Elena Meets the Author

A grieving young widow receives a phone call on her birthday. Her husband, Joe, died five months earlier. But before he did, he arranged something extraordinary: a year’s worth of books, one for every month, chosen to help her move on with her life.
That’s the premise of Libby Page’s latest novel, This Book Made Me Think of You, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and USA Today bestseller, and the book I’m talking about in this episode of Elena Meets the Author.
Before you think it sounds too sad, it isn’t. There’s a handsome bookseller named Alfie, who Tilly has to visit every month to collect her next book. There’s travel: Bali, Paris, Manhattan, Tuscany. And there’s London, drawn with the kind of warmth that makes you want to head to your nearest international airport. Libby has written something that holds grief and joy in the same hand, which is much harder than it sounds.
In our conversation, Libby talks about the inspirations behind the novel, including You’ve Got Mail and It’s a Wonderful Life, and how she balanced an emotional subject with a genuinely uplifting story. She describes the meticulous planning that went into the book’s 12-month structure, the pinboards, the 80 book references woven throughout, and the themed reading lists that give the novel so much of its warmth. We also talk about what the final gift Joe leaves Tilly actually means, her views on accessible versus literary fiction, her writing habits, the rejections she had before she was published, and how she overcomes writer’s block.
There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read This Book Made Me Think of You yet, Libby’s enchanting novel is well worth reading first.
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Today I’m speaking with Grant Ginder about his latest novel, So Old, So Young. I feel like I really get millennials and their anxiety-driven yet somehow still hopeful character.
The book follows six college friends across five parties and twenty years. A New Year’s Eve, a wedding, a birthday, a kids’ Halloween, and a funeral. From a night where everything felt possible to a morning where they had to reckon with what actually happened in between. It’s about people who met at Penn in the early oughts and spent two decades showing up for each other, making tiny decisions they didn’t notice until those decisions became their lives.
If you love character-driven fiction — which I do — this one is for you. Think Normal People. Or, if you’re a boomer like me, the 1983 film The Big Chill.
Grant grew up in Laguna Beach, worked as a speechwriter in DC, earned his MFA at NYU, and now teaches writing there while living in Brooklyn with his husband Mac and their apparently disastrous dog, Frankie. He’s the bestselling author of six novels. Grant, not Frankie.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, we talk about where the book came from- Grant’s own midlife anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night in a deep sweat, like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime with the phrase this is not my life- but oh yes, it is. - We discuss how the party structure gave Grant a way to write into that feeling. We talk about what long friendships actually give us, the particular tension between millennial hope and the reality of middle age arriving faster than expected, and how New York’s changing landscape can mark time in ways the characters themselves can barely track.
We also get into the craft of it. Grant talks about cutting backstory across eleven drafts with his editor, the link between his speechwriting background and how he thinks about narrative arcs, and his advice on writing dialogue: listen to real speech, avoid exposition, and pay attention to when a character over-explains. In real life when someone over-explains, like one of Grant’s NYU students telling him why a paper is late, that’s usually a sign they’re lying.
The episode is out now!
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What do Taylor Swift, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and a teenage girl from Pittsburgh in 1900 all have in common? More than you’d think.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking to New York Times bestselling author Allison Pataki about her eleventh book, It Girl, a gripping, fast-paced historical novel inspired by the true story of Evelyn Nesbit, America’s very first influencer. But this conversation is about a lot more than one book. It’s about what happens to young women when the world decides they’re too beautiful, too talented, and too powerful for their own good. And why that story keeps repeating itself.
Evelyn Nesbit’s life reads like something invented. From a Pittsburgh boarding house, where she lived with her widowed mother and younger brother, she became an artist’s model in Philadelphia at just 13, and by 16 she was taking Broadway by storm. Dubbed America’s Eve, her beauty and talent drew the attention of two very powerful men: Manhattan architect Stanford White and Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw. What followed became known as the murder of the century.
But Allison’s real obsession isn’t the crime. It’s the woman at the centre of it, and the way history chose to tell her story. Eve, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Salome. She made him do it. She drove him mad. She’s the cause of it all. Evelyn was just the latest in a very long line.
We also get into Allison’s own story, from her two storytelling grandmothers to writing live TV news at ABC, to becoming a full-time novelist. She talks about how she finds her heroines, why she’s drawn to women that exist only in the footnotes of history, and as a mother of three girls, what it felt like to write the darker parts of Evelyn’s life.
She also reads from the prologue. It’s worth it.

00:00 Welcome and Premise
00:15 Meet Allison Pataki
02:08 Origins and Influences
03:26 Finding Her Heroines
05:26 Discovering Evelyn Nesbit
09:16 High Society vs Showgirls
12:11 Prologue Reading Crime Century
16:42 Agency and Swim Metaphor
21:01 Modern Echoes Taylor Swift
23:56 Writing the Dark Parts
26:26 Fun Research Mythic Tropes
31:25 Mom Life and Book Tours
33:06 Recommendations and Wrap


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It all starts with a squabble over an apple cake. When one sister bakes a much better cake than the other, the estrangement that follows ripples across three generations of the Rubinstein family for years.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking with New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman about her latest novel, This Is Not About Us, a national bestseller and a Late Show with Stephen Colbert Book Club Pick. It’s a portrait of a modern American Jewish family on the East Coast, centring around two elderly sisters, Helen and Sylvia. Their sister Jeanne, the family matriarch, dies in the very first chapter, and as the Wall Street Journal puts it, what follows is a story about three generations bound by love, rituals, and guilt trips.
In each chapter, Goodman gives us a different member of the Rubinstein family. From octogenarian Helen, who says exactly what people need to hear (not necessarily what they want to hear), to sixth grader Lily, who wishes she lived in a different century and that her parents hadn’t divorced. It’s funny, sharp, and deeply relatable. The kind of book you recognise yourself in even when you’d rather not.
This is actually the second time I’ve spoken to Allegra in less than a year. Last July we talked about Isola, her historical novel about a French noblewoman who loses everything and is forced to live on a remote island. And now here we are with a sprawling Jewish family constantly gathering for birthdays, bat mitzvahs, and recitals. Same author, two entirely different books, both exceptional.
We talk about how Allegra began writing this book more than ten years ago, the novel’s rotating perspectives and humour, the title’s origins in the bat mitzvah storyline, Jeanne’s phrase “write down the ocean,” the role of music, what drew her to the name Rubinstein, her writing routine, and the books she has loved recently.
If you enjoy the episode and want to go deeper, Behind the Stories is my paid Substack where I share writing craft insights and process tips from each conversation, give early access to upcoming guests, and you can suggest questions before I record. It’s also a way to directly support the podcast and help it grow. You can find it at elenabowes.substack.com.
Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.


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Today I am speaking to Jason Rosenthal, whose memoir, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, is a story of true love, true loss, and how to truly live again after that loss.
It all began with an extraordinary essay written by Jason’s wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a prolific author, public speaker, and filmmaker. In 2017, Amy wrote a piece for the New York Times Modern Love column titled You May Want to Marry My Husband. It was a love letter to Jason, written in the form of a personal ad.
Amy was living with incurable ovarian cancer, and she wanted Jason, her husband and soulmate of 26 years, to experience joy and love again after she was gone. In the essay, she celebrates him in the most intimate and generous way. We learn that Jason is a great dad, a good cook, a lover of live music, handsome, stylish, and full of life. She writes about falling in love with him the day they met, and ends with the hope that the right person might read it.
Amy died just ten days after the article was published.
The piece went viral, read by millions, and it changed Jason’s life overnight. A private person, a lawyer, and a devoted family man, he suddenly found himself in the public spotlight.
A year later, Jason wrote his own response in the New York Times Modern Love column. His essay, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, shares the same title as his memoir, and begins with the line, “I am that guy.”
In this conversation, we explore what came next.
Jason reflects on grief not as something linear, but as something that moves in waves over time. He shares what it meant to be given permission by Amy to move forward, and how that has shaped his life in the years since her death.
We talk about Amy’s creativity and love of language, including their “marriage goals” list, and how her spirit continues to influence the way he sees the world.
We also explore how Jason has chosen to fill the blank space after loss. He stepped away from his career in law, retrained as a social worker, and now works as a grief therapist. He has commissioned public art in Amy’s honour and co-founded a foundation supporting ovarian cancer research and book giving.
This episode is both deeply moving and quietly practical. Jason shares thoughtful advice on how to support someone who is grieving, why honest end of life conversations matter, and how it’s possible to find moments of joy again, even in the hardest circumstances.
It’s a conversation about love that doesn’t end, and what it means to keep living alongside grief.
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Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to the Podcast00:28 Amy’s Viral Love Letter02:17 Nine Years of Grief03:33 Permission to Move On04:58 Why Jason Wrote the Memoir06:54 Talking About Death Honestly07:54 Honeymoon Marriage Goals List10:22 Wordplay and Creative Spark11:32 “More Time Here” Message15:22 Filling the Blank Space16:11 New Calling as a Therapist18:26 Foundation and Book Giving19:11 Ovarian Cancer Progress20:04 How to Support Grievers22:14 Sudden vs Expected Loss25:02 End of Life Conversations30:47 Love and Grief Reflections31:41 Closing and Tech Reset


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