Juli Min

How did you become a writer? In college I studied Russian and comparative literature with the plan to become an academic. One year in graduate school in my early twenties disabused me of that notion, and from then on I’ve dedicated myself to craft. I wrote my first book when I was twenty-five, a memoir about my year signed to a K-pop label in Seoul, but it died on submission. After that I ran a literary magazine for six years, finished an MFA, and worked on two more books; then I found a new agent and sold Shanghailanders.

Name your writing influences. I went to writing camp for a few summers in middle school. I remember the last day when my mom picked me up and the teacher called us in for a conference. “Your daughter should keep writing - she’s good at it.” Pithy words of praise can stay with a shy, introverted kid, planting the seed of confidence that can change a life. In high school, my 10th grade English teacher Carole Braverman pushed me to enter schoolwide essay contests and national competitions. Poet Theodore Deppe, when a visiting artist/teacher at my high school, generously let me experiment with poetry and music for credit during my senior year. Writing and music - those were the only two things I ever wanted to do.

And then: Svetlana Boym, Eileen Chang, Marguerite Duras, James Joyce, Kim Young-Ha, Min Jin Lee, Yukio Mishima, Vladimir Nabokov, W.G. Sebald, Virginia Woolf

 And of course: The incredible MFA program at Warren Wilson.

When and where do you write? Mornings, by hand, as early as possible, at a small desk in the corner of my room. I aim to do a minimum 500 words a day. 

Before I write, I always journal.

What are you working on now? I am playing with style, exploring options for voice for my next novel. It takes place in Manhattan in the early aughts.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes. If I can’t push through it, I spend the time reading instead. Sometimes I’ll re-read Nabokov’s story “Spring in Fialta,” which always inspires, and serves as a reset.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? “Why not?” - Antonya Nelson 

When I told her during my MFA thesis semester that I couldn’t possibly change the ethnicity and entire backstory of one character to fit the larger story’s needs. 

Sometimes you must let go of details you love. Make big decisions. Just try everything. Play.

What’s your advice to new writers? Finish projects, keep reading, and sign with Stephanie Delman at Trellis.

Juli Min is a Korean-American writer based in Shanghai. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson, and she studied Russian and comparative literature at Harvard University. Her novel Shanghailanders was published in May 2024 by Spiegel & Grau (US) and Dialogue Books (UK). Translations are forthcoming in Japanese, German, Spanish, and Norwegian.

Laura Cathcart Robbins

How did you become a writer? I've always written, as far back as I can remember. But it wasn't until I was in my late forties that I set my sights on becoming an author. For six years I took writing class after writing class. I also went to writing conferences, festivals, and retreats, as many as I could. I always say that reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale

Name your writing influences. My author influences span from Betty Smith to Maggie Smith. I can't read enough Kiese Laymon or Christie Tate. I've had so many writing teachers, but Jessica Ciencien Henriquez might have been my most pivotal one. 

When and where do you write? When I'm writing a book, I start around 11:00 am and go until around 6:00 pm, five days a week. I only write by myself (never with people around), in my home office, and I always have the TV in the background playing old sitcoms. 

What are you working on now? The manuscript I just finished is autofiction. It's about my life as the only Black entertainment publicist in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. My next book will focus on my life post-divorce.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes and no. Whenever I get stuck I write a scene that I'm excited about and then come back to the scene that's giving me trouble..

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Don't try to "write" like a writer. Write like you would talk to a girlfriend.

What’s your advice to new writers? When writing about trauma, fortify yourself (get enough sleep, eat good food, hydrate). Give yourself time before during and after to process.

Laura Cathcart Robbins is the best-selling author of the Atria/Simon & Schuster memoir, Stash, My Life in Hiding, and host of the popular podcast, “The Only One in the Room.” She has been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee and is credited for creating the Buckley School’s nationally recognized committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Her recent articles on the subjects of race, recovery, and divorce have garnered her worldwide acclaim. She is the SDWF’s 2024 Memoirist of the Year, a TEDx Speaker, and an LA Moth StorySlam winner. Currently, she sits on the advisory boards of the San Diego Writer’s Festival and the Outliers HQ Podcast Festival. Find out more about her on her website, lauracathcartrobbins.com, or you can look for her on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, and follow her on X.

Leslie Pietrzyk

How did you become a writer? I love to read, and what locked in the writing for me was a visit a local author made to my first-grade classroom. Our teacher had read this author’s book out loud to us, and I made a connection: I loved that book, this woman sitting right in front of me wrote the book I loved, maybe I could write a book that someone will love. After I got an MFA, I felt brave enough to call myself a writer. (And for the record, that book was Hildy and the Cuckoo Clock by Ruth Christoffer Carlsen.)

Name your writing influences. Early on, two of my favorite novels were (and still are) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. And while I could name many dozens of other books that deepened my understanding of writing, I’ll pick six: Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays; Raymond Carver, Cathedral; Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried; Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time; Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City; and Willa Cather, My Antonia. As for craft books, two I return to again, and still, are The Art of Fiction by John Gardner and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. 

When and where do you write? I’m an afternoon writer. Yes, I know how unusual I am, but I’m a thousand percent not a morning person! I use the morning for errands/life, keeping the afternoon as free as possible for writing. There’s something creatively inspiring about working on a novel for several hours in the afternoon, then heading into the kitchen to cook dinner—a different way of creative expression. Mostly I write at home, but I also do a lot of prompt-writing—by hand, on paper—out in coffee shops, sometimes with groups, which I think triggers a different part of my brain. That’s a particularly rich process for working through problematic scenes and developing characters, I think.

What are you working on now? I’m hoping to finish up a collection of linked stories that may turn into a novel or may feel right as stories. I’m saying that Nothing To See Here is like The Virgin Suicides minus the male gaze: a group of 12-year-old girls lives in a neighborhood in Iowa during the ’70s, and one of them disappears while buying candy. Without turning into a police procedural, the stories explore in greater depth how and why women and girls end up disappearing in our culture. 

 Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I try not to call it writer’s block, but I’ve definitely felt panic at not having a Big Project to focus on, or at feeling frustrated by my writing. When I’m in that state, I try to change things up in some way, whether by trying a different genre or writing in a different place or an atypical time of day. I’m also fine taking a break, during which I read or research, or I connect with nature or art. Not every writing day (or week, or month) is going to be great, and that’s just part of the writing life, learning when to plow through and when to step back, and being very, very, very patient with yourself throughout.  

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Richard Bausch, a beloved teacher I met at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, told us to write until something surprised us. That’s when you’ll know you’re on the right track. And that’s my definition of an excellent writing day: when something surprises me.

What’s your advice to new writers? Persevere. I said that I started calling myself a writer after I got my MFA, and I admire my youthful boldness. But I wrote three novels before my “first” novel, Pears on a Willow Tree, was published. I just knew I wasn’t going to give up until I had a novel in the public library in my Iowa hometown. I advise cultivating a deep and abiding stubbornness.  

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of linked stories set in DC, Admit This to No One, was published in 2021 by Unnamed Press. Her first collection of stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Short fiction and essays have appeared in, among others, Ploughshares, Story Magazine, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, The Sun, Cincinnati Review, and Washington Post Magazine. Awards include a Pushcart Prize in 2020.