by Writing Workshops Staff
10 hours ago
Stories make us feel less alone, whether we're telling them or hearing them. That's the core belief driving Micaela Blei's work as a storyteller, educator, and now podcast host.
With her new show, The Story Letter Podcast, the two-time Moth GrandSLAM champion and former founding Director of Education at The Moth is bringing her signature approach to personal narrative straight into listeners' earbuds.
And she's doing exactly what she teaches: talking out loud about talking out loud.
For writers who've ever felt their lives weren't dramatic enough to write about, Blei offers a liberating reframe. Not every story needs to be The Princess Bride, she points out: sometimes the quiet, interpersonal stakes of a When Harry Met Sally resonate just as deeply.
What matters isn't the size of your story but how you set it up and structure it, allowing listeners to appreciate the stakes of a given moment.
In her upcoming Your Story Out Loud: A Personal Storytelling and Memoir 6-Week Zoom Intensive, Blei creates a space where writers can discover their authentic voice through conversation before committing words to the page—a method that transformed her own writing after years of performing live. Students will learn to generate material by speaking it first, shape narratives using natural rhythms, and leave with a toolkit of strategies they can bring to memoir, essay, or any form of storytelling.
Here is our interview with Micaela about the launch of her new podcast and what students can expect in her upcoming six-week class:
Writing Workshops: The Story Letter podcast launched in January, focusing on why personal stories matter and how to tell them well. What made you decide to expand from your newsletter into the podcast format, and how does speaking about storytelling differ from writing about it?
Micaela Blei: I guess I figured—if you're talking about talking out loud, you should talk out loud! It's a great chance to demonstrate the things I'm teaching, especially the way that stories can engage us even if they're not "perfect." Also, as much as I love speaking to people as a lifelong teacher and storyteller, I was never sure the audio format was quite for me. But after working on my Audible Original memoir last year I realized that my whole [gestures vaguely toward self] deal does come across in audio, not just live. So it's a great chance to reach people who might want to work with me, but want to know what I'm like first.
Writing Workshops: In your first episode, you describe a powerful moment with a fifth grader that showed you how transformative personal storytelling can be. Can you share what that experience taught you about the relationship between the teller and the listener?
Micaela Blei: It reinforced my core belief, which is that stories make us feel less alone—whether we're telling them or hearing them. The listener's attention helps the teller feel heard and validated, while hearing someone's story creates permission for your own story and helps you realize that you're not the only one feeling things. The transformation happens in both directions. I find that wildly beautiful. It also helped me understand that judging whether a story is "good" depends on so many things, particularly who's listening!
Writing Workshops: One of the themes you explore in the podcast is how to choose which story to tell, and why the most dramatic story isn't always the best one. For writers who feel stuck because their life doesn't seem extraordinary enough, what advice would you offer?
Micaela Blei: There's something to be said for being relatable, not just sensational. See our exchange about how stories can validate listeners' experiences, above! Also, I just thought of this: we can think of personal stories belonging to different genres, like movies. Is The Princess Bride a great story? Absolutely, and the stakes are literally life and death. But When Harry Met Sally is a great story too, and no one is climbing the Cliffs of Insanity. The stakes are quieter and interpersonal. There's room (and need) for both kinds of story. And it's about how the story gets set up, and structured, that lets people appreciate the stakes of a given moment or experience.
Writing Workshops: Your podcast tagline promises to help listeners tell better stories, feel great telling them, and connect with your audience. Of those three goals, which do you find people struggle with most, and why?
Micaela Blei: Oh, such an interesting question! People most often come to me for the first—to tell better stories. And I think that's because we're very focused on being "good at it," whatever "it" is. But it might not even occur to them that they can feel great telling stories, or that connecting with their listener is actually what makes both of those other things possible. So it's less like three separate skills and more like: if you connect, you'll have a better time, and your story will come out better. They all support each other.
Writing Workshops: The Story Letter podcast and your Your Story Out Loud class both focus on personal storytelling, but they seem to offer different entry points. How do you see them working together for someone on their storytelling journey?
Micaela Blei: I think of the podcast as the invitation, while the class is the practice room and the chance to go deeper and get individual guidance. Podcast listeners will hear me demonstrate principles; class participants will experience them in their bodies. You absolutely don't need to listen to the podcast before coming to the class. But if you do listen (and the whole season is less than 3 hours!) you'll come to class with so many ideas and questions, and you'll be able to go even further in your own storytelling journey!
Writing Workshops: In your class, you encourage writers to generate ideas through conversation before writing anything down, which can feel vulnerable. How does your podcast demonstrate or model this kind of speaking-first approach to finding your stories?
Micaela Blei: In the podcast, we left my stops and starts, my "thinking aloud" moments, in the recordings, for exactly this reason—I wanted to demonstrate that you don't need to be totally polished to be listened to. In class, the goal of conversation-before-writing is to give our social brains a chance to generate language, without our inner critics getting in the way. It's deliberately low stakes. It can definitely feel vulnerable, but I'll never make you "perform an essay" off the cuff! And I want people to try conversation as a generator, but I'll also make sure to give you room to take notes first if you want. I just won't give you enough time to polish your words like river rocks. That's when perfectionism can start to get in the way.
Writing Workshops: You've described your teaching style as Muppet Guru, equal parts goofiness and wisdom. How does that philosophy show up in The Story Letter podcast, and what can students expect from that energy in the classroom?
Micaela Blei: It shows up in so many ways in the podcast! Just one example: Laura (my producer) put bloopers into each episode, and I didn't choose those—they are just parts of our recording where I was clowning around. It was so fun to listen to the drafts of each episode and find out what she'd chosen. Partly, goofiness has a pedagogical purpose: laughing IS a big part of finding enough ease to tell really present stories. But also, I'm just being honest about what lights me up. Which is, frequently, jokes. It's as much part of me as my performance-studies-nerd parts. In class with me, it means that I won't feel like a remote expert (I hope)—I'm in it with you, and we're there to have a good time and have some very big thoughts about your life and your writing.
Writing Workshops: You've talked about how your years performing stories on stage gave you access to your authentic writing voice in a way the blank page never could. For writers who are terrified of speaking their stories out loud, what's the first small step you'd recommend?
Micaela Blei: If this "stories out loud" thing feels really far away for you, I actually think a great first step is a very common recommendation for writers: read your written work out loud! That way you're not making yourself do too much at once—you're just listening to your own voice, but the words are taken care of. Another thing you can try: just notice next time you're telling a story to a friend. As simple as that. You can just think, "Oh, huh, I guess that was me telling a story." Bam! Small step taken!
Writing Workshops: Between your Audible Original memoir, your upcoming book with Harper One, The Story Letter podcast, and now this class, you're telling stories across so many formats. What have you learned about how a story changes, or stays the same, as it moves between the spoken word, the written page, and audio performance?
Micaela Blei: A story's emotional truth stays the same; the intimacy level shifts. A live performance is about the room's collective energy, and I adjust on the fly as I'm telling, based on the people in the room or Zoom room. Audio (like the podcast or Audible) creates one-to-one intimacy, even with a big audience. It feels like leaving a voice mail to me, it feels very personal, so I'm often willing to get more vulnerable than I might in a giant theater. The written page lets the reader control the pace and re-read for nuance, and requires punctuation, line breaks and other syntax to do the work that my spoken pacing and pauses might. But across all of them, I've learned to trust that the core of the story will translate if I lean into each medium's particular strengths, rather than fighting them.
Whether you start with The Story Letter Podcast or dive straight into the practice room, Blei's approach offers permission to be imperfect, unpolished, and still worth listening to. Her Your Story Out Loud: A Personal Storytelling and Memoir 6-Week Zoom Intensive begins Tuesday, March 17th, 2026—join her to discover the stories you want to tell and learn how to make them impossible to forget.
