Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. He also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years. He’s been on the show three times in the past. Those interviews can be found in our archives.

The River is Waiting is his first novel in nine years. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. It’s the first time Wally has put York Correctional Institution into his fiction. And he puts other parts of himself into this novel, as well.

He talks about rendering real life experiences into fiction, how to weave politics and current events into your prose, making unsympathetic characters sympathetic to your reader, what writing in the present tense does to your prose, what Wally may have learned about writing and life from the inmates he’s worked with, a little about the writing group he’s been part of for 20 years, 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 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 on April 28, 2025)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

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