Adelle Waldman is the author of two novels: Help Wanted, published in 2024, and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. which was named one of the year’s best books in 2013 by The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Republic, NPR, Slate, Bookforum, The Guardian and others. In this illuminating conversation that took place shortly after the US election, Adelle talks about the job she took at a big box store before writing a book about the exploitation of low wage workers; the US legislative proposal she recently drafted for a policy thinktank; and her love of expansive, psychological nineteenth century novels, especially those written by Jane Austin.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1977, Adelle attended Brown University in Rhode Island, worked as a reporter in Connecticut and Ohio, and wrote her breakout novel after moving to Brooklyn with her husband. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. She joined Pamela in the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media.

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adelle Waldman is the author of two novels. In this bonus episode, she reads from her latest, Help Wanted. Our full interview will be available on March 25.

More about Help Wanted:

"At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every morning at 3:55. Under the eye of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement―among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her “cool kid” status from high school, a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together and set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot into motion. A darkly comic workplace caper that explores the aches and uses of solidarity, Help Wanted is a deeply human portrait of people trying, against increasingly long odds, to make a living."

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media.

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christina Cooke was named a “Writer to Watch” by CBC Books in 2024. Born in Jamaica, she moved to Texas as a girl, then Vancouver, Fredericton, and Iowa before settling in New York. Her fiction and essays can be found in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Apogee, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. Her novel, Broughtupsy, was published in Canada by House of Anansi and an excerpt (of sorts) called “Homecoming” was published in PRISM International, after which it was selected for the 2023 Journey Prize Anthology.

As a queer Black writer and immigrant twice over, Christina explores themes of home and belonging, identity, family and love in her novel and other writings. I caught up with Christina while she accompanied her partner on a residency in Berlin, and where she was working on her own next project. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

How I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela Hensley

Presented by Knockabout Media.

Original music by Tyler K. Rauman

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.