Hannah Sward, author of STRIP

04/01/24 • 68 min

Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the award-winning author of Strip, her debut memoir. Hannah has appeared on NBC CA Live, C-SPAN BookTV, dozens of podcasts, and panels, and has published essays in the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost (forthcoming), Arts & Letters, and more. Hannah lives in Los Angeles where she is working on her next book.

Hannah joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about voice, what to do about family members concerned with what you’re writing, or have written, writing short chapters, tools, getting personal, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 15, 2024)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

(Recorded on March 15, 2024)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Previous Episode

Katherine Heiny, author of “Games and Rituals”

Katherine Heiny has traveled one of the more interesting roads into publishing we’ve heard in a while. She was published by The New Yorker at the incredible age of 25. Praised as a prodigy, her work appeared in an anthology alongside Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. And then she disappeared.

She popped back up two decades later when she published her first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow – followed by two novels, Early Morning Riser and Standard Deviation, and now she’s back with another story collection. In those intervening years, she married a former spy, wrote 25 young adult books under a pen name, and emerged the hilarious and gut-punching writer she is today.

Games & Rituals came out last year. Katherine joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, what writing YA brought to her fiction, the situation versus the story and finding the aboutness of your story, what the short story form allows her to do that the novel does not, how to weave backstory into your short stories, fictionalizing real life events, Katherine’s thoughts about publishing and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 20, 2024)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Next Episode

Steve Almond, author of “Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow”

Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. You can check those out here.

His recent books include the novel All the Secrets of the World, which has been optioned for television by 20th Century Fox, and William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life.

For four years, Steve hosted the New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. He is the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant in fiction, and his short stories have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. He also publishes crazy, DIY books.

His latest is Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories. He joins Marrie Stone to talk about it, including what this book adds to the conversation of craft. Steve also shares several of the books he’s found useful in his own creative endeavors including A Burning by Megha Majumdar, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey.

They talk about why childhood experiences consistently provide writers their material, and how to recognize when you’re being authentically true to your story versus performing for your audience. They also discuss elements of plot, character, managing time in fiction, writers block, and more.

(Recorded on April 1, 2024)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)