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DeepDive Sneak Preview #2: Steve Almond

DeepDive instructor Steve Almond on the challenge of writing across culture, gender, and lived experience

Author

Brad Listi
March 19, 2025

Hi there,

We’re hard at work in post-production, and How to Write a Novel is coming together!

This is the writing course that I wish I’d had years ago—a course that doesn’t offer magic formulas or quick fixes or short cuts; a course that is designed for people who are serious about writing and committed to seeing it through; and a course that delivers instruction from novelists who are actually doing the work and actually having real success.

How to Write a Novel is designed to accompany you over the long haul, as you work to get a draft done.

Along the way, you’ll hear from Steve Almond, one of our esteemed instructors and the author of the acclaimed debut novel All the Secrets of the World.

Steve Almond

Over the course of his career, Steve has published a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football.

His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. 

Here’s a preview of one of Steve’s episodes in How to Write a Novel:

DeepDive: What about writing cross-culturally and across genders? Your novel, All the Secrets of the World, does this very well. In many ways, it’s a book about the immigration experience, tracking the lives and backstories and motivations and deep dreams of characters who fall well outside your racial and cultural background. Talk about something that can be easy to screw up! Can you describe your creative decision-making process and the courage that it took to go in this direction?

Steve Almond: So I could have continued to write the sort of novels that I had been writing, which were based on some version of me—either more of a loser version or more of a famous, narcissistic version or whatever. And that would have been okay, that would have been fine. But then my protagonist, Lorena, appeared to me, and I immediately became so curious about her. I can't say why she came to me. I can only say that I knew that I wanted to write about her and understand her experience and travel with her through the world.

And I think once we as storytellers start saying, “You can't do that, you can't imagine that, it's too dangerous, the risks are too great”—it's unfriendly to our art. If we go that route, all of us become representatives of our particular demographic, our socioeconomic history, our racial history, our gender, our sexual preferences.

And, you know, in taking this approach, you do run the risk of exploiting your characters, of writing about them in ways that are foolish or naive or condescending. That risk certainly exists. But the question isn't “Should you do it or not?” but rather: “Are you trying to be as sensitive and empathic and thoughtful to all the characters as you can?” And if you fall short of that as somebody writing from a position of privilege about characters who are in a state of terrible vulnerability, you should be raked over the coals for it.

Remember: there are no limits to creativity in fiction—but there are certainly responsibilities that come with creative freedom.

We’re so excited to have Steve Almond as an instructor in this course.

If you’re someone who loves to write and you’re committed to doing your best work, How to Write a Novel will be an ideal companion piece—something you can take with you wherever you go, a collection of mentors like Steve who will help you stay on track.

Don’t forget to follow DeepDive on Instagram and BlueSky. And if you have thoughts or questions, you can always email us here.

Thanks so much, and more soon,
Brad

Brad Listi
Founder | DeepDive
www.deepdive.audio

Quote of the day:

Jennifer Egan. Photo by Pieter M. van Hattem

Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff clears the way for good, or forms a base on which to build something better.

—Jennifer Egan