Digressing with Lance Olsen

Lance Olsen is the author of Skin Elegies (Dzanc Books), and a smart, fascinating, and sweetheart of a guy who splits his time between Utah and Idaho with his artist wife Andi. During our podcast, we talked about the landscape and ecology of writing that doesn't come from the top-5 New York-based publishers, and how …

Digressing with Sarah Kornfeld

Sarah Kornfeld is the author of What Stella Sees, and the just-released The True, a narrative non-fiction that is being published in English, Romanian and French – each with its own ending (as we discuss during our podcast episode). Sarah is also the founder of Rising Media, a research and consulting company that serves the …

Digressing with Alice LaPlante

Alice LaPlante is an American writer living in Mallorca. She's written best sellers and textbooks on how to write bestsellers, and has taught people how to write, and now that she's no longer teaching in a formal setting, hosts a writing group in Mallorca. You'd think -- and until recently, I'd have thought -- that …

Digressing with Nick Kolakowski

I just dropped a new episode of "But I Digress" (How Writers Make it Work) with the amazing Nick Kolakowski. I've always admired Nick, loved his writing, and been curious about his professional and artistic journey. I'm very grateful he agreed to do this podcast, which I think you'll find very interesting. A few of …

Digressing With Rick Moody

Rick Moody's novel, The Ice Storm, was famously optioned and turned into a movie starring Kevin Klein and Sigourney Weaver. I asked Rick during the course of this podcast whether this changed his life, and his answer was surprising -- and candid. The short answer is, "yes," but not exactly in the way you'd think. …

Digressing with Sam Apple

I worked with Sam Apple more than a decade ago, while he was launching The Faster Times, which was a sort of precursor to Quartz. I knew Sam to be a supremely nice guy, but I took for granted his smarts and his talent as a writer. I can hardly think of someone better suited …

Digressing with Sheila Kohler

We're lucky to have Sheila Kohler. She's a brilliant storyteller, a mordant observer of human character, and a real tough cookie. And I mean that in the kindest way possible. She truly believes that the best thing we can do is teach one another what we know -- as if perhaps the true vocation of …

Digressing with Michele Herman

Please check out my digression with poet, novelist, and short story writer Michele Herman. An adopted New Yorker, she shares how she has manages to live in one of the most expensive cities on earth without either a trust fund, a Wall Street salary or a sugar daddy -- all while raising a family, being …

Digressions with Annie DeWitt

Many years ago, in the aftermath of a Gigantic launch party, I ran into Annie DeWitt on a Manhattan-bound F train. The magazine was called Gigantic, it published only tiny stories, and Annie was one of its hugely talented founding editors. She was a force of nature then, and she’s a force of nature now. …

Digressing with Lincoln Michel

One of the most interesting things about my conversation with Lincoln Michel was our discussion of genre fiction – not because he’s a “genre writer” but because he’s a “genre-bending” writer. The funny thing is that he talked about the odd segregation between genre and literary writers, genre and literary awards, and genre and literary …

Digressions with Sayeeda Copeland

I hope you all have an opportunity to listen to my podcast episode with Sayeeda Copeland, a rising talent and an amazing person. Sayeeda blows my mind with her strength of purpose and her strength, period. And as for her writing, well, she just pulls you right in. Here's how she opens her novel, Queens: …

But I Digress… My Podcast With Victoria Redel

Victoria Redel is a brilliant writer and human being. If you want proof of the degree of her awesome, look no further than the Facebook poetry reading series she conducted all throughout the pandemic lockdown. It was a gift to her FB friends, but as she tells me during the podcast (you can listen to …