The 7am Novelist Michelle Hoover

Today you get a sneak peak of what our summer interviews will like. Listeners will also get a chance to be a part of the summer podcast episodes, so listen for announcements about that opportunity in our SubStack notes and on our Facebook page. We’re going to start the summer off early (please, yes!) by hearing from Samantha Harvey, who latest novel, ORBITAL, was released in November. Samantha and I will be talking about the dynamic relationship between structure and point of view and how she rediscovered her own late in her drafting process. Samantha will also be at Porter Square Books in Cambridge tomorrow, April 3, at 7pm with author Jamie Quatro, so if you’re local to Boston, I encourage you to check it out. I’ll be there as well.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
To find Harvey’s book and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 
Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. 
Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief ,The Western Wind and Orbital. She is also the author of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, the Walter Scott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Prize, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the HWA Gold Crown Award. The Western Wind won the 2019 Staunch Book Prize, and The Wilderness was the winner of the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. Orbital, was published in November 2023 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Grove Atlantic (US). She lives in Bath, UK, and is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash


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We talk to Christine Byl after launching her debut novel, Lookout. A professional trail-builder in Alaska for 28-years, Byl knows the importance of quiet, patience, and spending the time that your book needs instead of allowing the outside world to muddle your instincts. How does she do it? Listen in.
To watch a recording of our interview, click here. These recordings are only available for a few days. Missed it? Check out the podcast version of the 7am Novelist on your fave podcast platform.
To find Byl’s novel and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 
Christine Byl is the author of the novel Lookout, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's 2023 First Novel Prize and a Great Group Reads selection; and Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Willa Award in nonfiction. Christine is an associate editor at Alaska Quarterly Review; teaches writing workshops in public schools; and has worked as a professional trail-builder for 28 years. She lives in Interior Alaska on the homelands of Dene' people.




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The last listener’s question in our January series is about joy. We’ve got authors Suzanne Berne, Shalene Gupta, and Christine Murphy to talk about the good that can be found in the writing process.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
Check out my interview with AE Osworth about “Joy First Drafting” here.
Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.
Suzanne Berne is the author of five novels: her most recent, The Blue Window, released last January, as well as The Dogs of Littlefield, The Ghost at the Table, A Perfect Arrangement, and A Crime in the Neighborhood, which won Great Britain’s Orange Prize, now The Women’s Prize.  
Shalene Gupta is a Boston-area writer and the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD, which will be released in February.
Christine Murphy is a graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program. Her debut novel, Notes on Surviving the Fire, is under contract and forthcoming in 2025. 
Photo by Adrian Moise on Unsplash


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We’ve got two very different questions today as we begin to wrap up our January series. The first asks about submitting shorter works to literary magazines and other venues. The second wonders how she can improve her use of subtext. Authors Mark Cecil, Erica Ferencik, and Whitney Scharer help us find the answers.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.
Mark Cecil is the author of the novel Bunyan and Henry; Or, The Beautiful Destiny, the host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast, and he has taught writing at Grub Street in Boston.
Erica Ferencik is the author of the critically acclaimed, best-selling novels The River at Night, Into the Jungle, and Girl in Ice.
Whitney Scharer is the author of the international bestselling and award-winning novel The Age of Light as well as short fiction and essays in numerous publications. and she’s the co-founder of the Arlington Author Salon in Arlington, MA. 
Photo by Cristian Tepaz on Unsplash



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Today, we talk about the trials and tribulations of writing from real life: Can I write a memoir if I don’t have concrete memories? Am I trying to stay too close to my original experience in turning that experience into a novel? And when does writing fiction based on real life become exploitive of others? Some tough questions, but we’ve got writers Anjali Mitter Duva, Alex Ferraro, and Ethan Gilsdorf to help us out.
Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.
Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.
Anjali Mitter Duva is the author of the historical novel Faint Promise of Rain and the co-founder of Galiot Press, a new publishing company ushering in a sea change for the written word.
Alex Ferraro is a graduate of the Novel Incubator and is working on his novel, a twisty Texas noir called Like Thunder in the Next County.
Ethan Gilsdorf is an essayist, critic, journalist, the author of the memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks and teaches GrubStreet’s Essay Incubator program.
Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash 




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We get to talk to Mary Carroll Moore who lays bare her own past writing challenges, how she dealt with them, and the kinds of issues she finds early writers struggle with most.
To watch a recording of our interview, click here. These recordings are only available for a few days. Missed it? Check out the podcast version of the 7am Novelist on your fave podcast platform.
To find Moore’s most recent book, a list of my favorite craft books, and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. 
Mary Carroll Moore is a bestselling and award-winning author of 14 books in 3 genres, including thePEN/Faulkner-and Lambda Literary Awards nominated young adult novel, Qualities of Light, the prequel to A Woman’s Guide to Search and Rescue. She received her MFA from GoddardCollege and has taught throughout the US and abroad at various writing schools and universities since 1998. Her writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “Reader’s Choice” award. Before moving into fiction, she worked as a chef, a cooking-school owner, a cookbook author, and a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her first cookbook won a JuliaChild/IACP award. Over two hundred of her essays, stories, and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals. She lives in New Hampshire with her family.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com