Ep. 416 I Only Wrote By Lava Lamp with T Kira Madden
The Stacks
Traci Thomas
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on The Stacks, we’re joined by award-winning author T Kira Madden to discuss her newest book, Whidbey. This novel follows three women whose lives intersect in the wake of a man’s murder. We chat about the questions that are left in the wake of trauma, her unique writing process, and how she tricks herself to keep writing fun.
The Stacks Book Club pick for March is Paradise by Toni Morrison. We’ll be discussing the book with Namwali Serpell on March 25th.
You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks website: https://www.thestackspodcast.com/2026/3/18/ep-416-t-kira-madden
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, it's me, Tracy, and I've got some exciting news for you. This year, the Stax is turning |
| 0:06.0 | eight years old, and we are celebrating with our very first meetup day. On Saturday, April 4th, |
| 0:11.8 | we are inviting you all to meet up in cities across the country and around the world to hang out, |
| 0:17.3 | play games, and build community around our shared love of all things, books, |
| 0:21.4 | reading, and of course, snacks. |
| 0:23.9 | Head to the stackspodcast.com slash meetup for more information. |
| 0:27.4 | Over there, you're going to find a list of all the cities we have meetup scheduled for. |
| 0:31.4 | You'll be able to RSVP. |
| 0:32.5 | And if you don't see a meetup near you, there's also information on how you can host one. |
| 0:38.6 | Again, the website is the stackspodcast.com slash meetup and meetup day is April 4th. Both books for me were pretty |
| 0:46.0 | similar in terms of overwriting and then the act of discovery was like, what is this that I'm writing |
| 0:52.0 | toward? I don't actually know until I have those thousands of pages and then backing up and saying, like, |
| 0:58.2 | oh, what's actually the spine here? |
| 1:00.0 | Like, what is the shape? |
| 1:01.9 | What's the story I'm trying to tell? |
| 1:03.4 | And sometimes I would go each day and say, okay, I'm going to put each of these characters |
| 1:08.9 | into a dinner party scene and see what their relationship is to food, to people at the table, to a menu. |
| 1:15.6 | So I prompt myself through these different little questions or prompts just to give myself an exciting writing day to get to know the characters better. |
| 1:29.6 | Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. |
| 1:33.0 | I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today I am joined by award-winning author T. Kira Madden |
| 1:38.0 | to talk about her newest book, Would Be. |
| 1:40.9 | This novel follows three women whose lives intersect in the wake of one man's murder. |
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