Episode Details

What happens when the thing you’ve spent your life doing suddenly becomes something you can no longer do?

In this episode of Thought Atlas, I sit down with Laura Van Wormer, a best-selling novelist, former editor, and creator of the serialized fiction podcast The Class of ’74.

Laura had wanted to be a writer since high school. She eventually became a published novelist and says she wrote 14 novels. But her life changed dramatically after a devastating head-on car accident involving a drunk driver left her with extensive injuries and a long recovery.

What she didn’t realize at first was that the accident had also affected her ability to write fiction.

Laura describes the painful moment when her editor told her that the novel she was working on wasn’t good. Writing had been such a central part of her identity that she struggled to imagine what life would look like without it. She says she retreated for years.

Then came her 50th high school reunion.

Although she wasn’t initially excited about attending, the reunion brought her back into contact with classmates she hadn’t seen in decades. Afterward, her partner suggested something unexpected: why not write a story for her former classmates—and make it into a podcast?

That idea became The Class of ’74.

Laura explains how the podcast allowed her to return to fiction in a way that worked with her changed circumstances. Instead of writing an entire novel, she could write in shorter bursts and then use the following week to think about the next episode.

The story takes listeners back to September 1971, when Laura and her classmates were teenagers. There were no smartphones, social media, answering machines, or even Xerox machines. The characters are loosely based on her former classmates, while the school resembles the one they attended.

But The Class of ’74 isn’t simply nostalgia.

Laura uses the fictional world to revisit a very different America—one shaped by the Vietnam War, the draft, changing social expectations, and the everyday experiences of teenagers growing up in the early 1970s.

She talks about how the characters get into scrapes and misadventures while still being, fundamentally, good-hearted kids. Through their stories, she explores kindness, friendship, difficult choices, family relationships, and what it means to grow up.

We also discuss why people are drawn to stories that provide resolution.

Laura observes that real life rarely ties up all its loose ends, while mysteries and fiction can give audiences the sense of resolution that reality often doesn’t. For her, The Class of ’74 is a way to take listeners somewhere else—to entertain them while also showing what she calls “love in action.”

The conversation also returns to Laura’s own experience of loss and change. She talks about the things she can no longer do because of her accident and the frustration that sometimes comes with that. But she also describes the creation of The Class of ’74 as a wonderful experience and a way of writing fiction again.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about memory, creativity, nostalgia, resilience, storytelling, and finding another way forward when life changes the path you thought you were going to take.

Sometimes you don’t get your old life back.

Sometimes you discover a new way to tell the story.

Connect with Laura Van Wormer:Listeners can reach Laura directly through her official website, where she provides a contact form and shares more about her writing and The Class of ’74: Laura Van Wormer’s official website

Listen to Thought Atlas: joinpodmatch.com/thoughtatlas