Writers on Writing

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling novels The Nest (named a best book of the year by People, the Washington Post, and NPR) and Good Company (a Read with Jenna selection). She has been a guest on Today, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Her work has been translated into more than 28 languages, and The Nest is in development as a limited series with AMC Studios. Cynthia holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She and her husband live in New York City. Her new novel is Lake Effect.

Cynthia joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss writing multiple point of view characters, why she based the book in the ‘70s, themes, stucture, naming characters, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded February 16, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Jordy Rosenberg is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He’s the author of the 2018 novel, Confessions of the Fox, which was the NYT Editors’ Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Lambda Literary Award and a recipient of a number of other accolades. His latest, Night Night Fawn, is part novel, part autofiction, part unauthorized fictionalized memoir of a character inspired by Jordy’s mother. It tackles transgenderism, homophobia, Marxism, Zionism, all through the lens of both history and this contemporary moment we’re living through.

He joins Marrie Stone to pick the book apart on the craft level, including writing from the POV of your own antagonist, capturing a strong and singular voice, using different textures (letters, movies, other novels, appendices, etc.) in fiction, using sex scenes and other scenes of various kinds of intimacy to show power dynamics, and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded February 26, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Larissa Pham’s writing has appeared in The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Aperture, Bookforum, Art in America, Granta, the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her essays and short fiction have been anthologized in Kink (Simon and Schuster, 2021); Wanting: Women Writing on Desire (Catapult, 2023); and Critical Hits, an anthology of writing on video games (Graywolf, 2023). She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School. Her debut novel, just published, is Discipline.
Larissa joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about plot, narrative tense, the freedom of writing without quotation marks, metafiction, revision, naming characters, themes, and much more.
For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.
(Recorded February 6, 2026)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Larissa Pham’s writing has appeared in The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Aperture, Bookforum, Art in America, Granta, the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her essays and short fiction have been anthologized in Kink (Simon and Schuster, 2021); Wanting: Women Writing on Desire (Catapult, 2023); and Critical Hits, an anthology of writing on video games (Graywolf, 2023). She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the New School. Her debut novel, just published, is Discipline.

Larissa joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about plot, narrative tense, the freedom of writing without quotation marks, metafiction, revision, naming characters, themes, and much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.

(Recorded February 6, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi. He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. These 12 pieces are masterclasses on managing time in short fiction, showing what dialogue can do, bringing setting to life, playing with POV (including 2nd person), and arranging a collection to read like an album. They discuss it all.
For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website.
(Recorded February 11, 2026)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)