On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Lucas Mann interviews Jill Talbot.

Lucas Mann is the author of three books, Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in Middle of Everywhere. His fourth book, Attachments: Essays On Fatherhood and Other Performances is forthcoming around the spring of 2024. He is also the new co-owner Riffraff Bookstore and Bar in Providence, RI.

Jill Talbot is the author of The Last Year: Essays. She’s also the author of The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir and Loaded: Women and Addiction, the co-editor of The Art of Friction: Where (Non)Fictions Come Together, and the editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction. Her craft book, The Essay Form(s), will be published in 2024.

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PART ONE, topics include:

-- the longstanding conversation between Jill and Lucas

-- the old writing table and a new writing table

-- writing and teaching as the same project

-- being the daughter of a football coach and granddaughter of a minister

-- cheerleading as early identity and coming to non-fiction

-- Jill's first book, LOADED

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PART TWO, topics include:

-- the process of writing THE WAY THEY WEREN'T

-- turning the Paris Review Daily column THE LAST YEAR into a book

-- writing from the precipice

-- the challenge of writing about parenthood

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PART THREE, topics include:

-- navigating the intention of writing about a child

-- writing habits changing after her child leaving the house

-- the pandemic happening during the writing of the original column

-- stories that are and aren't yours to tell

-- life after the end of THE LAST YEAR

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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.

Don't forget to check out Autofocus Books.

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