Allegra Goodman, author of THIS IS NOT ABOUT US

Allegra Goodman’s new book, This Is Not About Us, is a Late Show With Stephen Colbert Book Club Selection.  Her novels include Isola (a Reese’s Book Club selection and Libby award winner), Sam (a Read With Jenna Book Club selection), The Chalk Artist (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), and more. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and fellowships from MacDowell and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Allegra joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about literary fiction, writing in different genres, revision, short stories, how much she knows about her story before going in, readers, and more.   For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It’s stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you’ll find an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It’s perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. (Recorded February 20, 2026) Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Host: Marrie Stone Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)