Home Podcasts QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life
QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life

QWERTY: A Podcast for Writers on How to Live the Writing Life

Marion Roach Smith 170 Episodes Oct 2, 2026

Author Marion Roach Smith interviews writers across all genres to uncover their creative processes and the real challenges of the writing life. The podcast explores practical steps anyone can take to become a better storyteller, offering insights from experienced authors. Each episode delves into the habits, routines, and mindsets that support a sustainable writing practice. Listeners gain actionable advice and inspiration to navigate their own writing journeys.

Episodes

Ep. 174 Cara Benson
Ep. 174 Cara Benson Oct 2, 2026 1743 Cara Benson's writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Orion Magazine, Sierra Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Terrain, and selected for Best American Poetry. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the bpNichol Award. Benson wrote a series on walking in the woods for the Best American Poetry website and taught poetry in a New York State Correctio
Ep. 173 Jessica Walker
Ep. 173 Jessica Walker Sep 18, 2026 1561 Jessica Walker is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, filmmaker, and educator, she is an assistant professor of fine arts at Parsons and has exhibited films, books, and 2D media in solo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Australia. Her work is housed in the permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Research Library, Yale University Haas
Ep. 172 Hester Kaplan
Ep. 172 Hester Kaplan Sep 4, 2026 1671 Hester Kaplan is the author of two story collections, The Edge of Marriage (University of Georgia Press, and Norton), which received The Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction; and Unravished (Ig Publishing); the novels The Tell (HarperCollins) and Kinship Theory (Little, Brown). Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Story, Glimmer Train, Southwest Review, and Indiana Review and others, and ha
Ep. 171 Marian Yee
Ep. 171 Marian Yee Aug 21, 2026 1501 Writer, scholar, and award-winning teacher, Marian Yee teaches writing, literature and contemporary art to performing art students at Berklee College of Music. Her published writings include poems, reviews, and scholarly articles. Her debut novel is 4 JANES, published by Little A. Listen in as she and discuss the sheer joy of writing fan fiction. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book, T
Ep. 170 Rachel Weaver
Ep. 170 Rachel Weaver Aug 7, 2026 1663 Rachel Weaver is a writer, author, essayist, memoirist and teacher. She is the author of the novel, Point of Direction which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book To Pick Up Now, and won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Her new book, a debut memoir, is Dizzy, just out from West Virginia Press. Listen in as she and I discuss how to write a braided memoir. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you
Ep. 169 Nicole Walker
Ep. 169 Nicole Walker Jul 24, 2026 1688 Nicole Walker is the author of several books, including, “Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh and Navigating Disaster” and “The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet.” She edits the “Crux” series at the University of Georgia Press, is the nonfiction editor at the journal “Diagram” and teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University.. Her new book is How to Plant
Ep. 168 Hillary Plattner
Ep. 168 Hillary Plattner Jul 10, 2026 1690 Hilary Plattner is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her debut memoir, The Momma Puzzle, was shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and named a finalist for the Wandering Aengus and Trail to Table Book Awards. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and has taught writing at The New School. Previously, she founded and directed Brooklyn Writers
Ep. 167 Jed Alexander
Ep. 167 Jed Alexander Jun 26, 2026 1474 Jed Alexander is the author of The Fairy Tale Color Collection, a series of children’s books that begins with the wordless 2018 book Red, the follow-up 2022 book, Gold, and the third book in that series, Olive. His clients have included SpongeBob Comics, Cricket Magazine, Writer's Digest and The Children's Book Council. His new book is The Black Market, a Middle Grade book which he wrote a
Ep. 166 Davin Malasarn
Ep. 166 Davin Malasarn Jun 12, 2026 1846 Davin Malasarn is a writer an author whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Rosebud, Opium Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly and other journals in print and online. His debut novel, The Outer Country, is just out from One World/Random House. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin you
Ep. 165 Scott Eden
Ep. 165 Scott Eden May 29, 2026 1491 Writer and author Scott Eden is an investigative reporter whose work has focused on crime, corruption, injustice, business, science, technology, and the dark side of sports. His work has appeared in Wired, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, The Atavist Inc., and The Believer’s best-of collection Read Hard. The author of Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame. His new book is A Killing in Cannabis: A
Ep. 164 Marion Winik
Ep. 164 Marion Winik May 15, 2026 1888 Marion Winik is a writer and author whose memoir, First Comes Love, was originally published 30 years ago, featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and loved by reviewers and readers everywhere. Perhaps the words most often used for it were "pioneering" and "groundbreaking." The Kirkus review said of it, “Romance, comedy, tragedy, terrible truth, and extraordinary love, as straight woman
Ep. 163 Huda Al-Marashi
Ep. 163 Huda Al-Marashi Apr 17, 2026 1710 Writer and author Huda Al-Marashi writes for both children and adults. She is a coauthor of the middle grade novel Grounded, which won the Walter Dean Myers Honor award, and the author of the memoir First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and al Jazeera. She is a fellow and mentor with the Highlig

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