Our podcast guest this week is Gabi Coatsworth (A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over, Atmosphere Press, April 2023). The concept of a benevolent ghost helping a loved one move on is a popular trope at the moment and Gabi’s book fits right in. Readers like its blend of optimism and small town charm and it has proved there is room for humor in women’s fiction as well as heavier topics like grief and loss. Gabi is a member of both a local critique group and also runs one of WFWA’s Write-Ins, partly because she writes “with an English accent” and often needs help making her prose more accessible. We discuss her success with co-op ads to build her mailing list and how she’s enhanced her own author platform by positioning herself as a go-to interviewer for authors coming through Connecticut on national book tours.

Gabi Coatsworth is an award-winning British-born author and blogger, who has spent half her life living in the United States. Her memoir, Love’s Journey Home, was published by Atmosphere Press in May 2022 and her debut novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over, came out in April 2023. They both won first-place awards in the Connecticut Press Club, and the novel came first in the Indie Author Project Awards. She’s been published in trade publications, and literary journals, both in print and online, and anthologies, and is active in the Connecticut writing community, where she runs several groups for writers. If she’s not writing or traveling, she’ll be in her flower garden, wondering whether to weed, or relaxing with a book.

To learn more about Gabi, click here.

This week’s special episode is a roundtable discussion with four of the editors of the anthology Feisty Deeds published on Women’s Fiction Day June 8, 2024. This collection of 23 juried short stories came from members of WFWA’s Historical Fiction affinity group who meet weekly to share the ups and downs of writing in this genre. The selected stories range across centuries, continents, and cultures and feature ordinary women facing extraordinary challenges in astonishing ways. You’ll hear how the initial idea for an anthology morphed into a two-year collaborative venture with these five women each volunteering their time and expertise to this passion project. We discuss the initial planning process, how decisions got made, the developmental editing stage, and what each editor personally learned from the experience.

It’s obvious that this publication was truly a labor of love and a great example of what association members can achieve when they work together. The royalties from the sale of Feisty Deeds benefit the WFWA Scholarship Fund and the group of five editors are already planning their next volume. If you’re a member of WFWA, write historical fiction, and would like to join the affinity group, click here.

To learn more about the anthology, click here.

To connect with the group of Instagram, click here.

To learn more about the individual editors and their writing:

Kimberly Sullivan, click here.

Elaine Schroller, click here.

Christy Forrest, click here.

Kay Smith-Blum, click here.

Carolyn Korsmeyer, click here.

This week’s interview is with Cynthia Bogard (A History of Silence, Atmosphere Press, March 2023). A former university professor, Cynthia’s novel features six contemporary women grappling with issues of racism, misogyny, and societal challenges and she brought not only her background in Women’s Studies but also sensitivity readers to vet her story. We discussed how the lack of response from agents shocked her when compared to the academic feedback she was used to, how working with a hybrid press educated her about the publishing business, how bookstores have not proved an effective sales venue, and how being a part of two critique groups has had a profound positive effect not only on her braided novels, but on her own continued development as a creative artist.

Cynthia J. Bogard has reinvented herself as a novelist after a successful career as a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Hofstra University in New York. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin she’s lived in Kuwait, Greece, Mexico, New York, Texas, Vermont, and in Madison, Wisconsin.

World traveler, longtime feminist and environmentalist, Greece, mid- 20th century jazz, and Mother Nature are all close to her heart. These days, Cynthia lives with her spouse and two rescue dogs in Montpelier, Vermont.

To learn more about Cynthia, click here.