Finding the Throughline with Kate Hanley

[Nada Samih-Rotondo, part 1]: Writing by feeling vs. knowing, pandemic productivity, + the importance of getting out of the house

·21 min·2 clips

Nada Samih-Rotondo escapes her three kids' constant interruptions by writing in a cafe corner where the baristas know her.

The episode opens with Nada Samih-Rotondo describing her typical writing setup: escaping to a cafe on Saturday mornings to avoid constant interruptions from her three kids. Host Kate Hanley introduces Nada as a multi-genre Palestinian-American writer, teacher, and mother who immigrated from Kuwait to Rhode Island at age six. Nada's work has appeared in publications like The Master's Review and Squat Birth Journal. She discusses her lifelong love for the written word, with early interests in folklore, sci-fi, and weird fiction. During her MFA in creative writing at Leslie University in 2012, she focused on fiction but felt a sudden draw to memoir in her final year. Nada mentions there were few Arab American memoirs she knew of at the time, which motivated her exploration. She journaled intentionally and studied acclaimed memoirs to understand the craft. The pandemic provided unexpected creative space due to asynchronous teaching for her English language learner students and redesigned family boundaries at home. She bought a desk to separate sleep and work areas, which helped her thinking. Nada's curiosity drives her forward, with interests in nature, science, folklore, deep space exploration, and quantum physics influencing her memoir. She found memoir writing easier than fiction by discarding structural rules and following feelings instead of knowing exact paths. The most difficult part was the long publishing timeline, which she learned is common among writers. Her creative habits include reading diverse genres, breaking physical routines, immersing in art and music, and engaging with multi-genre writer communities. Self-care involves sleep, water, and community gatherings for energy exchange. She writes best in cafes with matcha, croissants, and headphones playing indie music, tolerating lyrics unlike many writers. The episode concludes with a preview of part two, covering inner critic management and rewritten beliefs.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how family life, changed routines, and curiosity make room for writing.

Finding the ThruLine grounds creative focus in the friction of everyday life, where writing has to share space with parenting, interrupted routines, and the basic need for somewhere else to think.

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Why you'd press play

Hear how a writer finds focus amid family interruptions, then follows curiosity toward quantum physics.

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