Michael Jamin about his collection of personal essays, A Paper Orchestra.Michael’s television career started in the mid-90’s with an episode of Lois and Clark, followed by more involved work on Just Shoot Me! and King of the Hill. Other writing and production credits include Beavis and Butthead, Rules of Engagement, Maron, and Wilfred.He self-published A Paper Orchestra through his company 3 Girls Jumping, and the book was named one of the best comedy books of 2024 by Vulture. Partially inspired by David Sedaris, Michael has also developed a stage show of the essays that has evolved from readings to reenacted performances of the scenes. In this conversation Michael and John talk about different themes throughout the essays, his transition to the stage, and balancing family life with work.

Antonio Michael Downing on Inner and Outer Colonialism 18.02.2026 58min

Author and musician Antonio Michael Downing sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Antonio Michael's books Black Cherokee and Saga Boy, music audience expectation regarding race and incorporating varied genres, and the disregard of the tech industry when it comes to profiting off of the work of artists without compensation.If his memoir Saga Boy is a personal story grappling with the effects of colonialism on his psychology, his first full-length novel, Black Cherokee, is a story constructed to show the ways that everyone is living underneath unseen layers of history that they don’t understand.The story follows Ophelia Blue Rivers, whose Black grandmother married the Cherokee Chief Trouthands, through four slices of time from 1993 to 2005. The book begins with Grandma Blue raising her on the Cherokee reservation while the disbanded tribe figures out how to handle a cattle farm that’s polluting the river. When she’s shipped off to live with her aunt in the nearby town, Ophelia has to integrate herself into typical southern society and finding temporary fellowship in a Baptist church. As she enters high school, she again has to assimilate, this time into affluent white society.This episode is scored with the John Orpheus song, “Fela Awoke (I Will Miss You).”

Joanna Walsh on Collective Internet Aesthetics 04.02.2026 55min

Multidisciplinary writer Joanna Walsh sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters. When Joanna first started writing, lacking IRL community and instruction, she turned early Twitter to find likeminded others to share work with. It wasn’t until after she’d been working as an artist that the schooling aspect came into play, getting her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship at Maynooth University.Joanna also founded and ran two activist campaigns on Twitter—@read_women, a movement dedicated to equal treatment for women writers, and @no_entryarts to reshape ideas about age in the arts—and wrote twelve fiction and nonfiction books, including two co-written with self-coded AI.In this conversation, the two discuss aesthetics through history, funding structures for the arts, and how policy affects access to who’s able to practice art.

Pia Leichter's Pivot to the Creative Club 15.01.2026 58min

Pia Leichter, founder of Kollektiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club, talks with TW creative director John Vogel about her experience transitioning from the advertising world to the artistic path. A big shift happened in her life about ten years ago, and Pia delves into some very personal details about the events that brought about that shift. As she said in our conversation: “I wasn’t expecting to share such vulnerable stories at all. I mean, I shared stuff some of my closest friends didn’t even know about me.”The two discuss Pia’s experience with self-promoting her book, the role of the brain’s default mode network in the creative act, and the presence of the cosmos in all people. Also included in the episode are three tracks from her collaborative spoken word album Famished with electronic composer Tyler Bodkins. All the music in the episode came from that album.

Molly Gaudry Experiments With Personal Storytelling 17.12.2025 46min

In today’s episode author Molly Gaudry sits down with TW founder and publisher Martha Nichols. Molly holds degrees in fiction, poetry, and experimental prose, and her new book that just came out last week is aptly titled Fit Into Me: A Novel, A Memoir. The book weaves a fictional narrative into Molly’s own story along with fragments from a wide range of other authors in an effort to create a sense of self via the combination of different elements. With this format Molly explores her experience as a Korean adoptee raised in the US, meeting her birth family as a teenager, and recovering from a brain injury as an adult.In this TW conversation, Fit Into Me provides a jumping-off point for big questions about self-creation and the holes in memory that writers inevitably confront when telling their own stories. Martha and Molly discuss how she blended its nonfiction sections with the fictional story of a character (the “tea-house woman”) taken from her two previous works, We Take Me Apart (Ampersand, 2009), which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award; and Desire: A Haunting (Ampersand, 2018).

Nic Brown: Making Peace with his Musical Past 03.12.2025 49min

In this week's episode, TW Creative Director John Vogel sits down with drummer and author Nic Brown to talk about his memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023).Despite being accepted to Ivy League colleges, Nic opted to pursue his band Athenaeum straight out of high school. They signed to Atlantic Records, landed a few hits, and played extensively before Nic decided to leave to group in 2001 to pursue different styles of music and reclaim his opportunity to go to college.While attending Columbia University, he joined up with the band Skeleton Key, headed by bass player Erik Sanko, who played in John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. Nic also played in several other bands, including Falcon! and Longwave. This episode is scored with that first Falcon! album, The Early Year.Nic then left NYC for the Iowa's Writer's Workshop, sending him down the writing and teaching path that he's followed over the last almost 20 years.

Victor Manibo on Touching the Work Regularly 17.11.2025 1u 3min

Victor Manibo, a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, sits down with TW Community Manager Neva Talladen to discuss the drafting process for his 2022 science fiction novel, The Sleepless. Manibo and Talladen connect over their shared Filipino heritage and roots in New York, as they explore the rise of “hustle culture.” The Sleepless portrays a society where sleep is no longer necessary or even desired. Instead, young professionals like Jamie, the story’s main character and an aspiring journalist, spend endless hours working, driven by an insatiable pursuit of career advancement.

Tom McAllister on Writing Education and Community 29.10.2025 56min

TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Tom McAllister about his new essay collection It All Felt Impossible (Rose Metal Press, 2025). For the book, Tom challenged himself to write an essay a day that corresponded to each year of his life, keeping within a 1500 word limit. The result is a kind of mosaic memoir through snapshots across time with some tangential thoughts instigated by the memories.This is Tom’s fourth published book, his first being the 2010 memoir Bury Me in My Jersey about his late father and their shared love of the Philadelphia Eagles. His other two books are the acclaimed novels How to Be Safe and The Young Widower’s Handbook, which have both been noted for their mix of darkness and humor.In their conversation, Tom talks about the experiences of teaching and being a student, expectations along the artistic path, and the community that art can create.

Andrew Boryga on Identity Politics in Publishing 15.10.2025 47min

TW Creative Director John Vogel talks with Andrew Boryga, author of the satirical novel Victim. The two talk about the autobiographic backdrop to the novel, balancing creative time with parenthood, and the addictive and distancing natures of social media.

Sasha Wizansky's Juggling Act 01.10.2025 42min

TW Community Manager Neva Talladen talks with visual artist and graphic designer Sasha Wizansky about her experience starting Pencil Magazine. The magazine, created entirely out of work made with pencil and paper, brings attention to the physicality of writing and drawing with pencil, as well as the slowing down that writing and reading handwriting can cause.

Athena Dixon's Highs and Lows of Writing 24.06.2025 1u 5min

In our last episode of the season, TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Athena Dixon, our first repeat guest for the podcast. A year and a half ago we released Neva’s interview with Athena, which focused on her book The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023). This time around, in January 2025, John asked her questions from his Perfect Recognition project focusing on intense aesthetic experiences and people’s life paths towards creativity. Fellow artists might find some resonance and solace in their open discussion about their own disillusionment surrounding artistic pursuit and how their lived experiences deviate from the more common narratives handed down to us.

Steve Hoffman and the Art of Authentic Traveling and Writing 04.06.2025 35min

TW proofreader Jess Barnett hosts award-winning Minnesotan food writer, Steve Hoffman, for a conversation about the unique joys and challenges of travel. Hoffman, a lover of French cuisine and culture, discusses traveling to the picturesque south of France, not as a tourist, skimming the surface of trending destinations, but as a humble guest, ready to immerse himself and his family in the cultural and culinary experience. In his recently published memoir, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France, Hoffman dishes out a humorous and layered perspective on marriage, parenting, and cooking in the small town of Autignac. Hoffman is a self-described Francophile and lifelong lover of literature. Like many aspiring writers, he relied on other industries for financial stability, working first in real estate before transitioning to tax preparation. Hoffman’s food writing career was launched during his family's extended stay in France in 2012. Upon returning, he wrote for the Minnesota Star Tribune about his experience abroad. His 2018 piece, “What is Northern Food?” earned Hoffman the James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award and propelled his career as a food writer. Hoffman describes his writing process as a decade-long reflection on “learning how to write a book, while writing one.” Stemming from journal entries during his time in France, he fashioned his writing after inspirational authors like John Updike and Jane Austen. Beyond a vivid depiction of the rural country and aromatic apprenticeship as a winemaker, he offers readers sincere vulnerability. Hoffman explores his imperfections and growth through professional coaching, caring but unvarnished feedback from his wife, and finding the balance in his writing between travel log and storytelling.Steve Hoffman continues to draw inspiration from shared experiences with his family. Following a recent house fire (thankfully no one was injured), Hoffman’s potential second book will focus on this unfortunate event as a “clarifying devastation.” As someone who closely links identity to physical place and space, he reflects on the skillful art of a simplistic lifestyle and carrying on the “minimal number of things you need to live graciously.”

Reimagining David and Bathsheba with Jeanne Blasberg 15.05.2025 36min

TW Podcast Production Manager Sarah Tulloch interviewed author Jeanne Blasberg this past September. Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. The two discuss her latest book, Daughter of a Promise, a modern retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba, completing the thematic trilogy she began with Eden and The Nine.

Mary Carroll Moore: Finding Connection Through Fiction 23.04.2025 48min

TW Creative Director John Vogel interviewed author Mary Carroll Moore this past November. Mary pursued a decades-long career as a food and cookbook writer before pivoting into writing instruction and self-releasing Your Book Starts Here in 2011. The two discuss her latest book, Last Bets, and her lifelong career as a creative with multiple mediums.

Nadia Pupa on the Publishing Process from Start to Finish 09.04.2025 56min

TW’s Community Manager Neva Talladen talks to the CEO and Co-Founder of Pique Publishing. In 2022, she was inspired to launch The Editor's Half Hour podcast—a monthly podcast that focuses on the craft of editing, industry trends, and editorial resources for advanced editors. The two discuss Nadia’s move from book coaching to starting her own publishing company, where she and her team help authors take advantage of the best book production practices.

Laura Hartenberger: What's Wrong with Chatbot Writing? 13.02.2025 44min

Last May, TW founder Martha Nichols spoke with Laura Hartenberger, author of the definitive 2023 essay “What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing” in Noema. Laura, who’s a lecturer in the Writing Programs at University of California at Los Angeles, is an essayist and fiction writer herself. When she spoke with Martha, they were both finishing up a turbulent spring semester that included protests for and against Israel at UCLA and Harvard. Here they confront big ethical questions surrounding AI and writing instruction. Are bots helpful tools for students or just another way of cheating? How and when should such tools be part of writing assignments? What qualities of voice and meaningful exposition are missing from chatbot writing? Can AI-generated work emotionally move readers?