Episode #85 Laura Van Wormer – Publishing, Reinvention & The Power of Story

In this episode of Miles Beyond the Page, host Michelle Miles sits down with author and former Doubleday editor Laura Van Wormer to discuss her remarkable journey through publishing, fiction writing, and creative reinvention.

Laura shares how an unexpected opportunity led her to write a biography-style book about the fictional Carrington family from Dynasty, which opened the door to official tie-in novels for Dallas and Knots Landing. Those experiences helped shape her unique storytelling approach and influenced her bestselling novel Riverside Drive, a sweeping story of interconnected lives brought together by an unlikely catalyst.

Michelle and Laura explore the realities of working in traditional publishing, protecting creative energy, and balancing the demands of writing with the business side of a creative career. Laura also offers insights into her chapter-driven, serialized style and the lessons she learned from both sides of the publishing industry.

The conversation takes a deeply personal turn as Laura shares how a devastating head-on collision left her with a brain injury that ended her ability to write novels. Rather than stepping away from

storytelling, she found a new creative path through her podcast, The Class of ’74, where she continues to connect with audiences through research, history, and compelling stories.

🎧 Join Michelle and Laura for an inspiring conversation about resilience, creativity, publishing, and finding new ways to tell stories when life changes the script.

ABOUT LAURA VAN WORMER:

Laura Van Wormer is the creative force behind "The Class of ’74," a serialized fictional podcast that blends nostalgia, drama, and meticulous historical detail. Set in 1971–1974 in a well-heeled Connecticut suburb of New York City, the show has been praised for its authenticity and period-accurate setting, detail and events, and draws on Laura’s decades of experience as a novelist, editor and researcher, with a specialty in the ways the past informs the present.

Her storytelling style is rooted in a good sense of humor, character psychology, the rhythms of small-town life, and creates a world listeners fall in love with. She herself was a member of the Class of '74 in Darien, Connecticut and was infamous for stopping high school parties to read stories she had written.

Laura started her career at Doubleday as a secretary (in the era Jackie Onassis worked there) and worked her way up to editor. She left to pursue her own writing and while learning how to write a novel, supported herself by creating books with the creators of the hit night-time TV serials, "Dynasty," "Dallas" and "Knots Landing."

Laura's first novel, RIVERSIDE DRIVE, was a bestseller when it was published in 1988. She published 13 more novels with major houses but in 2015 she was on her way to the airport to visit Betty White in Los Angeles when a drunk driver going the wrong way on the Merritt Parkway in CT hit her head-on. She woke up a month later in Yale New Haven hospital with a crushed collar bone, 16 broken ribs, torn diaphragm, broken knee, and a severed foot that required four surgeries to save.

Ten years later she attended her 50th high school reunion and was sad because no one could hear her. When she went home her other half suggested why didn’t she write a story as a podcast so her classmates could hear her – and THE CLASS OF ’74 was born, a weekly narrative soap opera about teenagers starting high school in 1971. While the story is fiction, it faithfully recreates the fascinating time before cell phones existed and is guaranteed to take the listeners' minds off their problems – at least for half an hour each week.

WHERE TO FIND HER:

Class of '74 Podcast Website | Apple | Facebook | YouTube | BlueSky

WHERE TO FIND HER BOOKS:

Amazon