London Writers' Salon

Poet Maya C. Popa on writing with wonder, the ruthless craft of revision, and building a sustainable life in poetry.

You’ll learn

Why wonder has more in common with the sublime — the beautiful and the terrible — than with simple delight.

How a poem loses its charge the moment its ending is visible from the opening line.

What “negative capability” asks of a writer stuck in the dark middle of a draft.

The question worth asking when the work feels uncomfortable and you’re certain something has gone wrong.

A ruthless method for finding a poem’s true entry point — often buried three-quarters of the way down.

When to cut the images you love most, even the ones that took hours to invent.

How to write about longing and love without collapsing into confession.

Why asking your writing to carry your finances can quietly poison your relationship with it.

What to guard at all costs while holding space for other writers.

The freedom that arrives once rejection stops meaning anything at all.

Resources & Links

📄 Interview Transcript

If You Love That Lady by Maya C. Popa

Gerard Manley Hopkins - Poetry Foundation

Wound is the Origin of Wonder by Maya C. Popa

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Maya’s Substack

Conscious Writers Collective

Poetry Society of America Awards

Maya’s ‘Five Things I Have Learned’ class

About Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa is a Romanian American poet. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was a recipient of a department bursary for exceptional merit, and previous degrees from Oxford University, New York University, and Barnard College.

Popa is the author of If You Love That Lady (W. W. Norton, 2026); Wound Is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022), named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry; and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), a runner-up for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, and winner of the North American Book Prize in 2020. She has also received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Oxford Poetry Society.

Popa is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and is the founder of Conscious Writers Collective, where she teaches and oversees all literary programming for poets and prose writers. She lives in New York City.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Author Casper ter Kuile on transforming everyday writing into a sacred ritual, drawing on rest and reflection to fuel creativity, and moving past self-doubt to write as a gift for others.

You'll learn

Why the point of the work week might be the rest, not the other way around.

How to turn an ordinary daily habit into a ritual using three simple ingredients.

What a weekly tech sabbath can unlock in your most creative thinking.

The reframe that turns a dreadful first draft into something you can build on.

A piece of advice from a mentor that dissolves the pressure to say something new.

How reading writers you love can quietly refill the tank when you're stuck.

Why treating your writing as a gift changes the way you handle criticism.

The practice for staying humble and kind toward yourself in equal measure.

What sacred reading traditions can teach you about going deeper into any text.

Why the smallest groups, not the biggest audiences, are where meaning actually forms.

Resources & Links

Casper ter Kuile's website

The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile

The Nearness

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text (podcast)

Sacred Design Lab

"How We Gather" report

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Seth Godin

About Casper ter Kuile

Casper ter Kuile is the author of The Power of Ritual and the co-founder of The Nearness: a space to explore life's big questions with like-hearted others. Casper holds Masters in Public Policy and Divinity from Harvard University, is the former cohost of popular podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and loves harmony singing, the London Review of Books, and arriving at the pub after a long country walk. He lives with his husband in Brooklyn, NY.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Bestselling and award-winning writers Seth Godin (The Practice), Amie McNee (We Need Your Art) and Mason Currey (Daily Rituals) on choosing yourself before anyone else does, protecting the hour you actually have, and why the practice that works is the one that fits your life rather than someone else’s.

You’ll learn

Why "grow a thicker skin" is the wrong advice for a writer facing rejection.

What shifts when you notice the harshest rejection you face each day is your own.

The case for lowering your standards if your ambitions are big.

How an hour that doesn’t look like writing can still be an hour of writing.

What the word discipline shares with the word disciple, and why it changes how a project turns out.

A quiet argument for half an hour a day over the perfect routine you can’t sustain.

Why chasing the writer you think you should be pulls you away from the work.

When a good outcome hides a bad decision, and what that means for your practice.

The difference between talent and skill, and why only one of them applies to writing.

Episode Links

#158: Amie McNee — Creating Without Permission, Overcoming Self-Doubt, Facing Rejection, Building a Life on Your Own Terms, Embracing Social Media as an Artform

#177: Mason Currey — Daily Routines and How Artists Work, Focus Time and Protecting Your Best Hours

#150: Seth Godin — Obscurity Is the Enemy, Here’s How to Stop Seeking Validation, Find Your Audience and Build a Creative Practice

About the Guests

Amie McNee is a trained historian turned creativity coach, writer, and speaker best known for her popular Instagram account, @InspiredtoWrite, and The Unpublished Podcast. She’s self-published two historical fiction novels: The Rules Upheld by No One and Regrettably, I Am About to Cause Trouble. Her book We Need Your Art: Stop F*cking Around and Make Something is a manifesto on the vital, human importance of creating. Her most recent novel, To Kill a Queen, a queer historical mystery set in Elizabethan London, was published in 2025.

Mason Currey is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles and the author of the Daily Rituals books. In addition to compiling the Daily Rituals books, Currey was a design-magazine editor for ten years, working as the managing editor of Metropolis, the executive editor of Print, a senior editor at Core77, and the programming chair for the 2015 Core77 Conference. His freelance writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and Slate, and he has delivered talks on the creative process to high school and college students, writers’ groups, and the partners of the design consultancy IDEO. He sends out a fortnightly newsletter on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life. His latest book, Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life, was published by Celadon Books in 2026.

Seth Godin is the author of twenty-plus international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work and have been translated into 39 languages – among them Unleashing the Ideavirus, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, The Dip, Linchpin, Poke the Box, and All Marketers Are Liars. He writes the most popular marketing blog in the world and speaks to audiences worldwide. He is the founder of the altMBA, the founder and former CEO of Squidoo.com, the former VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, and the founder of the pioneering online startup Yoyodyne.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa on turning archival fragments into living narrative, writing across the borders of genre, and giving voice to the forgotten lives of women committed to a Victorian asylum.

You’ll learn

Why the greatest gatekeeper between a writer and the page is often the writer themselves.

How a single word buried in clinical notes can become a bridge to a silenced voice.

What poetry can teach prose writers about immediacy and the shock of a strong opening.

The case for pointing at the gaps in the record rather than papering over them.

When a fleeting curiosity is worth following, and what happens once you treat it as real.

How third person can give a writer just enough distance to keep going.

A sense of fidelity to the reader you imagine standing at your shoulder.

How the drowsy space between sleep and waking can become an engine for ideas.

The ethics of using real names, and the difference between the dead and the long dead.

How the act of leaving things out turns even “fact” into a story.

Resources & Links

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

About Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. 'A Ghost in the Throat' finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as "powerful" (New York Times), "captivatingly original" (The Observer), and a "masterpiece" (Sunday Business Post). 'A Ghost in the Throat' won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It was translated into 20 further languages worldwide.

Doireann is also the author of seven critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.

Her new book, Said the Dead, distils hundreds of hours of archival research into a polyphonic portrayal of a single institution — a derelict Victorian asylum in Cork, and the women once committed within its walls.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Debut novelist Tara Menon on writing friendship as a life-shaping bond, the emotional architecture of grief, and researching the natural world for her novel Under Water.

You’ll learn

Why a platonic friendship can shape a life as profoundly as any romance

How to build tension in a story when the reader already knows what’s coming.

What an unexpected sea creature reveals about writing the bonds between women.

The difference between endless research and knowing just enough to write the scene.

Why fiction demands a kind of surrender that criticism never asks for.

How grief for a lost friend and grief for a vanishing natural world can become one story.

When self-doubt is evidence you’re taking the work seriously.

Why cutting a novel down to its essentials can matter more than what you leave in.

A writing rhythm that looks nothing like “500 words every morning” (and works anyway).

What finally makes the writing worth it, long before publication does.

Resources & Links

📄 Interview Transcript

Under Water

Jane Austen collection

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Middlemarch by George Eliot

In Memoriam by Lord Tennyson

I Can’t Let Kobe Go by Tara Menon

The Fall (2013)

Tara’s Website

About Tara Menon

Tara Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Nation, Paris Review and Public Books, where she co-edits the Literary Fiction section. Tara was born in India, grew up in Singapore, spent a decade in New York, and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her debut, Under Water, is out now.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!