
Dear Writer
Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $14.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Maggie Smith
-
By:
-
Maggie Smith
About this listen
New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2025 Maggie Smith (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Devotions
- The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
- By: Mary Oliver
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.
-
-
Humanity’s connection to all life.
- By Anonymous User on 02-25-25
By: Mary Oliver
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Catching the Light
- By: Joy Harjo
- Narrated by: Joy Harjo
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this lyrical meditation about the why of writing poetry, Joy Harjo reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her 50 years as a poet. Comprised of intimate vignettes that take us through the author’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory.
By: Joy Harjo
-
Goldenrod
- Poems
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her “meditations on kindness and hope” (NPR). Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory.
-
-
Powerful Collection
- By BookishMarginalia on 07-28-21
By: Maggie Smith
-
Writing on Empty
- A Guide to Finding Your Voice
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore? In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page.
-
-
A zen -tour de force!
- By Innocent Bystander on 07-24-24
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Devotions
- The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
- By: Mary Oliver
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.
-
-
Humanity’s connection to all life.
- By Anonymous User on 02-25-25
By: Mary Oliver
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Catching the Light
- By: Joy Harjo
- Narrated by: Joy Harjo
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this lyrical meditation about the why of writing poetry, Joy Harjo reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her 50 years as a poet. Comprised of intimate vignettes that take us through the author’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory.
By: Joy Harjo
-
Goldenrod
- Poems
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her “meditations on kindness and hope” (NPR). Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory.
-
-
Powerful Collection
- By BookishMarginalia on 07-28-21
By: Maggie Smith
-
Writing on Empty
- A Guide to Finding Your Voice
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore? In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page.
-
-
A zen -tour de force!
- By Innocent Bystander on 07-24-24
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Shift
- Managing Your Emotions—So They Don't Manage You
- By: Ethan Kross
- Narrated by: Ethan Kross
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices. But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us?
-
-
The toolkit I never knew that I needed
- By Tyler L on 02-07-25
By: Ethan Kross
-
Booked for Murder
- Old Juniper Bookstore Mysteries, Book 1
- By: P.J. Nelson
- Narrated by: Hallie Bee Bard
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Madeline Brimley left small-town Georgia many years ago to go to college and pursue her dreams on the stage. Her dramatic escapades are many, but success has eluded her, leaving her at loose ends. But then she gets word that not only has her beloved, eccentric Aunt Rose passed, but she's left Madeline her equally eccentric bookstore housed in an old Victorian mansion in the small college town of Enigma. But when she arrives in her beat-up Fiat to claim The Old Juniper Bookstore—and restart her life—Madeline is faced with unexpected challenges.
-
-
The protagonist
- By Avid series reader on 12-30-24
By: P.J. Nelson
-
The Art of Creating
- How to Create Art That Transforms Yourself and the World
- By: Joseph Nguyen
- Narrated by: Joseph Nguyen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every person is born a creator, but the world has conditioned us to believe that we are not. Most of us are not fulfilled because we have forgotten who we truly are and what we were created to do — create. There is a reason that one of the most fulfilling, expansive, and healing actions we can do as humans is to create using our gifts. The reason many of us do not create is not that we don’t know how, but simply that we are afraid and think ourselves out of it, even though we know deep down it is what we want to be doing every single day.
-
-
Fear of the unknown
- By Amazon Customer on 09-08-24
By: Joseph Nguyen
-
1000 Words
- A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All-Year Round
- By: Jami Attenberg
- Narrated by: Jami Attenberg, Kamali Minter, Joy Osmanski, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgement, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.
-
-
Amazing book on craft!!!
- By Inna on 02-29-24
By: Jami Attenberg
-
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- An Essay Collection
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Hilton Als
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.
-
-
Didion deserves a better narrator
- By Pamela on 02-03-21
By: Joan Didion
-
Big Magic
- Creative Living Beyond Fear
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
People of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear.
-
-
Biggest Inspiration In a Long Time
- By Gillian on 09-23-15
-
The Writing Life
- Ideas and Inspiration for Anyone Who Wants to Write
- By: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through their many best-selling books, Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron have done nothing less than deepen the way millions of us experience the art and practice of writing and creativity. Now, with The Writing Life, Cameron and Goldberg join forces for the first time in this revealing dialogue that speaks to our common search for an everyday spirituality.
-
-
Enjoyed hearing 2 perspectives from writers who have impacted me
- By Cheri Keirstead on 04-03-16
By: Julia Cameron, and others
-
The Power Pause
- How to Plan a Career Break After Kids—and Come Back Stronger Than Ever
- By: Neha Ruch
- Narrated by: Neha Ruch
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"So, what do you do?" When Neha Ruch had to answer this seemingly innocent question for the first time after leaving her corporate job to care for her infant son, she drew a shameful blank. She couldn’t find the words to describe this new stage of life she’d just embarked on. How, then, was she to navigate this identity shift? Frustrated, Ruch embarked on a mission to rebrand the stay-at-home mother for a new generation of women who don’t want to leave their ambition behind just because they decide to pause or change their careers post-kids.
-
-
Great read for SAHMs or those contemplating the transition!
- By Aaron Modic on 04-09-25
By: Neha Ruch
-
Wise as Fu*k
- Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Sh*tstorms of Life
- By: Gary John Bishop
- Narrated by: Gary John Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Compelling and straight-shooting wisdom for coping with whatever challenges life throws at us from the New York Times best-selling author of Unfu*k Yourself. In Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop taught millions of listeners how to silence the negative, self-sabotaging voice in their head to thrive. In Wise as Fu*k, he expands on his ideas, redefining what it means to be wise and showing how to tackle problems and improve our lives and those of others.
-
-
Very disappointed
- By Sal on 10-15-20
By: Gary John Bishop
-
Goodbye, Things
- The New Japanese Minimalism
- By: Fumio Sasaki, Eriko Sugita - translator
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fumio Sasaki is not an enlightened minimalism expert or organizing guru like Marie Kondo - he's just a regular guy who was stressed out and constantly comparing himself to others, until one day he decided to change his life by saying goodbye to everything he didn't absolutely need. The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him.
-
-
A Grounding Perspective
- By Mackenzie on 10-22-17
By: Fumio Sasaki, and others
-
Bird by Bird
- Some Instructions on Writing and Life
- By: Anne Lamott
- Narrated by: Anne Lamott
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a quarter century, more than a million readers and listeners—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title.
-
-
Why oh why did she narrate this?!
- By Amor Fati on 01-02-23
By: Anne Lamott
-
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
- By: Ross Gay
- Narrated by: Ross Gay
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.
By: Ross Gay
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Resurface
- A Guide to Navigating Life's Biggest Transitions
- By: Cassidy Krug
- Narrated by: Cassidy Krug
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life is nothing other than a series of transitions. Whether you’re graduating from college and trying to decide what’s next, coping with divorce, putting the pieces back together after a death or a diagnosis, moving to a new city, or thinking about leaving one career path for another, these transitions—planned or unplanned—are an inevitable part of life. But as inevitable as transitions are, they can still be intimidating. You’re venturing from the familiar into the unfamiliar, and that journey is often murky and filled with moments of uncertainty, grief, and self-doubt.
By: Cassidy Krug
-
Hello, Cruel World!
- Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times
- By: Melinda Wenner Moyer
- Narrated by: Melinda Wenner Moyer
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the blink of an eye, our kids will be adults facing countless serious threats—climate change, gun violence, political polarization, and disinformation, to name but a few. We’re not going to be able to solve all these intractable problems before our kids grow up—so how are we to prepare them for an impossibly complex and scary future? Plagued by this question, award-winning science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer interviewed parenting experts and researchers across multiple fields—psychology, education, information literacy, technology, business, and even addiction.
-
The Book of Alchemy
- A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life
- By: Suleika Jaouad
- Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad, Vidish Athavale, Fabian Cook Jr., and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life's biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through.
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Writing Creativity and Soul
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sue Monk Kidd was in high school, a home economics teacher wrote a list of potential occupations for women on the blackboard: teacher, nurse, librarian, secretary. “Writer” was nowhere to be found. On that day, Kidd shut the door on her writerly aspirations and would not revisit the topic until many years later when she announced to her husband and two children that she was going to become a writer. And so began her journey into the mysteries and methods of the writerly life.
By: Sue Monk Kidd
-
Keep Moving
- Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones", started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
-
-
This is not THAT Maggie Smith
- By Scribezilla on 10-16-20
By: Maggie Smith
-
Resurface
- A Guide to Navigating Life's Biggest Transitions
- By: Cassidy Krug
- Narrated by: Cassidy Krug
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life is nothing other than a series of transitions. Whether you’re graduating from college and trying to decide what’s next, coping with divorce, putting the pieces back together after a death or a diagnosis, moving to a new city, or thinking about leaving one career path for another, these transitions—planned or unplanned—are an inevitable part of life. But as inevitable as transitions are, they can still be intimidating. You’re venturing from the familiar into the unfamiliar, and that journey is often murky and filled with moments of uncertainty, grief, and self-doubt.
By: Cassidy Krug
-
Hello, Cruel World!
- Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times
- By: Melinda Wenner Moyer
- Narrated by: Melinda Wenner Moyer
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the blink of an eye, our kids will be adults facing countless serious threats—climate change, gun violence, political polarization, and disinformation, to name but a few. We’re not going to be able to solve all these intractable problems before our kids grow up—so how are we to prepare them for an impossibly complex and scary future? Plagued by this question, award-winning science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer interviewed parenting experts and researchers across multiple fields—psychology, education, information literacy, technology, business, and even addiction.
-
The Book of Alchemy
- A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life
- By: Suleika Jaouad
- Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad, Vidish Athavale, Fabian Cook Jr., and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life's biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through.
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
-
Writing Creativity and Soul
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sue Monk Kidd was in high school, a home economics teacher wrote a list of potential occupations for women on the blackboard: teacher, nurse, librarian, secretary. “Writer” was nowhere to be found. On that day, Kidd shut the door on her writerly aspirations and would not revisit the topic until many years later when she announced to her husband and two children that she was going to become a writer. And so began her journey into the mysteries and methods of the writerly life.
By: Sue Monk Kidd
-
The Family Dynamic
- A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success
- By: Susan Dominus
- Narrated by: Susan Dominus
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An Olympic athlete. An award-winning novelist. A successful entrepreneur. All raised under one roof. What can we learn from those families whose children aim high and succeed, sometimes in widely varied fields? Just as important: What were the costs along the way, and what can we glean from their travails and triumphs? The acclaimed New York Times journalist Susan Dominus offers compelling profiles of six such families in search of the factors that led to their success—was it an inherited quality, a specific way of parenting, the influence of a sibling, or a twist of luck?
By: Susan Dominus
-
Four Days a Week
- The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter
- By: Juliet Schor
- Narrated by: Helen Laser
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bestselling author, leading sociologist and economist Juliet Schor makes the case for a four-day work week, persuasively showing how this model can address major challenges such as burnout, AI and the climate crisis, and how employees, companies, and governments can work together to make it a reality.
By: Juliet Schor
-
Me, but Better
- By: Olga Khazan
- Narrated by: Olga Khazan
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent years, Olga Khazan had been spiraling toward an existential crisis. Though she treasured her loving, long-term relationship and her dream job, she often caught herself snatching dissatisfaction from the jaws of happiness. Her neurotic overachieving had always been a professional asset, but lately, Olga felt that her brittle disposition could shatter under the weight of just one more thing. She knew something had to give—but was it really possible to change her entire approach to life?
-
-
Great for introverts who want to be more social
- By ShawnaJ on 03-19-25
By: Olga Khazan
-
Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Maggie Nelson
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth is an experiment in interiority written in the pandemic studio. Something of a companion piece to 2009’s Bluets, Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life.
By: Maggie Nelson
-
Making the Best of What's Left
- When We're too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered
- By: Judith Viorst
- Narrated by: Judith Viorst
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the bestselling author Judith Viorst comes a witty and poignant exploration of the joys and sorrows of life’s twilight years—one that leaves us laughing, pondering, and grateful for the moments we have left.
-
-
The honesty of this book is enthralling, exciting, wise and inspirational. Thank goodness we have Judith Viorst.
- By Tybe Diamond on 04-08-25
By: Judith Viorst
-
Moral Ambition
- Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Boris Hiestand, Rutger Bregman
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of the New York Times bestsellers Humankind and Utopia for Realists comes a bold manifesto daring us to cultivate “moral ambition”: to harness our talents and transform our idealism into action—all with the goal of making the world a wildly better place.
By: Rutger Bregman
-
Bad Nature
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Courage
- Narrated by: Cia Court
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.
By: Ariel Courage
-
Permission
- The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create
- By: Elissa Altman
- Narrated by: Elissa Altman
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After writing three critically acclaimed memoirs and a decade of teaching memoir workshops at every level, Elissa Altman has helped students face the elephant in every writer’s room: how to craft the stories that are most vital to them despite the voices that have told them not to. Permission is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.
-
-
Exceptional storytelling
- By dana dunn on 03-27-25
By: Elissa Altman
-
The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
By: Camilla Barnes
-
The Next Day
- Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
- By: Melinda French Gates
- Narrated by: Melinda French Gates
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a rare window into some of her life’s pivotal moments, Melinda French Gates draws from previously untold stories to offer a new perspective on encountering transitions. Melinda will reflect on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more.
-
Small Ceremonies
- A Novel
- By: Kyle Edwards
- Narrated by: Chris Mejaki, Yolanda Bonnell, Dillan Meghan Chiblow, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Word on the street is that this is the Tigers' last season. For Tomahawk “Tommy” Shields, an Indigenous, image-obsessed high school student from Winnipeg, the potential loss of his team serves as a stark reminder of his uncertain future. He can't help but feel that each of his peers has some skill or gift that he lacks, yet each of their perceived virtues hides darker truths, too.
By: Kyle Edwards
-
The Murder of Mr. Ma
- By: John Shen Yen Nee, SJ Rozan
- Narrated by: Daniel York Loh
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death with a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?
-
-
Outstanding narration!
- By DAS on 07-12-24
By: John Shen Yen Nee, and others