“The first draft is absolute torture,” says historical nonfiction writer David Baron. And yet, he persists and his newest book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and more. The Christian Science Monitor says, “The Martians is a fascinating tale that’s beautifully told.” We speak with Baron about the joys of research, the agony of writing, the delight in rewriting, how imagination cuts both ways, and how Truman Capote’s work has influenced his own.

In this episode, we talk with Michael Kleber-Diggs about the importance of mentors and how sometimes they transition to colleagues as we find our own footing in our creative work, stepping into our own creative identity. He reads “What Name for This,” from his book Worldly Things, and we use the poem as a launching pad to talk about creative relationships, why we write and how attentiveness to the specific can lead us to questions about the universal, and making art out of the ordinary. And, in thinking about the role of the artist in a difficult time, Michael shares his controversial idea about the role of the artist in “dark times.”

One day, nationally acclaimed poet Maria Kelson hit “a poetry wall” for no identifiable reason. “It was frustrating,” she says, “because I had devoted myself to poetry. For 15 years, it was my primary focus.” What happened next–she followed an emerging passion, crime fiction. ‘As i was casting about I thought, I want to explore the dark side.” In this episode we talk with Maria about shedding layers of creative identity, finding new community, art as a way to explore and expose issues of social injustice, and the surprising ways poetry informs her new award-winning thriller.

When Starre Varten sat down to write her book The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us about the Power of the Female Body, she came to the project with two things: an intellectual thesis and a very personal bodily story. In this episode, we talk with Starre about how both mind and body fueled her creative practice. We also talk about how what began as an article became a book, how to turn toward the part of the book you might rather turn away from, how an outsider’s perspective can help us see our project more clearly and what it really means to be strong.

“I try to be really open to anything that comes my way,” says bestselling author Bonnie Tsui. Her newest book, On Muscle, isn’t a memoir, but it begins with her recounting her father encouraging her and her brother to “make a muscle.” Tsui appears in many sections of the book interacting with the various characters she introduces. Yet it’s not a book explicitly about her, and if there’s a main character it’s probably human muscle. In this episode we speak with Tsui to find the right balance of personal storytelling, history, science, experts and interesting characters. Plus why poetry is a part of her research and the value of pulling multiple disciplines into her writing.

Making something is fun. Promoting it? Not so much… On this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie discuss the what happens when you put something you’ve created out into the world. How do you get it to your intended audience? How do encourage people to find it without feeling like an icky self-promotional nag? We also discuss the pain of realizing that your friends didn’t and won’t read or watch or listen to your new thing, the importance of remembering why you’re doing this, and the 100 day promotion project we tried (inspired by previous Emerging Form guests Chris Duffy and Zach Sherman) and what it taught us.

Andrea Barrett is the author of the National Book Award-winning Ship Fever, Voyage of the Narwhal, Servants of the Map, Natural History, and other works of fiction. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NEA Fellowship, and the Rea Award for the Short Story, and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in the Adirondacks.