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Eileen O’Malley’s brother Lenny is killed in Vietnam while she’s a sophomore in college. Overnight her life changes. She drops out, moves home to Charleston, and takes a job in the men’s department of a local shop to help pay the bills. Then a handsome naval officer asks her advice about a pair of trousers. Next thing she knows, she’s a young bride on La Maddalena, a small Mediterranean island off the coast of Sardinia where the US Navy keeps its submarines. When Italian activists, nuclear scientists and a handsome journalist start warning her about contamination in the water, Eileen has to question everything she thought she knew. Rachel Beanland’s third novel is a coming of age story about a young woman working out who she is inside a marriage, a military community, and a country, all three of which expect her to toe the line. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Rachel talks about the childhood years she spent on La Maddalena, the 2019 return visit that sparked the book, and her mother’s detailed letters home that gave her the 1970s period detail. We talk about the island as a locked room, Eileen’s retrospective second person narration, the dual meaning of the title, and the research she did with Navy veterans and their wives. Rachel Beanland is also the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and The House Is on Fire. More episodes and writing at elenameetstheauthor.com. Books mentioned in this episode The Half Life by Rachel BeanlandUS Links support independent bookshops. As a Bookshop.org affiliate, the show earns a small commission on any sale. 00:00 Welcome to the Podcast 01:04 Meet Rachel Beanland 02:59 La Maddalena Origins 06:48 Why the 1970s 10:33 Navy Wives Community 13:48 Isolation and Research 17:02 Soap Opera Letter Clubs 22:20 Second Person Narration 26:33 Outlining and True Events 28:20 Bending The Timeline 30:08 Why Historical Fiction 35:07 Balancing Facts And Drama 38:59 Meaning Of The Half Life 40:56 Mary Magdalene Parallels 43:21 Travel Tips La Maddalena 45:07 Wrap Up And Final Pitch Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Priya Parmar’s The Original covers eighteen years of Katharine Hepburn’s life, from the age of 13, the year her brother Tom died, to the age of 32. Not the icon in the polo neck, but the young woman before all that. The failures, the self-invention, the loss she never really recovered from. It’s been praised by The New York Times, The Independent, BBC Radio, People and Oprah. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Priya explains why she chose a period defined by self-discovery and failure rather than the years everyone already knows. We talk about Hepburn’s unusually progressive family in Hartford and Fenwick, Connecticut, how the Hollywood studios manufactured star personas before the Production Code came in, and the decade of research behind the novel. Priya also talks about the omniscient Greek chorus structure she built the book around. Priya Parmar is also the author of Vanessa and Her Sister, a New York Times Notable Book about Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell, and Exit the Actress. She co-wrote the musical Sylvia, staged at the Old Vic and nominated for an Olivier Award. Books mentioned in this episode The Original by Priya ParmarUK | US Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya ParmarUS Exit the Actress by Priya ParmarUS Links support independent bookshops. As a Bookshop.org affiliate, the show earns a small commission on any sale. 00:20 Podcast Intro and Guest 01:37 Why These Years 03:07 Hepburn Family Roots 04:47 Epigraph and Persona 06:54 Hollywood Image Machine 09:12 Cary Grant Parallels 10:37 Defining Hepburn Boldness 13:34 Opening Pages Reading 15:46 Ten Years Research 19:22 Hidden Discoveries and Letters 23:09 Finding the Narrative Voice 26:41 Los Angeles as Character 27:35 Hepburn Home Base 28:18 Los Angeles Greek Chorus 28:53 Box Office Poison Escape 29:17 Dick Cavett Tape Gold 30:20 Crafting the Hepburn Persona 33:48 Favorite Films Shift 35:24 Wardrobe and Chanel Clash 38:38 Howard Hughes and Deafness 40:13 Cut Scenes and Europe 43:26 Next Book and Homesick This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Alan Anderson is a visionary ad man. That is, up until the morning he isn’t. He blows the biggest account of his career, comes apart, and moves out to live off the land, the land being his backyard in suburban Greenwich, Connecticut. He sets up in the children’s playhouse. He goes barefoot. He uses the woods as a bathroom. His timing couldn’t be worse. His wife Vivian is in the middle of a campaign to join the Queen Anne’s, Greenwich’s most selective women’s social group. Their two daughters are similarly going off the rails. One prefers drama to sports, which is not done in Greenwich. The other has started talking to animals. And Alan is emerging unshowered from the playhouse just as Vivian’s trying to make the best possible impression. Alan Opts Out is a comedy about what it costs to keep up, and what’s left of a man and a family when they stop trying. It’s a New York Times best book of the summer, blurbed by Elizabeth Gilbert and Carl Hiaasen, and currently in development as an HBO series. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Courtney talks about the luxury playhouse that sparked the whole idea, her frustration with overconsumption and the Stanley cup trend, and what it was like growing up around extreme wealth in Greenwich. We get into her past life as a brand strategist, how she developed compassion for Vivian over eleven drafts, and the unexpected joy of Alan’s lobster sidekick Lenny. She also talks about the Werner Herzog epigraph, taken from his 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, and what she wanted it to signal about the book’s tone. And she mentions Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer as a book she returned to just before publication, and why Christopher McCandless was on her mind throughout the writing. Courtney’s previous novel Touch also comes up in conversation. She describes it as the book she would have written next, except it’s already written, and thinks it will resonate just as much now as Alan Opts Out. She’s also the author of the publishing guidebook Before and After the Book Deal and runs writing classes and resources at courtneymaum.com. Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Twenty-two rib eye steaks go missing from Aunt Orsa’s, an upscale Italian restaurant in a fictional Midwestern college town. They vanish on the same day that celebrity author John Grisham is due to dine there. Someone on the staff took them. But who? That’s the whodunit. What Rebecca Kauffman’s sixth novel actually is, is something deeper and more complex than that. A who are they? The table of contents is renamed Menu, and each chapter, each course, dips into the life of one of the suspects. No one at Aunt Orsa’s is above suspicion. And as it turns out, no one’s life is boring. Kauffman has a real talent for believable dialogue and for telling us just enough about a person that we feel like we know them and want to know more. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, Emma Straub named it one of the standout books of 2026, and it’s been described as a pitch-perfect mash-up of Clue and The Bear. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Rebecca talks about drawing on years of working in restaurants, how John Grisham ended up in the book, the menu-style chapter structure, and her approach to revision by subtraction. We also talk about leaving some mysteries unresolved, how motherhood changed her writing, and why noticing is at the core of everything she does. Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com. https://pods.to/4zv3l7o.ODL Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

John Lanchester, Booker Prize-nominated author and regular contributor to The New Yorker, is my latest guest on Elena Meets the Author, the literary podcast that goes behind the book and into the mind of the author. His latest novel Look What You Made Me Do is full of twists and turns, so pay attention. Two women, both Londoners from different generations. Kate, 57, recently widowed, quietly devastated. Phoebe, a millennial TV writer whose Netflix megahit Cheating has become the show everyone’s talking about. When Kate starts watching, she realises something that stops her cold. The show contains secrets, inside jokes, a private language from her marriage to architect husband Jack that only she and Jack should know. Look What You Made Me Do is a novel about love, loss, calculating minds, family dysfunction, and revenge. It takes on popular culture’s intrusion into our personal lives, the private language of a long marriage, and generational warfare between boomers and millennials along the way. As one critic put it, it’s good, mean fun. And revenge here is less a dish best served cold than a whole buffet of chilled platters. In this episode of the Elena Meets the Author podcast, John Lanchester tells me that the entire plot of Look What You Made Me Do arrived in two minutes while he was brushing his teeth. We talk about how he built the thriller mechanics from there, the art of surprise versus suspense, how he shifts reader sympathy between Kate and Phoebe, the real-life Soho Farmhouse scene that made it into the book, and the generational resentments simmering underneath it all. If you enjoy Elena Meets the Author, Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. Find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Annabel Monaghan is a return guest on Elena Meets the Author, and for good reason. The internet has crowned her the queen of the summer romance, and as one fan put it, it’s not summer until Annabel Monaghan has come out with a book. Her latest, Dolly All the Time, is a number one New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America book club pick. It’s the story of Dolly Brick, a single mum, a champion caretaker, the person on everyone’s emergency contact list, who goes home to a fictional town next door to Newport, Rhode Island, and ends up fake dating the town’s handsome heir. It’s funny, it’s warm, the setting is dreamy, and it snuck up on me and broke my heart a little. In this episode Annabel tells the real story behind the name Dolly, a smiling fan she met on tour who later reconnected through Good Morning America. She explains why she loves the fake-dating trope for its forced intimacy and emotional honesty, and how she draws from her own life in this charming tale. We also get into Annabel’s unplotted drafting process, how her editor helped shape the humour, and why she was determined to rewrite the rescue narrative so Dolly is never a damsel. Annabel is one of my favourite guests. She’s smart, funny, and self-deprecating, and her characters mirror those traits. The dialogue, the sensual summer settings, the big life questions she weaves through every book. And by the way, Annabel’s first book came out when she was 50, which should give every aspiring writer a lot of hope. Dolly All the Time has spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer author. If you’d like to hear more from Annabel, she’s also in episodes four and 24. Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. If you want more than the podcast, you can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 02:08 The Real Dolly Story 04:20 Why Fake Dating Works 06:49 Writing From Personal Life 08:42 Research and Writing Process 12:34 Caretakers and Family Roles 17:14 Parenting and Letting Go 18:37 Building Whitfield and Newport Vibes 21:40 Romance Heroines and Age 23:05 Writing Older Heroines 24:11 Rewriting Rescue Tropes 25:42 Pretty Woman Escargot Rant 28:14 Specificity Makes Love Real 29:54 Banter and Finding Humor 33:03 Dream Casting the Movie 35:17 Queen of Summer Romance 36:28 PG Yet Evocative Intimacy 38:18 Editor Notes and Revisions 40:07 Letting Love In 41:21 Teasing the 2027 Novel 43:43 Wrap Up and Bestseller Buzz Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Ayelet Waldman’s latest novel is unlike anything else out there right now. A Perfect Hand is set in Victorian England and it’s a marriage plot with a twist. Alice Lockey, a lady’s maid, has fallen for Charlie Wells, a lord’s valet. The only way these two servants can be together is if Alice’s Lady Jemima falls for Charlie’s Lord Wynstowe. Which would be straightforward enough, except the lord and the lady despise each other. The novel has been described as Jane Austen meets Nora Ephron, and that feels exactly right. It’s funny, original, and the voice is captivating from the very first page. Amidst the crinolines, fancy French hairstyles, chamber pots, and stolen kisses, Waldman weaves in some modern-day thinking and feminist ideology that gives the whole thing a sharp, contemporary edge. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Ayelet and I get into how the idea came from her daughter’s advice after years of abandoned drafts, the captivating direct-to-reader Victorian lady-novelist narrator voice she developed, and the obsessive research that went into getting the period right, from the reality of servant life to toxic Victorian cosmetics to hiring a Victorian scholar and British graduate students to catch every anachronism. We also talk about the title’s three meanings, the suffrage era threads woven through the story, and what drew her to escapism with a feminist conscience. Behind the Stories on Substack is where the conversation goes deeper. Subscribers get writing craft insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. If you want more than the podcast, you can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. 00:00 Elena meets Ayelet 00:02 Welcome to the Podcast 00:17 Meet Ayelet and the Novel 01:21 Reading a Funny Excerpt 03:39 Finding the Narrator Voice 04:55 Daughter Inspired the Premise 06:19 Twists and Writing Timeline 08:24 Microdosing and Genre Swerves 10:42 Chasing Victorian Language 11:36 Why Shift to Suffrage Era 15:08 Servant Life Research Details 17:57 Bustles and Modern Beauty 19:37 Plastic Surgery and Hollywood 23:13 Meet the Main Characters 28:59 Meet Nigel Winstow 29:28 Calipers and Vanity Science 35:09 Experts Catch Anachronisms 37:14 Audiobook Accent Choices 38:01 Meaning of Perfect Hand 40:03 Stealing Victorian Voices 43:15 Escapism and Suffrage Echoes 47:13 Swiss Army Knife Career 49:08 Next Projects and WWI 51:25 Farewell and Wrap Up Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Three close friends. One dark secret they are each ashamed of. And a series of murders they are uniquely qualified to solve. The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives by Elizabeth Arnott is set during a sweltering summer in Los Angeles in 1966. Young women are being killed. And the three women investigating the crimes, Margot, Elsie, and Beverly, have something in common that gives them an edge: all three were married to serial killers. Not the men doing the killing, but the women who lived with them, slept next to them night after night, and had no idea what their husbands were up to. Have I got your attention? The title and premise certainly got mine. I read this book on a flight from California to New York and was completely engrossed. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Elizabeth and I talk about her long-standing fascination with true crime, why she set the novel in pre-profiling 1960s California, and the challenge of writing about killers before the term “serial killer” even existed. We get into how killers compartmentalise, why spouses so often don’t suspect, and how Elizabeth crafted three very distinct women while balancing dark subject matter with some welcome levity. We also talk about the “ticking clock” chapters written from a captive’s perspective, what those scenes are really saying about women’s everyday safety, and what it’s like writing freely versus under contract. If you enjoy the show, the best thing you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever listening platform you use and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s the paid tier that keeps Elena Meets the Author going, and subscribers get insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Five is not like any other novel I’ve read. It’s a fast-paced, urgent, entertaining psychological thriller with fascinating flawed characters. Funny at times, sad at others, thoughtful and surprising throughout. Here’s the premise: Five strangers are waiting on a suburban London train platform. In five minutes, one of them will be hit by an oncoming train and die. They don’t know this. But you do. Ilona Bannister has broken down the fourth wall, so we the reader know a lot about these characters’ thoughts that they wouldn’t necessarily want us to know. At first, we see them superficially, the way you might clock a stranger on your commute. A mother trying to control her energetic six-year-old. A handsome, smug businessman. An unfriendly older woman. A young man in a burgundy pinstripe suit with a red wine and orange knit scarf that somehow works. We make snap judgements, as one does. And then the author takes us directly into the lives of each of them. We see disability, abuse, addiction, narcissism, and trauma. Then we return to the platform, minutes ticking into seconds. Who will it be? In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I speak to Ilona about how a lightning bolt idea combining people-watching on a London bus with a local cycling death inspired her novel Five, a national bestseller. We talk about her no-outline writing process, how she developed the novel’s snarky omniscient narrator, the research she did into train platforms and forensic pathology, and the moral dilemmas she wanted the reader to sit with long after the last page. If you enjoy the show, the best thing you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever listening platform you use and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s a newsletter where subscribers get insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 00:00 Elena meets Ilona 00:00 Welcome to the Podcast 00:15 Meet the Novel Five 00:42 Platform Countdown Premise 01:41 Moral Dilemmas and No Spoilers 02:00 Author Joins the Show 04:25 Shift to Thriller Writing 06:21 Building the Five Strangers 08:44 Reading the Opening Scene 11:55 Writing Without an Outline 15:21 Creating the Omniscient Narrator 23:11 Research Process and Accuracy 24:33 Obsessive Train Research 25:24 Reading Mrs Worth 26:41 Emma and Motherhood Judgment 29:50 Luna Defends Neurodiverse Kids 33:31 Lawyer Mindset in Fiction 34:54 Next Book and Character Voices Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Mary Kay Ash built a $2 billion cosmetics empire out of a 500 square foot Dallas storefront. She was the first woman ever to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange and the only woman included in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time, a pantheon otherwise reserved for Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie. And when CBS This Morning introduced Mary Kay to America, they declared there was no more potent role for the self-made woman than Mary Kay Ash. Her story is scrappier and stranger than the pink Cadillacs and bouffant wigs you might remember. Born dirt poor in Hot Wells, Texas, she was running a household and nursing an invalid father by the age of 10. She was a mother at 17 and a grandmother at 34. By the time she founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963 at 45, she had already outlasted three divorces and two husbands’ deaths. The later death, of husband George Hallenbeck, the man who was supposed to be her business partner, came via a heart attack while jogging, just one month before the doors to Mary Kay were set to open. Her 20-year-old son Richard, a budding finance whiz, stepped into the breach. A legend was born. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m speaking to Mary Lisa Gavenas about her new biography, Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay, fifteen years in the making. We get into the restrictive 1960s norms that shaped what was possible for women, how Mary Kay adapted the direct-selling and party-plan models to build something genuinely new, the thinking behind her famous non-cash incentives like the pink Cadillacs, and the culture of encouragement and competition she created around her. We also talk about the criticisms levelled at direct selling, what made Mary Kay’s approach different, and what drew Gavenas to spend so many years researching and writing this particular story. If you enjoy the show, the best thing you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever listening platform you use, and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s the paid tier that keeps Elena Meets the Author going, and subscribers get insights from each episode, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

A grieving young widow receives a phone call on her birthday. Her husband, Joe, died five months earlier. But before he did, he arranged something extraordinary: a year’s worth of books, one for every month, chosen to help her move on with her life. That’s the premise of Libby Page’s latest novel, This Book Made Me Think of You, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and USA Today bestseller, and the book I’m talking about in this episode of Elena Meets the Author. Before you think it sounds too sad, it isn’t. There’s a handsome bookseller named Alfie, who Tilly has to visit every month to collect her next book. There’s travel: Bali, Paris, Manhattan, Tuscany. And there’s London, drawn with the kind of warmth that makes you want to head to your nearest international airport. Libby has written something that holds grief and joy in the same hand, which is much harder than it sounds. In our conversation, Libby talks about the inspirations behind the novel, including You’ve Got Mail and It’s a Wonderful Life, and how she balanced an emotional subject with a genuinely uplifting story. She describes the meticulous planning that went into the book’s 12-month structure, the pinboards, the 80 book references woven throughout, and the themed reading lists that give the novel so much of its warmth. We also talk about what the final gift Joe leaves Tilly actually means, her views on accessible versus literary fiction, her writing habits, the rejections she had before she was published, and how she overcomes writer’s block. There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read This Book Made Me Think of You yet, Libby’s enchanting novel is well worth reading first. If you enjoy the show, the best things you can do is leave a rating and review on whichever platform you use, and consider subscribing to Behind the Stories on Substack. It’s the paid tier that keeps Elena Meets the Author going. Subscribers get writing craft insights, early access to upcoming guests, and the chance to help shape the show. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Today I’m speaking with Grant Ginder about his latest novel, So Old, So Young. I feel like I really get millennials and their anxiety-driven yet somehow still hopeful character. The book follows six college friends across five parties and twenty years. A New Year’s Eve, a wedding, a birthday, a kids’ Halloween, and a funeral. From a night where everything felt possible to a morning where they had to reckon with what actually happened in between. It’s about people who met at Penn in the early oughts and spent two decades showing up for each other, making tiny decisions they didn’t notice until those decisions became their lives. If you love character-driven fiction — which I do — this one is for you. Think Normal People. Or, if you’re a boomer like me, the 1983 film The Big Chill. Grant grew up in Laguna Beach, worked as a speechwriter in DC, earned his MFA at NYU, and now teaches writing there while living in Brooklyn with his husband Mac and their apparently disastrous dog, Frankie. He’s the bestselling author of six novels. Grant, not Frankie. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, we talk about where the book came from- Grant’s own midlife anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat, like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime with the phrase this is not my life- but oh yes, it is. - We discuss how the party structure gave Grant a way to write into that feeling. We talk about what long friendships actually give us, the particular tension between millennial hope and the reality of middle age arriving faster than expected, and how New York’s changing landscape can mark time in ways the characters themselves can barely track. We also get into the craft of it. Grant talks about cutting backstory across eleven drafts with his editor, the link between his speechwriting background and how he thinks about narrative arcs, and his advice on writing dialogue: listen to real speech, avoid exposition, and pay attention to when a character over-explains. In real life when someone over-explains, like one of Grant’s NYU students telling him why a paper is late, that’s usually a sign they’re lying. The episode is out now! This Podcast is listener supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

What do Taylor Swift, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and a teenage girl from Pittsburgh in 1900 all have in common? More than you’d think. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking to New York Times bestselling author Allison Pataki about her eleventh book, It Girl, a gripping, fast-paced historical novel inspired by the true story of Evelyn Nesbit, America’s very first influencer. But this conversation is about a lot more than one book. It’s about what happens to young women when the world decides they’re too beautiful, too talented, and too powerful for their own good. And why that story keeps repeating itself. Evelyn Nesbit’s life reads like something invented. From a Pittsburgh boarding house, where she lived with her widowed mother and younger brother, she became an artist’s model in Philadelphia at just 13, and by 16 she was taking Broadway by storm. Dubbed America’s Eve, her beauty and talent drew the attention of two very powerful men: Manhattan architect Stanford White and Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw. What followed became known as the murder of the century. But Allison’s real obsession isn’t the crime. It’s the woman at the centre of it, and the way history chose to tell her story. Eve, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Salome. She made him do it. She drove him mad. She’s the cause of it all. Evelyn was just the latest in a very long line. We also get into Allison’s own story, from her two storytelling grandmothers to writing live TV news at ABC, to becoming a full-time novelist. She talks about how she finds her heroines, why she’s drawn to women that exist only in the footnotes of history, and as a mother of three girls, what it felt like to write the darker parts of Evelyn’s life. She also reads from the prologue. It’s worth it. 00:00 Welcome and Premise 00:15 Meet Allison Pataki 02:08 Origins and Influences 03:26 Finding Her Heroines 05:26 Discovering Evelyn Nesbit 09:16 High Society vs Showgirls 12:11 Prologue Reading Crime Century 16:42 Agency and Swim Metaphor 21:01 Modern Echoes Taylor Swift 23:56 Writing the Dark Parts 26:26 Fun Research Mythic Tropes 31:25 Mom Life and Book Tours 33:06 Recommendations and Wrap Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

It all starts with a squabble over an apple cake. When one sister bakes a much better cake than the other, the estrangement that follows ripples across three generations of the Rubinstein family for years. In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking with New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman about her latest novel, This Is Not About Us, a national bestseller and a Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club Pick. It’s a portrait of a modern American Jewish family on the East Coast, centring around two elderly sisters, Helen and Sylvia. Their sister Jeanne, the family matriarch, dies in the very first chapter, and as the Wall Street Journal puts it, what follows is a story about three generations bound by love, rituals, and guilt trips. In each chapter, Goodman gives us a different member of the Rubinstein family. From octogenarian Helen, who says exactly what people need to hear (not necessarily what they want to hear), to sixth grader Lily, who wishes she lived in a different century and that her parents hadn’t divorced. It’s funny, sharp, and deeply relatable. The kind of book you recognise yourself in even when you’d rather not. This is actually the second time I’ve spoken to Allegra in less than a year. Last July we talked about Isola, her historical novel about a French noblewoman who loses everything and is forced to live on a remote island. And now here we are with a sprawling Jewish family constantly gathering for birthdays, bat mitzvahs, and recitals. Same author, two entirely different books, both exceptional. We talk about how Allegra began writing this book more than ten years ago, the novel’s rotating perspectives and humour, the title’s origins in the bat mitzvah storyline, Jeanne’s phrase “write down the ocean,” the role of music, what drew her to the name Rubinstein, her writing routine, and the books she has loved recently. If you enjoy the episode and want to go deeper, Behind the Stories is my paid Substack where I share writing craft insights and process tips from each conversation, give early access to upcoming guests, and you can suggest questions before I record. It’s also a way to directly support the podcast and help it grow. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe

Today I am speaking to Jason Rosenthal, whose memoir, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, is a story of true love, true loss, and how to truly live again after that loss. It all began with an extraordinary essay written by Jason’s wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific author, public speaker, and filmmaker. In 2017, Amy wrote a piece for the New York Times Modern Love column titled You May Want to Marry My Husband. It was a love letter to Jason, written in the form of a personal ad. Amy was living with incurable ovarian cancer, and she wanted Jason, her husband and soulmate of 26 years, to experience joy and love again after she was gone. In the essay, she celebrates him in the most intimate and generous way. We learn that Jason is a great dad, a good cook, a lover of live music, handsome, stylish, and full of life. She writes about falling in love with him the day they met, and ends with the hope that the right person might read it. Amy died just ten days after the article was published. The piece went viral, read by millions, and it changed Jason’s life overnight. A private person, a lawyer, and a devoted family man, he suddenly found himself in the public spotlight. A year later, Jason wrote his own response in the New York Times Modern Love column. His essay, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, shares the same title as his memoir, and begins with the line, “I am that guy.” In this conversation, we explore what came next. Jason reflects on grief not as something linear, but as something that moves in waves over time. He shares what it meant to be given permission by Amy to move forward, and how that has shaped his life in the years since her death. We talk about Amy’s creativity and love of language, including their “marriage goals” list, and how her spirit continues to influence the way he sees the world. We also explore how Jason has chosen to fill the blank space after loss. He stepped away from his career in law, retrained as a social worker, and now works as a grief therapist. He has commissioned public art in Amy’s honour and co-founded a foundation supporting ovarian cancer research and book giving. This episode is both deeply moving and quietly practical. Jason shares thoughtful advice on how to support someone who is grieving, why honest end of life conversations matter, and how it’s possible to find moments of joy again, even in the hardest circumstances. It’s a conversation about love that doesn’t end, and what it means to keep living alongside grief. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Timestamps 00:00 Welcome to the Podcast00:28 Amy’s Viral Love Letter02:17 Nine Years of Grief03:33 Permission to Move On04:58 Why Jason Wrote the Memoir06:54 Talking About Death Honestly07:54 Honeymoon Marriage Goals List10:22 Wordplay and Creative Spark11:32 “More Time Here” Message15:22 Filling the Blank Space16:11 New Calling as a Therapist18:26 Foundation and Book Giving19:11 Ovarian Cancer Progress20:04 How to Support Grievers22:14 Sudden vs Expected Loss25:02 End of Life Conversations30:47 Love and Grief Reflections31:41 Closing and Tech Reset Get full access to Elena Meets the Author at elenabowes.substack.com/subscribe