My guest today is Lauren Kessler, a multi-award-winning author of eleven works of narrative nonfiction, three biographies, an oral history, and four books on writing and reporting.
A gutsy immersion journalist, Lauren has explored life inside a maximum-security prison, the grueling world of professional ballet, the anti-aging movement, and the hidden world of Alzheimer’s sufferers. Her brand new book, "Everything Changes Everything" is her most personal by far, detailing how she processed the loss of both her husband and her daughter by setting out alone to walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain.
We covered:
- How she landed on narrative nonfiction as her genre of choice, even though she had a degree in journalism
- The woman Lauren wrote her first feature story about, who died by suicide shortly after the story came out, and the effect that had on Lauren
- How writing feels in her body
- The work she’s had to do to accept that writing is a business as well as an art
- The part of the writing process that makes her brain sweat
- How she taught full time, wrote a deeply researched book every three years, and raised three kids–and how she’s been able to move away from working that hard, that consistently
- The breakthrough that helped her work smarter, not harder
- Her hack for making writing a little less sedentary
- A genius trick for making it easier to get your writing brain going in the morning
Connect with Lauren at laurenkessler.com or laurenjkess.substack.com.
For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com.
Thank you for listening!

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