Writers on Writing

Sophie, Standing There is Meg Mason’s fourth published novel, out in the States just last week and already Reese Witherspoon’s October Book Club Pick. Her last novel, Sorrow and Bliss, became an international bestseller after it was published in 2020. It won the British Book Industry Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about her publication journey, her transition from journalism to fiction, and what she had to learn and unlearn. They also dissect how she expands and compresses time in a single paragraph, how she delivers backstory while maintaining forward momentum, how she gives us a deep dive into a character’s psyche with just little brush strokes of color, and how she creates tension and suspense in everyday experiences. There’s a lot for writers to study in this novel, and Meg does a deep dive into particular passages to show how it’s done.

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 on October 3, 2026)

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

Rachel Khong, author of My Dear You. Her debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction. Her second novel, Real Americans, was published by Knopf in April 2024, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her most recent book is a story collection, My Dear You, published by Knopf in April of this year.

Rachel joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about putting a story collection together, voice, writing speculative fiction, what comes first when she’s writing a story, rejection, her favorite story in the collection, 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 interview on our website.

(Recorded on March 20, 2026)

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

Virginia Evans and the story behind the story of her runaway debut novel, The Correspondent, is one of those that helps us writers keep getting out of bed in the morning and back to the page. It’s an anomaly on every level. But it’s embedded with the lessons we talk about every day on this show — perseverance, resilience, and immunity from rejection, the importance of writing the story only you can tell and writing for writing’s sake and not publication’s sake. In many ways, The Correspondent breaks some conventional writing rules. But in its breaking, its tapped into something universal, relatable, and loved by well over 2 million readers and counting.
When The Correspondent came out in April of 2025, it was not an instant NYT bestseller. It gained momentum by word-of-mouth, by wonderful booksellers, book clubs, and maybe some Ann Patchett pixie dust. The book had been out for eight months before hitting the NYT bestseller list, where it’s been for 41 weeks and counting. Usually it’s Oprah who boosts a book with her book club picks. This time, Oprah ran to catch up to The Correspondence success. It’s now being turned into a film starring Jane Fonda. It also won the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.
Beyond the publication story is the book itself and what it has to teach us writers. This may be Virginia’s debut, but it’s hardly the first book she’s written. She joins Marrie Stone to talk about it. We find out what she’s learned – especially from some of the wonderful professors she’s had along the way like Claire Keegan. We talk about the pleasures and perils of the epistolary novel, tackling voice from a bunch of different and challenging perspectives, managing time in fiction, writing your fears, 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 interview on our website.
(Recorded on September 2, 2026)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Ariel Delgado Dixon. Ariel was born in Trenton, New Jersey and is the author of the novels Sourland and Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she teaches writing and works in farming.

Ariel joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about why she chose Humboldt County in Northern Calfornia for the setting of Sourland, writing side characters, naming characters, how much she knew before she started writing, what she does when she hits a wall, and how she comes up with her stellar verbs, because in my opinion, she presently is the the verb queen.

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 interview on our website.

(Recorded on July 24, 2026)

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

Daniel Mason is the author of six books of fiction, including The Piano Tuner, the story collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth — which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — and North Woods, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dublin Literary Award. He’s also a physician and a professor in Stanford’s Psychiatry Department.

His latest is Country People, published by Random House and out last month. It’s a Good Morning America summer book club pick and a NYT bestseller. It’s contemporary, it’s hilarious and, for us procrastinators who would rather fall down research rabbit holes than write, it’s very relatable.

It also gives writers a bunch of craft lessons to sink our teeth into. How to use your text to teach readers how to read your novel. Embedding content into form (this novel is a master class in that). Using different textures and kinds of writing to enhance your storyline, 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 interview on our website.

(Recorded on August 13, 2026)

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