Authors, books, and the work behind them.
Reading And Writing Podcast gives authors room to explain where their books began and how the work took shape. Recent conversations move from handwritten letters and historical research to fantasy warfare, maritime danger, campus mystery, and wartime evacuation.
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Reading And Writing Podcast is a straightforward author-interview show for people who want more than a jacket-copy summary. It begins with the book. Then it usually moves backward into origin, research, influence, and craft. The tone is calm and curious, with guests given enough space to connect memory, history, and writing choices in their own terms. Recent episodes show the range clearly. Amy Weinland Daughters describes how finding Dana on Facebook led to handwritten letters and a story about connection during illness. Alexander Brash explains a South Pacific whaling account through family history, redemption, petroleum, whale oil, and the long aftermath of industrial whaling. Adrian Tchaikovsky talks about fantasy war from behind the lines, mobile field hospitals, failed revolutions, and influences such as Les Mis, Casablanca, and The Maltese Falcon. Jack Kelly revisits Benedict Arnold as more than a shorthand for treason, placing his military importance and later betrayal in a wider war frame. Lauren Nossett discusses campus mystery, police-procedural research, and the way genre gave her writing structure after earlier manuscripts. John Winn Miller talks about turning a World War II maritime adventure from screenplay into novel, adding history, technology, character biography, and sensory description. Cecelia Tichi connects Gilded Age fiction to real historical figures and present-day echoes. Hazel Gaynor describes wartime evacuation, lifeboat survival, two points of view, and the pressure and pleasure of daily writing. Across these conversations, the show favors patience over performance. The host asks clear questions, then gets out of the way. The result is a useful companion for serious readers, aspiring writers, and anyone who likes hearing authors explain how imagination and evidence become a book.
Made for: For readers, writers, and book-club regulars who enjoy calm, substantive conversations with authors. It especially suits listeners interested in research process, genre choices, historical context, and publication journeys.
What sets it apart: The show gives authors long conversational runway to explain how a book was built, from first spark to final craft decisions. Its strength is the steady accumulation of context rather than quick takes or promotional chatter.
Interviews with authors about their books, their writing habits, their favorite novels, and how they got started writing.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Authors move from a new book's premise into the research, revisions and genre decisions that made it possible.
Reading And Writing Podcast gives authors room to explain how a book moved from an initial idea to a finished work. The host begins with the book's premise, then follows its construction through research, genre choices, revision and publication.
This is the show that makes your TBR pile listen to authors explain how their books got made.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A family manuscript becomes a wide-angled look at whaling, memory, and redemption.
Alexander Brash frames A Wailer at Twilight as both a family story and a personal account of redemption, with Robert W. Armstrong's 10 years in the South Pacific anchoring the discussion.
Kelly recasts Benedict Arnold as a serious wartime figure, and the Saratoga discussion gives that argument real force.
Jack Kelly's God Save Benedict Arnold, The True Story of America's Most Hated Man makes a clear case for seeing Benedict Arnold as more than a byword for treason.
A steady craft conversation on campus atmosphere, crime-fiction rules, and the research behind a dark academia mystery.
The Reading and Writing Podcast follows the author of The Professor through the novel's central pressures: a suspicious student death, a professor under suspicion, and retired detective Marlette Kaplan, whose university ties pull her toward the case.
A candid craft conversation about turning a family movie complaint into a historically researched maritime novel.
John Wynn Miller's The Hunt for the Peggy C begins with an unlikely spark: a family movie night with his wife and daughter that pushed him toward a maritime World War II story about an American fugitive who rescues a Jewish family from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam before America…
A measured conversation about fantasy war, field-hospital care, and Tchaikovsky's long-running ties to role-playing.
Adrian Tchaikovsky comes through as an award-winning science fiction writer with a clear, sturdy handle on House of Open Wounds. He frames it as a high-magic fantasy war story kept just behind the front line, mostly in a mobile field hospital where priests, magicians, and other…
A measured conversation about turning a wartime tragedy into a humane historical novel.
Hazel Gaynor's conversation about The Last Lifeboat keeps the scale human while circling a wartime catastrophe. She discusses a novel set in 1940, inspired by a lesser-known tragedy in which a ship carrying young evacuees from Britain to Canada is torpedoed in the Atlantic.
Great books, taken chapter by chapter, with delight
Book talk with room to wander.
Host Jess interviews New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor about her historical novel 'The Last Lifeboat'.
Host interviews author Pernilla Hughes about her new romance novel 'Ten Years', discussing its origin, themes, and writing process.
Host Jeff Rutherford interviews author Cecilia Tisci about her Gilded Age mystery novel and series.
Adrian Tchaikovsky opens with the field hospital.
Amy Wineland Daughters describes writing to Dana after learning that Dana's son Parker was battling cancer at St.
Alexander Brash starts with family history, which is a good clue to the shape of the interview.
Host interviews award-winning sci-fi author Adrian Tchaikovsky about his new fantasy novel House of Open Wounds and his writing inspirations.
Benedict Arnold arrives through the name everyone knows.
The host speaks with the author of The Professor about a dark academia thriller built around a suspicious student death.
John Wynn Miller describes The Hunt for the Peggy C as a World War II maritime novel about an American fugitive rescuing a Jewish family from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam before America entered the war.