The Writing Table with Kris Clink

Gina DeMillo Wagner

Gina DeMillo Wagner is an award-winning journalist and author. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Memoir Magazine, Modern Loss, Self, Outside, CRAFT Literary, and other publications. She is a winner of the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award, and her memoir was longlisted for the 2022 SFWP Literary prize. Gina has a master’s degree in journalism and is cofounder of Watershed creative writing and art workshops. She lives and works near Boulder, Colorado. Her...

Victoria Helen Stone: Secrets and Suspense

Victoria Helen Stone, author of the runaway best seller Jane Doe, writes critically acclaimed novels of dark intrigue and emotional suspense. Aside from At The Quiet Edge, The Last One Home, Problem Child, Half Past, and the chart-topping False Step and Evelyn, After, she also published twenty-nine books as USA Today bestselling author Victoria Dahl and won the prestigious American Library Association Reading List award for best genre fiction. Her novels have been published in eighteen langu...

Kirsten Miller: Books Bring Us Together

Jenna Bush Hager has included Kirsten Miller's latest novel, Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books, in her list of 5 Books to Read this Summer.  Kirsten stops by the Writing Table for a fun chat about small towns, book bans, and what has inspired her favorite characters.   Kirsten Miller grew up in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. At seventeen, she left for college in New York City, where she lives to this day. Kirsten's latest novel, Lula Dean's Little Library of Banne...

Elle Marr: The Alone Time

Elle Marr is the author of thrillers THE MISSING SISTER (2020), LIES WE BURY (2021), STRANGERS WE KNOW (2022), THE FAMILY BONES (2023), and THE ALONE TIME (2024). She is (evidently) a fan of coffee. Her work has been featured in PopSugar, Woman’s World Magazine, CBS affiliate KOIN-TV, ABC affiliate KATU-TV, and Audible. THE MISSING SISTER was a #1 Amazon bestseller and an Amazon Charts bestseller, while LIES WE BURY earned a Kirkus starred review, and STRANGERS WE KNOW was an Audible Most An...

Debut Author Jaclyn Westlake: Dear Dotty

In this episode, Jaclyn and Kris introduce their rescue pups, Bogey and Indy, discuss Jaclyn's journey into writing, and the story behind her debut, Dear Dotty.  Jaclyn Westlake is an alumna of the Stanford Continuing Studies Novel Writing Program. A former recruiter turned career advice columnist, her work has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, and Inc. She lives in California with her husband and their dachshund mix, Indiana Jones (but you can call him Indy). Pickles are her favorite f...

Suzanne Park: One Last Word

Acclaimed author Suzanne Park returns with a charming and compelling novel about an aspiring tech entrepreneur who goes on a rollercoaster journey of self-discovery after her app, which sends messages to loved ones after you pass, accidentally sends her final words to all the important people in her life—including the venture capital mentor she’s crushing on. Suzanne Park is a Korean American writer who was born and raised in Tennessee. In her former life as a stand-up comedian, Suzanne app...

Elka Ray: A Friend Indeed

Elka Ray is the Canadian author of Divorce is Murder and Killer Coin. Born in the UK and raised in Canada, Elka has two previous novels, Saigon Dark and Hanoi Jane; a short-story collection, What You Don't Know; and a series of children's picture books about Vietnam, where she currently lives with her family. Elka grew up in Victoria, B.C. Canada, the setting for her latest mystery. When she's not writing, drawing, or reading, Elka is in the ocean. Learn more at elkaray.com Intro reel, Wri...

Jenny Colgan: Behind the Castle Walls

Jenny Colgan gives us a look behind the castle walls, sharing stories of her game show experiences, her adoration for Terminator movies, her work on Dr. Who, and how she finds inspiration to keep creating humorous, heartfelt novels like her latest, The Summer Skies.  Jenny Colgan is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels, including The Christmas Bookshop, The Bookshop on the Corner, Little Beach Street Bakery, and Christmas at the Cupcake Café. Jenny, her husband, and thr...

Kathleen Basi's Song For the Road

Kathleen M. Basi is the quintessential jack-of-all trades writer: musical composer and songwriter, feature writer, essayist, nonfiction author, and of course, storyteller. Basi spent her childhood drawing inspiration for stories from the fields and trees on her family's farm...when she wasn't climbing on tractors and jumping off hay bales. Now, as mother to three rambunctious boys and one chromosomally gifted daughter, she doesn't have to look any farther than her kitchen table.  Learn more...

Stacy Stokes & The Darkness Rises

Stacy Stokes is a lifelong lover of stories, a former improv comedy geek, and a marketing professional by trade. She graduated with a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Her debut novel, Remember Me Gone, was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, an ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers Nominee and nominated for the Colorado Blue Spruce award. Her sophomore novel, THE DARKESS RISES, released in April 2024 with Penguin/Viking. S...

Stacy Stokes

Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro Recording

Katherine Reay: The Berlin Letters

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels. She has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books and history and brings that love to her stories. Katherine has also written one full-length nonfiction work. She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and has lived across the country with a few years in England and Ireland as well. A full-time author and mother of three children, Katherine and her husband currently live outsid...

Lynne Golodner: Women of Valor

Lynne Golodner writes emotional novels with compelling Jewish characters who are determined to fill their lives with passion, purpose and love. Her first novel, Woman of Valor, joins a body of work that includes two poetry collections and six nonfiction books, including Hide and Seek: Jewish Women and Hair Covering and The Flavors of Faith: Holy Breads. Lynne is a writing coach, marketing entrepreneur and host of the Make Meaning Podcast, and her creative nonfiction has been published around...

Nick Petrie's Latest Peter Ash Adventure: The Price You Pay

Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. His story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. His first novel, The Drifter, won the ITW Thriller and Barry Awards, and was nominated for Edgar, Anthony, and Hammett Awards. He won the 2016 Literary Award from the Wisconsin Library Association and was named...

A.H. Kim & Relative Strangers

A.H. Kim (Ann) was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. Ann was educated at Harvard College and Berkeley Law School, where she was an editor of the California Law Review. Ann practiced corporate law for many years and served as chief of staff to the CEO and as head of investor relations at a Fortune 200 company. Ann is the proud mother of two sons, a longtime cancer survivor, and community volunteer. After raising her family in the Bay Area, Ann and her hus...

A.H. Kim

A.H. Kim (Ann) was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. Ann was educated at Harvard College and Berkeley Law School, where she was an editor of the California Law Review. Ann practiced corporate law for many years and served as chief of staff to the CEO and as head of investor relations at a Fortune 200 company. Ann is the proud mother of two sons, a longtime cancer survivor, and community volunteer. After raising her family in the Bay Area, Ann and her hus...

Heather Frese & The Saddest Girl on the Beach

Heather Frese is the author of the novel The Baddest Girl on the Planet, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize. She has published numerous short stories, essays, and the occasional poem. Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Review, Front Porch, the Barely South Review, Switchback, and elsewhere, earning notable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays. Heather received her M.F.A. from West Virginia University and has a master’s degree from...

LR Jones & The Wedding Party

L. R. Jones is a pseudonym for New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones, whose dark, edgy fiction includes the highly acclaimed novels The Poet, A Perfect Lie, and the Lilah Love series. Prior to publishing, Lisa owned a multistate staffing agency recognized by the Austin Business Journal. Lisa was listed as #7 in Entrepreneur magazine’s list of growing women-owned businesses. She lives in Colorado with her husband, a cat who always has something to say, and a golden ...

Parisa Akhbari & Just Another Epic Love Poem

Parisa Akhbari (@authorparisa) is a mental health therapist and writer from Seattle, Washington. Her debut YA novel, Just Another Epic Love Poem, follows two queer best friends in Catholic school as they fall in love through the pages of a never-ending poem they’ve been writing back and forth for five years. When not writing or therapizing, Parisa can be found trying to replicate her grandmother’s drool-worthy Persian recipes, riding ferries around the Puget Sound, and dancing around the kit...

Jeff Hoffmann: Like It Never Happened

Jeff quit a perfectly good job at the age of 47 to return to college for his MFA, and his first novel, Other People’s Children (Simon and Schuster, 2021), emerged from that silly decision. His second Novel, Like It Never Happened, will be released by Crooked Lane Books on March 5, 2024. In addition to his two novels, Jeff’s writing has been published in The Sun, Booth, Harpur Palate, and Publishers Weekly. He was the winner of the Madison Review’s Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction and a final...

Jeff Hoffman: Like It Never Happened

Jeff quit a perfectly good job at the age of 47 to return to college for his MFA, and his first novel, Other People’s Children (Simon and Schuster, 2021), emerged from that silly decision. His second Novel, Like It Never Happened, will be released by Crooked Lane Books on March 5, 2024. In addition to his two novels, Jeff’s writing has been published in The Sun, Booth, Harpur Palate, and Publishers Weekly. He was the winner of the Madison Review’s Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction and a final...

Andie Burke: Fly With Me

Andie Burke began college as an English major before jumping into a pediatric nursing career. Her writing is inspired by over a decade spent working in hospitals with patients of all ages. After the last couple years spent in the pandemic ER, she escaped to an outpatient pediatric sedation unit. Andie lives in a blue house in Maryland with an alarming number of books and an embarrassing number of ultra-fine point pens. When she’s not writing, she’s probably feeding snacks to the two small h...

Rebecca Hanover: The Last Applicant

Rebecca Hanover is the New York Times bestselling author of THE SIMILARS duology. After graduating from Stanford University with a BA in English and drama, Rebecca joined the writing team of the CBS daytime drama GUIDING LIGHT, where she earned an Emmy Award. Still, she never lost her love of books—particularly YA. She now writes Young Adult as well as adult novels full-time from her home in San Francisco, where she enjoys matcha lattes and a complete lack of seasons. When she isn’t writing,...

Sheila Athens: Neena Lee is Seeing Things

Sheila Athens writes smart fiction set where the South meets the Sunshine state. Her stories are about women seeking to find the peace we all deserve—whether they’re battling an external foe or an internal one (or both). Readers are drawn to her work because they believe that everyday heroes can make a difference in our world. After growing up in the Ozarks, she moved—sight unseen—to Northeast Florida with the man who would eventually become her husband. Thirty-five years later, she’s still...

Vanderbilts, Astors, & Pirates: Katherine Howe's Just Getting Started

Katherine Howe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and novelist. She is the author of several novels for adults and young adults, has edited two volumes of primary sources for Penguin Classics, and is the co-author with Anderson Cooper of the #1 New York Times bestselling books VANDERBILT and ASTOR. Her newest novel, a mystery adventure set in the Golden Age of Piracy called A TRUE ACCOUNT: HANNAH MASURY'S SOJOURN AMONGST THE PYRATES, WRITTEN BY HERSELF came out in t...

Laurie Frankel on Writing about Families

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four (going on five) novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes fu...

Laurie Frankel: On Writing and Families

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four (going on five) novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes fu...

Sarahlyn Bruck's Trifecta: Soccer, Friendships, and Writing

Sarahlyn Bruck writes contemporary, book club fiction and is the award-winning author of three novels: Light of the Fire (coming January 2024), Daytime Drama (2021), and Designer You (2018). When she’s not writing, Sarahlyn moonlights as a full-time writing and literature professor at a local community college. She’s also a co-host of the pop culture podcast, Pretty Much Pop. From Northern California, she now lives in Philadelphia with her family. Learn more at sarahlynbruck.com and follow ...

Katrina Kittle: Morning in This Broken World

Katrina Kittle remembers thinking of herself as a writer way back in grade school, although she never thought about writing for publication until she graduated from college. Former classmates to this day tease her about the interminable stories she was always writing about horses or bands of stray animals. She inherited this love of books and storytelling from her dad, who encouraged her to read great books long before the same titles were required in school. Her dad still greets her at the ...

Peg Tyre: Crime Writing, Pulitzer Prizes, and Strangers in the Night

PEG TYRE, the bestselling author of The Trouble with Boys, was, until recently, a senior writer at Newsweek specializing in social trends and education. She has won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, a Clarion Award, and a National Education Writers Association Award. She lives in New York City with her husband, novelist Peter Blauner, and their two sons.  Her acclaimed novel, Strangers in the Night, was recently rereleased twenty-seven years after its original publication.  Lear...

Erin Hoover: Poetry & No Spare People

Erin Hoover was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), which won the Antivenom Poetry Award and a Florida Book Award, and No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and The Sun. Hoover lives in Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. She curates and hosts a poetry reading serie...

Gareth Russell's The Palace: 500 Years of British Monarchy

Gareth Russell is a historian and broadcaster, educated at Oxford University and Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the author of nine books. He is host of the podcast Single Malt History with Gareth Russell.  Russell divides his time between London and Belfast, Northern Ireland.  In THE PALACE, Russell presents 500 years of the British monarchy, from King Henry VIII to Queen Elizabeth II, through a unique lens--their connections to specific rooms at Hampton Court Palace. Architecturally b...

Molly Harper: Witches Get Stuff Done

Molly Harper is the author of more than thirty paranormal and contemporary romance titles, including the Half-Moon Hollow series, the Southern Eclectic series, and the Audible exclusive Mystic Bayou series. Molly lives in Michigan with her family. Molly's latest novel is Witches Get Stuff Done, an Audible Original.  Learn more at mollyharper.com Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro Recording Follow the Writing Table: On Twitter/X: @writingtablepc Everywhere else: @writingtablep...

Jacqueline Mitchard: An Inconvenient Scandal

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer....

Rochelle Weinstein's What You Do to Me

Rochelle B. Weinstein is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of When We Let Go, This Is Not How It Ends, Somebody’s Daughter, Where We Fall, The Mourning After, and What We Leave Behind. Rochelle spent her early years, always with a book in hand, raised by the likes of Sidney Sheldon and Judy Blume. A former entertainment industry executive, she splits her time between sunny South Florida and the mountains of North Carolina. When she’s not writing, Rochelle can be found on Miami's NB...

Vanessa Riley's Lady Worthing Mystery Series

Vanessa Riley is the award-winning author of Island Queen, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick. Riley's historical novels showcase the hidden histories of Black women and women of color, emphasizing strong sisterhoods and dazzling multicultural communities. Her works encompass historical fiction, historical romance, and historical mystery and have been reviewed by the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and the New York Times. This Southern, Irish, Trini girl holds a ...

Carolyn Hays & Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter

Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish Letter to My Transgender Daughter under a pen name to protect the privacy of her family. Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. Letter to My Transgender Daughter has four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France. Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of ...

Emily Bleeker's When We Were Enemies

Emily Bleeker is the best-selling author of six novels. Combined, her books have reached over 1.5 million readers. She is a two-time Whitney Award finalist, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, Amazon charts bestseller and was recently listed as one of the top 100 Kindle authors “of all time.” Emily lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago with her four kids and a growing menagerie of animals. Between writing and being a mom, she attempts to learn guitar, sings along to the radio (loudly), perf...

Yasmin Angoe: It Ends With Knight

Yasmin Angoe is the author of Her Name Is Knight and a first-generation Ghanaian American currently residing in South Carolina with her family. She’s served in education for nearly twenty years and works as a developmental editor. Yasmin received the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award from Sisters in Crime and is a member of numerous crime, mystery, and thriller organizations like Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Color, and International Thriller Writers.  Foll...

Alison Rose Greenberg: Maybe Once, Maybe Twice

Alison Greenberg is an author and screenwriter who lives in Atlanta, but is quick to say she was born in New York City. While attending The University of Southern California, Alison took her first screenwriting class and fell head over heels. A journey from screenwriting led to marketing jobs, before coming full-circle back to her first love. Alison speaks fluent rom-com, lives for 90’s WB dramas, cries to Taylor Swift, and is a proud single mom to her two incredible kids, two cats, and one ...

Emily Bleeker

David R. Slaton: Dark Moon Shallow Sea

David R. Slayton grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where finding fantasy novels was pretty challenging and finding fantasy novels with diverse characters was downright impossible. Now he lives in Denver, Colorado and writes the books he always wanted to read. White Trash Warlock, David’s first novel, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. In 2015, David founded Trick or Read, an annual initiative to give out books along with candy to children on Halloween as well as uplift lesser-known auth...

Virginia Pye: The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann

Virginia Pye’s collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, won the 2019 IPPY Gold Medal for Short Fiction. Her novels, River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix, have also received literary awards. Her short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, (Press 53) won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction, and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, New York Times, The Rumpus, Huffington Postand elsewhere. Virginia gradua...

Leah Redmond Chang: Young Queens

Leah Redmond Chang writes biography and literary non-fiction, with a focus on women’s history. Trained as a literature scholar, her books draw on her extensive research in the archives and in rare book libraries. A former tenured professor of French Literature and Culture at The George Washington University, she has also been an Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London. She lives with her husband and three children in Washington DC, and spends as much time as possible ...

Christine Wells: The Royal Windsor Secret

Christine Wells writes historical fiction featuring strong, fascinating women. From early childhood, she drank in her father’s tales about the true stories behind popular nursery rhymes and she has been a keen student of history ever since. After graduating from university with a law degree, Christine worked in a large city firm, specializing in corporate mergers and acquisitions. She might still be a lawyer if she hadn’t accepted a challenge from her friend to try her hand at a novel. The m...

Janie Paul & Making Art in Prison

Janie Paul is a painter, curator, and writer. She is the senior curator and co-founder, with her late husband Buzz Alexander, of the Exhibitions of Artists in Michigan Prisons, a project of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP). She is Arthur F. Thurnau professor emerita at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan where she has won many awards for her art and social justice work with incarcerated people and children experiencing poverty. She lives in Ann Arbor, Mich...

Erin Baker's My Little Nail Salon

Entrepreneur and fitness guru Erin Baker was inspired by a mid-pandemic conversation with her mother-in-law about Baker’s daughter, Arden’s fascination with nail polish. Without delay, this busy mom went to work, not stopping until she’d created a product that could be shared with other young people, My Little Nail Salon.  Learn more at;  www.mylittlenailsalon.com  Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro Recording Follow the Writing Table: On Twitter/X: @writingtablepc Everywhere e...

Sierra Godfrey: The Second Chance Hotel

Sierra Godfrey is the author of A Very Typical Family and The Second Chance Hotel (Sourcebooks). She was born in Santa Cruz, California and has lived many places, including Santorini, Greece. She loves hiking, watching soothing British farmland shows, and thinking of stories about messy families. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family, which includes a dog, two cats, and a turtle, all of which seemed like a good idea at the time. Email: [email protected] Twitter: ht...

Carol Dunbar: Writing off the Grid

Carol Dunbar has been writing books since kindergarten and worked freelance as a ghostwriter on her path to becoming a novelist. In 2018 she won the Hal Prize for fiction and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, The South Carolina Review, Midwest Review, and others. Her essays about living off the grid can be heard on Wisconsin Public Radio; one essay, involving her encounter with a mother bear, was televised as an animated short. Before devoting herself to writing, Carol earned ...

End of Summer Bonus Replay

This episode features clips from recent interviews with:  Philippa Gregory Meredith Ireland Anthony Tchaikovsky Gin Phillips Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop Namrata Patel Hannah Dolby Piper Hugely CeCe Lyra, Literary Agent Steve Phillips Ciera Horton McElroy Ashley Winstead Sariah Wilson Ret'd. Captain Brett Crozier Amina Aktar Kelly J. Ford Kelly Farmer Allison Winn Scotch Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro Recording Follow the Writing Table: On Twitter/X: @writingtablepc Everywhere ...