Episode 87: Adam Ross
As Told To
Adam Ross’s second novel, , is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. A story “dipped in molten nostalgia and flecked with love and sadness,” according to The Washington Post, it was hailed immediately upon publication by The Los Angeles Times as “extraordinary” and by The New York Times as “a gorgeous cat’s cradle of a book.” He is also the author of a previous novel, , which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist, and the story collection , which featured a story entitled “In the Basement,” a...
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Episode 86: Salwa Emerson
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“Sometimes our own stories get snatched from us, hidden in darkness for years,” writes podcast guest Salwa Emerson, “until it’s time to reclaim them.” Salwa is well-known to publishers as an author, editor and ghostwriter, specializing in memoirs, thought-leadership books, and book proposals. To hear her clients tell it, she has a way of bringing those stories out of hiding and into the light. She has collaborated with world-renowned chefs, professional athletes, reality television personalities, Oscar-winning actors, and Pulitzer Prize winners. Before turning to ghostwriting, she...
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Episode 85: Elizabeth Shockman
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“My job was to dance so well that it didn’t matter who favored me or why.” That’s a line from the compelling new memoir by world-renowned ballerina Joy Womack, “as told to” podcast guest Elizabeth Shockman. Together, in (dare we say it?) balletic prose, the two recount Womack’s storied career as the first American woman to dance under contract for the Bolshoi Ballet Theater in Moscow. “The dancers beside me were tired, pale after months of clouded winter skies,” they write in . “They bent and bowed, their bodies corded with muscle, like sallow stalagmites that had...
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Episode 84: David Peisner
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David Peisner is a freelance journalist and ghostwriter/collaborator based in Atlanta. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York, Esquire, Playboy, and other publications. His first book collaboration—with “Steve-O,” the legendary co-star of the legendarily out there MTV reality series “Jackass”—grew out of a magazine assignment, taking Peisner on a sidelong career turn he hadn’t anticipated. “If you are only going to buy one book this year about an alcoholic, self-abusive, vegan, pyromaniac ex-circus clown with a talent for vomiting on command and...
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Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio
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“We all have to figure out our own ways to carve out our own creativity,” says New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Cynthia DiTiberio about finding time to do her own writing alongside her collaborative work. “Not that our creativity doesn’t go into our ghostwritten books, but you can’t claim it in the same way.” Cynthia knows what it takes to create a successful book. She started her publishing career as a senior editor at HarperCollins, where she worked with a number of authors, including NIH director Francis Collins and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jeffrey...
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Episode 82: Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen
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We’re taking a bit of a pivot here at the podcast factory with this one, pinching from the season-opening episode of Writer’s Bone, our flagship podcast at the Writer’s Bone Podcast Network. “As Told To” producer and Writer’s Bone host and founder Daniel Ford featured a conversation with the writing team of Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, co-creators of the enchantingly poignant HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” starring actress/comedian Bridget Everett—a conversation that brushed up against so many relatable aspects of collaborative writing that we decided to rebroadcast...
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Episode 81: Laura Morton
As Told To
“The work that we do is actually very difficult to detach from when you’re writing in somebody’s voice,” notes veteran collaborator Laura Morton on the emotional connection she often feels when channeling her clients’ stories. Laura comes by this observation honestly, after spending more than thirty years helping to tell other people’s stories. In that time, she has written more than 60 books, including 22 New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent bestseller , written with GoDaddy and PXG Golf founder Bob Parsons—was a publication of , her own imprint at Forefront...
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Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer
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“You’d be amazed at how far you can get in life having no idea what the subjunctive mood is,” writes Benjamin Dreyer, retired managing editor and copy chief of the Random House division of Penguin Random House. “As if it’s not bad enough that English has rules, it also has moods.” Yes, it does. Happily, the mood of the room for writers in Benjamin’s good hands as a copyeditor was cheerful and patient and winning… and, for the most part, grammatically correct. Over the course of his 30+ years in publishing, he helped to shepherd the work of writers such as Michael Chabon, Edmund...
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Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks
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This episode originally aired June 20, 2023 First-time author David Jacks, a veteran video editor and music supervisor, ran into legendary music producer Peter Asher at a Santa Monica taco joint in 2003 and asked if he could interview him. Jacks, a long-time admirer of the man said to be the inspiration for Mike Myers’ “shagadelic” Austin Powers character, who first came to prominence as one-half of the hit-making British pop vocal duo Peter and Gordon and would go on to produce generation-defining albums for artists such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and...
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Episode 79: Seth Rogoff Returns
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Here at the podcast factory, we’re thrilled to welcome back novelist, translator, collaborator and cultural critic Seth Rogoff to talk about his new novel—a thrilling and unsettling coda to Franz Kafka’s unfinished masterwork The Castle. Seth joined us in Season 2 () to talk about the also thrilling and decidedly unconventional memoir he helped to write with ESPN basketball analyst and former NBA star Kendrick Perkins, , which took a critical look at racism in America, and in professional sports, and sounded a call for justice and social change—a book hailed by Kirkus Reviews as...
info_outline“Celebrity memoirs have always been my favorite book genre,” reflects podcast guest Chelsea Devantez, the Emmy-nominated writer, comedian, director, and host of the celebrity book club podcast “Glamorous Trash.” “That is what happens when your nearest bookstore growing up is a Wal-Mart. That was my fate.”
Chelsea is just out with a celebrity-adjacent memoir of her own, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This (But I’m Going to Anyway), from Hanover Square Press. It’s a book that might surprise her loyal podcast listeners, or viewers who know her from her work as a television writer for shows like “Not Dead Yet,” “Girls5Eva,” and “Bless This Mess,” or as the head writer for the Apple TV+ show “The Problem with Jon Stewart.”
The book is wildly funny in spots, but harrowing and traumatic in others, as Chelsea tells her story through a series of essays about the many women who have given her life shape and meaning, recounting a tumultuous childhood, a series of toxic relationships, and a pattern of domestic violence that might have upended a less determined soul.
Join us as we talk with Chelsea about her new book, about her unlikely career path, and about the current state of the celebrity memoir, in a conversation that will hopefully make you think about the stories we share, and the ways we go about sharing them.
Learn more about Chelsea Devantez:
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