As Told To

Everybody's got a story to tell. Sometimes they need a little bit of help. Veteran ghostwriter Daniel Paisner talks shop with his fellow collaborators and shines a light on what it means to pursue a writing life on the back of someone else’s story.

Episode 92: Carla Sosenko 07/01/2025

Episode 91: John Kasich 06/17/2025

Episode 90: Art Bell 06/03/2025

Episode 89: Alan Zweibel 05/20/2025

Episode 89: Alan Zweibel "Comedy writers learn early on that we have a high degree of anonymity," writes podcast guest Alan Zweibel in his memoir . "Our words are spoken publicly by others who often have famous faces. Or by unknown people on their way to having famous faces." As one of the founding writers on Saturday Night Live, Alan’s words were given voice by a cast of virtual unknowns, all on their way to becoming famous faces, eventually earning worldwide acclaim as some of the most iconic comic performers of their generation. Over the course of his 50-year career, he has penned jokes for dozens of Borscht Belt comedians and written for some of SNL’s most memorable characters (such as Gilda Radner’s "Roseanne Rosannadanna," John Belushi’s "Samurai," and Garrett Morris’s "Chico Escuela"), and helped to craft SNL producer Lorne Michaels’s now-legendary appeal to invite the Beatles to appear on the show for the standard artist fee of $3,000. Alan is the recipient of five Emmy Awards for his work in television, which in addition to SNL also includes "It’s Garry Shandling’s Show" (which he co-created and produced), "The Late Show with David Letterman," and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." He is the author of 11 books, including the 2006 Thurber Prize-winning novel , and , and six off-Broadway plays. He also collaborated with Billy Crystal on the Tony Award-winning play "700 Sundays," and with Martin Short on his Broadway hit "Fame Becomes Me," and co-wrote the screenplays for the films "Dragnet," "North," "The Story of Us," and "Here Today." He joins us on the podcast to reflect on a singular career as one of our leading comedy writers and humorists—and a wickedly funny body of work that has earned him an honorary Ph.D. from the State University of New York, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America, East. Learn more about Alan Zweibel: Please support the sponsors who support our show: John Kasich’s Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/36582415

Episode 88: Rachel Holtzman 05/06/2025

Episode 88: Rachel Holtzman How much does ego play a role in the art and craft of a book collaborator? That’s a question at the heart of this conversation with #1 New York Times best-selling ghostwriter Rachel Holtzman, co-author of more than 60 books on topics ranging from wellness and spirituality, to cooking and entertaining, including collaborations with such celebrated personalities as , , , and . Prior to her work as a self-described “book doula,” Rachel was an editor at Penguin Books and ELLE magazine, before a detour to culinary school and a short stint in the kitchen at New York’s Gramercy Tavern helped to launch her career as an in-demand cookbook co-author and recipe tester and developer. “We’re climbing inside the minds or the lives of our clients in order to produce something that is really of them,” she reflects, “while also leaving behind a pretty big footprint of our own, because it is of us as well. We’re not ChatGPT.” Rachel joins us at a busy time on the collaboration front, as she celebrates the publication of four new titles this month—, a collection of “veg-forward” Middle Eastern and Mediterranean-inspired recipes, written with television food personality Edin Grinshpan; , featuring seasonal recipes from celebrity chef and style curator Meredith Hayden; , a guide to peak living, from wellness educator Devi Brown; and, , a parenting primer on nurturing independent play, from Myriam Sandler, creator and founder of the Mothercould lifestyle platform. Learn more about Rachel Holtzman: Please support the sponsors who support our show: John Kasich’s Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/36432275

Episode 87: Adam Ross 04/22/2025

Episode 86: Salwa Emerson 04/08/2025

Episode 85: Elizabeth Shockman 03/25/2025

Episode 85: Elizabeth Shockman “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 mushroomed off the floor of a cave.” Womack’s story offers a first-hand glimpse of the cutthroat world of ballet, complete with acts of violence and intrigue, tales of eating disorders and body shaming, and profiles of legendary Bolshoi coaches who encouraged obsessive devotion and imposed their uncompromising standards on their young charges. And yet beneath the ugliness of graft and competition, the author’s love of dance and her appreciation for the place ballet holds in Russian culture fairly leap off the page, as she reflects on the intersection of art and politics and exposes the shadowy underbelly of the world of professional ballet. First-time collaborator Elizabeth Shockman is a public radio journalist based in Minnesota. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, Minnesota Public Radio, and the BBC. She has previously written for Reuters, The Moscow Times, and other publications. She first met Joy Womack on assignment for Reuters in Moscow and spent over a dozen years collaborating with her on this book. (Yes, Elizabeth agrees, that’s a very long time to work on one project, but as she shares in this episode of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, it sometimes happens that life and career take center stage, both for an author and her subject, as memoir waits in the wings.) Learn more about Elizabeth Shockman: Please support the sponsors who support our show: John Kasich’s (now available for pre-order) Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/35828245

Episode 84: David Peisner 03/11/2025

Episode 84: David Peisner 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 stapling his scrotum to his leg, make sure this is the one,” he wrote upon the book’s publication. That book, , became a New York Times best-seller, and led to a follow-up title, , and a string of ghostwriting projects that helped to supplement Peisner’s income as a freelance newspaper and magazine writer. Curiously, those two Steve-O books made headlines in December 2024, when they surfaced on the Goodreads account of suspected “CEO Killer” Luigi Mangione, charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—a connection that put Peisner’s work in an unexpected sliver of spotlight. It also brought his collaborative work to the attention of the similarly-named host of this here podcast, resulting in this conversation. Join us for a reflection on what it takes to build a career as a freelance journalist, and how to walk the fine line between writing about a celebrity subject and writing for a celebrity subject. Learn more about David Peisner: “” (05/19/24 Rolling Stone profile of Kid Rock) Please support the sponsors who support our show: John Kasich’s (now available for pre-order) Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/35594275

Episode 83: Cynthia DiTiberio 02/25/2025

Episode 82: Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen 02/11/2025

Episode 82: Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen 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 it (to re-podcast it?) here. “Somebody Somewhere” ended its three-season run in December, shortly after the creators sat with Daniel Ford to discuss the series—hailed by The Los Angeles Times as “epic television”—and we were charmed by their conversation, inviting listeners behind the scenes to reflect on how the show came about, and the singular place it now holds in the annals of bittersweet television. Paul Thureen is a founder and co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society, a Brooklyn-based theater company. He received an OBIE Award for his performance in the company's Blood Play. Hannah Bos, also a founder and co-founder of the company, received a Drama Desk Award for her performance in the Signature Theater Company’s production of Will Eno’s The Open House. Together, they have written for “Mozart in the Jungle” and “High Maintenance,” and developed pilots for HBO, FOX, Amazon and Paramount. “This has been a dream come true,” Hannah reflected on the duo’s “Somebody Somewhere” run as the series came to a close. “It was a dream that they made the pilot. It was a dream that they made the first season, the second season, the third season. And it was a dream that we made it with really fun, good people. So I hope we can do it again.” Paul’s reflections were a little less…well, reflective, as he shared what it was like to write for a group of midwestern-ish characters who weren’t used to talking about their feelings. “If it gets a little too real,” he said, of the pain and heartache that could often be found at the show’s core, “then you have to make a fart joke.” Indeed. Learn more about Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/35216790

Episode 81: Laura Morton 01/28/2025

Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer 01/14/2025

Episode 80: Benjamin Dreyer “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 Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, E.L. Doctorow, Elizabeth Strout, and Shirley Jackson into print. Somewhere in there, he also found time to write a book of his own: The New York Times best-selling stylebook —a “brilliant, pithy, incandescently intelligent book [that] is to contemporary writing what Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry was to medieval English,” according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, another Random House author who benefited from our guest’s unseen hand. Join us as Benjamin reflects on the collaborative role of the copyeditor in the publishing process, on the joys of creative footnoting, on the particularly lovely frustration of working with Isabella Rossellini, on a writer’s lifetime allotment of exclamation points, and the excesses to be pruned from phrases like “assless chaps,” “slightly ajar,” and “passing fad.” (Note the ever-popular serial comma in the previous sentence, and the expenditure of one of those allotted exclamation points in this parenthetical aside!) Learn more about Benjamin Dreyer: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/34829450

Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks 12/31/2024

Second Printing: Peter Asher and David Jacks 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 Diana Ross, immediately asked Asher if he would sit for an interview. The aspiring journalist thought he might use the interview as the basis for an article in a music magazine, but the two-time Grammy-winning Producer of the Year didn’t think anyone would want to read it. Nevertheless, that first interview led to another… and another… and on and on. Over the next two decades, the two continued to talk, while Jacks lined up interviews with hundreds of musicians and record industry professionals who had worked with Asher over the years, eventually leading to the publication of , the first book-length account of the producer’s life and career. Join us for a two-part conversation with author and subject, as Asher reflects on a book he never thought anyone would be interested in reading, and Jacks shares what it was like to tease out the story of a shape-shifting pioneer—“a fascinating music business anomaly,” according to The New York Times, who could never quite understand what all the fuss was about. Learn more about our guests: Read , timed to coincide with the publication of the David Jacks book. Read Read Peter Asher’s , based on the author’s popular Sirius XM radio show on The Beatles Channel. Please support the sponsors who support our show: Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/34665760

Episode 79: Seth Rogoff Returns 12/17/2024

Episode 78: Mike Thomas 12/03/2024

Episode 78: Mike Thomas “In general, magazine profiles are to biographies as inland lakes are to oceans,” writes the late entertainment journalist and ghostwriter Bill Zehme in The New York Times best-selling . “Far less sprawling and easier to navigate.” This is true—and readers need look no further than Zehme’s latest (and last) book, completed posthumously, for confirmation. Zehme, who collaborated on memoirs with Jay Leno and Regis Philbin and was a frequent contributor to Esquire, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Vanity Fair, worked on his Carson biography for over a decade, before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023, The New York Times cited “Carson the Magnificent” in his obit as one of the entertainment world’s “great unfinished biographies.” Enter podcast guest Mike Thomas, Bill Zehme’s former research assistant and longtime friend, who was tapped to complete the project, which was an immediate New York Times best-seller upon its publication last month. “Everything I needed (and so much more) was there, somewhere, stashed in long-unopened binders and torn envelopes and dusty bins,” Mike Thomas writes of this collaboration. “It was mostly a matter of sifting through the stockpile, extracting and sorting the relevant material and reaching out to a handful of Bill’s sources, all of whom were eager to help, for further illumination. But I’ve never lost sight of the fact that, despite my contributions, this is Bill’s book.” The book, Mike says, has been a blessing, gifting him the chance to keep connected to a close pal with whom he can no longer communicate directly—a mentor who cheered him on during his own career as arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, as a regular contributor to Chicago magazine, and as the author of two critically-acclaimed books of his own— and . Learn more about Mike Thomas: Mentioned on the show: , by Bill Zehme and ATT guest David Rensin Please support the sponsors who support our show: Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/34220240

Second Printing: Winnie Holzman 11/26/2024

Episode 77: Hal Donaldson 11/19/2024

Episode 77: Hal Donaldson Hal Donaldson’s faith-based humanitarian organization Convoy of Hope is a magnificent agent of change. In partnership with local churches, businesses, civic organizations, and government agencies, the organization is deeply committed to healing the world in all its broken places, through children’s feeding initiatives, community outreach and disaster response. currently feeds more than 571,000 children worldwide each day—and has served more than 250 million people in total since Hal, together with his brothers and friends, started the organization in 1994. It’s the 35th largest charity on the latest Forbes “100 Largest U.S. Charities” list. So what does all of this have to do with ghostwriting? Well, before launching Convoy of Hope, Hal started out as a journalist and ghostwriter. Early on in his career, on a ghostwriting assignment in Calcutta, he had the opportunity to interview Mother Teresa, who turned the tables on their interview and asked the young journalist what he was doing to repair the world. Hal had no answer, but when he returned to the United States a short while later, he rallied his friends and family and began donating goods and supplies to communities in need. As the organization has grown, Hal has continued to write. He’s just out with his latest collaboration, , written in collaboration with his daughter Lindsay Donaldson-Kring. Join us for an inspiring conversation on what really matters, as Hal Donaldson reflects on the good works that continue to flow from the first strokes of his pen. Learn more about Hal Donaldson: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Chelsea Devantez's Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/33960367

Episode 76: Aaron Philip Clark 11/05/2024

Episode 75: Betsy Lerner 10/22/2024

Episode 74: Jill Sobule 10/08/2024

Episode 74: Jill Sobule Over the course of her nearly forty-year career, singer-songwriter Jill Sobule has earned a singular spot in the American songbook. Best known for her breakout 1995 singles “” (from the “Clueless” soundtrack) and “” (which came out more than 10 years before the Katy Perry hit of the same name), her quirky, heartfelt, cheer-filled songs are difficult to categorize: she sings about the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, the French Resistance, LGBTQ issues and Mexican wrestling. In another decade, Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The New York Times, wrote that she stands “among the stellar New York singer-songwriters of the last decade”—high praise that has surely applied in all subsequent decades. Jill’s songs are enchanting, disarmingly funny and achingly poignant, and many of them are featured in her Drama Desk-nominated autobiographical musical "," which premiered at the Wild Project in NYC in 2022 and returns for a limited engagement in November 2024. “We didn’t have to create a story around these songs,” she says of the show, which she really, really hopes isn’t dismissed as just another jukebox musical featuring songs from an artist’s back catalogue. “These songs are my story. I just wrote a few more to fill out the narrative.” Jill joins us on the podcast to discuss her rich and varied career as one of the music industry’s most uniquely collaborative artists. She’s performed with musicians such as Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, and Warren Zevon, and once released a concept album of original music with lyrics written by some of her favorite writers, including Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, Vendela Vida, and David Hajdu. She regularly tours with comedian/actress/author Julia Sweeney in their two-woman “Jill & Julia” show. Two highlights from the very many cool, pinch me-type moments that have stamped Jill Sobule’s remarkable career: she inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and she appeared as herself on an episode of “The Simpsons.” So, you know, there’s that. Learn more about Jill Sobule: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Chelsea Devantez's Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/33343157

Episode 73: J. Michael Straczynski 09/24/2024

Episode 73: J. Michael Straczynski “The task of writing is to take a character and put him up a tree and start throwing rocks at him,” notes novelist, screenwriter, comic book writer, and television showrunner J. Michael Straczynski. The two-time Hugo Award-winning author is perhaps best known as the creator of the television series “Babylon 5”, and as the screenwriter for the 2008 Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood film “Changeling.” He is also the author of the Superman: Earth One” trilogy of graphic novels, and for many years he was the writer for Marvel Comics’ “Thor,” “Fantastic Four,” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” series, as well as for DC’s “Superman,” “Wonder Woman,” and “Before Watchmen” titles. These days, Joe is spending most of his time throwing rocks on behalf of his late friend Harlan Ellison, the legendary writer of speculative fiction, who is having a bit of a moment more than six years after his death. As the executor of the Harlan Ellison estate, Joe has been the driving force behind the re-release of the first two installments of Ellison’s landmark story collections and , which the author had always imagined as a trilogy. Now, thanks to Joe Straczynski’s dedication, the long-awaited third installment of “the most significant and controversial Science Fiction collections of our time,” will finally see the light of day with the publication of The , due from Blackstone Publishing in October 2024. “Harlan was my friend, and I have an obligation to him to get his work where it needs to be, in front of a mainstream audience,” Joe reflects on a year that has also seen the publication of a new collection of Ellison’s stories () as well as a novel of his own (). Join us as we talk with J. Michael Straczynski on his influences as a writer, on the art and craft of storytelling in all its many forms, and on what it has meant to him to be able to breathe new life into the work of an artist hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a twentieth-century Lewis Carroll.” Learn more about J. Michael Straczynski: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Chelsea Devantez's Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/33174032

Episode 72: Nancy French 09/10/2024

Second Printing: Frank Santopadre 08/27/2024

Second Printing: Frank Santopadre Originally aired Dec. 6, 2022. Frank Santopadre is a veteran comedy writer and the longtime co-host of “,” with the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. Prior to working with Gilbert, Frank helped to write jokes and supporting material for numerous awards shows (including the Daytime Emmys, the TV Land Awards, and the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize). He has also written comics for Bazooka Joe bubble gum, and mock ad copy, concepts, and character profiles for the Topps Company’s popular Wacky Packs and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards series. Oh, and did we mention he also wrote for Mad and Cracked magazines? And the somewhat less zany The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, US Weekly, and Politico? Along the way, he has created comedy material for an eclectic line-up of celebrated personalities, including Bill Murray, Howard Stern, Sarah Silverman, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, and Ben Stiller, and briefly served as a staff writer on what he proudly calls “the worst sitcom in television history”—a forgettable show from the late ‘90s called “,” hailed by The Los Angeles Times during its mercifully-brief run as “mirthless.” Join us for a somewhat more mirth-filled hour, as we talk about what it was like to help give voice to one of the most singular voices in the annals of American comedy—a joyful burden Frank kinda, sorta shared with podcast host Daniel Paisner, who collaborated with Gilbert Gottfried on his 2011 memoir . Learn more about Frank Santopadre, visit his , like his , and follow him on . Please support the sponsors who support our show: Chelsea Devantez's Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/32713252

Episode 71: Gathering of the Ghosts 08/13/2024

Episode 70: Hope Edelman 07/30/2024

Episode 70: Hope Edelman Hope Edelman is an author, ghostwriter, essayist, writing instructor and life coach. The through-line connecting much of her work, from the collaborations she’s helped to write to her own best-selling memoirs, is the theme of parent-loss. “Navigating motherhood without your mom is like assembling a complex puzzle without the picture on the box,” she writes in a blog post on her website. She’s been writing about the grief and loss in her own life since her best-selling 1994 memoir —a book she began as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, when she realized she was being called to write about her mother’s death more than a decade earlier. It's a calling that connects Hope to her ghostwriting clients as well. Her first collaboration, a dual memoir written with actors Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez——is informed by the death of Sheen’s mother, when the actor was just 11 years old, while her current project, written with Owen Elliot-Kugell, the daughter of the late Cass Elliot——finds its narrative drive in the sudden death of the author’s mother, who died in her sleep in a London apartment nearly ten years after she shot to fame as a member of The Mamas & The Papas. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize for Creative Nonfiction, Hope has taught writing at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the University of Iowa, and Antioch University-Los Angeles. Join us for a compelling conversation on what it means to find a way to heal as you find your voice as a writer. Learn more about Hope Edelman: Please support the sponsors who support our show: Chelsea Devantez's Daniel Paisner's Daniel Paisner's (PODCAST) | 30% discount (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton podcast podcast (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order (PODCAST) | 30% discount (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount /episode/index/show/astoldto/id/32333477

Episode 69: Adam Nimoy 07/16/2024

Episode 68: Michael Franklin 07/02/2024

Episode 67: Ellis Henican 06/18/2024

Episode 66: Chelsea Devantez 06/04/2024

As Told To

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