Marginally | a podcast about writing, work, and friendship

Today's guest, Kateřina Tučková (who we refer to as Katka in the episode), is a Czech author, playwright, publicist, art historian, and curator of exhibitions. She has won several literary awards, including the Magnesia Litera Award and the Czech Bestseller Award. In 2017, she was awarded the Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Award by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. She also has received the Premio Libro d’Europa at the Book Fair in Salerno, Italy. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. We approached Katka to talk about her book The Last Goddess because of the way that its form--composed of research documents as well as narrative--contributes to not only the dramatic structure but also the meaning of her novel. We talk in particular about the way that these authoritarian systems treated the goddesses as if they were dangerous, and "the struggle of single women against the many-headed hydra of political power." You can find Katka on Instagram and Facebook. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

Today's episode is a conversation we recorded with writer and essayist Meghan Nesmith back in May. We'd been emailing back and forth about the big things -- parenting, writing, work, life -- and decided we wanted to just sit down and hash things out in real time. What are we doing here? What should we be doing? What is the value of work -- emotionally, materially? We don't come up with any answers, but it felt good to connect. We hope it feels good to listen and think about it too. Meghan is a writer, editor, and obsessive living and working in Boston. She writes about motherhood, relationships, mental health, culture, and the boy band formerly known as One Direction. You can find her work online and in print in Man Repeller, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, and more. As a content marketer, she's worked with brands like Westin-Marriott, Slack, and Knixwear. You can find out more about Meghan at meghannesmith.com. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

In today’s episode, we talk to independent bookseller and essayist Nicole Brinkley about everything from community building with indie bookstores to vocational awe to knowing when to quit something, even when you love it. It’s a short episode, but we pack a lot in! Nicole is an award-winning bookseller who manages Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY. She runs Misshelved, a newsletter whose essays about the book world have earned industry acclaim. Previously, she hosted a bookseller podcast and was a teen book blogger. She really likes dragons. You can find Nicole online at nebrinkley.com. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

In today’s episode we talk to Jane Campbell, the author of the short story collection Cat Brushing (published in the UK by Hachette and US by Grove/Atlantic). Her first published short story, "Cat Brushing," came out in 2017 in the London Review of Books -- when she was 77. Interpretations of Love is the name of her next novel, which is scheduled for Spring 2024. We really loved talking to her in this wide-ranging interview, in which we touch on everything from portrayals of the elderly to existential angst. By the end, she’s even interviewing us. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. * As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

This is a pep talk for anyone trying to let themselves take a short or long break from anything at all. We've both decided to do less or quit things for a bit over this holiday period, so we get into the different reasons why you might want to quit / take a break from / power down from something. If you know it's what you need to do but can't break up with hustle culture, get in touch and we'll write you a permission slip to take a break or a letter firing you from your project! Definitely get in touch if this resonates with you or you want to share any thoughts you have. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

We do something a little different with this episode, and begin with a discussion of one of our friendship touchstones, the 1998 film You've Got Mail. Takes have been popping up everywhere lately, and we talk about why it matters and how it works, and what it means to us -- twenty-five years ago and now. But don't worry -- we also catch you up with some big changes in our work and writing lives. Routines, schedules, first drafting, and what's going on now [jump to minute 21 for this part of the show]. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

This week, we're sharing what we've been doing since June. It's one of those episodes where we end up forgetting we're recording a podcast and just having a conversation between friends about what our current writing routines look like, and what's going on in our work lives -- covering all the areas of our tagline of writing, work, and friendship. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

This week, we're sharing what we've been doing since June. It's one of those episodes where we end up forgetting we're recording a podcast and just having a conversation between friends about what our current writing routines look like, and what's going on in our work lives -- covering all the areas of our tagline of writing, work, and friendship. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

In today’s episode we talk to Janelle Hardy, who is a writer, artist, host of the Personal Mythmaking Podcast. She is also the creator/teacher of a memoir-writing course called The Art of Personal Mythmaking. This process uses body-based trauma-informed writing prompts, fairytales and themed modules to support creative folks who are interested in healing from their life stories as they write their memoirs. Her work combines her BA in Anthropology with her MA in Dance, plus her Diploma in Structural Integration. She has been working as a trauma-informed bodyworker and as an artist for many years, and she’s taught adults these important skills out of her living room, arts centers, universities and community colleges. You’ll hear all of that experience and her unique wisdom in this conversation, but definitely check out her podcast and her website. We loved talking to Janelle about the work she’s done, how to get out of your head and change your responses using myth and story as well as somatic or body-based healing techniques. Working in this way is rare and transformative. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

This week, we're delighted to have Emily Midorikawa back with us to discuss her new book, Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice, out now in both North America and the U.K, as well as her research process, the gift of libraries and librarians, parenthood, writing partners, and how she's worked during the pandemic. Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Her journalism has been published in, among others, the Daily Telegraph, the Paris Review, The Times (of London) andthe Washington Post. She teaches on the writing programme at New York University London. Emily is also the coauthor of A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontё, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, written with Emma Claire Sweeney, and published in 2017. She also collaborated with Emma on the long-running and excellent blog about female literary friendship, Something Rhymed. For more with Emily, you can listen to our previous interview with her writing partner Emma Claire Sweeney from May 2019, and of course find her online at emilymidorikawa.com, on Twitter @emilymidorikawa, and on Instagram @midorikawaemily. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

When we booked author Judith Warner on the show, we had a lot of questions for her about what writers (especially kid, YA and middle-grade fiction writers) need to know about middle-school friendship, and how that period affects the rest of our lives and our friendships. Judith's new book, And Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School, touches on the important role that this middle-grade period has in all our lives and our friendships. Judith talks brilliantly and clearly on that topic, but we go so much wider and deeper in this interview. She talks about how she manages her perfectionism, and when it spirals into a form of OCD. It's a struggle a lot of writers deal with, and we appreciated having this open discussion. If you've struggled with any of these things we discuss, please do get in touch with us - either through our website, on our Instagram or elsewhere. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

Today, we have a short episode walking through our revision processes. As usual, this isn't prescriptive -- do things your way if they work, and you're not doing it wrong. But listen on if you are curious about what's been working for us! As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá https://youtu.be/QfmEIq4h0bo

Interviewing Yang Huang, a fiction writer and computer engineer, was a real delight. We had a chance to read her forthcoming novel, The Good Son, before this interview, and we loved the way her complex characters drove a surprising and satisfying story. We definitely recommend it - it's out May 27, 2021! Yang has incredible advice about everything from characters to research. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

We're here this week with a quick update, as well as an announcement of a fun new experiment! Listen for details, and join us by subscribing to our newsletter. We also chat about the things we've learned in the last few years of developing solid writing practices, as well as where we're headed. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

We are so excited to talk to Elizabeth Wetmore today, the author of the novel Valentine, which we loved. We also love her story about working on a book as long as it needs, and how she's balanced many jobs while believing in her writing all along, even when she's been, in her own words, "late to the game in every possible way." So this episode features a fantastic practical discussion about making all of that work, from being led by your love for characters and place to asking for help. We also discuss the responsibility she felt in writing a diverse cast of characters in a West Texas setting, how she got the place right, and about writing about a place you deliberately left. Before devoting herself to writing, Elizabeth variously tended bar, taught English, drove a cab, edited psychology dissertations, and painted silos and cooling towers at a petrochemical plant. For a time, she lived in a one-room cabin in the woods outside of Flagstaff, Arizona while she worked as a classical music announcer. A native of West Texas, she is most at home in the desert, near the sea, or on the side of a mountain. She now lives in Chicago. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, and numerous other residencies and awards. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá. Have a question you'd like us to try to answer, or a topic you'd love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here. Thanks for listening, and get to work! If you like Marginally, you should check out #amwriting, with Jess and KJ, where two much more experienced writers talk through their processes with each other and celebrated guests.

This week, we're checking in with each other. We talk about how we're managing pandemic life and writing, and share revision woes, moving stories, #firstnovelneverdies, and things that are getting us through each day. We'd love to hear from you; what is helping you, and what do you miss the most right now? As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

In today’s episode, we talk to Tiffany Yates Martin, the author of the new book, Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. This book, which we got to preview before the interview, gives a comprehensive and accessible guide for writers on how to edit their own work. Tiffany also writes fiction under her pen name Phoebe Fox, and the most recent of her five novels is A Little Bit of Grace, released in August 2020. You can find her on her website, Fox Print Editorial: https://foxprinteditorial.com/, under her own name on Medium (https://tiffanyyatesmartin.medium.com/), and under Fox Print Editorial on Twitter (@FoxPrintEd) and Facebook (@FoxPrintEditorial). As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá. Have a question you'd like us to try to answer, or a topic you'd love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here. Thanks for listening, and get to work! If you like Marginally, you should check out #amwriting, with Jess and KJ, where two much more experienced writers talk through their processes with each other and celebrated guests.

In today’s episode, we bring you a conversation with writers and close friends, Shikha Malaviya and Soniah Kamal. Together, they talk about their how they went from strangers to close friends almost in the timespan of one phone conversation, how they help each other as writing partners, and how they embrace their intersecting identities to form communities of writers and readers. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

Today we are so excited to have Nina LaCour on our show. We have been HUGE fans of Nina’s for a long time. Nina is the bestselling and Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of five critically acclaimed young adult novels published by Dutton Books. Her latest book is called Watch Over Me, a spooky atmospheric but also kind and warm book that we both devoured recently and loved. We have a wide-ranging discussion on her literary friendships and collaborations, building communities, how she balances many projects, and also her latest book. You can find her on her website at ninalacour.com, at her podcast Keeping A Notebook, her course The Slow Novel Lab, or her newsletter Letters from Nina. She's @nina_lacour on Instagram, and also on @theslownovellab for her course. Enjoy! * * * As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Meghan's occasionally on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá. Have a question you'd like us to try to answer, or a topic you'd love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here. Thanks for listening, and get to work! If you like Marginally, you should check out #amwriting, with Jess and KJ, where two much more experienced writers talk through their processes with each other and celebrated guests.

This season, we’re exploring community. One of the reasons we started this podcast was we wanted to talk about writing and day jobs with other writers, and didn’t find an existing space. So when we wanted to be part of a small critique group, it made sense to start our own. The resulting collective is one of things we’re most proud of. Today’s episode is a discussion with some of last year’s collective members, about what works and what doesn’t, and we hope it gives you some tips and encouragement for starting your own. Let us know if you do! In this episode, we talk to Amy Dressler, Erin Levens, Nicole Roth, and Stephanie Bucklin. Links to their websites are in the show notes so you can check them out. You can also find links to collective members Peter Amos and Sarah Hawkins, who weren’t able to join, but who are also doing some exciting writing things. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show. Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Meghan's occasionally on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá