Writers at Work

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Dervla McTiernan, the international bestselling mystery writer whose latest, THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE, is available now.
A native of Ireland who now resides in Australia, Dervla has published a variety of mysteries and thrillers, including four audio novellas as part of the Audible Originals franchise. Her novels include the four-book series featuring police detective Cormac Reilly set in Galway. THE RUIN won in 2019 Australia's Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel by the Crime Writers Association of Australia.
Her first standalone, THE MURDER RULE, was published in 2022, followed by WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA in 2024, and now THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE. Perhaps as befits an author who now resides about ten-thousand miles from her birthplace, Dervla shifts her settings. THE MURDER RULE is set in Virginia, NINA in Vermont, and THREE REASONS FOR REVENGE in Melbourne.
If you've suffered my presence at a writer's conference or some such, you know that setting is my greatest interest in fiction. That Dervla leaps from there to here, here to there, fascinates me, and we'll delve into that, I'm sure.

I was in a bookstore recently when I spotted the title, THE MAN WHO WROTE THE PERFECT NOVEL. And then I was delighted to read the subtitle, JOHN WILLIAMS, STONER & THE WRITING LIFE. Since STONER is one of my favorite novels, I bought the book and read it almost immediately.
 
Then I contacted the author through his agent, and Charles J. Shields joins me today on Writers at Work. Charles is the author of several books on writers, MOCKINGBIRD: A PORTRAIT OF HARPER LEE, AND SO IT GOES: KURT VONNEGUT, A LIFE, LORRAINE HANSBERRY: THE LIFE BEHIND A RAISIN IN THE SUN, and IMAGINE: THE STORY OF A SONG.
 
So two novelists, a playwright, and John Lennon represented by his composition Imagine. John also wrote I AM SCOUT, a biography of Harper Lee for young adults, and 20 or so histories and biographies for young readers. He's one of the founders of the Biographers International Organization, a nonprofit that promotes art and craft of biography. THE MAN WHO WROTE THE PERFECT NOVEL was published in 2018 and was rightfully well received. I'd echo this review from Western American Literature. “STONER has in recent decades become the sort of book that people adore, give to their friends, fiercely identify with, and dub the perfect novel.”
 
And full credit to Charles Shields for going behind the scenes to fill in the picture of Williams' own life.

With me today on Writers at Work is Jennifer DeVere Brody, author of MOVING STONES: ABOUT THE ART OF EDMONIA LEWIS, the 19th century Black and Native American sculptor. Jennifer, who is professor of theater and performance studies and African and African American studies at Stanford University, is the author of several books, including PUNCTUATION: ART, POLITICS, AND PLAY and IMPOSSIBLE PURITIES: BLACKNESS, FEMININITY, AND VICTORIAN CULTURE. In MOVING STONES, Jennifer views Edmonia Lewis through a Black feminist and queer lens.
 
Born in 1844 in upstate New York, Lewis' early life was marred by the loss of both parents before her ninth birthday. While one of the rare Black students at Oberlin College, she was accused of poisoning two women and then savagely beaten as rumors of the allegations spread. She was cleared of the charges.
 
She left Ohio, moved to Boston, and began her career as a sculptor, a career that blossomed in Rome and led her to be the first Black American and Native American sculptor to achieve domestic and international acclaim. Today, Lewis' works are on display in major institutions, including the Smithsonian. One of her most characteristic works, "Old Indian Arrow Maker and His Daughter," is in the collection at the North Carolina Museum Art. There's much to discuss with Professor Brody, not only the work of Edmonia Lewis, but also her approach to examining and communicating about that work.

Joining me on this episode of Writers at Work is Wesley Brown, whose latest novel is LOOKING FOR FRANK WILLS. It's part of McSweeney's “Of the Diaspora” series that also included Wesley's debut novel, TRAGIC MAGIC, originally published in 1978 and celebrated by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and others. Wesley Brown is the author of three novels, a novella, a short story collection, and five plays. He also edited several anthologies and wrote the narration for the segment of the PBS documentary W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices. He is a professor emeritus in English at Rutgers University and a former visiting professor at Bard.
For readers and American history buffs, the name Frank Wills may ring a bell. Wills was the security guard who, in 1972, discovered the Watergate burglars mid-break-in. Without Wills' diligence, there may have been no Watergate scandal. And without Watergate, the Nixon administration may not have been held accountable for its criminal behavior that resulted in Nixon's resignation as president. I found Wesley's LOOKING FOR FRANK WILLS an ingenious way to tell a story of a man's life through the eyes of Wills' barber at Wayne's Clip and Trim in North Augusta, South Carolina.

Here today on this episode of Writers at Work is Erica Wright, whose latest novel is THE MUSEUM OF UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE: A PSYCHIC CITY MYSTERY. It's a bit of a departure for Erica, who may be best known for her genre fiction written with a literary flair. Her previous novel, HOLLOW BONES, was inspired by Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," for example. One reviewer called it an incredible, rich work of literature. In 2020, SNAKE, a collection of her essays, was published as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her 2014 novel, RED CHAMELEON, introduced readers to Cat Stone, a private eye with a nasty past.
 
Erica is also a poet. For more than a decade, she was poetry editor of Guernica magazine. Her latest collection of poems, A BUYER'S GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE, arrives in July. A few years ago, I invited Erica to submit a story to CRIME + MUSIC, an anthology of music-inspired noir, and she and I seem to travel in somewhat similar circles, yet I don't believe we've ever spoken, so I'm looking forward to our chat.

With me today on Writers at Work is Kevin Wade, best known for his work on the police drama Blue Bloods, where he served as writer, showrunner, and executive producer. The show ran for 14 seasons on CBS. Prior to that, Kevin wrote or co-wrote such feature films as Working Girl, Mr. Baseball, Meet Joe Black, and Maid in Manhattan, and polished the script for the James Bond film GoldenEye, among others. His play Key Exchange was produced off Broadway back in 1981. He's been honing his craft for a good long while.
In 2025, Kevin published his first novel, JOHNNY CARELESS, featuring Jeep Mullane, police chief in Bayville, Long Island, who was once an NYPD detective. When the body of a childhood friend washes up on a beach, blue collar Mullane does battle with the victim's wealthy family and the man's ex-wife while he works the case. It's a gritty tale that calls to mind the great cop-out-of-water tales that raised high the bar for crime fiction.
Kevin's JOHNNY CARELESS was nominated for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Another Jeep Mullane novel, ONE GOOD EYE, arrives in August.
What happens when a screenwriter and playwright decides to try his hand at writing a novel? How must he adapt to meet the readers rather than the viewers' needs? Who better than Kevin Wade to tell us.

With me today on Writers at Work is Gayle Feldman, author of NOTHING RANDOM: BENNETT CERF AND THE PUBLISHING HOUSE HE BUILT. There was a time when Cerf, co-founder of Random House, was a household name in America. In a massive and meticulously researched biography, and thoroughly enjoyable, I should add, Gail tells us how he came to be that and more. In doing so, she also tells us how publishing prospered in Cerf's time when books were at the center of American cultural life. Gail is the perfect writer for the task.
She's written for Publishers Weekly for some 40 years, including serving as a senior staff editor, and is now the US correspondent for The Bookseller, the British magazine that covers the book business. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the LA Times, The Times of London, and The Nation, and more.
Across its 1,000-plus pages, Gail puts us in close contact with James Joyce, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Philip Roth…you get the picture. Not as celebrities, but as writers dealing with getting their distinctive books to the public in the best way possible.
Thus, for all the luminaries in NOTHING RANDOM, none shine brighter on the page than Bennett Cerf. Was he actually all that? Let's find out.

With me today on Writers at Work is Allegra Goodman, whose latest two books reveal the range of her abilities as a novelist and author of short fiction. Published in 2025, ISOLA, is a masterful work of historical fiction based on the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, a sixteenth-century French woman who, abandoned on a remote island to end a forbidden romance, fights to reclaim her life.
It was named the best book of the year by Time, The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Globe and Mail, and on and on. Allegra's latest, THIS IS NOT ABOUT US, is a collection of linked short fiction published between 2011 and 2024, mostly in The New Yorker, that tell of a fractured family struggling to find footing following the death of a charismatic sister.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Hawaii, Allegra Goodman earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard and her PhD in English Lit at Stanford. Established as a gifted short story writer, her debut novel, KAATERSKILL FALLS, was published in 1998 and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Now, I must stop here to tell you that KAATERSKILL FALLS is one of my favorite novels. A tale set in an Orthodox Jewish community in upstate New York in 1976, it exists in my mind as a lived experience that I had been there along with her characters in the world she depicted. I tell you sincerely that every now and then, a scene or a moment within a scene will flash in my mind as vividly as if it had happened in my presence.