Autofocus Books authors Erin Slaughter (THE DEAD DAD DIARIES) and Lena Ziegler (A REVISIONIST HISTORY OF LOVING MEN) interview each other about literary friendship, navigating disclosure, dignity, and responsibility in memoirs about trauma, writing with compassion about your previous self and real-life people who have harmed you, the emotional realities and real-life risks of publishing memoir, and more.

This episode of The Lives of Writers is a recast of another podcast, Naomi Washer's Reading around the Margins. In episode 9 of Reading around the Margins, LoW host and Autofocus Books publisher Michael Wheaton interviews Naomi about her new book MARGINALIA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, which inspired her podcast (and is out now from Autofocus Books).

Autofocus Books publisher Michael Wheaton presents brief readings and various interview clips with the authors of the three Autofocus spring 2025 new releases: Erin Dorney (Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering), Shayne Terry (Leave: A Postpartum Account), and Teresa Carmody (A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others).

Andrew Bertaina interviews Nick Rees Gardner. Topics include: buying a store, morning vs evening writing, running, emo poetry, going to college for drugs, leaving college for rehab, the story collection DELINQUENTS AND OTHER ESCAPE ATTEMPTS, rewriting, slowing down, reviewing books, influence, rhythm, subverting the rehab narrative, and more.

Jason McCall interviews Tasha Coryell. Topics include: seasons, ambience videos, re-shifting priorities, moving to thrillers, unpublished novels, relaxing about publishing, running, LOVE LETTERS TO A SERIAL KILLER, a very millennial character, entertainment, the forthcoming Matchmaking for Psychopaths, and more.

Jason McCall interviews Juan Carlos Reyes. Topics include: reading as gateway, writing and creativity, temp jobs, academia, Seattle, Hinton Publishing, THREE ALARM FIRE, triptychs, collecting stories, narrators, and more.

Drew Hawkins interviews Jami Attenberg. Topics include: the new novel A REASON TO SEE YOU AGAIN, ground rules, first lines, family games, loss, time, phones, perspective, 1,000 Words of Summer, and more.

Drew Hawkins interviews Kirsten Reneau. Topics include: the debut essay collection SENSITIVE CREATURES, different selves, sexual assault & gendered violence, the very personal, nature, images, animals, ideal writing situations, editing lit mags, organizing a collection, cicada season, implicating others, and more

Kristine Langley Mahler interviews Dennis James Sweeney. Topic include: reading before bed, the forthcoming HOW TO SUBMIT, small presses, hybridity, photographs, Crohn's, THE ROLODEX HAPPENINGS, performance, artmaking, meaning-making, and more.

Kaycie Hall interviews Puloma Ghosh. Topics include: writing and illustration, elementary school notebooks, the short story collection MOUTH, being generous to a past self, story changes through drafts, elements of horror and supernatural, working on novels, green M&M fanfic, and more.

Joshua James Amberson interviews Tomas Moniz. Topics include: engaging with an audience, a book tour/honeymoon, working with a bigger press, zines and zine community, working on multiple projects, trying and failing to sell a book, RAD DAD, writing and receiving letters, the new novel ALL FRIENDS ARE NECESSARY, and more.

Erin Slaughter interviews Jenny Irish. Topics include: Maine & Arizona, childhood imagination, academia, body scrutiny, the new book HATCH, having or not having a child, the violent division in America, genre & hybridity, and more.

Sara Rauch interviews Ursula Villarreal-Moura. Topics include: teaching, learning to read like learning to drive, poetry, a move to fiction, the debut novel LIKE HAPPINESS, not writing in 3rd, ambiguity, stories we tell ourselves, healing in the right environment, and more.

Jason McCall interviews Brooke Champagne. Topics include: finding time, 20+ years of teaching, NOLA FACE, trying to quit writing, collecting essays, time's role in craft, approaching the page at different stages of life, and more.

Mike Nagel interviews Andrew Bertaina. Topics include: selves on the page, THE BODY IS A TEMPORARY GATHERING PLACE, evaluating your own work, modes of essay, mind as setting, representing others, good catalysts, speed, valuing the reader, and more.

Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Mallory Smart. Topics include: growing up in Chicago, writing in high school, studying history and philosophy, logic and therapy, a preference for narrative, starting Maudlin House, an app that forces you to write, I KEEP MY VISIONS TO MYSELF, pressure and nostalgia, and more.

Aaron Burch interviews Josh Denslow. Topics include: moving to Barcelona, formative places, the desire to share creative work, rejection, the novel SUPER NORMAL, humor and the reality of fiction, fun, and more.

Teresa Carmody interviews Kristen E. Nelson. Topics include: imperfect queer & trans narratives, calling in community, other voices, IN THE AWAY TIME, a later-in-life PhD, hybridity & divinations, the limits of the body, constraint, autobiographical experiments, timescape, personal disasters, and much more.

Emily Adrian interviews Justin Taylor. Topics include: growing up as a child actor, growing into a writer, a couple Donald Barthelme anthologies, his first books, the new novel REBOOT, realism, the supernatural, tv forms in the novel, a bottle chapter, Portland, Dawson's Creek, and more.

Michael Wheaton interviews Lucas Mann. Topics include: becoming co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore & Bar, community in Providence RI, the gap between life & writing about the life, growing up reading and watching, ambition, ATTACHMENTS: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances, intimacy and its mediation, threading and/or juggling, writing about parenthood, resembling a real human, body image, overlapping thinking and feeling, and more.