In this interview, Tarpley discusses researching the doll craze for her new book, Barbieland, the importance of finding the right editor, and more.

Name: Tarpley Hitt
Literary agent: Alice Whitwham at the Cheney Agency
Book title: Barbieland: The Unauthorized History
Publisher: One Signal/Atria, Simon & Schuster
Release date: December 2, 2025
Genre/category: Nonfiction
Elevator pitch: A history of America’s most recognizable toy since the Slinky, and the incredibly litigious corporate apparatus that made her unavoidable. It’s also meant to be a bit of a tour through the literature of dolls, as well as an exploration of the “knockoff” — the tension between Barbie’s cultural branding as the first “adult” doll and the fact that she was a near-exact copy of a campy piece of advertising merch for a conservative German tabloid.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I’ve always been a bit intrigued by dolls and this millennia-old impulse we have to make little replicas of ourselves—sometimes to worship, sometimes to give to children, and so often a bit of both. Several years ago, I wrote about the craftswomen who make “reborn” dolls: hyper-realistic (and very expensive) baby dolls which are so detailed that they not only look and feel like actual infants but demand certain human-like behavioral norms. (If you leave one in a hot car, for example, someone will likely call the cops.) What struck me about those dolls was the amount of emotion both the craftswomen and their customers invested in these inanimate objects; they cared for them like real children, to an extent that was both bizarre to an outsider and somewhat moving. It seemed like an exaggerated version of the kind of complex relationship children (and adults) form with any doll, and perhaps none more so than Barbie, arguably the most famous doll in the history of human civilization.

The event that precipitated this particular doll book was, of course, the movie. About a year before the movie came out, an editor I’d been in touch with for years about a different book on a different subject (horseracing; gambling) told me he wanted a history of Barbie. I’d never had a relationship with Barbies—they were banned from my house—so the craze the film was already generating took me a bit by surprise. Barbie came with so much baggage; she struck me as a bit dated, slightly embarrassing. And yet here she was, in her 70s, mobilizing several generations of doll-havers, and about to rebrand herself for the next. The thing that got me interested was this idea of a dispassionate history told by a Barbie-agnostic trying to understand the grip this one doll had on the American imagination. But what sold me was what I came to understand a few weeks later, after reading as much as I could about the toy industry—namely, the degree to which that grip had been engineered from the beginning, and the lengths, both nefarious and pretty goofy, that Barbie’s guardians had gone to maintain it.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I sold the book in early December of 2022, and started my reporting in earnest in February 2023, after the website where I worked, Gawker 2.0, was shut down. I spent most of the first year reporting, most of the second writing, and much of this past year editing and fact-checking. I would have happily kept tweaking for another year or seven, but that is unfortunately not how deadlines work, which is probably for the best. The idea changed quite a bit—partly because of the abbreviated proposal process, and partly because the information you have going into a book necessarily changes after a year of reporting.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Everything was a learning moment, more or less. I knew very little about book publishing before this project—from the logistical process (the makings of a proposal; the differences between various imprints), to the creative process (how to structure something so large and unwieldy), to little things, like the jargon of publishing (“first pass pages” or “FPP” means the first review of the manuscript in layout, apparently). I did not know, for example, that much of an “advance” is actually not paid in advance, but in scheduled “tranches,” the majority of which come after you’ve delivered the manuscript. The fallout of not knowing this was reporting so little income during my second year that the accountant I called about filing taxes laughed into the phone. Something to plan ahead for, should there be a second book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Many. I’m still reeling from a conversation I had about two years ago with one of Barbie’s veteran designers. She’d joined Mattel in the 1960s, stayed into the late-90s, and spent the decades since touring the broader doll collector circuit. She was both deeply knowledgeable about Mattel and very generous with that knowledge, so I was thrilled when she told me she was in the process of donating her papers to a well-known toy archive. But when I went to visit her, I learned that this process involved going through her files and burning anything marked “CONFIDENTIAL.” (On the audio recording of our chat, you can hear an unsettling yelp—my reaction in the moment). It’s not that I assumed she would hand over decades of work without some pruning. But the idea of all these internal documents literally going up in smoke reminded me just how curated the public record can be. My hope was to fill in a few of the blanks.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

A couple hours with some true 20th-century eccentrics. One of those bumper stickers that says, “Get corporations off welfare.” A reason to agree with Baudelaire, when he asked of the toy store: “Is not the whole of life to be found there in miniature, and in forms far more colourful, pristine, and polished than the real thing?”

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Find an editor you trust to be anal, vicious, and right.

The post Tarpley Hitt: On Filling In the Historical Blanks appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Matthew discusses learning to trust his vision during editor changeovers with his new historical nonfiction, A Biography of a Mountain, his hope for readers, and more.

Name: Matthew Davis
Literary agent: Michael Signorelli, Aevitas Creative Management
Book title: A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release date: November 11, 2025
Genre/category: History/Travel/General Nonfiction
Previous titles: When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale
Elevator pitch: Most Americans know and recognize Mount Rushmore, but not many know the comprehensive and complicated story of how Rushmore came to be built in the Black Hills of South Dakota—the history of the Hills, the story of Rushmore’s controversial sculptor, and its impact on the area today. A Biography of a Mountain marks the 100^th anniversary of Rushmore’s initial dedication and uses history, reportage, and essay to tell this full story of Mount Rushmore and explore how we memorialize the contested narratives of American history.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

On July 3, 2020, President Trump spoke at Mount Rushmore and offered a narrow vision of both American history and the memorials and monuments built to represent that history. Though I did not see the speech live, as I read both about it and the protests that had greeted Trump, I wondered why he had chosen to give that speech there, in front of the four faces of Mount Rushmore. As I learned about its history, Rushmore became a vehicle to both explore the fascinating history of the Black Hills, but the broader historical debates our country is having as we move toward celebrating our 250^th birthday.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

From idea to publication took about five years. And the biggest change was less a change than a filling of a gap. When I sold the book, I wasn’t yet sure who the contemporary characters were going to be. I knew the historical arc of the memorial’s building and the main historical character in the form of Gutzon Borglum, the memorial’s sculptor, but I hadn’t yet spent any time in the Black Hills. So, it was finding my contemporary characters and speaking with them over the course of years, that really solidified the main contemporary themes of the book.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The only real surprise in the publishing process was the switching of editors. The editor who acquired the book left soon after purchasing it, and then the second editor I was working with left in the beginning of the writing process. So, I mostly worked with a third editor, Brigitte Dale, who was a perfect fit for this given her background and interests. Thankfully, this switching up didn’t impact the book writing process much and taught me to trust my vision and arguments, as all three editors I worked with responded well to the work as it progressed through different stages.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I think the biggest surprise was how this book resonated to both me and others as I was writing it, the increased sense of urgency of its themes. When I sold the book, though I knew I would be exploring the controversies Rushmore raises in the Black Hills, I really thought I would be writing more of a history book. But as we entered the 2024 election season, and it became clear that the issues of American history would be pertinent, the book became less a book about the past and more a book about the present. In doing edits and prepping for publication, this has become even more the case, as the Trump administration has attempted to sanitize American history at our national parks and museums and the historical debates we are having as a country seem so vital to the future of our democracy.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

There are two things I would love for readers to get out of the book. The first is an appreciation of the Black Hills, a place I have come to really love. The Hills are incredibly beautiful, and the area’s history is complicated, fraught and fascinating, full of so many of the myths that compose our American identity. I would also love for readers to think about Mount Rushmore in a different way and, by extension, to think about the thousands of other historical monuments and memorials that dot the American landscape. In a time when many want to simplify our historical narratives, I hope this book will both reveal and revel in complexity and nuance.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Writing can be a frustrating process and a really frustrating business, one where your successes and failures sometimes feel out of your control. With that in mind, focus on what you can control—the quality of the writing and the work you are producing.

The post Matthew Davis: Focus on What You Can Control appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Char reveals what inspired her debut book, her favorite part of the writing process, and more.

Name: Char Adams
Literary agent: Justin Brouckaert (Aevitas Creative Management)
Book title: Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore
Publisher: Tiny Reparations Books
Release date: November 4, 2025
Genre/category: History
Elevator pitch for the book: Black-Owned tells the complete history of Black-owned bookstores in the country through the lens of Black political movements. It is a story of community, espionage, repression, joy, and perseverance.

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

What prompted you to write this book?:

I began to study Black-owned bookstores in 2018, simply due to personal interest. When I learned that there was no singular book or resource to learn the full history of the businesses, I decided I’d write it myself.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I began writing Black-Owned in 2021, so it’s been about a four-year journey! The idea did not change during the project, as it was a pretty big undertaking with several sub-topics and components. The idea didn’t change, but it did expand—there were so many stories to tell within the entire book.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The entire process was one, continual learning moment because this is my first book. I wasn’t familiar with the publishing process beforehand so there were so many experiences that were firsts for me—especially when the writing was finished and the marketing and promotional process started.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Not surprising, but one of my favorite parts of the writing process was sitting with so many Black booksellers of all ages and hearing their stories. Everyone was so eager to share and so passionate about their work.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope that readers come away from Black-Owned with a deep understanding of how community shaped, and continues to shape the story of Black-bookstores. We can learn a lot from their story about how to care for and be in community with one another.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Focus on your growth—your writing, your reading, and perfecting your craft. So much good will come from that, from simply doing the work well and consistently.

The post Char Adams: Telling the Story of Black-Owned Bookstores appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Elizabeth discusses how one blog post grew into an 11-part series that led to her new narrative nonfiction, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, the ways in which fiction and nonfiction are similar, and more.

Name: Elizabeth R. Hyman
Literary agent: Suzy Evans
Book title: The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release date: October 14, 2025
Genre/category: Holocaust History/Narrative Nonfiction
Elevator pitch: The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto follows five young Polish Jewish women as they organize against and resist Nazi terror.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

In the spring semester of 2013—my second year of graduate school—I took a course called “Gender, Women, and Autobiography.” It was cross-listed with the Jewish Studies Department and promised formal training on how to read and analyze Jewish women’s diaries, autobiographies, and memoirs as primary sources.

In March, the class read several excerpts from the memoir of a woman named Vladka Meed, who worked for the Jewish resistance in Warsaw during World War II. The excerpts centered on an incident in which Vladka and a male colleague were cornered by a gang of Poles intent on catching underground Jews. Both Vladka and her comrade tried to run. He got away, but she was too slow. Luckily, however, she was able to talk herself out of the situation.

As the professor led the class discussion, she asked us, “Why does it matter that they didn’t catch her male colleague? What differences existed between Jewish men and Jewish women which allowed her to talk herself out of capture, but which ensured that he would never be able to?”

I was stumped.

The answer was circumcision. If a female Jewish resistance worker was caught, nothing on her bodies could betray her Judaism. But for men, all it took was an order to drop their pants, and they were done for.

These two facts—that there were active Jewish female resistance workers tasked with arming the Warsaw Ghetto in preparation for an uprising, and that one of the ways these women maintained their cover was through their lack of genitalia marked by Judaism—blew my mind. It also made me kind of angry. How was it that I—a graduate student of Modern Jewish History, the writer of viral blog posts about women and the Holocaust, the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Polish Jewish refugees—had never heard of these women?

After I finished graduate school in May 2014, I read Vladka’s memoir cover-to-cover at least six times in preparation for a blog post all about her. I researched Warsaw, and interwar Poland, and reread all of the major treatments of the Holocaust with an eye toward Poland. With each book I read, Vladka’s story grew bigger and bigger, and what I thought would be a simple blog post morphed into an 11-part series. I finally started posting them in April 2018, timed to align with the 75^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When the series was done, and even though I’d spent years on the project, I knew I’d barely scratched the surface of the story, for Vladka was hardly the only Jewish woman working for the Jewish resistance. There was Zivia and Tema and Bela and Lonka and Rokhl and Tosia and Dvorah and Hannah and Justyna and Frumka and Franya and so many more that I knew I didn’t even know the names of. Maybe I could write them all blog posts, I thought. But I knew the story was much, much bigger.

Big enough, to be this book.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I decided that this was a book I had to write in summer 2018. The book is coming out in a little less than a month, as of this writing.

When I began the project, I envisioned it as a book which would discuss all the young Polish Jewish women involved in underground work. I began to query agents with this vision in mind before I really understood how that process worked. Early on, an agent declined the project but gave me a very important piece of advice: Don’t even try to focus on all the women. Pick four, maximum five, of the women to ground the project. More than that will overwhelm readers.

So, I chose five, but fairly late in the process, I realized that one of them did not fit into a series of generational arguments I was making and had to switch her out for another figure. Definitely a “kill your darlings” situation, but the work is stronger for it.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Most of the writer’s groups I’m part of on social media are filled with writers of fiction. That group tends to view nonfiction writing as something dull and dry and lacking in creativity. They talk about how characters take on their own agency and change the planned story; how it went in a direction they never could have envisioned.

What surprised them, that nonfiction is very similar. You know what you want to write about, you know your primary and secondary sources, but you don’t know where those topics and sources will take you. And for historians, you might not even know for sure what you’re arguing until the end of the project. I loved letting the work surprise me. It’s that joy that keeps me writing; that knowledge that, despite my expertise and mastery of the sources, there’s still material left to surprise me.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

This book was born out of my own righteous indignation at the fact that I had never heard of these women; and on a larger level, the fact that collective western Holocaust memory was so deeply based on male experiences and narrative. As such, I hope that this book—to pull a line from Lin Manuel-Miranda—puts women back into the narrative. If this book propels the women into public consciousness, into mainstream knowledge, I’ll have done my job.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Getting a book traditionally published is a long game. It is difficult and requires you to reframe how you understand the nature of rejection and success. Every no from an agent, every pass from a publisher, represents a new path forward, (potentially) valuable feedback, and a new contact. And that’s all a win! A win, which will only make your book stronger.

The post Elizabeth R. Hyman: I Loved Letting the Work Surprise Me appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Nicole discusses the long history of women’s textile work in her new book, With Her Own Hands, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Nicole Nehrig
Literary agent: Kendall Berdinsky at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret
Book title: With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Release date: August 19, 2025
Genre/category: Nonfiction
Elevator pitch: A rich and intimate exploration of how women have used textile work to create meaningful lives, from ancient mythology to our current moment.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

In March 2020, I was quarantined with a 3- and 5-year-old, coordinating work and childcare responsibilities with my husband—our work and home lives fully merged. Between the demands of full-time employment and full-time childcare, I had no time just for myself. Yet, I could still knit while my kids played outside and sat through Zoom pre-school. It was something I could do to take care of myself while I took care of my kids. As women have long known, textile work is compatible with childcare. Knitting took on new meaning during the pandemic, offering opportunities to ground myself in something tangible, make order out of chaos, and express the creative and intellectual energy I had channeled into my psychotherapy research prior to lockdown. I thought a lot about how to make meaning during times of struggle, how to be creative within constraints, and how to locate yourself when suddenly under radically different circumstances. I wondered how women throughout history and across cultures had overcome the challenges they faced in life and what role activities like knitting, weaving, and sewing, which were necessary for survival but also could be creative and connecting, played in the process. I dove deep into the history of women’s textile work to find out, reading books and speaking with anyone I could—indigenous weavers, knitwear designers, textile artists, anthropologists, and historians—to understand how creating textiles enriched women’s lives in the past and how their experiences might resonate with the meaning I had found in it. With Her Own Hands is the result of that exploration.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started reading about women’s textile work in the fall of 2020. I had no idea it would lead me to write a book at that time. While I learned a lot about the critical role of textile work in shaping cultures and economies, and about its use in activism and art, I had difficulty finding stories that reflected the personal meaning of this work for women—how it has served as a form of creative expression, an intellectual pursuit, a means of social connection, a way to have a voice and stand up for what they believed in.

It was around the spring of 2021 that I decided if I wanted to know about how women have created meaning while creating cloth, I should write about it myself.  I told a couple of people about the idea and that summer a writer friend connected me with an editor who guided me on how to write a book proposal. The organization and focus of the book was still hard for me to envision so it was a slow process. Then I had a fire in my home in January 2022 that displaced my family for over a year and caused a major setback in my writing progress. I began interviewing people in the summer of 2022 to learn firsthand from women who make textiles and experts who study them. The interviews became the key to organizing the book—I wanted to tell these women’s stories, weaving in history, philosophy, and psychology to cohere them. I finished the proposal and was lucky to land an agent later that summer.

I wrote a chapter to include with the proposal before my agent shopped the book to publishers. I signed a book deal with W. W. Norton in the spring of 2023 and was given a year to write the book. I work well with deadlines so I finished the first draft right on time in the spring of 2024. One round of major edits, one round of minor edits, copy edits, image rights, first pass, second pass, and the index took another year. The book will be released nearly five years from when I first got interested in the topic and nearly three years from when I started writing chapters.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

One major surprise was my own excitement for the publicity aspect of the publishing process. Prior to writing With Her Own Hands I had been a mental health researcher accustomed to being in the shadows of my work. I published papers that got cited here and there, and once or twice a year I spoke at conferences to share my work, but it felt rather disconnected from me personally. I was comfortable with this and didn’t know how I’d feel about promoting a book more publicly. With Her Own Hands is much more personal and reflects an important way that I have found meaning in my life. Connecting with people who share my interest in textile work during the interviews I conducted was enlivening and exciting—definitely the highlight of the writing process. Now I’m eager to engage with people around the ideas presented in the book. I want to hear their stories and learn from their reflections.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The first surprise was just how much had been written about textiles and women’s engagement in it—once I scratched the surface, I became aware of the unbounded depth of the subject matter. I quickly realized I could not do a comprehensive literature review the way I had when writing academic papers. 

The next surpise was that I wrote a book! Initially, I thought maybe I’d write an article, but as that stretched on for many pages beyond what anyone would publish, I realized I had more to say than I thought. I then figured I’d write an academic book filled with citations for historical facts and psychoanalytic theory. But when I began interviewing women, I heard stories that I wanted to tell to a wider audience. Initially my writing was still heavy on theory and research. I had been an academic researcher for a decade and was accustomed to supporting anything I wrote with multiple citations. I had to get comfortable sharing my own ideas rather than relying on others’. I was so fortunate that my editors’ visions for the book were so aligned with my own and their support helped me build trust in this new way of writing.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

While historically there haven’t been a lot of written accounts of women’s inner lives, we see them reflected in what they made with their hands. If you know how to read them, textiles leave a trail of the maker’s thought process, creativity, values, and beliefs. When spinning thread or making cloth, it may have looked like women were engaged in menial daily tasks but the seeming simplicity of these activities betrayed the complexity of what they were actually doing including the meaning they made out of this work. Like the women in the book, many of whom had to contend with significant challenges and constraints, we all have the ability to make meaning in our lives with what we have available to us. It’s up to us to transform whatever bits of cloth and thread we’re given in life into something of value and maybe even of beauty.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write in whatever way works for you. It was impossible for me to create a coherent outline for this book in advance. I felt like I should be able to and that I was defying all my lessons in school by not doing so. My process was messy and extemporaneous. As I researched, I added anything that could possibly be relevant to a chapter into a Word document—snippets of interviews, quotes, or general ideas from books, my own musings which could be anything from a bullet point to a few paragraphs. Then when I was ready to start that chapter, I’d read through the 50-60 pages of notes and group things that seemed to fit together. I’d see what themes emerged from those groupings and from there decide how to organize the chapters. It was rather like organizing scraps of fabric into a pleasing arrangement for a quilt. I realized this is how I work best and it was fun to see the structure emerge from the data I had collected—I could create order from the mess.

The post Nicole Nehrig: Write in Whatever Way Works for You appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Writing Fiction Based On Your Life: A Chat With Jessica Berg)

In this episode of “Writer’s Digest Presents,” editor Michael Woodson sits down with Robert to discuss his new book American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (on sale today), how he infuses literary sensibilities to his historical nonfiction, and more.

About the Author

Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist investigating marginalized groups and a scholar excavating forgotten histories. A National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year and recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, his debut book Tinderbox won seven awards, including the Edgar Award, and his reporting has appeared in Slate, Commonweal, and River Teeth, among others. Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is pursuing a PhD at Tulane University as a Mellon Fellow. He lives with his husband on the gayest street in New Orleans.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

From the Episode

On Choosing What to Write About: “It’s a lot like falling in love, but from a horrific standpoint, because you’re dealing with history. It’s typically something that engages me intellectually while simultaneously taking this side door into my heart in a way where I can’t stop obsessing about it.“

“I have this problem that I’ve had since I was very little where I want to know the story that others don’t want me to know. That’s the juicy stuff! That’s the gay gossip!”

On Incorporating Fiction Craft Practices In Literary Nonfiction: “I love nonfiction that can employ literary and aesthetic sensibilities, where they have respect for the line, for the musicality of language, where they have a respect for and an understanding of mood and atmosphere, which is very difficult to communicate to an academic historian, but I think it matters. I also love plotting, set-up and pay-off, introducing threads and paying them off later. And I like the way that literature allows for revelation—where there’s just moments where you feel like you’re entire body’s lit up.”

Listen To The Episode

The post Writing Literary Nonfiction With Robert Fieseler appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Simon discusses the individuals at the heart of his new true crime book, A Deafening Silence: Forgotten British Murders, his advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Simon Farquhar
Book title: A Deafening Silence: Forgotten British Murders
Publisher: The History Press
Release date: June 10, 2025
Genre/category: True Crime/ History/ Social History
Previous titles: A Dangerous Place: The Story of the Railway Murders; A Desperate Business: The Murder of Muriel McKay; Rainbow Kiss: A Play
Elevator pitch: In a decade of researching and writing about crime, Simon Farquhar has met many of those professionally or personally affected by it. They all carry with them stories that the rest of the world has forgotten, but which to them remain unforgettable. Now, five of these stories are told, in full, for the first time.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

I’d always had a fascination with crime, but my writing career was mostly in drama until about 10 years ago. My late father was a police officer, a very good one, and after he died, I wrote a book about his last case, which was a famous serial killer hunt of the 1980s. It started from there.

What interests me particularly about crime is the window onto social history that it gives us. I always have been struck over the years by how much of a crime story goes unexplored, specifically the lasting dreadful legacy not only for those directly affected by a tragedy but those indirectly affected—a person’s friends, lovers, family, but also those involved on a professional level. They are human beings too, and they have to endure a lot in the course of their work.

I have met many people involved in crime, police officers, lawyers, and so on. And over the years you gather a lot of stories from them, stories of cases that have left a mark on them. And some of them have in turn have left their mark on me.

So, I decided to do a book collecting five of those stories. None of them had ever been told in any depth before. I wanted to talk to every living soul connected with each case. The criteria for them going into the book was partly an emotional one—they are the stories that have made the deepest impression on me—but also, I had to justify retelling them. It wasn’t just about remembering and commemorating the victims. The stories each tell us something about the world that we live in—how it has changed or how it still needs to change.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Originally this book was going to be just the first story, A Tragedy in Fairyland, a story that has haunted me for nearly a decade. I had a book commissioned about it back in 2017, and did a huge amount of research, but I had to shelve it for two reasons.

One was that the story would not have filled a whole book, and, as a standalone book it would have needed to generate a good deal of publicity, which would have been distressing for the surviving relatives. But I felt that by featuring it within a book and insisting on no publicity for that specific story, I could finally set it down for history.

Apart from that, the format of the book didn’t really change. The other four stories were selected very easily. I then pitched it to my publisher, and it was green-lit.

But although the idea didn’t change, I didn’t predict how the book would eventually turn out. The last story in the book, Vicious Circle, is an incredible case, set against the backdrop of the music scene of the early 1970s, with connections to David Bowie, bizarrely. I’d carried this story around with me for years, unable to find a home for it until now, but when the research got underway one of my interviewees presented me with a remarkable archive of letters, diaries, photographs, the inside track. It was beyond my wildest dreams and meant that I could get genuine insight into the minds of the family involved and how such a bizarre crime could have occurred. (Honestly, you will be amazed.)

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Working with the History Press is always a very civilized affair, and there were no problems in that regard. The cover photograph was spotted by my commissioning editor, Mark, and I had an idea of what I wanted for the back and was very pleased with how it turned out. I knew I wanted an image of winter.

It’s interesting how such seemingly insignificant things matter so much. When it came to the photographs inside, there was one for one of the victims, and the caption was to be her name and then, in brackets, where the picture was sourced from, and I remember saying, “Can we put them on separate lines?” It seems trivial but it just looked so much more respectful. Similarly, I remember adding the victims’ dates at the top of each chapter, and requesting that it should be the full years, e.g. “1955-1970” rather than “1955-70”, which looked somehow too casual. You wouldn’t present them like that on a gravestone.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The biggest surprises are when unexpected and sometimes seemingly slight elements become the most powerful moments. Similarly, you can craft some very beautiful prose, but the simplest and least-dressed sentence can be the one that moves you the most.

I think also, I was surprised at which chapter that seemed to get the most reaction. It was “High Windows,” the one I initially had the least information on. When I traced the family of the victim, they were very resistant to the idea of the book at first. But over time they came to trust me, and their contribution was magnificent. They saw a way of remembering their loved one, and their reaction when they read what I had done was a huge relief. I’m very proud of that chapter. When you are telling stories like this, you must respect and honor those people. It is their tragedy, not yours, however much you are affected by it, and they are putting a lot of trust in you. You have to make clear that you are telling the story, not their story, though.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they will find something different to a lot of other true crime books, in that the stories aren’t just “this happened, the person was caught, they went to jail”. I wanted to know who these victims were as people, not just define them by their deaths. I also wanted to know what happens when the media moves on, after the sentence is passed. How do those left behind rebuild their lives? What happens to a murderer when they get out of jail? Are there any stories of reform? That’s something that did stun me; a couple of the stories of where these people are now.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Tell your story your way. Others will tell it differently, but trust the direction your mind is pointing you in. I always put myself into the story, and say, “This is the journey that I’ve been on.” Often quite literally—I’ll start with me standing at the place where some dreadful event happened. But even if you don’t put yourself within the narrative, it’s your own bias, your own sensitivities and reactions, that lift this from reporting into storytelling. Stories are events presented meaningfully rather than just informatively.

The post Simon Farquhar: On Bringing Humanity to True Crime appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(6 Research Tips for Writing Nonfiction.)

I learned this recently as I waded through my boxes of notebooks, interviews and research that I have done in the city’s ancient archives and museums over the past decades.

Even since I first stepped off the train in Bologna in 1988, and then descended through its famed medieval porticos like a beguiled flaneur, I knew I would one day write a cultural history of this northern Italian city. In the last two years, I have finally sat down to write that long overdue book.

Bologna is the one city I have always called home over the past three decades, even when I lived elsewhere.

And yet, as my 91-year-old mother recently asked me as I visited her in Cochise County, on the Arizona-Mexico border, in a time of so many crises in our country, how on earth can I be working on a book now about medieval towers or the genius of 17th century Baroque painter Elisabetta Sirani—among other historical gems in a place art critique John Berger called the “improbable city.”  

My mother, a coal miner’s daughter, whose father took part in the bitter coal wars for union recognition and civil rights, is not alone in her question. I receive nonstop emails and texts from other writer friends, historians, archaeologists, and artists, all consumed and their projects derailed by the daily exigencies of dealing with random budget cuts and job losses, attacks on academic freedom, endless wars, and the denial of due process guaranteed in our constitution for all residents in our country. 

Perhaps Bologna is best known for its gastronomic wonders, its UNESCO heritage recognition, or the 1,000-year-old seat of the oldest university in the West—the original alma mater, which shaped Dante, Petrarca, Copernicus, Lavinia Fontana, Mozart, and Umberto Eco, among so many others, including my wife, in its great halls. One of my journalism exemplars, Margaret Fuller, reminded Americans in her correspondence in 1847 of Bologna’s fame as the “paradise of women,” pointing out the city’s tradition of championing women painters, writers, scientists, and thinkers as the “soul of society.”

But John Adams, who I chronicled in one of my past books on his attacks on journalism and his role in persecuting critics with the Alien and Sedition Acts, now dictates my Bologna state of mind. The Aurora newspaper in Philadelphia had accused Adams in 1798 of realigning with “a despotic rather than a republican state,” and serving the financial interests of a small group of wealthy merchants.

In London, frantically writing A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America in 1787, Adams sought to lay out why Americans were adamant about choosing a three-branch form of government, which ensured the checks and balances missing in European monarchies.

Adams highlighted Bologna for two reasons. First, he admired the city for abolishing slavery in 1256, as proscribed in the cherished document Liber Paradisus (“The Book of Paradise”). Secondly, Adams encouraged all young Americans to learn the Italian language (as he did), in order to master the arts, science, and literature in the country, including its history. In Bologna, specifically, he spent reams of pages detailing the machinations of warring factions in the medieval period, and their persecution of enemies, retribution and vengeance between opposing sides, and the tragedy of “streets that ran with human blood,” despite the city’s extraordinary role as the European center of education and rationalism in the medieval period. 

Adams admonished his readers, and all Americans, to never forget Bologna’s “final catastrophe of all such governments, the establishment of absolute power in a single man.”

Adams’ concerns, of course, echoed his earlier writings, in his Thoughts on Government in 1776. Declaring that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, Adams concluded “the dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice.”

Bologna had not cornered the market on submitting to the authoritarianism of a single man, of course. But the medieval city, among other cities in Italy and Europe, Adams told his readers, was full of “excellent warning for the people of America.”

That perhaps is now the best reason to write a book on Bologna, and heed Adams’ message in defense of the American constitution, and the absolute power of a single man. 

The post History Prompts: How Can I Write a Book on Medieval Bologna When Our Country Is Coming Undone? appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(How Poetry Can Animate Narrative Nonfiction.)

I believe that outlines and over-planning stifle creativity. It hems in a writer and does not allow for spontaneity and discovery, which is essential when researching and writing a narrative nonfiction book. This process allows for a continued questioning of source material, never allowing oneself to become too complacent with an existing dominant narrative. I believe that this methodology also keeps a writer closer to the reader experience. I allowed Rose’s story to unfold before me, just like a reader discovers a story through reading a book.

I did not always work like this. In fact, as an overachieving Taiwanese American with a “Tiger Mom,” trained as a classical cellist at Juilliard, and a graduate of Harvard College, I was accustomed to having my life planned out to the minute detail. It had led to success on paper, so why change it?

In my mid-20s, however, I left my first career in the fashion industry where I was a merchandiser for brands including Abercrombie & Fitch, J. Crew, and Calvin Klein. I had believed that my whole educational path up to that point led to my job in fashion, but I was now truly at a loss. I was creatively unsatisfied and stressed out. When I looked around my apartment, I realized it was full of books on art, architecture, and history, and I realized I had strayed far from my passions.

I decided to rethink everything I knew in the hopes of finding my way back. I backpacked around the world without a set itinerary and I went back to school at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). There, I met a professor and mentor who basically threw me into a washing machine and made me question how I had been approaching work and problem solving.

Architectural pedagogy is based on the idea that work is constantly iterative. It is through feedback, repeated revisions, and small evolutions that progress is made. Sometimes, you just need to start putting pen to paper and allow something to reveal itself to you, no matter how unformed. You can’t be too afraid to begin building. It can be during the most challenging moments that an epiphany comes—struggle is part of the creative process. You work, rework, and shift things until your project is ready, with nothing ever fully set in stone. I have now been a professor in the architecture department at Columbia University GSAPP for over 10 years, teaching the same studio class that radically changed how I work.

Of course, it is not possible to go into a project as large as a narrative nonfiction book with no plan whatsoever. You must allow for an organizing principle. For The Art Spy, it was the concept of time. I wrote the first draft of the manuscript chronologically, apart from one chapter which I was inspired to write while visiting a location for research. I let the exact timeframe of the book remain loose, to be determined by the events in Rose’s life and where it felt the story should organically start and end.

Click to continue.

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted the book to take place over the course of WWII—that it would not be a standard biography going chronologically from birth to death. I also wanted to have two concurrent storylines—Rose’s timeline and that of Alexandre Rosenberg, a Free French soldier whose father was the exclusive art dealer to Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Léger. Rose and Alexandre’s stories skirt by each other throughout the war and finally intersect in a fantastic way at the end of the book.

I did not know if there would be enough material to carry both Rose Valland’s and Alexandre Rosenberg’s storylines throughout the whole book. But I began to write as if I did, building their stories page by page. I knew that if I hit a roadblock, I might need to throw out the work I did and I accepted that from the beginning.

I initially imagined the book might stretch in time from 1939 to 1945, which would include the German invasion of France, Rose’s work undercover as a spy in the Jeu de Paume museum—which the Nazis had taken over to loot Jewish-owned art collections en masse—and her time in Germany and Austria as a “Monuments Woman” restituting looted artwork. I knew there were holes in her story that I would have to address but I tabled them until I came to that point in her timeline, while keeping a lookout for missing material.

I found my first smoking gun in an archive in Grenoble. A first-person account of Rose’s escape from Paris, cut from her memoir, had been reproduced in an unpublished book and the manuscript was sitting in a museum archive, uninventoried. This allowed me to begin Rose’s story the summer of 1939, before WWII breaks out.

Rose also claimed to have seen the Nazis burning over 500 paintings in the Tuileries Garden in 1943 but her account had been questioned beginning in the 1960s, protested initially by the very Germans who perpetrated the horror. Since I wanted to write the book from Rose’s point of view without including any additional clarifying commentary in the text, I knew I would have to address this issue if I did not find material to prove she had been correct.

A little over a year into my research, I was trying to organize the nearly 10,000 pages of documents I had photographed from the French Diplomatic Archives, which contained all the papers Rose Valland left behind in her office when she died. One morning, I came across numerous handwritten, notarized documents in the back of one of the boxes. I recognized the names of the signees—they were the guards at the Jeu de Paume during WWII. I glanced at the words, translating the handwriting as best as I could, and immediately showed them to my French husband when he woke up. “Are these what I think they are??” I asked him excitedly.

Indeed, they were the signed, notarized testimonials of the events in the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume over two fateful days in July 1943, when the Nazis burned over 500 modern paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Dali, and others. Four guards had given their account for posterity, but they had been forgotten in the intervening years. 

Writing sans outline is not for every book or for every writer. However, the concept of remaining nimble and adaptable, to allow yourself the opportunity to question existing narratives and to make new discoveries, and to give your project room to breathe to find exactly the right form to tell your story, is applicable for any creative project.

Check out Michelle Young’s The Art Spy here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

The post How I Wrote My Book Without an Outline: Allowing for Spontaneity and Discovery in Narrative Nonfiction Writing appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Dane discusses the process of writing about the fascinating and misunderstood Wild West era of history with his new book, Queen of All Mayhem, the importance of the publishing team behind any given book, and more.

Name: Dane Huckelbridge
Literary agent: Renee Zuckerbrot
Book title: Queen of All Mayhem
Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins
Release date: May 13, 2025
Genre/category: History/Biography
Previous titles: Castle of Water, No Beast So Fierce, The United States of Beer, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit
Elevator pitch: A spirited recounting of the life of Belle Starr, a female outlaw who served as a Civil War spy, befriended infamous gunslingers like Cole Younger and Jesse James, and eventually became the full-fledged leader of a criminal gang while living among the Cherokee.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

When I was growing up, there was a piece of old family lore that we were somehow related to Belle Starr. Because of that, she was always a person of interest for me, although I confess, I didn’t know that much about her until I began digging and doing the research. And as it turned out, she had an even more action-packed and scandalous life than I imagined! I’ve always been drawn to stories of historical underdogs and social outsiders, especially those who defied the norms of their place and time to forge their own paths, and Belle Starr proved to be exactly that kind of character. I had an inkling of this before, but the full extent of her rebellious spirit became apparent with the research and writing.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

In total, it took about three years—two to write the book and one more year for the editing. As far as changes to my original idea, I would say that the book became far more expansive than I initially imagined, especially as it pertained to American history. I realized quite quickly that I wasn’t just telling the story of a female outlaw from the Old West, but also the story of the immigrant experience, Western expansion, the forced removal of Indigenous peoples, the Civil War in the Border States, and the birth of Wild West culture. Belle’s life was lived amid some of the most sweeping and powerful currents in our country’s history, and it became clear that her biography, while incredibly entertaining and insightful in its own right, also provided a fascinating vantage point for better understanding our own origins as a nation.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

It’s perhaps not a surprise, per se, but with each book, it’s always a fresh reminder: This truly is a team effort. Your agent, your editor, your cover designer, the publicity, marketing and sales teams—everyone has a critical role to play, and everyone pitches in and does their part. I don’t think I was as aware of this before publishing my first book, but now I’m on my fifth, and I’m very grateful for the help of so many talented and committed people. And it’s a long process, too, much longer than I realized when I was just starting out. Far from being the work of a lone individual over several months, as it is so often depicted in popular culture, the creation of an actual, tangible book is a joint project that involves the collaboration of dozens of people, over the course of several years.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

One thing that surprised me was just how much fun it was writing about the Wild West. It’s such a fascinating era in American history, and so misunderstood, too. At times, it felt more like writing the script to a Spaghetti Western, everything just moved so fast. Trying to capture the thrill of stolen gold, the thundering of hooves, the gleam of gunmetal—it was a new experience for me, and I must say, I enjoyed it. Back when I was studying the history of the American West in college, it always came across as dry and uninteresting, which is unfortunate, because in reality it is anything but. Being able to write about this historical moment in our nation’s past and give it the full flare and bravado it deserves, proved to be a pleasure that I did not initially anticipate.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they will see that, while certainly not a role model, Belle Starr was a trailblazer, rising to a position of public power and influence at a time when women in America were generally denied both. She refused to conform to the rules and expectations that society imposed upon her, essentially forging her own destiny despite her detractors—a characteristic that so many important figures in American history share. In the last half-century, her life has been largely overshadowed by Western personalities like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane; I’d like to show readers that unlike those figures, Belle Starr actually was feared and respected as a Wild West outlaw, and that her life story deserves to be told and remembered.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Never give up! There are rare individuals who do get lucky and hit the ground running, but for most of us, it takes years—and lots of rejection before getting a break. And even then, it’s hard; you never really “make it,” you just keep on working and seeing what sticks. If you’re passionate about writing, and feel strongly that you have something to say, then keep going. It might take years, it might take decades, but there’s only one way to make it happen, and that’s to keep working at it. Be prepared for ups and downs, and learn to celebrate every personal triumph, no matter how big or small. Take it from me: You never know when some story you used to hear around the dinner table might turn into an idea, that idea into a proposal, and that proposal into a book deal. Anything can happen so long as you stick with it.

The post Dane Huckelbridge: Learn To Celebrate Every Personal Triumph appeared first on Writer's Digest.