The Resilient Writers Radio Show

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Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of domestic abuse, coercive control, religious trauma, sexual assault, and emotional abuse. Please take care while listening.
In this episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, I’m joined by author, artist, and survivor Boni Woodland to talk about her memoir, Turning Survival Into Words: From Houses of Fear to Freedom. 
This is a powerful and tender conversation about survival, voice, healing, and the courage it takes to tell the truth about a life that was once shaped by silence.
Boni’s book began in therapy. After her life had settled enough for her to look back, she realized that her past was still affecting her present. But speaking about what had happened to her was incredibly difficult. 
For much of her life, Boni says, it “wasn’t a privilege to speak my mind.” So before therapy sessions, she began writing down the incidents she wanted to discuss. Over time, those pages became a collection of memories, painful moments, and turning points — and eventually, the beginning of a book.
In our conversation, Boni shares what it was like to grow up inside a controlling religious environment that shaped nearly every part of her life: what she could wear, what she could eat, who she could spend time with, who she could marry, and what was expected of her as a woman. 
Those beliefs followed her into marriage, where she moved from one controlling situation into another. What she hoped would be freedom became another form of captivity.
One of the most striking parts of Boni’s memoir is the way she organizes the story around the different houses she lived in. Each house becomes a marker of a particular stage in her life, and the chapter titles — including “The House of Non-Consent,” “The House of No Money,” “The House of Hunger,” and “The House of Chilling” — help readers understand the slow progression of abuse, control, isolation, and fear.
Boni wanted to write the book she once needed. She talks about how hard it can be for people outside an abusive relationship to understand why someone doesn’t “just leave.” 
As she explains, when you have no money, no family support, no access to education, no safe place to go, and children to protect, leaving is not simple. Her hope is that readers will better understand that reality — and that anyone who sees themselves in her story will feel less alone.
We also talk about one of Boni’s first acts of quiet resistance: sneaking to the library. Surrounded by books, she began looking for language, understanding, and hope. She wanted to read a story from someone who had survived and found a way forward. In many ways, Turning Survival Into Words became that book.
This episode is a deeply moving conversation about writing through pain, reclaiming your voice, and turning a difficult past into something that may help someone else find their own path toward freedom.

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In this episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, Rhonda is joined by Annie Dike, author of Clovis, her debut literary fiction novel. 
Annie’s writing life is anything but ordinary: she’s an attorney by profession, a long-time sailor, the author of several bestselling sailing books, and a travel writer whose work has grown out of years spent cruising the East Coast of the United States and the eastern Caribbean with her partner, Phillip, on their 46-foot sailboat.
But Clovis comes from somewhere much deeper.
Annie grew up in Clovis, New Mexico, and the novel is rooted in the memories, atmosphere, grit, and emotional truth of her childhood. In this conversation, she shares how her life as a sailor unexpectedly connects back to her upbringing as a cowgirl—both worlds requiring resourcefulness, problem-solving, toughness, and the willingness to fix whatever breaks.
Rhonda and Annie talk about what it means to write autobiographical fiction: how much truth to include, how much to fictionalize, and what it feels like to write honestly about real people you love. 
Annie opens up about the vulnerability of portraying her father and brother in the book, and how writing truthfully allowed her to connect more deeply with the story.
They also dig into the craft and business of writing. Annie shares how Clovis began as a huge 255,000-word manuscript, and how working with editors helped her see what needed to stay, what needed to go, and how revision ultimately made her a stronger writer. 
She also speaks candidly about querying agents, self-publishing, marketing, and the emotional resilience required to keep going when the book world feels discouraging.
Annie also gives us a glimpse into what’s next: Austin, the sequel to Clovis, and a third book, Roswell, which will go back in time to explore Callie’s mother’s story. Through it all, Annie’s fascination with mother-daughter relationships, memory, place, and identity shines through.
This is a beautiful conversation for any writer who has wondered whether their own life, family stories, or complicated past might become fiction—and how to write from truth without being trapped by it.

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In this episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, I’m joined by Aga Maksimowska, author of Becalming and Giant, for a thoughtful conversation about voice, literary fiction, and what it means to return to a character after more than a decade. 
Aga’s latest novel, Becalming, is anything but calm. It’s propulsive, emotionally layered, and deeply attentive to the messy, often contradictory experience of early adulthood—something Aga knew from the beginning she wanted to capture on the page.
We begin by talking about Gosia, the protagonist of Becalming, who readers may recognize from Aga’s earlier novel Giant. Though Aga never intended to write a sequel, Gosia returned—older, more complicated, and shaped by the difficult work of becoming an adult while still carrying the imprint of childhood. 
Aga shares what it was like to revisit a character she already knew and discover how much more there was to uncover once Gosia was placed in new relationships, new responsibilities, and the complicated emotional terrain of adulthood.
Aga also talks about her deep love of first-person narrative and voice-driven fiction. We explore why she’s drawn to intimate, character-rich storytelling and how her background in journalism shaped her curiosity about people and the stories they carry. 
She reflects on the craft choices behind Becalming—particularly her desire to write about frustration, disappointment, and emotional upheaval without creating an angry narrator. Instead, she leans into humor, tenderness, and the kind of emotional complexity that feels deeply human without tipping into sentimentality.
One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation centers on language, migration, and identity. Aga shares how writing across cultures allows her to explore the ways personality shifts through language, and how Gosia is, in many ways, a different person in Polish than she is in English. 
✨ It’s a rich conversation about inheritance, history, and how identity is shaped not only by where we come from, but by the language we move through.
We also talk about titles, process, and Aga’s affection for difficult books—the kind that ask readers to do a little work, to make leaps, and to trust what’s unfolding on the page. She shares why Becalming became the right title, how she wrote much of the book at 5 a.m. and in Toronto libraries, and why she believes some books are meant to stay in the drawer. It’s a generous, thoughtful conversation about writing with depth, trusting your instincts, and allowing the work to become what it wants to be.

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There’s something fascinating about stories that sit just outside the spotlight—moments in history that don’t always get the same attention, but quietly shape the world we’re living in now. That’s exactly where this conversation with Melanie Anagnos begins.
Melanie’s novel Night Swimming is set in the 1970s—a decade often overshadowed by the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, but one that was just as complex, just as charged, and in many ways, still echoing today. 
As she shares in this episode, it was a time of enormous social change: the women’s movement gaining momentum, early conversations around gay rights, and shifting economic realities. It’s also a moment that feels surprisingly familiar when you look at today’s cultural conversations.
What’s especially interesting is how Melanie came to write this book. Like so many writers, she had a first novel that never made it out into the world. 
But instead of being a dead end, that project became the seed for something new. 
A minor character from that earlier manuscript—Jamie—grew into the central figure of Night Swimming, a young police officer navigating both a homicide investigation and a rapidly changing cultural landscape.
And here’s where it gets even more compelling: Melanie didn’t set out to write a police procedural. In fact, she initially felt completely unqualified to do so. But inspired by a David Bowie quote about pushing beyond your comfort zone, she leaned into the unfamiliar—and discovered not only a new genre, but a new creative energy in her work.
We talk about the deep research that went into bringing this story to life—from listening to police interviews and podcasts like Small Town Dicks, to digging through archives on Newspapers.com to capture the everyday details of the 1970s. Because when you’re writing in a pre-digital world, every small detail matters.
But at the heart of it, this isn’t just a story about crime—it’s a story about character. Melanie is deeply drawn to character-driven fiction, and that’s clear in how she approaches Jamie. 
He’s not perfect. He’s not heroic in the traditional sense. But he’s decent. He’s trying. And that, as Melanie points out, is often what makes a character feel real—and worth following into a series.
We also explore one of the most nuanced challenges of writing historical fiction: how to portray women accurately within the constraints of the time, while still creating characters that resonate with modern readers. It’s a delicate balance, and one Melanie approached with thoughtfulness and care.
This conversation is such a beautiful reminder that writing often asks us to step into uncertainty—to try something we’re not sure we can do, to follow an idea even when it feels unfamiliar. And sometimes, that’s exactly where the most interesting work begins.

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If you’ve ever found yourself polishing the first chapter of your novel over and over again while the rest of the story stubbornly refuses to move forward, this episode is going to feel very familiar—and very reassuring.
In this conversation, I’m joined by editor, author, and book coach Rebecca Pickens, and we talk about something that doesn’t always get as much attention as plot or structure, but might actually matter more than anything else: emotional impact.
Rebecca works with a lot of writers on their debut novels, and she sees a very common pattern. Writers learn all the craft tools—story structure, narrative arc, opening hooks, character arcs—and they apply them carefully and thoughtfully. But somewhere along the way, they start to lose touch with the very thing that made them want to write the story in the first place: the emotional heart of the story and the characters they fell in love with.
As Rebecca points out, writers often love craft, but readers love characters. Readers remember characters who feel real, complicated, and emotionally alive, even more than they remember perfectly structured plots or beautiful sentences.
We talk about how emotional impact often comes from two key tools: interiority and subtext. Interiority is what the character is thinking and feeling inside—the things they don’t say out loud. When readers are given access to those private thoughts and feelings, they feel closer to the character and more invested in what happens to them.
Subtext, on the other hand, is what’s happening beneath the surface of a scene. Instead of telling the reader exactly what a character is feeling, we show it through their behavior, their reactions, and what they don’t say. Readers get to connect the dots themselves, and that makes the story more engaging and more emotionally powerful.
Rebecca also talks about how emotions become more compelling when they are connected to a character’s identity—who they believe they are, what they fear, what they want their life to mean. When conflict threatens a character’s identity, the emotional stakes become much higher and the story becomes much more compelling.
We also talk about when writers should think about emotional impact—during outlining, drafting, revising, or editing—and why, for many writers, it’s actually easier to put all the emotional material into the first draft and then shape it later, rather than trying to add emotional depth after the story is written.
Finally, we talk about endings—why writers often get stuck when they reach the end of their manuscript, and why a satisfying ending usually depends less on the final chapter and more on whether the character has truly earned that ending through a believable character arc.
Rebecca has also created a free workbook to help writers craft stronger endings, with prompts and checklists you can use to evaluate whether your story is landing the way you want it to. You can download that free workbook here and use it as you revise your ending.
This is a thoughtful, practical, and encouraging conversation about how to make readers not just read your story—but feel it.