Story Made Project

New episode! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with Alice Martin. 📚 Her magnificent debut novel WESTWARD WOMEN hits the shelves Tuesday!!

Listen to us talk all about Alice’s sensational 6 BOTBs + WESTWARD WOMEN, a kismetic moment for family journals, letters, manuscripts, and the everyday writing of women, staying grounded but gettin’ weird, what is home really?, David Lynch but make it Southern, debut novels as an authors’ “preassigned subject matter”, and much more. Go listen now!!

Alice’s Books on the Bed 📚

The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary by Jennifer Sinor

Envelope Poems: Poetry by Emily Dickinson (edited by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner)

If I Had Two Wings: Stories by Randall Kenan

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Alice Martin This week we visit with Alice Martin in Waynesville, North Carolina. Alice Martin is a writer, reader, and teacher from North Carolina. She holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University and works as an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches ficti...

Yesterday was the antidote to the long wistful winter. Sun, warmth, bluest skies, bbq on the patio, and a delightful BOTB conversation with one of my new fave authors, Alice Martin.

Her magnificent debut novel WESTWARD WOMEN drops March 10th and I think all of you should read it. A story that began with Alice reading family journals, she takes us on a strange and dreamy and beautiful ride with a cast of women whose minds you won’t want to leave. It’s a story about friendship, the complicated desire and quest to find your home in this world, and the idea that what binds women together is often what binds them down.

It is pretty sweet that we have such an absurdly deep community of women authors in Western NC and I get to be friends with them and share their books as a job. Alice will be in conversation with another one of my faves .fontaine at .lights.nc on 3/28 + at the WCU Lit Fest in April.

Can’t wait to share this episode with you!

New episode! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with my good friend and graphic designer Nathaniel Roy. 📚

Listen to us talk about Nate’s fantastic BOTBs + his book club with his mother, his influence on Story Made and BOTB, his journey as a graphic designer, why design matters and also doesn’t matter, the quote tattooed on his arm, doing what he loves in Ypsilanti and not New York, and much more. Go listen now!!!

Nate’s Books on the Bed 📚

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher
Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding... Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis by Sam Anderson

Nathaniel Roy This week we visit with Nathaniel Roy in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Nathaniel Roy is a book designer, collage maker, photo taker, self-publisher, and a few other things. He's a graphic designer who specializes in book design, but for the right cause, he'll design just about anything. He's keenly intereste...

Western NC friends: is showing at the Bardo Arts Center at WCU on February 24th at 4:30pm. The film will be followed by a virtual visit with the wonderful & talented and Brenda Toineeta Pipestem. Let’s pack out the theater!

Hey, friends! The wonderful is coming to .lights.nc next Saturday, Feb. 14th at 3pm to share her incredible debut book ROUGH HOUSE in conversation with

This was the first book I read in 2026 and it’ll be hard to top. If you’re in Western NC, East TN, North GA, or the Upstate of SC, then you’ll want to make a lil’ Valentine’s Day adventure to Sylva. Spread the word!

Yesterday I got to record a special episode with my good friend and Story Made/Books on the Bed graphic designer

In addition to helping me, he’s a designer at the Ann Arbor District Library, an ELITE book designer, and has a super rad Substack called “A Book Designer’s Notebook”. He’s been with me on this journey since Day 1. He was the first person I called when I wanted to start Story Made and again when I was sitting on a brick wall outside an auto shop in Franklin when the idea for BOTB hit me. My life, authors’ lives, publishers’ lives, and readers’ lives are much more rich because of him.

He’s also an exceptional reader! Interviewing a designer is a new experience and I think you’ll appreciate the perspective he brings to the BOTB conversations. Nate’s episode will be out top of February and I highly recommend listening to it. 📚 In the meantime, check out his design work and if you need a designer HIRE THIS GUY!!!

New episode! 🎧 BOOKS ON THE BED with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips 📚

Listen to us talk about Ashleigh’s delightful BOTB choices + being from & writing about Woodland, NC, how made this moment happen, making art from compulsion & passion without instruction, writing rural stories for the people & place — not everyone else, not caving to the capitalist demand for constant production, me waxing poetic about SLEEPOVERS being the greatest story collection of decade, & much more. Go listen now!!

Ashleigh’s Books on the Bed 📚
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver
Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians  1976-1982, 2009-2018 by Wendy Ewald 
Bambi by Felix Salten, translated by Damion Searls
Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated by Liesl Schillinger
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Egypt, 57 B.C. by Kristiana Gregory

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips This week we visit with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips in Asheville, North Carolina. Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her debut short story collection Sleepovers is the...