Interviews with authors about their experience "at the well." How do they draw words and images up from the depths? What underground streams fuel them? How they know when they are aligned, in flow, attuned to the will of their story, and when they are off course? Do they incorporate meditation or other forms of spiritual practice to keep them connected to their truth? Let's find out!
Writers at the Well is a sister to Tess's meditation podcast, Heart Haven Meditations: which offers practices that draw from modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom traditions.
Heart Haven Meditations: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1998903.rss
Tess Callahan, Ed.M., MFA, is the author of the novel APRIL & OLIVER and DAWNLAND, and a certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher. You can find her at: https://tesscallahan.com/.
Podcast "Chalice Well" Cover Image by Angela Latham:
www.celticmystery.co.uk (http://www.celticmystery.co.uk/)
www.sacredearthsoundtherapy.com (http://www.sacredearthsoundtherapy.com/)
DISCLAIMER: Any advice or suggestions mentioned by the guest or host is to be vetted by you. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred by you acting or not acting as a result of listening to these conversations. You acknowledge that you use any information provided at your own risk.
Alice Elliott Dark on the Inner Other: What if the Story is Seeking You?
Thirty years after it first appeared in The New Yorker, Alice Elliott Dark's story "In the Gloaming" has been published as a standalone book. In this conversation, Alice takes us back to the strange visitational experience of writing it. She talks about “the internal other,” where stories come from, and how she listens for them. She shares her 7-minute writing practice, her sunrise ritual, and her unusual perspective on grief. We also get a preview of Wherever You Are, her forthcoming novel w...
29 Sept 2026
Ayad Akhtar on The Radiance: What If the Sentence Knows More than the Writer?
Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and novelist, author of American Dervish and Homeland Elegies, joins host Tess Callahan to talk about his new novel, The Radiance. The book follows a writer (also named Ayad) who wakes from a hit-and-run accident into an unbidden state of heightened perception that unfolds over eight months as he navigates an academic scandal in a politically divided town. Ayad talks about writing as “melding” with a register of experience rather than execu...
22 Sept 2026
Hallie Shepherd on Writing a Gothic Thriller with a Screenwriter's Intincts and a Poet's Heart
Novelist Tess Callahan interviews screenwriter, actress, and producer Hallie Shepherd about her debut novel Call Off the Dark, just out from HarperCollins. Shepherd’s dramatic and cinematic instincts are evident in this genre-bending gothic thriller/love story about a grieving young widow who reinvents herself as a tradwife in the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest. The novel is being adapted for TV by Warner Bros. and Berlanti Productions. Shepherd is co-owner of Fireshoe Productions...
18 May 2026
Andrew Holecek on the Power of Darkness to Unleash Creativity
Dr. Andrew Holecek discusses Dark Retreat—a Buddhist practice of spending extended periods in complete darkness—and its transformative effects on creativity, healing, and spiritual insight. Dark Retreat is “big medicine” not to be undertaken lightly. Like any retreat, its power relies on its integration. His new book is: Total Eclipse of the Mind: Unleashing the Power of Darkness for Creativity, Healing, and Transformation Dr. Holecek is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner in Tibe...
27 Jan 2026
George Saunders on Writing with Fierceness and Compassion
Novelist Tess Callahan sits down with George Saunders to discuss his new novel Vigil. Saunders reflects on writing morally complex characters, the balance between empathy and fierceness, and the challenges of inhabiting the consciousness of a character who is in his words "a real stinker." He discusses how revision, attention, and trust in the reader shape his work. George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize,...
15 Sept 2025
Novelist Carrie Birde on Writing as an Act of Grace
Join debut novelist Carrie Birde author of A Small Tale of Uncommon Grace (Blydyn Square Books) as she discusses her creative process, her road to publication, and the unique spiritual and artistic practices that help her transmute suffering—her own and the world’s—into daily acts of beauty. A literary fairy tale, her novel explores themes of community, connection, and communication. Carrie shares her personal rituals, including yoga, Qigong, and creating paper cranes, which help her ma...
26 Aug 2025
Novelist Paula Saunders on Starting from Here, and Writing as an Act of Compassion
Join novelist Paula Saunders as she discusses her moving autobiographical novel Starting from Here, just out from Penguin Random House. A stand-alone sequel to The Distance Home, the novel follows 15-year old René through the challenges of adolescence within the pressure cooker of cultural and socioeconomic stressors. Saunders draws from her own experiences as a ballet dancer. She shares her spiritual journey, particularly her practice of Buddhism, and references beloved teachers teachers Ton...
3 Jun 2025
Novelist Karen Dukess on Writing with a Spirit of Play
Novelist Karen Dukess talks about daring to write with joy and the fun she had with her new book, Welcome to Murder Week. Karen is the author of The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week, (6/10/25). She contributed to the forthcoming anthology Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen's Unsung Characters. Karen lives outside of New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today’s most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Cen...
29 Jan 2025
Dr. Samra Zafar on Breaking Old Patterns to Transform Your Future
Internationally renowned speaker and physician Dr. Samra Zafar speaks with Tess about her new book Unconditional: Break Through Past Limits to Transform Your Future, which explores breaking free from old conditioning and embracing self-acceptance. She shares her journey from an abusive marriage to building a better life, emphasizing the importance of meditation, visualization, and unlearning. Zafar highlights the concept of "parts work" therapy to understand and heal different aspects of ones...
13 Jan 2025
Author Laura Munson on Opening to Awe
Bestselling author Laura Munson talks with Tess Callahan about her new book, THE WILD WHY: STORIES AND TEACHINGS TO UNCOVER YOUR WONDER, which she describes as a "teaching memoir" designed for people who think they are not creative. She discusses the value of intuition and wonder both in the writing life and everyday living. She offers tips for managing empathy and cultivating a firm but friendly relationship with one's inner critic. Laura shows us how wonder and awe are the wellsprings of cr...
21 Nov 2024
Novelist Manda Scott on Thrutopian Fiction and Creating a Roadmap for the Future
Award-winning novelist, teacher, and podcaster Manda Scott talks with Tess Callahan about her shamanic spiritual practice, her new Thrutopian novel ANY HUMAN POWER, and her highly acclaimed podcast Accidental Gods. Tess and Manda discuss dreams, visions, and the liminal states between waking, sleeping, life, and death. Manda encourages writers to create new narratives that will pave the way to the systematic changes our world needs. Best known for the Boudica: Dreaming series, Manda's previo...
7 Nov 2024
Sculptor/Poet Don Freas on Taking Creative Leaps
Join sculptor/poet Don Freas, author of In-Between: Creativity Set Free and Swallowing the World: New and Selected Poems, in a rich exploration of the relationship between meditation and creativity. Don takes us on a deep dive into the “material meditation” of making art. “When you look back,” he says, “your own accrued shape appears in the spaces between the things you’ve fashioned.” Don holds an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College and lives in Olympia, Washington, where he exhibits at Chi...
24 Oct 2024
Novelist/Essayist Mar'ce Merrell on Daring Yourself in Life and on the Page
Join novelist, essayist, and canoe adventurer Mar’ce Merrell as she unpacks her spiritual and creative toolbox, sharing how she uses meditation to move through stuck places in life and on the page. Mar’ce describes some of her extraordinary life-and-death moments in the canoe, how she learned to work with water and not against it, and how her life has unfolded in the gap between the impossible and the possible. Mar’ce is the author of the YA novel Wicked Sweet. Her stories and essays in...
16 Oct 2024
Alan Watt on Writing as a Desire to Evolve
Novelist, screenwriter, and founder of LA Writers' Lab Alan Watt talks with host Tess Callahan about his creative process, meditation, and the meaning he finds in teaching. He discusses the writing of his award winning novel Diamond Dogs and his many popular books on writing. Watt asserts that the desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve. In both his writing and meditation practices, Watt is all about inquiry. In this interview, he encourages you to give yourself permission to wri...
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