About the show
A podcast for people who take writing seriously
Behind the Book started in a spare bedroom in 2022 with a single question: what actually happens between a blank page and a finished book? Four seasons and 126 episodes later, we've asked it of debut novelists, prize winners, poets, translators, agents and editors.
Every Wednesday, host Nora Ellis sits down with one author for an unhurried conversation about the work itself — the false starts, the structural rewrites, the rejections, and the small habits that carry a manuscript to the end. It's the show we wished existed when we were writing our own first drafts.
What every episode covers
Craft, in detail
Not 'where do you get your ideas' — actual structure, scene work, revision passes and the tools authors use to finish.
The publishing reality
Querying, advances, edits, deadlines and marketing, discussed honestly by people who've lived through all of it.
A working community
Listener questions shape our episodes, and our newsletter turns each conversation into notes you can apply this week.
Long-form, unhurried
Forty to sixty minutes, lightly edited. Enough room for a guest to change their mind mid-answer.
Your host
Nora Ellis
Nora Ellis is a former acquisitions editor turned interviewer. Over a decade in publishing she read thousands of submissions — which is why her questions tend to go straight to the part of the book that almost didn't work.
Pitch an episodeNever miss an episode
One email a week. The episode, plus the craft notes.
Every Wednesday we send the new conversation with a short written breakdown of the writing lessons inside it. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.