Story Behind the Story

Host Clara Sherley-Appel interviews authors about their creative process, from the inspiration behind the books they write to specific choices they make.

Story Behind the Story is a arts podcast hosted by Clara Sherley-Appel, with 57 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Clara Sherley-Appel hosts Story Behind the Story, a arts show with 57 episodes published.

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  Story Behind the Story

  Episode 61: Charlie Jane Anders - LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTER

  Oct 6, 202556 minS0

  <p>Charlie Jane Anders is an award-winning, best-selling author of speculative fiction based in the Bay Area. She is the winner of the 2017 Nebula, Locus, and Crawford awards; winner of the 2020 Locus Award; a co-creator of the transgender Marvel Comics superhero, Escapade; a founding editor of the science fiction website io9; a co-host, with Annalee Newitz, of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct; and the current science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for The Washington Post.</p> <p>In this episode, I talk to Charlie Jane about her latest and most personal novel yet. Written during the pandemic, partly as...

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  Story Behind the Story

  Episode 60: Christopher Blackwell and Deborah Zalesne - ENDING ISOLATION: THE CASE AGAINST SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

  Sep 6, 202557 minS0

  <p>Christopher Blackwell is an award-winning journalist currently incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center, where he is serving a 45-year prison sentence for taking another human’s life during a drug robbery (something he takes full accountability for).</p> <p>Deborah Zalesne is a legal expert and law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, where she teaches contracts, corporate law, and commercial law.</p> <p>Together with Dr. Terry Kupers and Kwaneta Harris, they wrote Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement, which weaves together first-hand accounts of incarceration and solitary confinement with legal and me...

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  Story Behind the Story

  Episode 59: Alka Joshi - SIX DAYS IN BOMBAY

  Aug 2, 202556 minS0

  <p>Alka Joshi spent 10 years working on her debut novel, The Henna Artist, before it was published in March 2020, just before the world locked down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, a few months later, Reese Witherspoon selected it as a Reese's book club, changing the trajectory of Joshi's life and writing career forever. At a time when many debut artists were struggling to connect with their audiences, Joshi was zooming into libraries, bookstores, and book clubs big and small, and finding her people in the process.</p> <p>Five years later, Joshi has published two sequels to...

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  Story Behind the Story

  Episode 58: Kirsty Capes - DAUGHTERS

  Jul 5, 202555 minS0

  <p>In this episode of Story Behind the Story, host Clara Sherley-Appel talks to British novelist Kirsty Capes about her latest book, Daughters, which was recently released in the US following its debut in the UK in 2024 (under the title Girls). Daughters follows Mattie and Nora, whose neglectful and abusive mother was the acclaimed artist Ingrid Olssen. On her deathbed, Olssen asks them to destroy her work, so when Olssen’s sister arranges an exhibition of her art in San Francisco, her daughters feel compelled to put a stop to it — despite their difficult and complicated feelings about their mother.</p> <...

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  Story Behind the Story

  Episode 57: John Gibler - TORN FROM THE WORLD

  May 3, 202555 minS0

  <p>In this episode of Story Behind the Story, host Clara Sherley-Appel talks to journalist John Gibler about his 2014 book, Torn from the World: A Guerrilla's Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico. Torn from the World tells the story of Andrés Tzompaxtle Tecpile, a member of an armed resistance group who was forcibly disappeared and tortured by the Mexican military long after the government claimed it had stopped using these tactics.</p> <p>Gibler has been reporting on social movements in Mexico since 2006, when he accompanied members of the Zapatista movement on The Other Campaign. That experience shaped h...

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