How Critically Acclaimed Author Tracy O'Neill Writes

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

06/28/24 • 36 min

Critically acclaimed author, Tracy O'Neill, spoke with me about reality hunger vs. the hyper-realness of the pandemic, writing a love letter to friendship, and searching for her birth mother in her noir-adjacent memoir WOMAN OF INTEREST.

Tracy O'Neill is a National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honoree, and the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020.

Her first book of nonfiction is the memoir WOMAN OF INTEREST (HarperOne; on-sale: 6/25/24) described by The Millions as “an intimate memoir written with the narrative propulsion of a detective novel” in their list of Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2024.

In a Starred Review Publishers Weekly, called it “...riveting... cool, noir-tinted prose shot through with wit and compassion, O’Neill presents her inquiry as a sort of metaphysical detective story. Readers will be riveted.”

Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, and BOMB, among other publications. She teaches at Vassar College and holds an MFA from the City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University.

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In this file Tracy O'Neill and I discussed:

COVID as a catalyst for life change

Why real life doesn’t adhere to any genre

Meditations on language and storytelling

How her process has evolved from fiction to non-fiction

And a lot more!

Show Notes:

tracyoneill.net

Woman of Interest: A Memoir By Tracy O'Neill (Amazon)

Tracy O'Neill Amazon Author Page