(Writing Fiction Based On Your Life: A Chat With Jessica Berg)

In this episode of “Writer’s Digest Presents,” editor Michael Woodson sits down with Robert to discuss his new book American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (on sale today), how he infuses literary sensibilities to his historical nonfiction, and more.

About the Author

Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist investigating marginalized groups and a scholar excavating forgotten histories. A National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year and recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, his debut book Tinderbox won seven awards, including the Edgar Award, and his reporting has appeared in Slate, Commonweal, and River Teeth, among others. Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is pursuing a PhD at Tulane University as a Mellon Fellow. He lives with his husband on the gayest street in New Orleans.

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From the Episode

On Choosing What to Write About: “It’s a lot like falling in love, but from a horrific standpoint, because you’re dealing with history. It’s typically something that engages me intellectually while simultaneously taking this side door into my heart in a way where I can’t stop obsessing about it.“

“I have this problem that I’ve had since I was very little where I want to know the story that others don’t want me to know. That’s the juicy stuff! That’s the gay gossip!”

On Incorporating Fiction Craft Practices In Literary Nonfiction: “I love nonfiction that can employ literary and aesthetic sensibilities, where they have respect for the line, for the musicality of language, where they have a respect for and an understanding of mood and atmosphere, which is very difficult to communicate to an academic historian, but I think it matters. I also love plotting, set-up and pay-off, introducing threads and paying them off later. And I like the way that literature allows for revelation—where there’s just moments where you feel like you’re entire body’s lit up.”

Listen To The Episode

The post Writing Literary Nonfiction With Robert Fieseler appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(How Poetry Can Animate Narrative Nonfiction.)

I believe that outlines and over-planning stifle creativity. It hems in a writer and does not allow for spontaneity and discovery, which is essential when researching and writing a narrative nonfiction book. This process allows for a continued questioning of source material, never allowing oneself to become too complacent with an existing dominant narrative. I believe that this methodology also keeps a writer closer to the reader experience. I allowed Rose’s story to unfold before me, just like a reader discovers a story through reading a book.

I did not always work like this. In fact, as an overachieving Taiwanese American with a “Tiger Mom,” trained as a classical cellist at Juilliard, and a graduate of Harvard College, I was accustomed to having my life planned out to the minute detail. It had led to success on paper, so why change it?

In my mid-20s, however, I left my first career in the fashion industry where I was a merchandiser for brands including Abercrombie & Fitch, J. Crew, and Calvin Klein. I had believed that my whole educational path up to that point led to my job in fashion, but I was now truly at a loss. I was creatively unsatisfied and stressed out. When I looked around my apartment, I realized it was full of books on art, architecture, and history, and I realized I had strayed far from my passions.

I decided to rethink everything I knew in the hopes of finding my way back. I backpacked around the world without a set itinerary and I went back to school at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). There, I met a professor and mentor who basically threw me into a washing machine and made me question how I had been approaching work and problem solving.

Architectural pedagogy is based on the idea that work is constantly iterative. It is through feedback, repeated revisions, and small evolutions that progress is made. Sometimes, you just need to start putting pen to paper and allow something to reveal itself to you, no matter how unformed. You can’t be too afraid to begin building. It can be during the most challenging moments that an epiphany comes—struggle is part of the creative process. You work, rework, and shift things until your project is ready, with nothing ever fully set in stone. I have now been a professor in the architecture department at Columbia University GSAPP for over 10 years, teaching the same studio class that radically changed how I work.

Of course, it is not possible to go into a project as large as a narrative nonfiction book with no plan whatsoever. You must allow for an organizing principle. For The Art Spy, it was the concept of time. I wrote the first draft of the manuscript chronologically, apart from one chapter which I was inspired to write while visiting a location for research. I let the exact timeframe of the book remain loose, to be determined by the events in Rose’s life and where it felt the story should organically start and end.

Click to continue.

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted the book to take place over the course of WWII—that it would not be a standard biography going chronologically from birth to death. I also wanted to have two concurrent storylines—Rose’s timeline and that of Alexandre Rosenberg, a Free French soldier whose father was the exclusive art dealer to Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Léger. Rose and Alexandre’s stories skirt by each other throughout the war and finally intersect in a fantastic way at the end of the book.

I did not know if there would be enough material to carry both Rose Valland’s and Alexandre Rosenberg’s storylines throughout the whole book. But I began to write as if I did, building their stories page by page. I knew that if I hit a roadblock, I might need to throw out the work I did and I accepted that from the beginning.

I initially imagined the book might stretch in time from 1939 to 1945, which would include the German invasion of France, Rose’s work undercover as a spy in the Jeu de Paume museum—which the Nazis had taken over to loot Jewish-owned art collections en masse—and her time in Germany and Austria as a “Monuments Woman” restituting looted artwork. I knew there were holes in her story that I would have to address but I tabled them until I came to that point in her timeline, while keeping a lookout for missing material.

I found my first smoking gun in an archive in Grenoble. A first-person account of Rose’s escape from Paris, cut from her memoir, had been reproduced in an unpublished book and the manuscript was sitting in a museum archive, uninventoried. This allowed me to begin Rose’s story the summer of 1939, before WWII breaks out.

Rose also claimed to have seen the Nazis burning over 500 paintings in the Tuileries Garden in 1943 but her account had been questioned beginning in the 1960s, protested initially by the very Germans who perpetrated the horror. Since I wanted to write the book from Rose’s point of view without including any additional clarifying commentary in the text, I knew I would have to address this issue if I did not find material to prove she had been correct.

A little over a year into my research, I was trying to organize the nearly 10,000 pages of documents I had photographed from the French Diplomatic Archives, which contained all the papers Rose Valland left behind in her office when she died. One morning, I came across numerous handwritten, notarized documents in the back of one of the boxes. I recognized the names of the signees—they were the guards at the Jeu de Paume during WWII. I glanced at the words, translating the handwriting as best as I could, and immediately showed them to my French husband when he woke up. “Are these what I think they are??” I asked him excitedly.

Indeed, they were the signed, notarized testimonials of the events in the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume over two fateful days in July 1943, when the Nazis burned over 500 modern paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Dali, and others. Four guards had given their account for posterity, but they had been forgotten in the intervening years. 

Writing sans outline is not for every book or for every writer. However, the concept of remaining nimble and adaptable, to allow yourself the opportunity to question existing narratives and to make new discoveries, and to give your project room to breathe to find exactly the right form to tell your story, is applicable for any creative project.

Check out Michelle Young’s The Art Spy here:

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The post How I Wrote My Book Without an Outline: Allowing for Spontaneity and Discovery in Narrative Nonfiction Writing appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Dane discusses the process of writing about the fascinating and misunderstood Wild West era of history with his new book, Queen of All Mayhem, the importance of the publishing team behind any given book, and more.

Name: Dane Huckelbridge
Literary agent: Renee Zuckerbrot
Book title: Queen of All Mayhem
Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins
Release date: May 13, 2025
Genre/category: History/Biography
Previous titles: Castle of Water, No Beast So Fierce, The United States of Beer, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit
Elevator pitch: A spirited recounting of the life of Belle Starr, a female outlaw who served as a Civil War spy, befriended infamous gunslingers like Cole Younger and Jesse James, and eventually became the full-fledged leader of a criminal gang while living among the Cherokee.

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What prompted you to write this book?

When I was growing up, there was a piece of old family lore that we were somehow related to Belle Starr. Because of that, she was always a person of interest for me, although I confess, I didn’t know that much about her until I began digging and doing the research. And as it turned out, she had an even more action-packed and scandalous life than I imagined! I’ve always been drawn to stories of historical underdogs and social outsiders, especially those who defied the norms of their place and time to forge their own paths, and Belle Starr proved to be exactly that kind of character. I had an inkling of this before, but the full extent of her rebellious spirit became apparent with the research and writing.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

In total, it took about three years—two to write the book and one more year for the editing. As far as changes to my original idea, I would say that the book became far more expansive than I initially imagined, especially as it pertained to American history. I realized quite quickly that I wasn’t just telling the story of a female outlaw from the Old West, but also the story of the immigrant experience, Western expansion, the forced removal of Indigenous peoples, the Civil War in the Border States, and the birth of Wild West culture. Belle’s life was lived amid some of the most sweeping and powerful currents in our country’s history, and it became clear that her biography, while incredibly entertaining and insightful in its own right, also provided a fascinating vantage point for better understanding our own origins as a nation.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

It’s perhaps not a surprise, per se, but with each book, it’s always a fresh reminder: This truly is a team effort. Your agent, your editor, your cover designer, the publicity, marketing and sales teams—everyone has a critical role to play, and everyone pitches in and does their part. I don’t think I was as aware of this before publishing my first book, but now I’m on my fifth, and I’m very grateful for the help of so many talented and committed people. And it’s a long process, too, much longer than I realized when I was just starting out. Far from being the work of a lone individual over several months, as it is so often depicted in popular culture, the creation of an actual, tangible book is a joint project that involves the collaboration of dozens of people, over the course of several years.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

One thing that surprised me was just how much fun it was writing about the Wild West. It’s such a fascinating era in American history, and so misunderstood, too. At times, it felt more like writing the script to a Spaghetti Western, everything just moved so fast. Trying to capture the thrill of stolen gold, the thundering of hooves, the gleam of gunmetal—it was a new experience for me, and I must say, I enjoyed it. Back when I was studying the history of the American West in college, it always came across as dry and uninteresting, which is unfortunate, because in reality it is anything but. Being able to write about this historical moment in our nation’s past and give it the full flare and bravado it deserves, proved to be a pleasure that I did not initially anticipate.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they will see that, while certainly not a role model, Belle Starr was a trailblazer, rising to a position of public power and influence at a time when women in America were generally denied both. She refused to conform to the rules and expectations that society imposed upon her, essentially forging her own destiny despite her detractors—a characteristic that so many important figures in American history share. In the last half-century, her life has been largely overshadowed by Western personalities like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane; I’d like to show readers that unlike those figures, Belle Starr actually was feared and respected as a Wild West outlaw, and that her life story deserves to be told and remembered.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Never give up! There are rare individuals who do get lucky and hit the ground running, but for most of us, it takes years—and lots of rejection before getting a break. And even then, it’s hard; you never really “make it,” you just keep on working and seeing what sticks. If you’re passionate about writing, and feel strongly that you have something to say, then keep going. It might take years, it might take decades, but there’s only one way to make it happen, and that’s to keep working at it. Be prepared for ups and downs, and learn to celebrate every personal triumph, no matter how big or small. Take it from me: You never know when some story you used to hear around the dinner table might turn into an idea, that idea into a proposal, and that proposal into a book deal. Anything can happen so long as you stick with it.

The post Dane Huckelbridge: Learn To Celebrate Every Personal Triumph appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Gabe discusses the 15-year process of his new history book, Enough is Enuf, how he sees writing as excavation instead of an act of creation, and more.

Name: Gabe Henry
Literary agent: Katherine Latshaw
Book title: Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell
Publisher: Dey Street (HarperCollins)
Release date: April 15, 2025
Genre/category: History, Language, Humor
Previous titles: Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats;  What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History
Elevator pitch: Enough is Enuf explores the fascinating and often absurd history of the Simplified Spelling Movement, which tried for centuries to transform through into thru, laugh into laf, love into luv, and enough into enuf (tu naim a few). From Ben Franklin to Mark Twain, Kool-Aid to Twitter, this quirky crusade sparked debates about identity, education, and the future of English itself.

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What prompted you to write this book?

When I first learned about the Simplified Spelling Movement in college, it struck me as utterly ridiculous—this idea that people in Revolutionary times were walking around with their feathered quills writing “love” L-U-V and “laugh” L-A-F like some teenager with a cellphone.

It wasn’t until years later when I started digging into the movement earnestly that I realized how rich and complex it actually was. It’s a tale of grand ideals and radical failures, charming oddballs and pompous visionaries. Many of these so-called “simplified spellers” were brilliant. Others were clearly out of their minds. Yet they were all united by the shared belief that they could improve society simply by changing the way we spell.

I wanted to bring these characters to life—not just as kooky footnotes in history, but as real, flawed, and deeply driven individuals. And I wanted to explore how even the tiniest efforts to change the world—something as small as, say, removing the B from “doubt”or spelling “though”T-H-O—can ripple through history in surprising ways.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

From the first spark of inspiration to the moment I held it in my hands, Enough is Enuf took 15 years to come to life. Not all that time was spent writing, of course. Most of it was spent thinking, planning, waiting—waiting for the right moment to withdraw from the world and commit. Writing a book isn’t just about having a good idea; it’s about finding the space in your life to actually write it. How many would-be authors start their book with enthusiasm, only to be pulled away by the demands of everyday life? A manuscript begins, stalls, lingers. A draft sits untouched on a hard drive.

Writing a book means rearranging schedules, reprioritizing goals, and sometimes (speaking for myself, here) transforming into an over-caffeinated, socially negligent troll for a couple years. There are stretches of time when it feels like the only conversations I have are with the words on the page.

This book evolved along the way, just like I did. It became deeper, broader, wiser. What began as a compendium of eccentrics turned into a study of progress, tradition, culture, and identity. In the end, the book I set out to write is not the book that I ultimately wrote.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I was surprised by how collaborative the process was. The first year of writing was a solitary (and often lonely) journey, but once the manuscript left my hands, it became part of a much larger team effort. From editors to designers to marketers, everyone contributed ideas that elevated it. It feels strange that my name is the only one on the cover. This book has many parents.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers gain a sense of wonder and curiosity about our language. I want them to understand how spelling evolves, and why people have been so passionate about trying to change it. But most importantly, I want readers to walk away with a sense of relief. You’re not bad at spelling—spelling is bad at spelling.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Many writers think of their labor as an act of creation. They’re building a house, and every morning they sit at their desk and add another brick. I prefer to think of writing as excavation. That perfect sequence of words, that sublime turn-of-phrase—all of it is buried underground somewhere, and your job as a writer is to find it. Every day, I dig. I remove a little more dirt, loosen a few more rocks. The process isn’t glamorous. It’s slow, often frustrating. But if I can commit to the daily excavation, then I’m doing my job. On days when the words don’t flow, when nothing seems to click, I remind myself: The treasure is there. All I have to do is dig it up.

The post Gabe Henry: I Think of Writing As Excavation appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Hallie discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic completely upended her writing plans for her new historical true crime book, Story of a Murder, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Hallie Rubenhold
Literary agent: Eleanor Jackson (U.S.), Sarah Ballard (U.K.)
Book title: Story of a Murder
Publisher: Dutton (PRH)
Release date: March 26, 2025
Genre/category: History / True Crime
Previous titles: Nonfiction: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper; Lady Worlsey’s Whim (published as The Lady in Red in the U.S.), The Covent Garden Ladies; fiction: Mistress of My Fate; The French Lesson
Elevator pitch: Story of a Murder is one of the most sensational and infamous American true crime stories you’ve never heard of!

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What prompted you to write this book?

After writing The Five I became aware of how historic true crime stories were being told, and how these tales had been entirely owned as crime “legend.” The result of this is that the original narratives formulated in the periods in which the murders occurred were never questioned, but rather repeated for their sensational value. Many historians have traditionally written off true crime as “junk history”—unsavory cultural legends, hyped and doctored by the press in order to sell papers, but this is simply untrue. A historical true crime provides a detailed snapshot of an era and allows us to dig deep and understand our past through this very focused and dramatic event. The danger of leaving these stories to the realm of legend is that they are simply repeated as they appeared in the writing and journalism of the time. They are presented with the prejudices of the era fully intact. Stories like these are simply recirculated in podcasts, in TV and film, online and in books, and they shouldn’t be. They should be probed and questioned like any other event in history. I thought it was high time that someone apply this approach to the murder of Belle Elmore.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The biggest obstacle to writing this book was the pandemic. I had written the proposal and had it accepted just before we went into lockdown. Of course, I never saw this coming, nor did I anticipate having to wait a full two years to be able to complete all of my research due to archive and library closures in the U.K., Ireland, and in the U.S. I was also tied up with a successful podcast, Bad Women (Pushkin) and when the archives began to open up again, I could only work on Story of a Murder in stages. It was quite frustrating at times.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Other than the fact that the entire rule book was thrown out the window during the pandemic—no! We all had to make up strategies as we went along. I hope it’s not something we have to face again. A lot of nonfiction authors found the situation particularly stressful. We rely on access to libraries and archives, and without these resources, it’s impossible to write true stories as fluently or as fully as we would like. Never take libraries for granted!

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Having to rethink how I was going to write and research this book, almost from the outset. I had a research plan—I was going to come to New York in April 2020, in fact I had my ticket booked. I was going to spend three weeks in the U.S. going to various archives. Instead, I had to start writing this book without having done any of the primary research. The result was when I was able to get into the archives, I then had to rewrite everything! It was too difficult to sit on my hands and do nothing—I had to start somewhere.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I really hope that American readers will be introduced to this incredible story, which is truly a Transatlantic tale of a world which was becoming increasingly smaller and more modern at the turn of the last century. Belle’s murder occurred two years before the Titanic set sail and it’s very much of its era—a time of tremendous cultural and technological change and upheaval, especially for women who were really finding their voices. I’m also hoping readers will come to understand true crime in a different light—these stories are not gory legends, these events happened to real people and their families, and this needs to be recognized with compassion. The murder of Belle Elmore sent shockwaves around the world. It was literally front-page news for months in 1910.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Whatever nonfiction project you take on, make sure you love it, that the subject fascinates you deeply, because it will become your entire life, not only for the time you are researching and writing it, but for years afterwards. Books are like babies, they are brought into the world with a lot of labor and (sometimes) pain, but they become a part of who you are, even after you have set them free into the world.

The post Hallie Rubenhold: Books Are Like Babies appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Richard discusses everything he learned in the process of researching and writing his new historical nonfiction book, The Crossing, the collaborative process of publishing a book like this, and more.

Name: Richard Parker
Literary agent: Jane von Mehren, Aevitas Creative Management
Book title: The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story
Publisher: Mariner Books (HarperCollins Publishers) Nonfiction, History
Publication Date: March 4, 2025
Genre/category: Nonfiction, History
Previous titles: Lone Star Nation (Pegasus Books, 2014); Disunion (Contributing Author only, The New York Times and Oxford University Press, 2016)
Elevator pitch for the book: The Crossing is a radical work of history that recenters the American story around El Paso, Texas, gateway between north and south, center of indigenous power and resistance, locus of European colonization of North America, centuries-long hub of immigration, and underappreciated modern blueprint for a changing United States. American history is almost always told from East to West and yet a closer look at the past reveals the country’s start began not in the East, but in the West—at a Texas city situated on a natural, shallow crossing of the Rio Grande River: El Paso.

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What prompted you to write this book?

On the scorching afternoon of August 3, 2019, a young man from just north of Dallas got out of his car. Unlike the hundreds of shoppers crowding Walmart for back-to-school sales, Patrick Crucius, age just 19, wasn’t here to buy anything. He was here to take it. He raised an AK-47 style rifle across the parking lot and toward the front door, lifting it once to kill an elderly woman as she walked out. To his left, a knot of school-age girls sold candy to raise funds for their soccer team; they bolted and ran, their black ponytails flying behind them.

After an editor at The New York Times stirred me from a much-needed nap—I had just arrived in my hometown from Los Angeles to visit my mother—I raced toward the scene in the car, following the radio reports and the circling helicopters to the scene to a middle school converted to a gathering point for nervous families. In the end, 23 people would lay dead with nearly an equal number wounded in the largest act of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing nearly a quarter century earlier.

I pieced together the scene as the dead, wounded, and missing were identified to the hysterical, grieving, shocked, nervous, and relieved families inside. A pastor showed me pictures of a baby who survived but whose parents did not; cradled by his mother, she turned her body to shield the child and was instantly killed by Crucius. In that moment, I didn’t just witness the aftermath of another mass killing, but the raging violence of a nation convulsed by a rising majority that was not, strictly speaking, white, the intersection with the cruelty of the Trump administration toward immigrants and the belief that this city, now bigger than Boston, was somehow a dusty desert outpost of no consequence.

As a result, I bore witness to new facts: My hometown, for which I had held little regard, was the very root of American history—the first humans in the Western hemisphere, complex native cultures, European contact, a passage of settlers who long predated Jamestown or Plymouth; ensuing violence between Europeans, Americans, and Native Americans on a globally historic scale over survival, land, Manifest Destiny, and revolution. It was all followed by 100 years of sacrifice for the country, firsts in the struggle for equal and civil rights, and the rise of peaceful society astride three nations and all or parts of five states that is a model of integration and diversity unmarred by the original American sin of chattel slavery.

These were all things that I didn’t know and that hardly anyone from even El Paso understood. I came to believe that this story wasn’t just history, but narrative history, replete with characters, drama, suspense, and tragedy. I think this story doesn’t just tell us as Americans from where we really came—most Americans now live west of the Mississippi River—but where we can go if we vanquish our demons and fears, of others and the unknown.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

It took about four and a half years. I kept Peter Hubbard apprised as I researched and wrote, certainly, and he provided some excellent guidance that helped me avert some blind alleys and underscored what was important in a sprawling story that stretches over some 14 millennia

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I was pleased at how gifted people it takes to publish a work like this. I know that at least a half-dozen people pushed this manuscript over the finish line, and I got the chance to thank them in the acknowledgments. Sort of like raising a kid, it takes a village to publish a big book like this.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

For me they came more in the research and reporting of the book. I was pleased at how certain nuggets of fact became “aha” moments.

For example, the first evidence of human beings in the Americas was found two decades ago by just two sites: near El Paso and in Peru, carbon dated to 14,000 years ago, nearly three times older than that of the people who came from Asia across the Bering Strait ice bridge. Or that the population of El Paso (the city) now exceeds that of Boston or Detroit and just barely trails Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Or that the population of the Southwest now rivals the Northeast. Or that the binational metropolitan area contains nearly 4 million people—far bigger than metro Denver and about the same as Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Or that the first Thanksgiving was not held at Plymouth, Massachusetts, by the Pilgrims, but on the banks of the Rio Grande by a huge expedition along with native people. The list is long. But to be fair, I didn’t know these facts either, till I started down the trail of this book.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I suppose there are really three things. Everything they are taught about American history is so incomplete as to be factually wrong. Despite the legend and the lore, we are not a people simply rooted on the colonial East Coast; instead, we are a nation of westerners with all the good, bad, dangerous, and tragic that entails.

But as importantly, as a nation of westerners we can fashion an alternate national future in which people of a range of races, ethnicities, countries, languages, and religions can indeed live side by side. El Paso had its share of oppression, sure, but it is probably one of the few large American cities that never endured a race riot.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Think about what the nonfiction story is about in a larger sense, from individual emotion to global precedence and all that’s in between, and then weave that through your narrative to see if it binds the story together and tells an even bigger one. There is that and the importance of a great agent. My agent, Jane Von Mehren, was tireless and I benefited from her skills as a former book editor. There simply are no shortcuts around these two, no matter the rise of self-publishing and now AI. Just like the team at Mariner, it takes a village.

Lastly, I do get asked for advice by students who want to write and say they plan a major or graduate degree in journalism. I have two degrees, been a journalist in one sense or another, all of the last 40 years or so. I have been privileged to teach journalism at the university level twice and benefited vastly from journalism fellowships.

But the number of journalism classes I took. Zero. Instead of learning process, learn subjects you care about. Think critically. 

The post Richard Parker: On Considering the Bigger Picture in Nonfiction Writing appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Kate discusses how the disturbing details of a centuries-old case propelled her to write her new true-crime book, The Sinners All Bow, her hope for readers, and more.

Name: Kate Winkler Dawson
Literary agent: Jessica Papin
Book title: The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Release date: January 7, 2025
Genre/category: True crime, 19^th century American History
Previous titles: Death in the Air, American Sherlock, and All That is Wicked
Elevator pitch: This is the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I first read Sarah Maria Cornell’s story several years ago when I was looking for true crime stories to cover on my podcast. I thought her case was fascinating and confusing. I hoped to shine a light on it using original source material, as well as evidence gathered from Catharine Williams, a poet turned true crime writer in the 1830s. Cornell was fighting for her rights when she was murdered. She was disparaged and victim-shamed after her death. And the question remained for me to answer: Was she really murdered?

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It took about three years, as I was finishing my third book and working on my three podcasts. I was writing feverishly because I was so disturbed by the case, that it was propelling me forward. The idea stayed exactly the same during the process: reinvestigate an almost-200-year-ago case using a 21st-century lens.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

This isn’t my first rodeo because it’s my fourth book, so there were no surprises. My team at Putnam is outstanding!

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I love 19th-century stories, but I really missed having photographs to work with. I leaned heavily on pictures for scene-setting in my second book, American Sherlock, so having only rough sketches/drawings forced me to lean on contemporary descriptions of the locations and the people.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers get a better understanding of why victim-shaming is so destructive to our society, particularly to women. And how religious organizations can rally to protect someone who needs to be investigated.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write about what you love and nothing else. The reader can sense inauthenticity on the page—it won’t get you anywhere.

The post Kate Winkler Dawson: The Reader Can Sense Inauthenticity on the Page appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(10 Interviewing Tips for Journalists.)

In my 25 years as a freelance writer, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a wide range of people, mostly in the culinary arts, entertainment, and business worlds. Some folks are natural storytellers, and my interviews feel more like conversations that flow steadily and easily. Others feel nervous about being interviewed, or their attention is pulled in a multitude of directions, so it’s my job to make them feel at ease while gathering salient quotes.

But I hadn’t encountered anyone who didn’t think they had anything valuable to say. Not until Peter.

Peter Huey was in his 90s when I interviewed him in 2017. He had immigrated to the U.S. in 1950 from Hong Kong. Along with his nephew, Peter owned and operated Won Kow, the oldest restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown at the time (it has since closed).

I had interviewed other business owners and community leaders throughout Chinatown for my story on Won Kow, but my interviews with Peter Huey, I hoped, would be the centerpiece. I called him at the restaurant, where he still worked every day, to schedule our first in-person chat. After I offered some possible dates and times, there was a pause on the phone.

“You don’t think you can find anybody better than me, huh?”

I was stunned. Anybody better? In my mind, Peter was indeed a valuable historian. The Chinese-American Museum of Chicago even expressed interest in archiving my interviews with him. Peter had started as a server at Won Kow in 1950 and was still there, nearly 70 years later. No! I wanted to shout. There isn’t anyone better!

I assured him, as best I could, that his experiences were vital to the restaurant’s history, and he reluctantly agreed to meet me at Won Kow the following week.

Our first interview was awkward. Peter deflected every single question about his past, his family, his staff, or his life in China. I have spent over a decade of my life interviewing restaurateurs for features and guidebooks. Most are grateful for the press and are generous with their time. I’ve only had one restaurateur refuse an interview, out of hundreds. I have learned to navigate language and cultural barriers, and maneuver around the harried restaurant life. I am always respectful of their time and try to get in and out as quickly as possible.

Peter was gracious but guarded, and looked nervously around the restaurant while we were talking, as though guilty of something. The wide cultural gap between us felt insurmountable. I was able to get some vital information, but not much detail, so we scheduled a follow-up.

At the next interview, Peter showed up with a Won Kow menu he had found in the building’s basement. It was dated 1928.

“Can you use this in your book?” he asked brightly. I took this as a sign he was becoming more comfortable and persisted with my questions. He still dodged and ducked, but we were headed in the right direction. I asked for another chat the following week.

On our third interview, Peter handed over an entire file of recipe cards he had found in Won Kow’s bar when he bought the building with his brother in 1970. These were original, handwritten recipes for some of the first tiki drinks in Chicago—maybe in America. I took a few photos with my cell, gave the box back to him, urging him to keep it in a safe place, and got my publisher to request written permission to reprint a couple in the book. But I still wasn’t making much progress in getting him to talk about his life, his family, or the history of the neighborhood. I could barely get him to talk about the menu and where he sourced the ingredients, or how his customer base had evolved over the years. He just couldn’t fathom why he was interesting. I felt stuck.

Around the same time, I was taking a course at the Chicago History Museum to discuss Studs Terkel’s book, The Good War. Our teacher was Peter Alter, Director of the Studs Terkel Center for Oral History, so I knew we were in capable hands as we tackled this epic work.

At the end of our first class, which I had taken for fun, Alter assigned homework—an interview with a veteran. I eagerly dove into the assignment, which was well within my comfort zone. I wound up interviewing my niece, and walked away with what I felt was a compelling and fascinating account of her military service during the Iraqi War.

I had hardly glanced at the resources Alter handed out to help us with this assignment—excerpts from Doing Oral History, by Donald A. Ritchie, and Oral History for Texans, by Thomas L. Charlton.

At our next class, Alter reviewed the Charlton handout. Most of it, on interviewing techniques, was Journalism 101 to me: how to use closed questions, open-ended questions, and a balance of both when interviewing subjects. But one interviewing technique, the use of seven different “probes,” caught my attention. Per Charlton, these are “questions and statements that probe what has been said.” Probes are used to persuade a respondent to “reach back in memory for additional, more specific information.”¹

I had been using some of the seven probes on instinct. But the “silent probe” was particularly intriguing. In a nutshell, interviewers using this technique remain silent after a respondent answers a question. This silence sometimes allows the respondent the opportunity to ponder the question more fully, and may continue to talk, unsolicited. I decided to give it a try at what I hoped was my final interview with Peter Huey.

The next time I saw him, we sat at our usual table at Won Kow, in between lunch and dinner service, Peter with his mug of tea, me with a glass of ice water, my cell phone recording audio between us.

I once again asked him more about his history as a restaurateur in Chicago. I sipped at my water and let silence hang in the air after he offered his usual, brief answer. As we sat, I became more acutely aware of the sounds around me; employees were clearing dishes from tables nearby, and the overhead music played ‘80s hits. After about a 30-second pause, Peter started talking spontaneously with a story of his past, instead of his usual stiff answer. I felt a surge of elation.

I tried it again, asking him how Chinatown had evolved in the nearly 70 years he had lived there. Again, he gave a short answer, then elaborated after my silence. Over and over, I let these silent probes do their work, and our conversation continued for over an hour. Though Peter still looked nervously around him from time to time, his body relaxed in the chair. He crossed his legs, leaned back, and folded his arms, sometimes getting lost in his thoughts. He smiled more. I had to stop the recording to save the file and start a new one several times, since I’ve learned—the hard way—to break up long interviews with several recordings in case one file gets damaged or deleted.

Peter wasn’t offering anything I considered juicy or scandalous. It was fairly standard information about anyone’s history. But I respected the fact that it was probably the most personal information he’d ever given to someone outside his community. I considered it an honor.

I thanked Peter for his time, then gathered up my belongings and prepared to leave, somewhat exhausted by our long talk. It was a late winter afternoon and would soon be dark; I wanted to get home before Chicago rush hour traffic hit. Ever the gentleman, Peter stood up, ready to walk me out. I wish I could end this story on that victorious note.

“You aren’t going to use any of that, are you?”

My heart fell into my shoes. I stared hard at the floor, trying to avoid expressing the frustration that flooded my body. Peter looked scared, nervous. He had signed a release that gave me permission to use the images and interviews I gathered. I had every right to use them in my book.

But I didn’t. It became abundantly clear to me that he was conflicted about sharing what I felt were somewhat mundane details about his life. I agreed to only use our earlier interviews, before our breakthrough that long afternoon, out of respect for someone who was in unchartered waters.

I felt deflated as I filed our conversation under “personal.” At least I had grown as a writer by learning to use silent probes for more spontaneous, interesting interviews. I’d have to write my story on Won Kow without what I felt were more interesting details about Peter’s life and Chinatown’s history, and accept the day for what it was—an afternoon with someone whose comfort zone only extended to the dry facts. Someone who revealed himself as a storyteller, if only for a couple of hours, if only for my ears.

___________________________

1. Charlton, Thomas L. 1985. Oral History for Texans, Second Edition. Austin, TX: Texas Historical Commission.

Author’s Note: Peter Huey passed away in 2022, after several decades as a restaurateur.

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In this interview, Ed discusses the 20-year process of idea to publication for his new historical nonfiction book, Devil’s Contract, how scholarly writing differs from that of trade publication, and more!

Name: Ed Simon
Literary agent: Jake Lovell of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
Book title: Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain
Publisher: Melville House
Release date: July 9, 2024
Genre/category: Nonfiction/History/Cultural Studies/Religion/Philosophy
Previous titles: Paradise Lost: A 350th Anniversary Edition; Seven Sins and Seven Virtues; The Soul of Pittsburgh: Essays on Life, Community and History; Elysium: An Illustrated History of Angelology; Relic; Heaven, Hell, and Paradise Lost; Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature; Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology; The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why it Matters; An Alternative History of Pittsburgh; Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance’s Radicalism; The Anthology of Babel; Furnace of this World; or, 36 Observations about Goodness; America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion
Elevator pitch: The first full, comprehensive, and popular history of the infamous Faustian legend.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

This is a book that I’ve wanted to write for an incredibly long time. My beat, largely, is things that are related to religion and faith, but my disposition is such that I’ve always been drawn to the more extreme facets of belief. I’ve written about demons, I’ve written about relics, and so a book about Faust is something that fits right in with what my interests are. That’s the general explanation, when it comes to Faust in particular, I think that the legend about someone who sells their soul to the Devil for certain powers or knowledge is obviously evocative. What really shocked me is that there hasn’t before been a popular cultural history of the legend, in all of its permutations, though obviously there have been, by the shelfful, fantastic scholarly works on particular aspects of the myth. Toni Morrison once said that you should write the book that you want to read, and I’ll confess that I’ve always wanted there to be a history of the Faust legend—so I wrote one.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

From the very beginnings of wanting to write this book until its actual publication was a really long time, far longer than most of my ideas—almost 20 years. I first knew that I wanted to write this book when I began my graduate studies in English two decades ago, and originally I thought that maybe my dissertation could be a general history of the Faust legend, of the narrative whereby somebody sells their soul to the Devil, from the Bible all the way to the modern day. Quickly I learned that in graduate school, and scholarly writing more generally, you tend not to be given such latitude to widely range in that way.

But in the back of my mind, I knew that this was a title I wanted to write, and at various points, such as when I was able to visit Christopher Marlowe’s grave in 2013, that desire to return to this subject would emerge again. I began querying folks in earnest around 2019, but lots of folks passed over the proposal, which was obviously frustrating but also surprising to me. When I signed with Melville House—fully cognoscente of the appropriateness of signing a contract to write about the Devil’s contract!—I found a house and an editor who were incredibly supportive and really understood what I was trying to do. After that the book was written really quickly, about nine months. Whether that’s because of supernatural affinities or because the idea had been germinating in my mind for so long, I leave to the readers to parse.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think that the most useful thing I learned during this process, and every writer learns something from a good editor (and my editor Mike Lindgren was definitely that), was how to smooth down some of the scholarly affectations that naturally come in from my entire adult life being in the university. In graduate school we’re trained to do what’s known as a “literature review,” this kind of recap of everything in your field, which can be dry as hell, and also to heavily rely on endless secondary quotations. There are reasons for that in the scholarly world, but it doesn’t translate well to a trade publication, and I think that even when we assume we’re not doing it, we’re doing it. Learning how to rely more on my own voice without a million quotations was a really valuable skill to refine.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Going into this project, I knew that there were going to be a number of versions of the Faustian legend that I’d write about, from Renaissance magicians to the bluesman Robert Johnson, but I was surprised by just how often I kept on seeing Dr. Faust pop up all over the place.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

That they have the opportunity to learn about what I think is a tremendously interesting subject, that they apply it to important issues of today, and that they do this by enjoying language and narrative that I hope they find to be written with verve and style.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

That it’s always better to write without thinking than to think without writing. Afterwards, editing and revision exist for a reason.

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In this post, Ronald discusses the process of writing his new nonfiction espionage book, Beverly Hills Spy, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: Ronald Drabkin
Literary agent: The Watermark Agency
Book title: Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero and Spy Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor
Publisher: William Morrow
Release date: February 13, 2024
Genre/category: History/Espionage/True Crime
Elevator pitch: In the spirit of Ben Macintyre’s greatest spy nonfiction, the truly unbelievable and untold story of Frederick Rutland—a debonair British WWI hero, flying ace, fixture of Los Angeles society, and friend of Golden Age Hollywood stars—who flipped to become a spy for Japan in the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

My obsession with espionage history started when I was a child in Los Angeles, where I vaguely understood that my father had been working for the U.S. military in counterintelligence. Later I discovered that my grandfather had also been in “the business,” and it drove a voyage of discovery into previously classified documents on three continents.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Five years. It started with the idea of writing a book on my family history in espionage, but it has evolved into something completely different; in fact, my family barely appears in the book at all.

The evolution started when, looking into possible associates of my grandfather, a curious thing happened. I sent a request to the FBI to see if they had a file available on Frederick Rutland, the British pilot and war hero who had become a spy for the Japanese Navy. The FBI replied with a copy of the file. I noted his file had just been declassified, and I realized that I may have been the first person outside of the bureau to see it. Cracking the file open, the first thing I saw was a memo from FBI Director J Edgar Hoover. The memo instructed the FBI agents to not mention to anyone that Rutland had been a double agent, working for the U.S. Navy, because it would be very embarrassing to the FBI if that secret leaked.

As I dug into the FBI file, I realized that this was just a really good story, and that it needed to see the light of day. Further research in the U.S., U.K., and Japan filled out more and more of what had happened. The next evolution of the book turned into a biography of a glamorous, complicated man, who made some bad decisions and ended up stuck in a life of espionage that was getting more and more disastrous as the fatal moment of Pearl Harbor approached.

The final evolution of the book was thanks to my editors. They encouraged me to tell a bigger picture story of espionage, Hollywood, and the run-up to Pearl Harbor, primarily though Rutland’s eyes.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The process for getting pictures for the cover and photo insert is very challenging for a writer of nonfiction that takes place in the 1930s-40s. It is the responsibility of the author, not the publisher, to obtain the permissions.

For the paid photo sites, the cost to get a license to use a single picture is often $200-$300, and you need maybe 20 for a photo insert. Surprisingly, getting rights from a nonprofit organization to use a photo can be even harder than getting one from a company. For example, many of the museums in Britain now charge roughly $100 license fee for each 5000 copies of your book you sell. Therefore, if your book ends up becoming a bestseller, they will come after you, sending you a bill which is the cost of a new car for each picture you use.

There were also family pictures that I wanted to use, but for a person with maybe 30 living descendants, even finding out who owns the copyright gets really challenging.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I kept having to update the book when I found new information! And a lot of the discoveries were fascinating, like the discoveries on Frederick Rutland and Amelia Earhart, or more details on what Rutland did with the Japanese Navy.

As just one example, information on Hollywood in the 1930s is all over the newspapers of the period. In 2021-2022, many of these old newspapers were only available on microfilm, in libraries that were mostly closed due to the pandemic. In 2023, the Hearst corporation put newspapers from the period online, and there I found dozens of articles with information on specific parties that spies and movie stars attended together.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they will enjoy the tour of Hollywood stars, spies, and Pearl Harbor. And I hope they will think about two things:

1. Missed chances to prevent the Pearl Harbor attack
2. How a person who has done bad things may try to redeem themselves.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

I would ask them how they balance what they want to tell people with what the reader is looking for.

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