Babe Cave

In this mini-episode, Amanda Polick shares updates on her debut novel, including how it's shifted over the last 9 years, why it's taken this long to nail the idea, and what's coming next. Find Amanda: @amandapolick | amandapolick.com Free 1-hour cookbook masterclass: Writing Gold Babe Cave Book List (By clicking the links above, at no cost to you, I may receive some $$$ in my pocket.)

The next Babe Cave book chat brings Amanda Polick and Crystal Marie together for a conversation about Kin by Tayari Jones, and the Southern places, family ties, and complicated histories that make the novel feel so real. Crystal, a lifelong story enthusiast and host of Under Told by CM, shares how Kin helped her imagine her grandmother as a young woman, and why words like "trifling" and "no count" made the book feel instantly familiar. They get into the novel's vivid settings, the communities that help raise children, and the search for maternal love and belonging. They also discuss the history behind the story—from travel in the Jim Crow South to reproductive rights—and why those themes still resonate today. Also in this episode: Why the book's Southern details feel lived-in, not just described The power of "play cousins" and community care What letters allow Annie and Vernice to say that they might not say aloud The book's emotional impact, and why its story stays with you If you read Kin and had feelings

AI is everywhere, and writers are being asked to figure out what it means for their work. So Amanda Polick brought in literary agent Lauren MacLeod for an honest conversation about AI and publishing, without pretending the answers are simple or settled. They get into the risks writers should know about: copyright, reputation, accuracy, and the way AI can smooth the edges off a distinctive voice. Lauren explains why keeping drafts and notes matters, what to be cautious about with tools like Grammarly, and why AI detectors don't tell the whole story. But this isn't an all-or-nothing conversation. Amanda and Lauren also talk about where AI can be useful—from brainstorming and transcribing to handling tedious business tasks—and how to use it without letting it take over the creative work. They discuss the Anthropic lawsuit and settlement involving books used to train Claude, the need for more transparency from publishers, and the possibility of a future where creators are paid when their work is used to train AI.

Season five kicks off with Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, and people are still mad about it. So, obviously, it had to be the first thing Amanda Polick talked about. Amanda is joined by longtime friend of the show, Jacque, to talk about the novel that set the internet on fire this year. Natalie is a trad-wife influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to actually live the life she's been selling online. It's weird, it's uncomfortable, and it made both of them furious in the best way. They get into trad-wife culture, the manosphere, unlikable women, and why the people who hate this book might be proving its point. Amanda also shares what it was like to watch a real trad-wife speak at a conference this year, and how disorienting it was to not nod along with everyone else in the room. Also in this episode: Why Natalie not having a redemption arc is actually the whole point The misinformation and performance baked into influencer culture — on and off the page The twist, the ending, and Caro's response to a very un

Season four is a wrap, and Amanda is taking the summer to go analog. After eight months of taking on too much and being chronically online — including a day job that is literally social media marketing — she is ready to step back, create some white space, and remember what life felt like before the algorithm. This episode is part season finale, part personal manifesto, part permission slip. In this episode: Why she's calling it an analog summer and what that has everything to do with becoming a better writer The advice Brand Builders Group gave to one of their clients about splitting attention across too many channels — and why it landed so hard What she wants season five to look like, including bringing back the book club and having the audacity to invite more guests The Annie F. Downs book that might be her whole summer reading plan Disposable cameras, needlepoint, a record player she needs to replace, and the whimsy she's been missing in her own home Why being present, having real conversations, and a

Books are having a moment on screen, and Amanda has thoughts — including that Greta Gerwig is going to direct her novel someday. Greta doesn't know this yet. Hollywood has spent years refusing to greenlight anything without existing IP, which sounds like bad news until you realize that existing IP is exactly what a published book is. This episode is about why that matters for writers right now, and what it actually looks like when a book becomes a film. In this episode: The Yesteryear deal: four studios bidding, 15 publishers competing, Anne Hathaway attached — and why that kind of buzz starts with the book What the self-described Book Whisperer of Hollywood says changed after Harry Potter and Twilight, including her advice to screenwriters to write the book first How options work, why most of them never become movies, and why that's not necessarily the tragedy it sounds like What you're actually giving up when you sign those rights over, and why having a good agent in the room matters more than people think

No gatekeeping allowed — and that includes yourself. After leaving Jubilee feeling like the real conversations were happening somewhere else, Amanda found them at Copper Books' Book Fair in Nashville. One day, one room, and editors, agents, marketers, and publicists actually telling the truth about what's happening in publishing right now. She's bringing it back to you here, along with a moment of self-reckoning she didn't see coming. In this episode: The honest state of nonfiction publishing right now: who's buying, who isn't, and where cookbooks actually land in that conversation Why a Simon & Schuster editor said one Substack subscriber is worth five to ten Instagram followers to a publisher, and what Amanda actually thinks about that What three publicity powerhouses said about in-house pub teams, and why authors who were promised the moon are learning the hard way to be their own best advocate Allison Trowbridge's reminder that if you have a book idea, you really have a business idea The moment s

Writer's block is real. Amanda Polick believes in it, and she's in it right now. She's deep in revisions on her novel: the one she's been writing for years, the one she wrote 30,000 words of in the wrong direction in 2024, the one she finished a rough draft of last year that she's now going back through with brain fatigue and a spring that got away from her. Instead of hiding from it, she brought it here. In this episode: The one-page flash fiction exercise that gets her out of her own head when she's too stuck to touch the actual manuscript Why she thinks she's lost the habit of romanticizing her writing process — and why she wants it back Olafur Arnalds, instrumental music, and the case for being bored more often What she's noticing in the novel she's currently reading about backstory dumps, exposition monologues, and the things she's actively trying not to do in her own book Why consuming the same content over and over is part of what creates the block in the first place The honest truth about writer's

Cherry Bombe's Jubilee is the conference in THE food world. Amanda Polick has been before, took a few years off, and went back this year with an actual game plan and a lot of thoughts she's whispering to her friends later. This episode is her honest debrief: what worked, what left her wanting more, and what she walked away with that had nothing to do with any of the panels. In this episode: Why going in with a loose schedule and a short list of people she wanted to meet changed everything Her real talk on conference programming that stays too surface when the room is full of people who came for the inside baseball The Levain Bakery founders, copycat recipes, and the conversations she wished had gone deeper Why she cried meeting Grace Young and has zero regrets about it The follow-up moves that actually matter after a conference ends The best thing she got out of Jubilee wasn't from the talks. It was the face-to-face time, texting new connections already, and the moment she shared her novel idea and watc

If you have a book idea, you really have a business idea. That line — from publisher Allison Trowbridge at a Parnassus Books panel — is the jumping-off point for this episode. Amanda Polick gets into what it actually means to treat your writing life like a business: not in a hustle-culture, monetize-everything way, but in a packaging-yourself-correctly, knowing-what-you-bring-to-the-room way. She's been doing her own reckoning with this lately — restarting after a year heads-down on her novel, going back to conferences, cold-emailing people, and asking herself how to pull together all the scattered pieces of a writing career into something coherent. In this episode: Jane Friedman's The Business of Being a Writer and why Amanda tells every single client to get it Why writers being financially sustained by writing alone has always been the exception, not the rule — and what that actually frees you up to do The cold email formula that works almost every time, and why showing up in someone's inbo

Writing workshops: a combination of ritual scarring and group therapy — or the thing that actually made you a better writer? Amanda Polick is not sure it isn't both. In this episode, Amanda digs into the history and honest reality of the writing workshop, whether creative writing can even be taught, and why she still has PTSD from the ones she's been in. She also revisits the Girls Iowa arc, which she maintains is the most accurate depiction of workshop culture ever put on television. In this episode: The history of creative writing programs in America, from a Harvard drama workshop in 1906 to the GI Bill-fueled MFA explosion — and Iowa's official position that they had nothing to do with producing Flannery O'Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ann Patchett Why Hannah Horvath's Iowa episodes still hold up: the rotted-teeth prodigy, the party meltdown, the non-apology letter, and the relief of almost getting kicked out Stephen King's argument that workshops force you to write with the door open when you need it clo

Here's the full description: What if the thing standing between you and your best work isn't a better template — it's not enough resistance? Amanda Polick has been thinking about friction. Not the kind you eliminate, but the kind you seek out: the static electricity of doing hard things anyway, showing up when it's inconvenient, sitting with a sentence until it finally lands. This episode is a case for why writers who are obsessed with removing every obstacle from their process might be accidentally removing the thing that makes the work worth doing. It starts with her handwriting, which has, by her own admission, become garbage. And it ends somewhere much bigger. In this episode: A Dan Koe post on writing without AI, without templates, and without knowing what you're writing yet — and why it stopped her cold Why a template is only valuable after you've sent hundreds of terrible versions first, and what we lose when we skip that part What C.S. Lewis, dense reading, and the lost art of wrestling with a

Print never died. The people running it just stopped believing in it first. Amanda Polick — former Cooking Light fellow, Time Inc. segment producer, and longtime magazine obsessive — makes the case for why the magazine revival isn't a nostalgia trip. It's a signal. And if you want to write a book, it might be the most important thing happening in media right now. Amanda unpacks what the resurgence of publications like Saveur, the new Gourmet newsletter, and indie food zines like Tomato Tomato actually means for writers and why she's always believed that every book idea lives inside a magazine pitch. In this episode: What Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, and Hunter S. Thompson all have in common (before the books came) What a 2025 Huck magazine piece gets exactly right about why print is culturally ascendant again — and why digital content has trained readers to distrust almost everything they skim The inside story of working at Cooking Light and Time Inc. during the era of rolling layoffs, sol

Spring didn't just show up on the calendar — it showed up in the work. Amanda Polick recorded this one on the first official day of spring, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a real-time reckoning with hibernation, self-imposed smallness, and what it finally feels like to wake back up. This isn't a productivity episode. It's a permission slip. Amanda gets honest about a winter spent rethinking major parts of her novel, sitting with creative fatigue instead of pushing through it, and quietly realizing she'd stopped betting on herself in ways she used to do without thinking twice. Cold emails. Conference sign-ups. Relentless connection. Somewhere along the way, that version of herself got comfortable — and comfortable got small. In this episode: Why she's been shifting the language she uses with herself — and what phrases writers reach for that quietly keep them stuck What happened when she stopped treating her network like a to-do list and started letting the dots connect The meme about the world being

Hot garbage isn't an insult — it's a practice. Cookbook coach Amanda Polick makes the case for why submitting imperfect, unpolished, still-in-progress work is not just acceptable — it's the whole point. Drawing on her background as an actor and Second City Hollywood graduate, Amanda unpacks why perfectionism stalls more writing projects than any lack of talent ever could, and what it actually takes to break through the wall. In this episode, you'll hear: Why Amanda holds the line on deadlines with every client — and what that teaches writers about their own resistance The Anne Lamott quote on perfectionism that she returns to again and again What the Tadashi Suzuki acting method reveals about creative fatigue (and why friction might be exactly what you need) How writing 30,000 words in the wrong direction on her own novel changed how she coaches The free-writing technique that unlocks the section you've been avoiding Oh — and this episode is itself a live demonstration of the concept. Amanda recorded i

Virginia Woolf published A Room of One's Own in 1929. Nearly 100 years later, the questions she raised — about money, creative freedom, and a woman's right to write — are still the questions women writers are asking. In this solo Women's History Month episode, Amanda Polick takes a deep dive into the essay that inspired the name Babe Cave itself, and unpacks why its central argument is just as urgent in 2026 as it was when Woolf delivered it as a lecture at Cambridge in 1928. In this episode, you'll discover: The story of Shakespeare's hypothetical sister — and why Woolf believed she lives on in every woman who hasn't written her story yet The history of women writing anonymously, and what it means to put your name on your work today Why Aphra Behn — the first English woman to earn her living by writing — deserves your attention (and probably a few flowers) How financial independence and creative freedom have always been the same conversation Why the restrictions facing women writers in 2026 are just as r

What does hosting a dinner party have to do with writing a book? Everything, it turns out.   In this episode, Amanda Polick dives into Chelsea Fagan's Having People Over and draws surprising parallels between the art of entertaining and the writing process — from reclaiming formality in your creative work to why going deeper (not wider) is the move that changes everything.   In this episode, you'll discover: •       Why we've gotten too casual with our writing — and how to fix it •       The "back-pocket recipe" method for finding your creative focus •       How to combat the loneliness of writing by inviting people into your process •       What the Golden Hour coaching call is and how it can help you take your next book step   Perfect for: Aspiring authors, writers stuck in the idea phase, creatives craving community and a clear next step.   Shownotes: https://www.amandapolick.com/blog/having-people-over-episode  Newsletter: Weekly insights on writing and creativity Connect: Instagram @amandapo

Lokelani Alabanza has invented over 300 ice cream flavors, spent five years writing the cookbook she was born to write, and will absolutely change the way you think about what's in your freezer.   Loke is a classically trained pastry chef with 20+ years of experience, founder of Saturated Ice Cream (a non-dairy, plant-based brand based in Nashville), and the author of Ice Cream Queen: Flavors from Black America's Past, Present, Future — out June 16, 2026, the week of Juneteenth. The book covers 200 years of Black American ice cream history and includes 100 recipes.   In this conversation, they get into: → What it actually took to finish this book — surrendering control, surviving the silence, and betting on herself when no one could guarantee the outcome → Why you have to be a little delusional to see a creative dream through (and why that's not a bad thing) → The mission behind Ice Cream Queen — and what Loke hopes you feel the next time you walk down the ice cream aisle → What the publishing process reall

Your cookbook proposal isn't a rough draft—it's a business plan that will make or break your book deal. After years of coaching aspiring cookbook authors, Amanda Polick has seen the same mistake over and over: brilliant writers with incredible concepts who sabotage themselves by treating their proposal like an afterthought. They think agents will clean it up, or figure it out. But if your proposal doesn't immediately prove you have a clear concept, know your audience, and can market your book, it's dead in the water. In this episode, you'll discover: •       Why your proposal is your best opportunity to land a book deal (not your book itself) •       What goes into each section of a winning proposal and how to make it sparkle •       The marketing and promotional plan mistakes that immediately signal amateur hour •       How to get expert guidance without going it alone (including three new coaching options) Perfect for: Aspiring cookbook authors, food bloggers ready to write a book, recipe developers see

In this episode, celebrating Black History Month, Amanda Polick dives into the life of Edna Lewis. A woman who became the Grand Dame of Southern Cooking not by following culinary trends, but by staying true to her roots.  Edna's path was anything but linear. She worked as a seamstress making dresses for Marilyn Monroe, threw legendary dinner parties in NYC's bohemian art scene, and eventually became head chef and co-owner of Cafe Nicholson, where literary giants like Tennessee Williams and Eleanor Roosevelt came to eat her roast chicken and chocolate soufflé. But the real turning point came when her editor told her she was telling two different stories—and forced her to choose the one only she could tell. In this episode, discover: → How growing up in Freetown, Virginia (a community founded by formerly enslaved people) shaped everything about Edna's approach to food and community → The epic dinner parties that led to her running one of NYC's most celebrated restaurants with zero professional training →