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10 Minute Writer's Workshop

A peek into how great writers conjure and craft their work. From creative rituals to guilty distractions, writers reveal what it really takes to get pen to paper.

New Hampshire Public Radio

In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the “tragedy of the commons,” racial genetics, and “broken windows” theory. The Internet and computers, too. It’s a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.”

MODERATOR Erik Baker is a lecturer in the Harvard History of Science Department and the director of the senior thesis program for the History & Science concentration. He received his PhD from Harvard and his BA from Northwestern University. His book project, Make Your Own Job: The Entrepreneurial Work Ethic in Modern America, explores the role of popular psychologists and management experts in transforming beliefs about work and success in the twentieth-century United States. He also writes widely for magazines such as n+1, The Baffler, and The Drift, where he is an associate editor.
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Malcolm Harris and Erik Baker for a discussion of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World.

Pretty Big Deal with Ashley Graham – “Whitney Cummings Breaks Down Codependency”.

Join supermodel, style icon and barrier-breaking body activist Ashley Graham as she sits down with some of her brilliant, inspiring and honest friends about what makes them a Pretty Big Deal. Absolutely nothing is off limits, so get ready.

Ashley Graham sits down with the hilarious Whitney Cummings! Whitney is a comedian, actress, writer, director, producer, show-runner, author, and most recently — host of the Good For You podcast.

Her latest comedy special Can I Touch It? debuted on Netflix this summer featuring a life-sized robot clone of Cummings.

In this episode, we talk about comedy, codependency and so much more.
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Pretty Big Deal with Ashley Graham - Whitney Cummings Breaks Down Codependency

Aisha Test Episode 
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Aisha Test Episode

After more than two years and 60 episodes, the 10 Minute Writer’s Workshop is signing off to make room for new projects and podcasts. Thanks to everybody who has listened and learned from the show. 
As we dream up our next undertaking, we want to hear from you aspiring writers and literature lovers out there. What sorts of things do you do to keep yourself creatively engaged? Are there exciting writerly events happening in your community? Do you lead a book club, or a writers workshop of your own? Let us know! You can reach us several ways:
Send us a message on Facebook: @10MWW
Twitter: @10minutewriters
Or send an email to: wordofmouth@nhpr.org 
We’re not sure what the future holds (creativity takes time, after all!) but to hear about upcoming projects involving Virginia Prescott, follow her @Verginger. 
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Workshop 61: The Last Line

Some of you may know Manoush Zomorodi as host of the podcast Note to Self from WNYC. She is also, now, an author. Her book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self came out of her own experience and curiosity about the creative process and confronting digital distractions - one of the biggest challenges for writers. She asked her audience to help her figure out what it would mean to let all of that go and to learn to shut down in order to build your creative juices up. Bored and Brilliant is the result, and it begins with an extreme case of writer’s block – what Manoush refers to as “a blankness.”
Episode music by Ryan Andersen
Follow us on Twitter @10MinuteWriters and find Manoush at @manoushz and @NoteToSelf
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Workshop 60: Manoush Zomorodi

Conventional, linear narratives are not really Jennifer Egan’s thing. She's a shape-shifter of fiction – jumping through time, space, voices and forms. She's written a graphic novel, a short story composed of tweets, and, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, a kind of novel-as-concept album. Jennifer Egan takes on historical fiction in her newest novel, Manhattan Beach. We called her at her home in Brooklyn to ask about her process and how she begins her unpredictable novels.
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Workshop 59: Jennifer Egan

Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, co-creators of the phenomenally popular Welcome to Nightvale podcast, the “Nightvale Presents” series of podcasts, and New York Times bestselling co-authors of the new novel, It Devours, their second book set in the fictional world of Nightvale. We caught up with them at the 2017 Boston Book Festival. Episode Music by Disparition
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Workshop 58: Welcome to Nightvale's Jeffrey Cranor & Joseph Fink

The blockbuster 2003 thriller The Da Vinci Code launched Dan Brown into the best-selling stratosphere. More than 200 million copies of his books have sold worldwide since. Three of his novels have been made into films starring tom hanks as fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Brown is a disciplined writer, rising at 4am to a breakfast smoothie and "bulletproof" coffee, writing every day, and throwing himself into his research. He spent four years researching Origin, his latest novel, which again thrusts Langdon into a 24-hour scavenger hunt for keys, codes and symbols in spectacular European locations. The breathless action drives bigger questions about faith, conspiracies, and organized religion. The question of whether contemporary notions of god can withstand scientific scrutiny is at the heart of Origin. We caught up with him just before discussing the book at The Music Hall in Portsmouth for Writers on a New England Stage.
Music in this episode by Gregory W. Brown, used with permission by PARMA Recordings, and Podington Bear.
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Workshop 57: Dan Brown

For many writers, hitting their stride means finding their voice. Success for Sarah Hurwitz is in creating a voice for others. Sarah was candidate Hillary Clinton’s chief speechwriter during the 2006 Presidential primary, and was quickly snatched up by the Obama campaign team. She landed in the White House, soon being named First Lady Michelle Obama’s head speechwriter. We asked Sarah about her work and confirmed that she worked on that 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention that was plagiarized by then candidate Trump's wife, Melania at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
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Workshop 56: Speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz

Virginia Macgregor, author most recently of Wishbones, has a knack for capturing the voices of children and young adults and projecting her novels through their lenses, giving us young narrators with accurate levels of experience and naivety - and a perspective not often found in adult literature. Our conversation with her centered around that: how she conjures the voices of young people, insures they are three-dimensional, and navigates those voices around complicated adult situations.
Episode music by Broke for Free
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Workshop 55: Virginia Macgregor

Atul Gawande is a surgeon, professor at Harvard Medical School, and writes about medicine and ethics for the New Yorker. He’s author of several best-selling books, most recently, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. The book questions the human cost of miraculous medicine, and urges a shift from the prevailing thought that human decline and death are signs of failures to instead think about how to make old age and the experience of dying better. Despite the grave topic, Gawande views it as a book about living. We spoke to him in the greenroom at The Music Hall in Portsmouth before a Writers on a New England Stage live event.
Episode music by Uncanny Valleys.
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Workshop 54: Atul Gawande

Celeste Ng came out of the gate strong. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller and Amazon's #1 Best Book of 2014. Her latest, Little Fires Everywhere, continues her exploration of family dynamics and the effect of being included or excluded from belonging. She has said in the past that her stories begin with images, so we began by asking her where those images come from.
Episode Music by Cheetara
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Workshop 53: Celeste Ng

Louise Penny was well into her forties when she published Still Life, the first in what has become the wildly popular Armand Gamache mystery series. The novels are set in Québec, where Gamache is Chief Inspector of the provincial police force. They are meticulously plotted, part police procedurals, part exploration of human nature - and the precarious balance between good and evil. Louise Penny is now out with the thirteenth in the series, Glass Houses.
Episode Music by Dana Boulé.
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Workshop 52: Louise Penny

Howard Axelrod was a junior at Harvard when an accident left him blind in one eye. The loss left him feeling shattered and isolated, eventually leading to a two-year stint living in the solitude of the Vermont woods. His memoir from that time is called The Point of Vanishing, named one of the best books of 2015 by Slate, The Chicago Tribune, and others. 
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Workshop 51: Howard Axelrod

Alice Fogel is Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, and the author of six collections of poetry, including Interval: Poems Based on Bach's Goldberg Variations. Her most recent work is A Doubtful House. 
Episode Music by Little Glass Men
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Workshop 50: Alice Fogel

Michael Cunningham is best known as the author of The Hours, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, which imagines a fateful day in the life of Virginia Woolf and its modern parallels. Nicole Kidman won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in a film adaptation of the book. 
But he's a man of many genres - he's also co-written a screenplay, walked readers through Provincetown, Mass with a travelogue, and turned fairy tales on their heads, as he does in his recent collection of short fiction, A Wild Swan and Other Tales.
Episode Music by Blue Dot Sessions
Ad Music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 49: Michael Cunningham

This episode, we speak to Roxane Gay, author, essayist, teacher, and all around-superwoman. The author of New York Times bestsellers Bad Feminist and Difficult Women, her latest, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, is a candid and personal account of life inside her body, of weight, trauma, and self-care. We spoke to Roxane by phone from her home. Episode music by Blue Dot SessionsAd music by Uncanny Valleys 
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Workshop 48: Roxane Gay

Author, outspoken vegetarian, social media abstainer and writing teacher Jonathan Safran Foer is author of three novels: Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am, which follows four generations of a Jewish family grappling with identity, connection and disaster. His nonfiction book about factory farming, Eating Animals, was also a New York Times best-seller.

Episode music by Broke For Free
Ad music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 47: Jonathan Safran Foer

Ian Rankin is best known for two characters: Inspector John Rebus, the protagonist of now 21 mystery novels, and the city of Edinburgh, whose dark corners come alive in Rankin’s hands. Rebus made his debut in the 1987 crime novel Knots & Crosses. In Rankin’s newest novel - Rather Be the Devil - a retired Rebus returns to a case that has haunted him for decades.

Episode music by Podington Bear
Ad music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 46: Ian Rankin

Krista Tippett is probably best known as the host & creator of the public radio program On Being.  But she's also the author of three books that pull from her decades of interviews with a broad variety of thinkers and seekers, exploring the intersections between spirituality, science, and living. The most recent is called Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery & Art of Living.  We spoke to her backstage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH before a Writers on a New England Stage event.

Music: Podington Bear - "Daydreamer"
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Workshop 45: Krista Tippett

Anita Shreve had a small, but devoted following as a literary author when her second novel, The Pilot's Wife was named an Oprah Book Club pick. The recognition propelled her into a New York Times bestselling novelist. Two days after her 18th novel, The Stars Are Fire, was released, she canceled her extensive book tour, later writing on her Facebook page that she would be undergoing chemotherapy.  

This most recent novel uses wildfires that raged through coastal Maine in 1947 as the backdrop for the story of one woman’s extraordinary resilience.

Music by Tyler Gibbons
Ad Music by Uncanny Valleys

Find Anita Shreve on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anitashreve/
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Workshop 44: Anita Shreve

John Scalzi, the Hugo Award-winning author of science fiction both serious and less-so and an internet star from way, way back. He is former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, perhaps best known for his Old Man's War series, his blog “Whatever,” and his novel Redshirts, which is currently being developed for television. He joined us in the NHPR studios while on tour for The Collapsing Empire, the first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe.
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Workshop 43: John Scalzi

Tana French is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Dublin Murder Squad series. The newest, called The Trespasser, is the sixth in the best-selling, habit-forming series. "It’s taken for granted that anybody who’s read one [Tana French novel] will very shortly have read them all,” wrote Laura Miller in the New Yorker.   
 
French wrote her debut novel, In The Woods, in the long stretches between parts as a stage actress in Dublin. That theatrical training - understanding people from the inside out - may well be the edge that sets her books apart from other mysteries and police procedurals. The search for the killer becomes entangled with a search for the self, or as Miller put it, "in most crime fiction, the central mystery is who is the murderer? In French’s novels, it’s who is the detective?”

Music by Podington Bear
Ad music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 42: Tana French

Ben Winters is a little incomprehensible. Not his output, which is consistently great, but his wild imagination and range. He's a teacher, a playwright, an Edgar and Phillip K. Dick Award-winning novelist, he's written children's books, an existential detective series and landed a New York Times bestseller with the Jane Austen meets the kraken mash-up, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. 
His most recent novel, Underground Airlines, imagines an alternative American history - and present. The civil war never happened, and slavery is legal in four southern states under protection of the Constitution. Underground Airlines is an ingenious work of speculative fiction that at times seems chillingly plausible. It landed on several top ten lists in 2016...from Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan to the BBC. 
We caught up with him at the Capital Center for the Arts in Concord, NH before interviewing him and The Underground Railroad author, Colson Whitehead.

Episode music by Podington Bear
Ad music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 41: Ben H. Winters

Lindy West, columnist for The Guardian, and author of How to be a Person and Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Lindy writes about feminism, social justice, body image, pop culture and, lately, politics.
She's a funny and original thinker, and brave. She's been a contributor on several memorable episodes of This American Life - one on "coming out" as fat, another about confronting an internet troll, one of hundreds who'd harassed her online.
She's got a bunch of balls in the air - TV and movie projects, an idea for a podcast - but we honed in on the demands of being a columnist.

Episode music by Ari de Niro
Ad music by Uncanny Valleys
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Workshop 39: Lindy West

Victoria Schwab... VE Schwab... V... the author's name depends on her audience, which, like the dark worlds she builds, is a well-thought out design.

Ms. Schwab, we'll say, burst onto the scene in 2011 with The Near Witch. A dozen books later, adult, young adult and middle grade readers have followed her into supernatural worlds, sinister scenarios and richly formed fantasy worlds.

A self-described pagan, Victoria managed to survive a happy, independent childhood, with a morbid streak.  "I definitely hung my teddy bears from the stair railing, execution-style,” she told Book Page. That slightly twisted imagination has served her well, and she continues to build speculative worlds and cutthroat characters that probe the human capacity to be monstrous to each other - and to the natural world. 

Her newest novel, A Conjuring of Light, is part three and the culmination of the Shades of Magic  fantasy series.  We reached her at her home in Nashville via Skype. 
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Workshop 38: Victoria (V.E.) Schwab

Ottessa Moshfegh says she writes to explore why people do weird things. The daughter of a Croatian mother and Iranian father, she was a serious piano student who knew she didn't want to be a pianist when she felt the call to write - and not just write, but be bold.

We spoke to her before her reading at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass.

Episode Music: Kevin MacLeod, "Trio for Piano, Violin and Viola"
Credit Music: Uncanny Valleys, "Curious or Disconcerting"
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Workshop 37: Ottessa Moshfegh

Caitlin Moran is the best-selling author of How to Be a Woman, Moranthology, and columnist for the Times of London. She and her sister developed and write 'raised by wolves" --a British television series loosely based on their experience in a family of ten growing up in a tiny subsidized flat in the English midlands. She is also a mother of two, an unapologetic feminist, and really, really funny.  Caitlin Moran is now out with Moranifesto, her second collection of columns and essays. The Harvard Book Store sponsored her event at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We caught up with her before she went on stage. She was warm and playful and not at all anxious about going on stage - or writing.

Episode Music: "American Weirdos" by Hurry Up
Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay
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Workshop 36: Caitlin Moran

Jonathan Lethem is the best-selling author of Gun, with Occasional Music, Fortress of Solitude, and other novels, including the Naitonal Book Critics' Circle award-winning Motherless Brooklyn. He's known for reanimating and remixing genres - hard-boiled crime novels, post-apocalyptic science fiction, superhero comics and even technicolor westerns. His most recent novel is called A Gambler's Anatomy. It's about a high-stakes competitive backgammon player and con artist - a character who, like Lethem, was raised in the bohemian Brooklyn of the 1970s.

Episode music: "Crate Diggin" by Ari de Niro
Ad music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay
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Workshop 35: Jonathan Lethem

'In Maine, when we say something is "wicked good" – we really mean it.'

That's how LL Bean describes their Wicked Good Slippers, and how we describe Jeff Ryan, who for decades wrote Bean's catalog copy. We spoke to him about finding the story in everyday objects and the tricks of the trade when it comes to copy writing.

Jeff Ryan is also the author of Appalachian Odyssey, a memoir of hiking the Appalachian Trail, bit by bit, over 28 years.

Episode music: "Auld Lang Syne" by Podington Bear
Credit music: "Joy in the Restaurant" by David Szesztay
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Workshop 34: Catalog Writer Jeff Ryan

Irish author Emma Donoghue may be best known for Room,  her novel written in the voice of a young boy confined with his mother in a single room.  It was nominated for a Man Booker prize and made into an Oscar-winning film, for which she wrote the screenplay. Her most recent novel is The Wonder, about a "fasting girl" in 1850s Ireland.

Music: Podington Bear - "Evenhanded"
Ad Music: David Szesztay - "Joy in the Restaurant"
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Workshop 33: Emma Donoghue

Tom Gauld -- a cartoonist, illustrator of comics and covers for the New Yorker and The Believer. His weekly cartoon about the arts for The Guardian newspaper is a wry, often deadpan favorite among writers. He is extremely prolific, author of more than a dozen books of comics, including You're Just Jealous of My Jetpack and most recently Mooncop. The lunar cop is perfectly Gauldian character - doesn't say much, spends a lot of time walking the barren landscape, is pretty lonesome and quaint. Virginia met with Tom before his talk at Harvard Book Store  in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just an hour's drive from our studio. The challenge was finding a quiet spot to record in Harvard square...at rush hour.

Music: "Feeding Pigeons" - Poddington Bear
Ad Music: "Joy in the Restaurant" - David Szesztay
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Workshop 32: Tom Gauld

A National Book Award winner, Pulitzer-Prize nominee, Guggenheim fellow, and winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant, Colson Whitehead's new book, The Underground Railroad, was one of the most anticipated works of fiction this year. Virginia caught up with him backstage at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire before a reading with novelist Ben Winters hosted of Gibson’s Bookstore.
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Workshop 31: Colson Whitehead

It’s our 30th episode, this time with the phenomenally successful Jodi Picoult.
Small Great Things is her 24th novel - and the ninth straight to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. If Picoult has a "thing" it's writing about thorny ethical issues from the perspective of multiple characters...and a twisty ending!  She's written in the voice of suicidal teens, rape victims, a school shooter…but until now, never as a black character and never directly confronting race, privilege and inequity - which most people avoid talking about. We caught up with her in the green room at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before Writers on a New England Stage. 

Music: “Many Hands” by Poddington Bear
Photo: David J. Murray, cleareyephoto.com

We are proud to be sponsored by Blue Apron. To receive a free week of meals, visit http://blueapron.com/10minute
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Workshop 30: Jodi Picoult

In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer’s Workshop, singer-songwriter, musician and novelist Josh Ritter – who might say writer first, musician second. It was a song that spun into his 2011 novel Bright's Passage. Josh Ritter’s songs draw deeply from the narrative traditions of American and Scottish folk music he studied after dropping out of the neuroscience program at Oberlin. They're little stories of character and place...wild prairies, snake oil salesman, teenage lust, and adults running out of road.  Josh describes his most recent album Sermon on the Rocks as “messianic oracular honky-tonk.” We caught up with him at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, the day it was announced that Bob Dylan would be rewarded the Nobel Prize. So we focused on songwriting... let’s call this the 10-Minute Songwriter’s Workshop.

Music: Josh Ritter, "Henrietta, Indiana" (used with permission)
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Workshop 29: Josh Ritter

Legal decisions are rarely read for pleasure. And though read and re-read and excerpted and quoted, they are not always quotable. Clocking in at an average of just under 5000 words, they can sound jargony, pompous and bone-dry in the wrong hands. Today's 10-Minute Writers Workshop asks an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States about what goes into writing an opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1994 and is an exuberant advocate for participatory democracy, animated explainer of the reasoning behind decisions and author of several books. I spoke with Justice Breyer in the green room at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just before talking with him about his most recent, The Court and the World - American Law and the New Global Realities for Writers On A New England Stage.
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Workshop 28: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

The novelist, short story writer and essayist Cynthia Ozick's best known piece of writing is called The Shawl, a brutal, phantasmal story of a woman and two children marching to a Nazi concentration camp. The Holocaust and Jewish identity are recurring topics in Ozick's fiction and criticism. Growing up in the Bronx, she was called Christ-killer, and humiliated for not singing Christmas carols at school.

Now 88, her 7th volume of criticism, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, And Other Literary Essays, was published recently, in July 2016. Ozick's last public reading was 6 years ago, but, happily, we got her on the phone from her home in Westchester County, New York.

Photo: Ric Kallaher
Music: Podington Bear
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Workshop 27: Cynthia Ozick

Andre Dubus III's memoir Townie told the story of his violent childhood on the wrong side of the tracks. Writing was his way out, and he's made more than good, with multiple NYT bestsellers, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and an Oscar-nominated film adaptation (for his novel The House of Sand and Fog). And he gets out there, as a public speaker and writing instructor for graduate programs, seminars and retreats. We caught up with him at New Hampshire Writers’ Project's annual Writers’ Day.

Photo of Virginia & Andre by Karen Kenney
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Workshop 26: Andre Dubus III

Kelly Link is one of a handful of writers to manage to be wondrous, fantastical and ominous at the same time. As Kirkus says, her work is “like Kafka hosting Saturday Night Live, mixing humor with existential dread.” Her most recent collection, Get in Trouble, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.  She and her husband manage Small Beer Press.

Photo © 2014 Sharona Jacobs Photography
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Workshop 25: Kelly Link

Essayist, novelist, columnist, sportswriter and former ethicist for the New York Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman has got a wildly original voice. That makes sense for a guy who's written about glam metal bands in North Dakota, or whether you should hire a detective to trail your spouse. He's author of several best-sellers including Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and most recently But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past.
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Workshop 24: Chuck Klosterman

Anyone who's ever been an awkward adolescent knows that for decades now, dog-eared copies of Judy Blume's books have been passed around school playgrounds like secrets, or read under the covers after lights out. Her best known books - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie, Blubber, and Forever - offered young readers plain language and shame -free stories about periods, bullying, sexual urges and, even 'going all the way'.

Judy Blume finally tells her own story with In the Unlikely Event. It’s set in 1952, when three planes crashed into her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. We sat down with her in the greenroom at the Music Hall in Portsmouth before a Writers on a New England Stage live event.
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Workshop 23: Judy Blume

Donald Hall is now 87 and no longer writing poetry, a pursuit he calls "a young man's game" which takes "too much testosterone." But Hall, former Poet Laureate of both New Hampshire and the United States, long ago cemented his place in literary history. In this episode of the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop, Virginia and Sara traveled to Hall's home in Wilmot, NH, to speak to him - getting lost along the way, and, ultimately, finding themselves right at home.
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Workshop 22: Donald Hall

The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - and bonafide Charming British Lady - Helen Simonson lets us in on her writing process, her thoughts on sunshine, and the perils of HGTV. Her latest novel, set in 1914, is The Summer Before the War.
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Workshop 21: Helen Simonson

A bona fide podcasting star, Aaron Mahnke has turned his love of the darker side of history into the spooky smash hit, Lore, which he researches and authors. He's also the author of four thrillers, a veteran of self-publishing, and handy with an 80s film reference.
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Workshop 20: Aaron Mahnke of Lore

Richard Russo is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool - both were adapted into films starring Paul Newman. He returns to the fictional working class town of North Bath for his most recent novel, Everybody's Fool.

We sat down with him on the darkened stage of an eerily empty theater before an extended interview at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH.
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Workshop 19: Richard Russo

As a writer, Joe Hill's family name gave him a leg up. Instead, he chose to create his own. We sat down with the best-selling author just before his appearance at Writers on a New England Stage at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH, where he was discussing his latest thriller, The Fireman.
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Workshop 18: Joe Hill

"Kill 'em and leave" was James Brown's commandment to his band before every show...it's also the title of a biography of the soul legend, the latest by James McBride. The National Book Award winner is also a musician and composer. We sat down with him just before his appearance at the Writers in the Loft series at the Music Hall Loft in Portsmouth, NH.
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Workshop 17: James McBride

In this episode, married co-authors Kevin Flynn & Rebecca Lavoie. Together, they have written four true crime books, most recently Dark Heart: A True Story of Sex, Manipulation, and Murder. They are also two of the eponymous crime writers behind the podcast Crime Writers On...
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Workshop 16: Partners in True Crime, Kevin Flynn & Rebecca Lavoie

We are thrilled to say the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop has picked up a ton of new listeners, so, we're bringing you this bonus episode to say thank you! and welcome...we are ecstatic to have you!

On this episode, author, columnist and critic Olivia Laing. Her most recent work, The Lonely City, is part memoir, part searching exploration of loneliness and artists whose outsider experience inspired their creativity, from seeming social gadfly Andy Warhol to the reclusive Henry Darger.
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Workshop 15: Olivia Laing

Alice Dreger is a historian of science, anatomy, and medicine, known for her work studying and advocating for people born with atypical sex disorders. She famously resigned from Northwestern University in protest of academic censorship, and gained some infamy on Twitter for live-tweeting her son's sex education class.

We had a delightful chat with her about her writing process in advance of the paperback release of her book, Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science.
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Workshop 14: Anatomical Historian Alice Dreger

Alexander Chee is a careful craftsman of language. As we came to find out, when we talked to him from Argot Studios in NYC, he is as measured, unassuming and thoughtful in his speech. A retiring man, who prefers to write in transient spaces, he also just so happens to have penned the most hotly anticipated literary novel of 2016 - The Queen of the Night, a sophomore work fifteen years in the making*.

*He assures us it only took eleven or twelve.
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Workshop 13: Alexander Chee

Long-time NPR reporter and five-time author Tom Gjelten recently visited the studios here at NHPR. We, of course, couldn't resist talking to him about his latest book, A Nation of Nations, and asking him for ten minutes.
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Workshop 12: Tom Gjelten

We spoke to YouTube superstar and writer of books Grace Helbig after the publication of her second tongue-in-cheek guide, Grace & Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It. She gave us a glimpse at her writing process backstage at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH before a Writers on a New England Stage event.
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Workshop 11: Uber YouTuber, Grace Helbig

Chris Bohjalian has written some thrilling novels tackling some tough subjects - Armenian genocide, the ethics of midwifery, and, most recently, sex trafficking - but he speaks about the process of writing with humor and aplomb.
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Workshop 10: Chris Bohjalian

Marianne Williamson has written six New York Times best sellers, including The Age Of Miracles and A Return To Love. Known in some circles as Hollywood's favorite self-help guru, we just had to find out what the process for a spiritual author entails.
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Workshop 9: Spiritual Author, Marianne Williamson

Tom Perrotta is the author behind, among others, Little Children, The Abstinence Teacher, and The Leftovers, now a hit HBO drama which he co-writes. Recently, he provided the foreword to a new Penguin edition of The Scarlet Letter.

We made a date with him and settled into a corner of Harvard Book Store to ask him about his writing process.

#authors #books #writing
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Workshop 8: Tom Perrotta

Described as "David Lynch for teenagers," award-winning crime writer Megan Abbott. Her latest, The Fever, seemed to make every Best of 2014 list, from the Village Voice, to Amazon, to NPR. Her forthcoming novel, You Will Know Me, is out in July 2016.

We spoke to Megan from Manhattan on a busy NYC New Year's Eve, 2015

#writing #authors #books
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Workshop 7: Megan Abbott

Author, columnist and political satirist Christopher Buckley entertains and enlightens us as we talk about his writing process. #writing
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Workshop 6: Christopher Buckley

We caught up with the NYT-best selling "Summer Beach Read Queen" Nantucket writer Elin Hilderbrand. The workshop was recorded backstage at the Music Hall Loft in Portsmouth, NH, before the Writers in the Loft series, where she was signing books. #writing
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Workshop 5: The Beach Read Queen, Elin Hilderbrand

The Scottish author, Alexander McCall Smith, lets us in on his writing process before an event recorded for radio in Portsmouth. The workshop was recorded backstage. #writing
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Workshop 4: Alexander McCall Smith

Virginia sits down with her idol, rocker and writer Patti Smith. 
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Workshop 3: Patti Smith

Author Stacy Schiff gives a 10-minute writer's workshop before an event recorded for radio in Portsmouth. The workshop was recorded backstage. #writing
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Workshop 2: Stacy Schiff

Author Salman Rushdie gives a 10-minute writer's workshop before an event recorded for radio in Portsmouth. The workshop was recorded backstage. #writing 
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