The Magazine Revival Episode
Babe Cave
Print never died. The people running it just stopped believing in it first. Amanda Polick — former Cooking Light fellow, Time Inc. segment producer, and longtime magazine obsessive — makes the case for why the magazine revival isn't a nostalgia trip. It's a signal. And if you want to write a book, it might be the most important thing happening in media right now. Amanda unpacks what the resurgence of publications like Saveur, the new Gourmet newsletter, and indie food zines like Tomato Tomato actually means for writers and why she's always believed that every book idea lives inside a...
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The Spring Awakening Episode
Babe Cave
Spring didn't just show up on the calendar — it showed up in the work. Amanda Polick recorded this one on the first official day of spring, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a real-time reckoning with hibernation, self-imposed smallness, and what it finally feels like to wake back up. This isn't a productivity episode. It's a permission slip. Amanda gets honest about a winter spent rethinking major parts of her novel, sitting with creative fatigue instead of pushing through it, and quietly realizing she'd stopped betting on herself in ways she used to do without thinking twice. Cold...
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The Hot Garbage Episode
Babe Cave
Hot garbage isn't an insult — it's a practice. Cookbook coach Amanda Polick makes the case for why submitting imperfect, unpolished, still-in-progress work is not just acceptable — it's the whole point. Drawing on her background as an actor and Second City Hollywood graduate, Amanda unpacks why perfectionism stalls more writing projects than any lack of talent ever could, and what it actually takes to break through the wall. In this episode, you'll hear: Why Amanda holds the line on deadlines with every client — and what that teaches writers about their own resistance The Anne...
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The 10 Things No One Tells You About Writing & Publishing a Cookbook Episode
Babe Cave
If you're trying to write a cookbook — or any nonfiction book — and you feel like you don't know what you don't know, this episode is the one. Cookbook and food memoir coach Amanda Polick breaks down the ten things almost nobody tells aspiring cookbook authors before they start: why a book proposal can take six months or longer, what agents are actually looking for, how to think about an advance (and why bigger isn't always better), what happens to your manuscript after you sign a deal, and why fighting for your work is the most important skill you can develop. In this episode, you'll...
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The Room of One's Own Episode
Babe Cave
Virginia Woolf published A Room of One's Own in 1929. Nearly 100 years later, the questions she raised — about money, creative freedom, and a woman's right to write — are still the questions women writers are asking. In this solo Women's History Month episode, Amanda Polick takes a deep dive into the essay that inspired the name Babe Cave itself, and unpacks why its central argument is just as urgent in 2026 as it was when Woolf delivered it as a lecture at Cambridge in 1928. In this episode, you'll discover: The story of Shakespeare's hypothetical sister — and why Woolf believed she...
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The Having People Over Episode
Babe Cave
What does hosting a dinner party have to do with writing a book? Everything, it turns out. In this episode, Amanda Polick dives into Chelsea Fagan's Having People Over and draws surprising parallels between the art of entertaining and the writing process — from reclaiming formality in your creative work to why going deeper (not wider) is the move that changes everything. In this episode, you'll discover: • Why we've gotten too casual with our writing — and how to fix it • The "back-pocket...
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The Lokelani Alabanza Episode
Babe Cave
Lokelani Alabanza has invented over 300 ice cream flavors, spent five years writing the cookbook she was born to write, and will absolutely change the way you think about what's in your freezer. Loke is a classically trained pastry chef with 20+ years of experience, founder of Saturated Ice Cream (a non-dairy, plant-based brand based in Nashville), and the author of Ice Cream Queen: Flavors from Black America's Past, Present, Future — out June 16, 2026, the week of Juneteenth. The book covers 200 years of Black American ice cream history and includes 100 recipes. In this...
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The Cookbook Proposal Episode
Babe Cave
Your cookbook proposal isn't a rough draft—it's a business plan that will make or break your book deal. After years of coaching aspiring cookbook authors, Amanda Polick has seen the same mistake over and over: brilliant writers with incredible concepts who sabotage themselves by treating their proposal like an afterthought. They think agents will clean it up, or figure it out. But if your proposal doesn't immediately prove you have a clear concept, know your audience, and can market your book, it's dead in the water. In this episode, you'll discover: • ...
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The Edna Lewis Episode
Babe Cave
In this episode, celebrating Black History Month, Amanda Polick dives into the life of Edna Lewis. A woman who became the Grand Dame of Southern Cooking not by following culinary trends, but by staying true to her roots. Edna's path was anything but linear. She worked as a seamstress making dresses for Marilyn Monroe, threw legendary dinner parties in NYC's bohemian art scene, and eventually became head chef and co-owner of Cafe Nicholson, where literary giants like Tennessee Williams and Eleanor Roosevelt came to eat her roast chicken and chocolate soufflé. But the real turning point...
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The You Shouldn't Write a Book Episode
Babe Cave
Not everyone who wants to write a cookbook should—and as a cookbook coach, Amanda Polick knows when to say so. In this episode, Amanda shares the red flags she watches for when aspiring authors apply to work with her: the family friend who insisted his wild game cookbook was "all in his head," the woman who tried to negotiate rates while planning to spend $8,000 she didn't have on self-publishing, and the applicant who sent her a Canva movie in French. Listeners will discover: Why "it's all in my head" is the most dangerous phrase in cookbook publishing The platform-building work...
info_outlinePrint never died. The people running it just stopped believing in it first.
Amanda Polick — former Cooking Light fellow, Time Inc. segment producer, and longtime magazine obsessive — makes the case for why the magazine revival isn't a nostalgia trip. It's a signal. And if you want to write a book, it might be the most important thing happening in media right now.
Amanda unpacks what the resurgence of publications like Saveur, the new Gourmet newsletter, and indie food zines like Tomato Tomato actually means for writers and why she's always believed that every book idea lives inside a magazine pitch.
In this episode:
- What Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, and Hunter S. Thompson all have in common (before the books came)
- What a 2025 Huck magazine piece gets exactly right about why print is culturally ascendant again — and why digital content has trained readers to distrust almost everything they skim
- The inside story of working at Cooking Light and Time Inc. during the era of rolling layoffs, sold buildings, and a podcast idea nobody wanted to greenlight
- Why magazine feature writing makes you a better book writer and why writing shorter is actually harder
- The Central Valley water story that taught her what deep reporting can do for fiction
- Three books worth tracking down if you want to get serious about long-form writing, plus a resource for finding editors who are actively looking for pitches right now
If you've been waiting for permission to fall back in love with writing long, or you've been circling a story idea you haven't known what to do with, this one is for you.
Resources mentioned: Tomato Tomato, the new Gourmet newsletter, Saveur, QWOTED, Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob, Story by Jack Hart, The Essential Feature by Vicki Hay
Find Amanda: @amandapolick | amandapolick.com