Writers on Writing: A Weekly Podcast for Writers, Readers, & Book Lovers

Annie Hartnett is the award-winning author of three novels: Rabbit Cake, Unlikely Animals, and the national bestseller The Road to Tender Hearts, which won the 2025 New England Book Award for fiction and was named a best book of 2025 from NPR, LitHub, and Southern Living. It’s now out and available in paperback, published by Ballentine. Along with the writer Tessa Fontaine, Annie co-runs Accountability Workshops for writers, helping writers commit to routines and embrace the long, slow, joyful, terrible process of doing the work. The Road to Tender Hearts gives us writers a lot to talk about. Structuring a novel around a road trip and how to weave in backstory while maintaining forward momentum. Writing heavy topics like death, addiction, grief, and abandonment with humor. Annie’s approach to third-person multiple points of view, tackling a range of viewpoints, and so much more. We also talked about her ambivalent relationship with Scrivener, how she uses spreadsheets, working with mind maps, and the importance of accountability for writers. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded June 2, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Tom Perrotta’s eleven works of fiction include Election and Little Children, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning HBO series. He’s now been on the podcast five times with Marrie. First in 2007 with The Abstinence Teacher, again in 2011 for The Leftovers, Mrs. Fletcher in 2017, and Tracy Flick Can’t Win in 2022. We return to familiar New Jersey territory in Ghost Town, a place reminiscent of where Tom grew up, which gives him a chance to talk again about writers’ obsessions with childhood homes. He also talks about writing about race and American politics in fiction, as well as what seemingly simple and straight-forward writing can do for your story, and how he tackled point of view. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded May 22, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Ada Limón is likely best known for her role as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her signature project, "You Are Here," focused on connecting poetry with the natural world, including installations in seven National Parks. She also wrote "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," which was engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft which launched in 2024 to explore Jupiter’s icy moon. Ada is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Startlement, The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, The National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim and was named a 2024 Time Woman of the Year. Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, is the speech she delivered when she left her post as Poet Laureate last year. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about her work as Poet Laureate and how she used her platform to talk back against this political moment. She discusses her job as a creative and her job as an advocate and gives us a glimpse behind her process. She also reads and discusses her poem, “The Endlessness,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 2023. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded May 12, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jayne Anne Phillips has been on the podcast at least three times. First in 2000, with her novel MotherKind. Again in 2014 with Quiet Dell, and the last time in 2023 with Night Watch, before it was announced as the Pulitzer Prize winner. Raymond Carver pronounced her first story collection Black Tickets “stories unlike any in our literature…a crooked beauty” and established Jayne Anne as a writer “in love with the American language.” She published that collection in 1979 when she was only 26. She was praised by Nadine Gordimer as “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty” and Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre. She’s also the author of Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, Lark and Termite, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2009. Her latest memoir-in-essays, Small Town Girls, is comprised of 22 pieces tackling everything from the profoundly personal to the historical and sociological. We learn the backstory behind the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys and the long and complicated history of West Virginia. We learn about Jayne Anne’s close relationship with her mother, her experiences with religion, abortion, a mass shooting, and — most important for today’s discussion — her lifelong relationship with writing. There are essays about other writers, essays reflecting on the difficulty and necessity of writing, and what this practice has given Jayne Anne, and us, for her entire career. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about all of it. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded April 13, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Louise Erdrich in one of those relatively rare authors who has won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She’s authored 19 novels as well as story collections, poetry collections, children’s books and nonfiction. Her first novel, Love Medicine, was the only debut ever to with the National Book Critic Circle Award for Fiction. The Round House won the National Book Award in 2012. The Night Watchman won the Pulitzer in 2021. Her latest story collection is Python’s Kiss. It contains 13 stories, two of which already appear in this year’s The Best American Short Stories and The O’Henry Prize Winners Best Short Stories. Five of them were in The New Yorker. They’re historical fiction, science fiction, ghost stories, love stories. And they’re accompanied by gorgeous artwork from Louise’s daughter — Aza— that only adds to the depth of these stories. Louise joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, including playing with points of view, world building, landing the ending, the creation of effective lists, titles, how animals can work in fiction, managing time in a short story, 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded April 6, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Anne Enright has written eight novels, most recently The Wren, The Wren, for which she was on the show in 2023. She won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. Her latest collection of essays is Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World. These 24 essays cover a lot of ground, but one big theme is how Anne reads other writers, and specifically how she reads them today in contrast to how she’s read them before. There are familiar names like Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Edna O’ Brien, Samuel Beckett, and Alice Munroe. But some obscure writers, as well. Anne joins Marrie Stone to talk about reading, both for the joy of it and for the study of it, writing, attention, our waning attention spans, and how being a woman has played a role in every one of these topics. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded March 31, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Kate Schatz is the New York Times bestselling author of the "Rad Women" book series, including Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, and Rad American History A-Z, as well as "Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book" co-written with W. Kamau Bell. Her latest is Where the Girls Were. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about bringing history and culture alive in your fiction; how to introduce a big cast of characters to your reader; creating and maintaining suspense and momentum when your character is confined; using texts in your fiction that are now in the public domain, and more. They also talked about Kate’s publishing process, finding an agent, matching with the right publisher and 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded March 11, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jordy Rosenberg is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He’s the author of the 2018 novel, Confessions of the Fox, which was the NYT Editors’ Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Lambda Literary Award and a recipient of a number of other accolades. His latest, Night Night Fawn, is part novel, part autofiction, part unauthorized fictionalized memoir of a character inspired by Jordy’s mother. It tackles transgenderism, homophobia, Marxism, Zionism, all through the lens of both history and this contemporary moment we’re living through. He joins Marrie Stone to pick the book apart on the craft level, including writing from the POV of your own antagonist, capturing a strong and singular voice, using different textures (letters, movies, other novels, appendices, etc.) in fiction, using sex scenes and other scenes of various kinds of intimacy to show power dynamics, 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded February 26, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi. He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. These 12 pieces are masterclasses on managing time in short fiction, showing what dialogue can do, bringing setting to life, playing with POV (including 2nd person), and arranging a collection to read like an album. They discuss it all. 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 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded February 11, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Mark Haddon might be best known for his 2003 breakout novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But it’s only the tip of a body of work that stretches across genres and artforms. He’s the author of three other adult novels, including The Porpoise and two collections of short stories. Dogs and Monsters came out last year. He’s also written poetry and plays. Before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark wrote over a dozen children’s books. He’s also an illustrator and visual artist. Out this month is Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour, which gives us access to his amazing mind and provides one roadmap into the creative process (recognizing there are an infinite number of roads). He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his insights into the craft including using constraints to enhance creativity, why he no longer uses flowcharts to map his work, how the flow state in writing differs from visual art, how writers’ childhoods are different, and how he leaned into his writing weaknesses to produce The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He also talks about mental illness and creativity, points of view he won’t touch, 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. You can 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded February 2, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

When Ann Packer’s latest novel, Some Bright Nowhere, was chosen by Oprah for her book club last November, we saw what an impact this book was making on so many folks and their experiences with dying loved ones. The book was written in a record four months – in contrast to her novel The Dive from Clausen’s Pier which took nearly 10 years. It’s a masterclass in subtle conflict, in putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, in compressed dialogue that heightens tension, in character change, in point of view decisions. It gave us a lot to pick apart on the craft level. She joined Marrie Stone to talk about it, as well as her 2015 NYT essay Between Books. In addition to Some Bright Nowhere, Ann is the author of three other bestselling novels: The Children’s Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has been published in two collections — Mendocino and Other Stories and Swim Back to Me — and includes stories that appeared in The New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies. 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 can 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded January 13, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of nine books across several genres — novels, short story collections, autofiction, and now a craft book about writing. Her novel, The Giant’s House, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1996. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the Story Prize in 2015 and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She’s appeared in five editions of The Best American Short Stories. And she has taught fiction off and on (mostly on) since 1989 including at the University of Iowa, where she also received her MFA. She's retiring from the University of Texas in Austin this year. Ann Patchett once said that Elizabeth was the only person she allowed to read her manuscripts as she was writing them. We discuss a great interview Elizabeth and Ann did back in 2005 that can be found here. A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction is out and she joined Marrie to talk about it. Basically, if this podcast were a book, we would hope it might look something like Elizabeth’s book — full of insights, wisdoms, anecdotes, and advice on craft, but sometimes second-guessing itself, contradicting itself, and understanding that all the “rules” we hear about art are meant to be broken. It gave us endless things to talk about. 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 can 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. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded December 19, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)