Life on Words
The interview series of Inkhorn Review
Life on Words features writer interviews with authors and other book people about the realities of a writing career. Host Terry Heath speaks with working writers, agents, and booksellers about the costs, rewards, and surprises of building a life around books and writing. This is not a craft show or a book-promo circuit; it is a conversation about the person behind the work and the life shaped by words.
October 7, 2026
Aleks Merilo: Kicked Out of His Own Play
Aleks Merilo wrote Exit 27, which the Houston Chronicle called "the best original play to be produced this season," and The Widow of Tom's Hill, which ran off-Broadway at 59E59. His plays have won the Playwrights First Award, Project Playwright, and the New x NW competition. He also…
September 23, 2026
Allie Millington: I Tried Again Four Hundred Times
Allie Millington's premier middle-grade novel Olivetti debuted on the New York Times bestseller list with a glowing review from Tom Hanks, but it was after enough rejections to fill a book, which she did.
September 16, 2026
Maureen McQuerry: The Girl Who Asked Questions
Poet and novelist Maureen McQuerry decided at age six that she would be a writer. She was in her forties before her first novels came out. In between, she was the neighborhood kid called "question box," a closet poet in high school, and a teacher who chose the classroom because writing…
September 6, 2026
Elena Taylor: Allowed in the Room
Elena Taylor spent twenty years in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer before she wrote her first novel in 2007. It took until 2016 to see a book in print, and by then she had learned the thing nobody tells you: there is no game plan. No book you can buy that lays out a…
August 30, 2026
Sheila Roberts: No Problem, No Story
Sheila Roberts wanted to be a songwriter. Sixty books later — with movies on Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family — she says the writing life has cost her nothing at all. That answer is worth sitting with, because it doesn't come from an easy career. Sheila talks about crashing…
August 26, 2026
Kirby Larson: The Girl Who Wanted to Be Dorothy
After 250 rejection letters, Kirby Larson's work produced Hattie Big Sky, a Newbery Honor book, and a shelf of historical novels about the slices of American history most of us were never taught. But she had learned that words have power at age seven.
August 19, 2026
Alan Katz: Forty Years of Getting Paid to Be Funny
Alan Katz has written more than 50 books and spent five years writing for The Rosie O'Donnell Show. He grew up in a family of shoe-store owners and teachers and announced early that he'd be a writer — his father's response was that as a writer, you are your own merchandise. We talk about…
August 12, 2026
Christina Braver: Real Sex, Real Stories
Steamy romance novelist Christina Braver has never turned a profit on her books — and she's never regretted a page. In this conversation, Christina talks about writing "real sex representation" into the romance genre: heroines with endometriosis, sexual trauma, and bodies that don't work…
August 12, 2026
Ben Rockwood: The Publisher Who Rejected the Question
Ben Rockwood and his wife Tamara started Bainbridge Island Press out of frustration — she was writing better and better work and getting nothing but silence from publishers. So they decided to get on the other side of the fence and find out why. Four years later he's designing books…
August 12, 2026
Susan Wiggs: 60-Plus Novels and What They Cost
Susan Wiggs sold her first book in 1986 while teaching full-time with a one-year-old at home. She's since written more than 60 novels, won three RITAs, and hit the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. We talk about what that life has cost — a decade of…