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Scott Turow, author of PRESUMED GUILTY
Scott Turow is a writer and former practicing lawyer and the author of 13 bestselling works of fiction, including Presumed Innocent. Scott has also published two nonfiction books, including One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into movies and television projects. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and the Atlantic. His most recent novel is Presumed Guilty. Scott joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his path to writing fiction, loving literary fiction and also loving plot, writing in the first person present tense, writing outside your culture and race, the importance of setting, and his revision process. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on March 18, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
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Charlotte McConaghy, author of WILD DARK SHORE
Charlotte McConaghy is an Australian author living in Sydney with her partner and two children. She has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a number of published SFF works in Australia. Her novel Migrations was her first foray into adult literary fiction, published in North America by Flatiron Books, and by Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK. It is being translated into over 25 languages and adapted to film. Once There Were Wolves, the New York Times Bestseller, is a romantic mystery about a biologist charged with reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the landscape and bring a forest back to life. Wild Dark Shore, the focus of today’s show, continues her love of romantic thrillers set in beautiful, remote places, and explores not only what it takes to raise children in a collapsing world, but the impossible choices we make to protect those we love. Charlotte joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about whether she comes up with the story first or the setting, what her research entails, why she chose multiple point of view narrators for Wild Dark Shore, how she knows when a novel is finished, revision, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You’ll help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on February 14, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
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Eowyn Ivey, author of BLACK WOODS, BLUE SKY
Eowyn Ivey was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for her debut novel, The Snow Child. Her latest, Black Woods, Blue Sky, offers a dark fairytale, a love story of a different kind, and depicts a mother-daughter relationship like none we’ve read before. Ivey joins Marrie Stone to talk about the backstories behind the novel. They also chat about writing different points of view, including writing from a 6-year-old perspective, setting up the rules of magical realism, and making landscape a character in your novel. They explore how time and linearity aren’t the same thing as structure in a novel, and writing a novel that exists outside of time. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. Help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on March 4, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
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Adam Ross, author of PLAYWORLD
Adam Ross is the author of Mr. Peanut, selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He’s been a fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin and a Hodder Fellow for Fiction at Princeton University. He is editor of The Sewanee Review. Born and raised in New York City, he now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his two daughters. His new novel is PLAYWORLD. On the show, Adam joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about how the idea for PLAYWORLD became a book, why it took ten years to write, how being an actor influenced his writing, why he named his protagoinist Griffin Hurt, writing voiceover scenes, bringing his experiences as a kid into the story, his revision process, journaling, and so much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. Help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on February 21, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
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Laila Lalami, author of THE DREAM HOTEL
Laila Lalami’s fifth novel, The Dream Hotel, is a dystopian story for our time. Set in Los Angeles in the near-distant future, the novel follows Sara –– a museum archivist and mother — who just landed at LAX from London and is retained by the Risk Assessment Administration for a crime they believe she might commit based on data and algorithms the government uses to track its citizens through their dreams. Lalami, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, has been hailed a “maestra of literary fiction” by NPR. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about writing dystopian fiction during a time when reality might be moving faster than fantasy. She discusses her research process, her tendency to begin her novels in the middle and write to the outsides, how she trained to become a novelist by dissecting fiction, and much more. Along the way, Lalami references Jane Smiley’s article on revision, which can be found here. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds upon hundreds of past interviews on our website. If you'd like to support the show and indie bookstores, consider buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on February 20, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
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