Writers, Ink: Your backstage pass to the world's most prolific authors

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including controlled digital lending, The 'Wall Street Journal' dropping its bestseller lists, a Kindle Vella contest, and TikTok lifting Kindle sales. Then, stick around for a chat with Kelsea Yu! Kelsea Yu is a Taiwanese Chinese American writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children. Whether through a speculative or real-world lens, her writing explores diaspora identity, twists on folklore, complicated interpersonal relationships, and characters who make unconventional choices. Kelsea’s novella, Bound Feet (Cemetery Gates Media), is nominated for a 2022 Shirley Jackson Award. Her debut novel, It’s Only a Game, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Children’s in 2024, and her next novella, Demon Song, is forthcoming from Titan Books in 2025. She has stories and essays published in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Apex, PseudoPod, and Fantasy, and in various anthologies. Her nonfiction has been published in Nightmare, Sarah Gailey’s Personal Canons Cookbook, and elsewhere. Kelsea is an active member of SFWA and HWA, as well as a first reader for the Ignyte Award-winning and twice Hugo Award-nominated magazine, khōréō. Find her on Instagram or Twitter @anovelescape. She is represented by Jennifer Azantian of Azantian Literary Agency.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including how an agent was fired over Twitter posts, some actual Amazon book sales data, Shopify adding sellers to its third-party marketplace, and how ElevenLabs just launched its iOS app. Then, stick around for a chat with Snowden Wright! Snowden Wright is the author of the novel American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month, selection for Barnes & Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” program, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and NPR Favorite Book of the Year. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Wright was the Visiting Writer and Prose Faculty at the 2021 Longleaf Writers Conference, and his debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, won the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars’ Graywolf Prize. Recipient of the Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship from the Carson McCullers Center, he has attended writing residencies at Yaddo, Escape to Create, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tusen Takk, Monson Arts, and the Hambidge Center. Wright lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi. His third novel, The Queen City Detective Agency, is forthcoming from HarperCollins in August 2024.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including Barnes & Noble purchasing Tattered Cover, how you can read classics with A.I. guides, Saturday Books' new launch, and how authors seek help to plug their own books. Then, stick around for a chat with Ace Atkins! Ace Atkins is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author who started his writing career as a crime beat reporter in Florida. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is his thirtieth novel. His previous novels include eleven books in the Quinn Colson series and multiple true-crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. In 2010, he was chosen by Robert B. Parker’s family to continue the iconic Spenser series, adding ten novels to the franchise. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including The New List, Little and Brown hitting layoffs, and how English-Language books are filling Europe’s bookstores. Then, stick around for a chat with Kimberly Belle! Kimberly Belle is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author with over one million copies sold worldwide, with titles including The Paris Widow, The Marriage Lie, a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and the co-authored #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows. Kimberly’s novels have been optioned for film and television and selected by LibraryReads and Amazon & Apple Books Editors as Best Books of the Month, and the International Thriller Writers as nominee for best book of the year. She divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Dick Wybrow as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including the Romance Writers of America filing for bankruptcy, Polis Books, and how Costco plans to stop selling books year round. Then, stick around for a chat with Carol LaHines! Carol LaHines: For me, the most affecting stories are those that are leavened with a sardonic sensibility.  Italo Calvino, one of my favorite writers, notes “th[e] particular connection between melancholy and humor,” speaking of how great writing “foregrounds [with] tiny, luminous traces that counterpoint the dark catastrophe.”  I've always veered toward the great literary comic writers—from Cervantes to Laurence Sterne to Pynchon, with a particular reverence for Nabokov, who believed that the best writing places the reader under a spell. My debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. My second novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway, is forthcoming in 2024 (Regal House). My fiction has appeared in journals including Fence, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Nebraska Review, North Atlantic Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte. My story, “Papijack,” was selected by judge Patrick Ryan as the recipient of the Lamar York Prize for Fiction. My short stories and novellas have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been finalists for the David Meyerson Fiction Prize, the Mary McCarthy Prize, the New Letters short story award, and the Disquiet Literary Prize, among others. My nonfiction includes “New York est une ville a part,” appearing in chantier d’ecriture (Mémoire d’encrier, A. Heminway, ed.). I am a graduate of New York University, Gallatin Division, and of St. John's University School of Law. My teachers include Rick Moody, Phil Schultz, and Sheila Kohler.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Jena Brown, and Kevin Tumlinson as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including the Amazon Audible Audiobook Antitrust, Microsoft’s AI deal with UAE, the 2024 U.S. Book Show, and Beventi. Then, stick around for a chat with Ellery Lloyd! Ellery Lloyd – Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos Collette Lyons is a journalist and editor, the former content director of Elle (UK) and editorial director at Soho House. She has written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.  Paul Vlitos is the author of two previous novels, Welcome to the Working Week and Every Day is Like Sunday. He is the program director for English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of Surrey.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including Penguin Random House dismissing two of its top publishers, why Scarlett Johansson is angered over a new ChatGPT voice, and A24 striking a deal with publishing house Mack. Then, stick around for a chat with author Michael Jamin! Michael Jamin has been writing for television since 1996. His many credits include Just Shoot Me, King of the Hill, Beavis & Butthead, Wilfred, Out of Practice, Rules of Engagement, Lopez and Tacoma FD. He’s also served as Executive Producer/Showrunner on Glenn Martin DDS, Maron, and Rhett & Link’s Buddy System. Michael currently lives in Los Angeles where he continues to work in TV and is the author of the forthcoming collection, A Paper Orchestra.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Jena Brown, and Kevin Tumlinson as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including Laureate Alice Munro, the DOJ’s suit to block Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster, how OpenAI destroyed a trove of books used to train AI models, and GPT-4o. Then, stick around for a chat with author Kate White! Kate White is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of eighteen novels of suspense: ten standalone psychological thrillers, including the upcoming The Last Time She Saw Him (May ’24), and also eight Bailey Weggins mysteries. For fourteen years Kate served as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, which under her became the most successful magazine in single copy sales in the U.S. Though she loved her magazine career, she decided to leave ten years ago to concentrate full-time on another passion: writing suspense fiction. Kate’s first mystery, If Looks Could Kill, was a Kelly Ripa Book Club pick, a #1 bestseller on Amazon, and an instant New York Times bestseller. She has been nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award in the fiction category, and her books have been published in over 30 countries worldwide. Like many female mystery authors, Kate fell in love with the genre after reading her first Nancy Drew book, in her case The Secret of Redgate Farm. Kate is a frequent speaker at libraries, book conferences, and organizations, and has appeared on many television shows, including The Today Show, CBS This Morning, Morning Joe, and Good Morning America. She is also the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, as well as the author of several bestselling career books, including I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This and the ground-breaking Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do. Kate is an avid traveler and enjoys spending each winter with her husband at their home in Uruguay. She holds an honorary doctorate of letters from her alma mater, Union College, where she gave the 2022 commencement speech.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Jena Brown, Kevin Tumlinson, and Dick Wybrow as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including Simon & Schuster acquiring Holland’s VBK, KDP Virtual Voice Beta's Audible titles, and how a billionaire who helped bring ‘3-Body Problem’ to Netflix was killed by his business partner. Then, stick around for a chat with author KimBoo York! KimBoo York: I’m K.C. York and I enjoy telling stories, but otherwise I’m pretty trustworthy. I used to be the kid who stayed up late at night reading books under the covers with a flashlight…and honestly not a lot has changed. I’m a professional author who enjoys encouraging other writers to Write The Thing, and yes, I have a long standing love affair with fanfiction for which I will never apologize! I’m over 50 years old and proud that I made it this far. 

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Jena Brown and Kevin Tumlinson as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including the world’s first book with a ‘NO-AI’ warranty, how you can clone your voice for audio production, and the prison book program. Then, stick around for a chat with author Sarina Bowen! Sarina Bowen is a 24-time USA Today bestselling author, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary romance novels. Formerly a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Sarina holds a BA in economics from Yale University. A New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country in the 1760s, Sarina is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. She lives with her family on a few wooded acres in New Hampshire. Sarina's books are published in over a dozen languages with fifteen international publishers.