23.4 Maria Semple, novelist

How can you use disappointment to fuel your future success? Viv talks to Maria Semple, who wrote the bestselling novel, Where D’You Go, Bernadette, after bouncing back from the disappointment of her first novel not making it big. Her new book, Go Gentle is the darkly funny story of Adora Hazzard, a woman who thinks she’s got it all figured out in later life — she lives in a “coven” with other cool, older women — only to have the past come back to haunt her in the shape of an unresolved MeToo moment in her earlier career. In Maria Semple’s own previous life before becoming a novelist, she held her own in TV writer rooms in the 1990s and early 2000s, on shows like Beverly Hills 90210, Saturday Night Live, Arrested Development, Ellen and Mad About You. Maria tells Viv about discovering her true vocation as a novelist; how being raised in a creative Hollywood family made her effortlessly confident around show-business people; and she gives an insider’s view of working – often as the only woman on the team – in TV writers rooms in the 1990s. Maria Semple’s new novel is Go Gentle @MariaSemple The new edition of How To Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking is out now, featuring more in-depth analysis of everyone from Michelle Obama to Virginia Woolf — and extra-practical, actionable advice on honing your own speaker style. @vivgroskop

23.4 Maria Semple, novelist