About the Midwives
We’re Jade Chang and Ann Friedman, two best-selling authors and national magazine writers who have been leading workshops as the Midwives of Invention since 2018. Between us we have written best-selling fiction and non-fiction books, published pioneering newsletters, edited magazines, written for beloved television shows, and created podcasts and audio essays. We are also friends who live in Los Angeles.
We’ve had countless conversations about deepening an idea, shaping a concept so that it feels vital and rich, and knowing when a project is worth the time and effort. Our workshops are about sharing those conversations with you. For us, coming up with ideas, crafting sentences, and revising drafts is actually fun, and doing it in community is the best part.
Why “Midwives of Invention”? Because we believe YOU, the writer, are the mother of all inventiveness in your work. We are simply here to help your process along.
Photo by Zoey James Towner
Jade Chang
Jade’s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Elle, and Amazon. She has been invited to discuss the book at colleges (Yale, UT Austin) and companies (Google, Amazon), as well as on the air (Late Night with Seth Meyers, NPR’s Morning Edition). Her bestselling novel was optioned by Hulu and has been published in twelve countries. She is also a film and TV writer (The Baby-Sitters Club) and has written and voiced two non-fiction audio projects: The List (Amazon Originals) and You’ve Already Changed Your Life (Audible). Her journalism and essays have appeared in The NYT Magazine, The WSJ, The Best American Food Writing, and others.
Ann Friedman
Ann is the co-author of the New York Times best-seller Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close. She is a newsletter innovator whose long-running Ann Friedman Weekly has more than 50,000 devoted readers. She co-created the beloved Call Your Girlfriend podcast, and for many years she was a columnist for both The Cut and The Los Angeles Times. Her essays and reported features have been published in The New Yorker, ELLE, The Guardian, Bon Appétit, and more. She is a contributing editor to The Gentlewoman, where she writes short essays and cover profiles of fascinating women. And she’s working on a new book about modern adulthood, to be published by Viking Books.