Welcome to The Eavesdrop
A quarterly conversation in your inbox with authors Anna-Marie McLemore, Emily X.R. Pan, Anica Mrose Rissi, Sara Ryan, and Nova Ren Suma
Welcome to The Eavesdrop, a free quarterly newsletter in which five multi-published authors who are also close friends share the ins and outs of their creative processes, go deep on craft, and nerd out about publishing and other obsessions.
Each installment features an honest, intimate, and in-depth conversation—much like the conversations the five of us hold regularly over Zoom—in which we’ll set a topic, spill and discuss our varied approaches and perspectives, and share what else is feeding, draining, shaping, and sustaining our work at the moment. We’re excited to see where the conversation goes.
We hope you’ll listen in!
P.S. Subscribers will be automatically entered in a giveaway each season.
Who We Are
Things Anna-Marie McLemore has done while researching and writing books: swim in a mermaid tale (The Weight of Feathers), wander enchanted gardens (Wild Beauty), dance in red shoes (Dark and Deepest Red), dress like a fashionable 1920s young man (Self-Made Boys), learn to cross a room like a proper society girl (Flawless Girls), and get a fight choreography injury (Venom & Vow). Find them online at annamariemclemore.com.
A-M and Emily met in Kentucky on a quest for the perfect bag of Swedish fish, which they were both convinced would fuel their revisions. Several years, several books, and many Harry Styles outfit discussions later, they’re still friends.
Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Astonishing Color of After and An Arrow to the Moon. She belongs to Kiwi the strangely-proportioned dog and Pippin the Hognose snake, and wishes she could also adopt all the bats in her backyard. In her free time she sings, plays various musical instruments, and makes visual art. She is currently learning how to pick locks, and putting black sesame paste in her decaf coffee. exrpan.com
Emily first met Anica at a housewarming party where they were both inhaling epic amounts of cheese. They became fast friends. Later on, Anica was the fairy dogmother who helped Emily adopt the silly beastling of her dreams. Now, over a decade into their friendship, they also make music together.
Anica Mrose Rissi is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and YA. Her latest release, Wishing Season, is a middle grade novel about friendship and loss, set on the Maine island where she grew up. She also plays fiddle in and writes lyrics for the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. Before she ever dreamed of writing, Anica worked as a cheesemonger and book editor, and she still loves all things dairy and suggesting what other people should do. She posts about bookish things and her very good dog, Sweet Potato, on BlueSky and Instagram, and can be found at anicarissi.com.
Anica developed an instant friend crush on Sara during Anica’s first semester teaching in the Writing for Children & Young Adults MFA program at VCFA, when she saw Sara’s lecture on “Building Three-Dimensional Settings—Literally” and bonded with them about craftiness of all sorts over crepes (with Emily!) at The Skinny Pancake. Sara recently did a two-week writing residency at Anica’s house, during which the two of them conducted rigorous testing to determine the perfect number of olives to put in an Olive City cocktail. Spoiler: The answer is six.
Sara Ryan is the award-winning author of the middle-grade novel Mountain Upside Down, the graphic novel Bad Houses with art by Carla Speed McNeil, young adult novels The Rules for Hearts and Empress of the World, and various comics, short stories, and essays. A few things they like: hand-sewing, baking, makerspaces, queer history. They’re on the VCFA WCYA faculty and part of the editorial team at Crucial Comix. Find them at sararyan.com and occasionally on Bluesky & Instagram.
In an earlier Internet era Sara was an avid reader of Nova’s Distraction 99 blog, which led, of course, to reading her excellent books. Not long after they first met Nova in person, she made an incredibly valuable suggestion for which Sara will always be grateful. Sara also has fond memories of eating pizza with Nova in a haunted house in Vermont.
Nova Ren Suma is the New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us, Imaginary Girls, and her latest, Wake the Wild Creatures, among others, published and in-progress. Her personal obsessions include ghost stories, unreliable narrators, and the beautiful black cat who visits her almost every morning. She can be found at novaren.com and her newsletter The Words Around Us.
Nova first connected with A-M through their stunning debut novel, The Weight of Feathers. But a true friendship was found when they taught a writing workshop together called Making Magic at a now lost refuge in Vermont, where Nova watched A-M run out into the deep powdery snow to make snow angels, ungloved and gleeful and beckoning her to follow.
