Monthly Archives: October 2025

My BookEnds Mentor’s Life-Changing Guidance on Writing Interiority

Novel Tips for Novel Writers

2025 Fellow Jeanette S. Jouili reflects upon her work with BookEnds mentor and program alumni Vanessa Cuti. 

My work with my BookEnds mentor Vanessa Cuti started with an editorial letter. Within these pages of generous feedback on my novel manuscript, she emphasized one point in particular: deepen the main character’s interiority. This came somewhat as a surprise to me. In my mind, I’ve been so clear who my protagonist Hayat was, what she wanted, and how I wanted to portray her, what I wanted to expose and what I wanted to leave unsaid. I could not comprehend at this point why something was lacking or what should be added. What I would realize throughout my journey with Vanessa was that my analytical map of my characters, drawn with an academic mindset—I’m a professor and researcher in the anthropology of religion—at times served as a shield that prevented me from exploring and developing my characters’ full scope of complex emotions. This revision work on interiority, therefore, was also one of lowering my shield to a more fully embodied narrative perspective—a shield I hadn’t even realized was there.

My novel THRESHOLDS is about Hayat, a young, idealistic, German Muslim woman of Tunisian origins, who relocates to her parents’ home country to recover from the trauma and injuries of a racist attack. Settling into her new life in Tunis, she meets Nassir, an upper-class, worldly, and secular architect, struggling to come to terms with devastating personal losses. When they discover their shared passion for reading, they initiate a book exchange of novels suggested by Nassir, and political writings offered by Hayat. Through their weekly book discussions, where Hayat and Nassir probe each other’s most cherished beliefs and commitments, they begin a journey of healing. 

I conceived the book club sessions as the vertebrae of the book, where two different characters meet, get to know, challenge, and eventually fall in love with each other. But as an academic, my personal obsession with the intellectual content of their conversations, despite having already cut down on it in previous revisions, still lurked. 

Vanessa wanted these meetings to be the place where we learn about the characters’ inner worlds and sensibilities rather than just their intellect. In her editorial letter, she wrote, “What we really need to see in these scenes feels a bit buried by the talk of the books. We need to see their relationship deepening, becoming more of a respite and joy to them, yes, but also the central challenge of the book. […] deepening interiority is key.” Throughout our five months of working closely together, Vanessa kept pushing me to dig deeper into the characters, develop and grow their inner voice, especially that of Hayat, which she felt I was holding back. Having read Vanessa’s novel The Tip Line just before beginning the mentorship program, I knew that she was the perfect person to help me foster what was lacking in my narrative: in The Tip Line, the internal monologues, dreams, fantasies and very unreliable perceptions of reality are a real delight. 

In the first months of our meetings, when I shared my revisions, she felt my resistance to opening Hayat up. Interestingly, Nassir’s interiority was already more clearly portrayed on the page. As we discussed possible reasons for this difference, I realized that I was too aware of the burden of representation in portraying Hayat, a religious Muslim woman in hijab—a character rarely seen as a protagonist in literary fiction. I felt  protective of her—and that protectiveness created more distance between Hayat and the third-person narration. Inadvertently, I portrayed her as a woman completely in control of herself and her thoughts—which she definitely was not.

While always kind and gentle, Vanessa was razor-sharp in identifying the missed opportunities throughout the book where the scenes wanted to dwell on Hayat’s inner life, and she pushed me to be more daring in exploring her rich interiority, including her doubts, longings, uncertainties, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. She made me see that exploring and giving voice to these complexities did not water down her persona, nor did it necessarily open up to misrepresentation. Instead, interiority helped me develop Hayat into a deeper, more interesting character that the reader could root for. 

And as Hayat’s interiority took shape, the relationship between Hayat and Nassir deepened and evolved in meaningful ways as well. However much I loved their book club arguments, Vanessa showed me that every intellectual discussion needed to be cut if it didn’t speak to character development and change. When I was unwilling to let go of an argument about books, she challenged me to make that argument essential to their relationship. If I wasn’t able to do so, then it was a sure sign that the material didn’t add to the story of their connection.  

This technique helped me to tighten the book club sessions and tease out the emotional arc that had been buried in the intellectual conversations. The scenes became tighter, more emotionally charged, and essential to the relationship between my two main characters.

Vanessa encouraged me not only to dig deeper into my characters’ interiority, to excavate their weaknesses, fears, and insecurities, but also to face my own fears. I learned in the process that writing interiority can happen in the extremely complicated, messy, somewhat dialectical relationship between the writer and the character emerging between the pages—one that I should not prohibit with a scholarly shield to subjective, interior experience. Vanessa’s guidance on revision was my springboard to take that journey, with unimpeded vision. It changed the way I think about writing fiction.  

Jeanette S. Jouili was a 2024-2025 BookEnds fellow. Trained as an anthropologist, she is Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. Thresholds is her first venture into fiction.

Did you know BookEnds has an endowment? Donate to the Founders Fund here!

Fall 2025 News Round-Up

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Did you know that BookEnds has an endowment? You can donate to the Founders’ Fund to ensure that this visionary program will continue to cultivate the next generation of literary voices, who will redefine the landscape of contemporary fiction and carry forward the standards of craft and camaraderie so foundational to this immersive program.

This summer, with bittersweet gratitude, our program bid farewell to our co-founding director Susan Scarf Merrell. Susie worked tirelessly to develop the BookEnds novel revision fellowship from a pilot cohort of six students in 2017 to a program going into its tenth year, with seventy-five alums who have published and continue working tirelessly on their BookEnds novels and beyond in our alumni community. Susie was intrinsic to the selection process for BookEnds novels each year, and read draft after draft from every fellow. We celebrate her work, and she will be deeply missed!

We are overjoyed to introduce our new co-director, Alison Fairbrother, who claimed the mantle from Susie this summer after a lengthy and competitive search amongst many accomplished authors, editors, and teachers. A lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing, Television and Film, Alison is the author of the novel The Catch (Random House), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a People magazine “Best New Book.” She was an associate editor at Riverhead Books before coming to Stony Brook, where she worked with New York Times bestselling and award winning authors. A graduate of Stony Brook’s MFA program, she was a BookEnds fellow during the program’s inaugural year. 

This summer also saw the publication of 2022 Fellow Giano Cromley’s BookEnds novel American Mythology with Doubleday! And we are delighted to announce the following forthcoming novels: 

2023 Fellow Miranda Shulman’s BookEnds novel Harmless is forthcoming with Dutton on April 14, 2026. Preorder here!

2021 Fellow Marian Mitchell Donahue’s BookEnds novel Backstitch is coming out with Galiot Press on March 3, 2026. 

2021 Fellow Rachel León’s BookEnds novel How We See the Gray will be published by Curbstone on May 15, 2026. Preorder here! Rachel is also the editor of The Rockford Anthology (Belt), forthcoming this month. 

2022 Fellow Kelly Anderson’s BookEnds novel The Wild Beneath will be published by HarperCollins/Park Row Books on August 4, 2026, as well as with Harper Canada, with foreign rights acquired in fifteen other countries. 

2022 Fellow Jennifer Yeh’s BookEnds novel Migratory Creatures is forthcoming with William Morrow in early 2027.

2019 Fellow Sheena Cook sold her BookEnds novel Men Would Kill for This in a two-book deal to HarperCollins in the U.K. and Hachette in the U.S., for publication in early 2027.

Many other BookEnds novels are represented by agents and out on submission—so we expect much more happy news to come! Fellows from our recent and incoming cohorts have also signed with agents over the past months. 

Further honors and doings: 

2024 Fellow Sam Corradetti was awarded the Giuseppe Velli Creative Prize by the American Boccaccio Association for a zombie retelling of Tancredi and Ghismonda (Decameron 4.1), and has a short story coming out with Mississippi Review this winter.

2025 Fellow Jules Donne will hold an artist residency at Dorland Mountain Arts next year. 

2019 Fellow Kathleen Gibbons was in residence at Hedgebrook this past summer. 

2023 Fellow Suzanne LaFetra was in residence in Westfjords, Iceland, in September, working on a new novel. 

2021 Fellow Coco Picard was named Associate Publisher at City Lights in San Francisco. 

BookEnds alums are also busy and active in our ongoing writing community, with new works in progress; supporting one another through daily and weekly Zoom writing sessions; giving each other advice, feedback and support on query letters and the query process; and—of course—through our BookEnds blog. We are excited to announce a Giving Day Write-a-Thon in spring 2026! Please stay tuned for details and how you can follow along and support the BookEnds fellows in their ongoing writing journeys. 

We look forward to bringing you more great news soon. To learn more about BookEnds, join us for our Fall 2025 Open House to meet co-directors Alison Fairbrother and Meg Wolitzer, as well as mentors, alums and fellows! Register here.

 

Inside the Rewrite: How Deep Collaboration Transformed My Revision Process

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BookEnds 2025 Fellow Amy Purcell reflects on working with her BookEnds pod. 

Writers know the drill well: write, read your work, revise. Rinse and repeat. It’s the necessary process—sometimes it may feel like a necessary evil—of writing a novel. By the time I considered applying to BookEnds, my manuscript had been through numerous rinse-and-repeat cycles. I’d scrubbed the shine and energy out of it through rounds of feedback. The feedback wasn’t the problem; it was that any time I was given constructive criticism, I’d rush off and revise immediately without asking whether the suggestions served the story—or the story I wanted to tell. 

So, when I arrived at BookEnds in 2024, surrounded by a cohort of  brilliant writers, including my two outrageously talented podmates Jeanette Jouili and Layla Schlack, I wondered: How could I trust that my pod experience would be different from other writing groups and workshops? Was I just pressing another rinse and repeat cycle on already over-laundered pages? 

Without a doubt, being in a pod is unlike any workshop. In a pod, there are two other writers who are as committed to your work and your success as you are. Each podmate gives and receives in equal measure, reading and responding, supporting through insight, with an eye to what you want your novel to be. We read each other’s manuscripts not once but twice. 

From the jump, Layla, Jeanette and I approached each other’s work with positivity and support. We loved and cared for each other’s manuscripts. We provided each other with close readings and celebrated the strengths of our stories while also interrogating the opportunities. We focused on what we loved, what was working, what we wanted more of—instead of what wasn’t landing.

Early on, I confessed my habit of diving straight into revision after receiving feedback. Layla and Jeanette encouraged me to put that cycle on pause. They asked the questions I had stopped asking myself:

“What do you want this story to be?”

“What do you love about it? Not what that agent said or what you heard in the last workshop, but, you, Amy, what do you love?”

Those questions gave me the pause and space I needed to reflect. In fact, that pause took me back to earlier drafts. I resurrected a few scenes and ideas that I’d “rinsed out” of my manuscript. I even resurrected one of my original notebooks to reconnect with why I’d started this novel in the first place. 

Reflecting on what captured my podmates’ attention, where they felt engaged or confused or surprised, instead of reacting to their feedback helped me see the path forward.

Over time, we found that our meetings brought each of us to a better place, before we ever touched the page. The act of talking about our stories was sometimes more transformative than doing the actual writing. My podmates—and the passionate, vulnerable exchanges we shared—reminded me that revision isn’t just about words or scenes or structure. It’s about rediscovering the heart of your story. 

We also helped each other kill a few darlings—those beloved bits that we were reluctant to give up. In my case, I changed the beginning. In earlier versions, my protagonist found her husband dead on the living room floor in chapter one. In the BookEnds version (now out on submission through my agent), the first few chapters show the main character and her husband interacting with each other, giving readers time to settle into their relationship. That change deepened the emotional resonance of the opening.

Layla removed one character’s point of view from her multiperspective novel and removed an element of her story that, while beloved, wasn’t fitting with other revisions. Jeanette trimmed scenes and strengthened aspects of her protagonist based on our discussions. We didn’t revise to prove we were right—we revised to make sure we weren’t wrong about what we were holding onto. We revised to tell the story we wanted to tell.

And don’t get me wrong. The rinse and repeat revision cycle isn’t a sign of failure but a necessary part of the process. It’s how we grow as writers. But that growth requires reflection instead of knee-jerk reactions. It also requires trust.   

I trusted that my podmates had my best interests at heart. Their questions, encouragement and honesty helped me shape a stronger manuscript. More importantly, they helped me reclaim the story I wanted to tell. There’s a quote often attributed to Thomas Edison: “I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.”My manuscript was that light bulb for a good long while. My podmates helped me finally spark the light inside of it.

Amy Purcell is a 2024-25 BookEnds fellow. Her short stories have been published in Triquarterly, Passages North, The Masters Review Volume VI, and Third Coast, among others. She received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Kent State University and a B.S. in Journalism from Ohio University. She is represented by Maria Vicente of P.S. Literary Agency, and her BookEnds novel is currently out on submission. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and two very spoiled Australian Shepherds. When she isn’t writing or reading, she’s running half marathons, enjoying live music and trying new craft beers. 

Did you know BookEnds has an endowment? Donate to the Founders Fund here!