So You're a Novelist:
What's Wrong With You?
Amanda Miller has been trying to write a novel for over four years with the knowledge that even if she is so triumphant as to finish it one day, there is no guarantee anyone will read it besides her writing group. Nevertheless there is a compulsion to write the damn thing. She can't help but shake her head at the sheer insanity of the undertaking and has concluded that someone who attempts this has to have something (or multiple things) wrong with them. Her curiosity about the inner workings of other humans who attempt to write novels inspired the idea for this podcast. Each episode features a guest novelist interviewed by Amanda. New episodes are released on the first of the month.
Episode 1: Jenny Williamson
Amanda’s first interviewee, Jenny Williamson, happens to be a high functioning novelist. While she is not a manic depressive chain smoking alcoholic who passes out in bar bathroom stalls on the reg, she still has her quirks. Some of the topics covered include handling rejection, copy writing as poetry, art as manipulation, romance novels, dark heroes and writing sex scenes. Listen and come to your own conclusions about what is wrong with this woman.
Jenny Williamson is a poet, fiction writer, actress, and model living in New York City. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Speech & Theatre from St. Lawrence University. She acted at the Globe Theatre in London, and worked as a commercial actress, voiceover artist, and print model in New York City for seven years. She has read frequently at New York venues including the Poetry Brothel, Lyrics, Lit & Liquor, Urbana, and Louder Arts. Her first chapbook, Collection of Flaws in a Black Dress, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016.
Episode 2: Amy Dupcak
It’s not that Amy Dupcak is unaware of the real world, it’s just that she finds it easier to live in the world in her head. She loves to interact with other humans, but she also really needs her alone time. She has been described as always happy, yet she has a penchant for the macabre and suffers from migraines. The protagonist in her first novel, The Grid, sees a pattern of lines that happens to be the underlying fabric of reality, but people think she just has schizophrenia. All this and more in this month’s episode.
Amy Dupcak is the author of the short story collection, Dust, published on Lucid River Press. She has also published fiction and creative nonfiction in Sonora Review, Phoebe, Litro, Fringe, Runaway Parade, Chicago Literati, and other publications. She earned her MFA in Fiction from the New School and teaches writing workshops for kids and teens at Writopia Lab in Manhattan. She loves editing the works of other writers and often reads at Lyrics, Lit & Liquor events, for which she also creates original trivia.