QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life

Gloria L. Huang is a freelance writer whose fiction has appeared in literary journals including Michigan Quarterly Review, The Threepenny Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Witness Magazine, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Southern Humanities Review, Fiction Magazine, North American Review, Arts & Letters, Washington Square Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Sycamore Review, and The Antigonish Review. Her debut novel, KAYA OF THE OCEAN has been selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce selection, and Indie Next selection. It is just out from Penguin Random House. Listen in to this episode of The Qwerty Podcast, as she and host Marion Roach Smith discuss the art and work of being a contemporary freelance writer. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars and instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Today my guest is author Nicole Graev Lipson, whose work has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Millions, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, nominated for a National Magazine Award, and selected for The Best American Essays anthology. She is the author of the just-out memoir in essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, published by Chronicle Books. Listen in as we talk about the fine art of the persoanl essay, writing essays and how to write a book-length collcetion of them. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars and instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

The author Brooke Randel has just published a memoir titled Also Here: Love, Literacy and the Legacy of the Holocaust, in which she explores the third generations's efforts to understand the Holocaust. In Also Here, she captures one woman's harrowing survival and another's struggle to excavate the story from her grandmother's fading memories so we can continue to explore this global horror. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars and instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

In the summer of 1964, the FBI found the smoldering remains of the station wagon that James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman had been driving before their disappearance. Shortly after this awful discovery, Julie Kabat’s beloved brother Luke arrived as a volunteer for the Mississippi Summer Project. He was one of more than seven hundred volunteers from the North who assisted Black civil rights activists and clergy to challenge white supremacy in the nation’s most segregated state. From his tale, author Julie Kabat has creatad a brillaint new memoir, Love Letter from Pig, My Brother's Story From Freedom Summer, an in-depth look at the life of a history maker, a change agent, and blazing star. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Today my guest is writer, author and actor, Amy Wilson. She is the author of the memoir, When Did I Get Like This?: The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I'd Never Be, as well as the co-host of the popular parenting podcast WHAT FRESH HELL: LAUGHING IN THE FACE OF MOTHERHOOD. The author of the MOTHER LOAD, a one-woman show which toured to 16 cities after its hit off-Broadway run, she has appeared as an actor on Broadway and as a series regular on TV sitcoms. Her new book is Happy to Help, Adventures of A People Pleaser, just out from Zibby Books. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Anita Felicelli's short stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Midnight Breakfast, Air/Light, The Normal School, and elsewhere. She has contributed essays and criticism to the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Slate, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Times Modern Love column, among other places. Her short stories and poems have been anthologized and in 2023, one of her short stories was performed as part of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts. Her books include Chimerica: A Novel, the award-winning Love Songs for a Lost Continent and her new short story collection, How We Know Our Time Travelers, published by WTAW Press. Listen in as we discuss the benefit as a writer to being able to write across forms. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Sarah LaBrie is a TV writer, librettist and memoirist whose new memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart, is just out from Harper Collins. Listen in as host Marion Roach Smith asks the author about the vulnerability needed to write memoir, how to find the language for defining ourselves and writing about family mental illness. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Liz Morrow, a seasoned ghostwriter and co-author of "Hungry Authors," shares her insights on what it takes to succeed as a writer. She discusses the vital role of 'hunger' in the writing journey, emphasizing determination over traditional skills. Morrow highlights the process of finding a compelling book idea and the nuances of blending genres. She also stresses the importance of understanding your audience and crafting flexible proposals. Finally, she delves into self-care and endurance as essential components for sustaining motivation in writing.

Comics artist and writer, Teresa Wong is the author of the 2019 graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression, a finalist for The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2020. Her comics have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Her new book, All Our Ordinary Stories, is just out from Arsenal Pulp Press. Listen in as she and I discuss the intimacy that the graphic memoir allows. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars and instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

Sarah Sherbill's memoir, There was Night and There was Morning: A Memoir of Trauma and Redemption, is just out from Union Sq. and Co., and chronicles a road to redemption after her father, a beloved rabbi in an Orthodox Chicago community is also a man who abuses his family. In Sarah's role in the family, she is the secret keeper, until a secret so grave is revealed that creates the demand to write it all down. Her work, including a remarkable full-page opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times, explores redemption and it complexities. Listen in as author Sarah Sherbill and Qwerty podcast host, Marion Roach Smith, discuss writing memoir, how to wite into redemption and how to look at one family story and turn it into essays, a book and opinion pieces. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars and instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.