Writers at Work

Kevin Wade

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.

Gayle Feldman

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.

Allegra Goodman

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.

Andy Kroll

With me today on Writers at Work is Andy Kroll, a reporter for ProPublica, the nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Based in Washington, Andy covers justice and the rule of law. Earlier this year, he won the coveted George Polk Award for political reporting for "The Shadow President," a fascinating and comprehensive article about Russ Vought, a conservative, self-described Christian nationalist and longtime Washington bureaucrat who leads the Office of Management and Budget in the current Trump administration.
The OMB is the largest and arguably most powerful office in the executive branch. Under Vought, it's responsible for most of the deep cuts in government agencies and services that have occurred since January 2024. Co-published with The New Yorker, you can find "The Shadow President" on ProPublica's and The New Yorker's websites.
A veteran political reporter whose writing appeared in Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, Andy is also the author of A DEATH ON W STREET: THE MURDER OF SETH RICH AND THE AGE OF CONSPIRACY. You may recall that in 2016, Rich, a young employee of the Democratic National Committee, was murdered in Washington, D.C., shot in the back by an unknown assailant. Soon, however, the Republican-aligned disinformation machine, with the aid of Fox News and other media outlets and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, seized the unsolved murder and spun it into a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, much to the dismay of the Rich family.
In his book, Andy revealed how the insidious conspiracy campaign came to be and how it eventually unraveled, though not before too many Americans believed it to be true.
There's much to talk about with Andy, who I must tell you I've known socially for a good while now, but I want to focus on the writing of A DEATH ON W STREET: THE MURDER OF SETH RICH AND THE AGE OF CONSPIRACY.

Graham Nash

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Graham Nash, singer, performer, band leader, photographer, activist, and for our purposes, songwriter. Graham is a two-time member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for his role in The Hollies and Crosby, Stills, & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Also a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, he's composed pop songs that are known to several generations, "Teach Your Children," "Our House," "Just a Song Before I Go," among them.
But Graham has written scores of other songs, also worthy of admiration and affection. There's at least one gem on each of his seven solo albums, including NOW, his latest, his four albums with David Crosby, eight albums with David, Stephen Stills, and sometimes Neil Young, and those written during his half-dozen years with The Hollies. Many of his songs are uniquely his, tender and open-hearted, written in an intimate style as if whispered to a lover or a friend. I want to explore those songs with him today.
When Graham left The Hollies in 1968, he said, "I can't take touring anymore. I just wanna sit at home and write songs." Landing in Los Angeles, he did write, though decades of touring ensued. In fact, at age 84, he and his band will resume his tour in support of NOW on July 7, and continue into October. See grahamnash.com for more.
Before we proceed, I'll be referencing a lot of songs many of you may have never heard. I checked, and you can find every one of them on YouTube, and I've posted under my name a playlist on Tidal of more than two dozen Graham Nash compositions.

Jane Smiley

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is Jane Smiley, whose latest novel is LIDIE: THE FURTHER TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON. If that title rings a bit of a bell, it's because in 1998, Jane published THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON. That novel, set in the 1850s as our country crept toward a civil war, told of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young, resolute woman who marries an abolitionist and takes up the cause.
Surrounded by violence, she goes after her killer in enemy territory, disguising herself as a boy to do so. Now, Lidie returns. The country is moved even closer to civil war and Lidie, a widow and bereft, becomes close to her niece, Annie, an actress. When Annie's career takes off, Lidie, her armed protector, joins her. Thus, more travels, more adventure, and more delight.
First published in 1980, Jane has written many novels, 18 I think, several of which are considered among the finest in modern American literature. A THOUSAND ACRES, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. MOO, a five-part satire set largely in a Midwest agricultural college, a trilogy featuring an Iowa farming family that began with SOME LUCK, and others of note.
Among her non-fiction works is CHARLES DICKENS: A LIFE. Jane was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. She was a longtime professor of English at Iowa State University.

Chris Grabenstein

My guest on this episode of Writers at Work is author Chris Grabenstein. If you don't know Chris, I can assure you that your kids--and their kids--do. With his many series for young readers--Mr. Lemoncello, The Smartest Kid in the Universe, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, some of which were written with James Patterson--Chris has influenced thousands and thousands of young people to become enthusiastic readers. To visit Chris on social media and see photos of how kids respond to his books and characters is to put a smile on your face and have your faith in the future restored.
Because of his popularity with young readers, it's easy to forget that Chris broke in as a mystery writer. His debut mystery, TILT-A-WHIRL, Won the Anthony Award in 2006 for Best First Novel. He was writing for kids and adults at the same time until 2013, I think. Chris travels extensively to meet young readers. In May, he'll return to Knoxville, he attended the University of Tennessee, to participate in a children's reading festival. He recently returned from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he witnessed the world premiere of his new stage play, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Reading Rooms.

Alex Lin

On this episode of Writers at Work, I'm joined by Alex Lin, playwright and screenwriter, whose métier per Forbes magazine is the lives of, "complex women in power while also working to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and pop culture." I quote Forbes because its editors recently placed Alex on its 30 Under 30 list, naming her one of America's brightest young talents.
Alex's achievements thus far include two plays premiering at major New York theaters in the same season, Lao Wang: A Chinatown King Lear at Primary Stages, and Chinese Republicans at the Roundabout Theater. Alex also wrote for the AMC series The Audacity, which premiered this past Sunday. A graduate of Juilliard, Alex is the winner of a Stavis Award presented by the National Theatre Conference, and two Kennedy Center awards.
Her plays have been developed by countless regional theaters and workshops, and she's worked as an actor. As I understand it, she's now at work on a play about the first Cantonese language translator working at Angel Island in San Francisco, the primary immigration station on the West Coast in the early part of the 20th century.