Bestselling author and award-winning podcaster Barbara DeMarco-Barrett spoke with me about producing 20+ years of Writers on Writing, why writers don’t retire, and her debut noir short story collection POOL FISHING.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s first book Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, was an Los Angeles Times bestseller and honored with an American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Book Award.

Her latest book of short stories, Pool Fishing, is “... centered around deviant women …. in a world with characters who live on the fringes of society-physically, psychologically, or financially”.

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is creator, executive producer, and host of the award-winning podcast, Writers on Writing, where she interviews authors, agents, and poets. She taught at the UC-Irvine Extension, where she received a Distinguished Instructors award, and is professor of creative writing at Saddleback College’s Emeritus Institute and lecturer at Chapman University.

Her fiction and poetry have been published in Coolest American Stories 2022, CrimeReads, Dark City Crime & Magazine, Serial Magazine, Beach Reads, among others. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Rowboat,” in Kelp Journal (Dec. 2023).

Her essays and articles have also been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Orange Coast Magazine, Westways, The Los Angeles Times, Writer’s Digest, and Poets & Writers and many others.