Colleen Hoover

The meteoric rise of self-made writer Colleen Hoover has been a topic circulating TikTok since 2020. This social worker turned best-selling author wields an origin story that can inspire young writers who don’t have family ties to the publishing industry, proving that success can happen even for those with humble beginnings.

This led to one question: how might a writer replicate that sort of rise? Was BookTok and a boredom-inducing pandemic responsible for Colleen’s start as a top-charting author, or was there something deeper to her narratives that, while dark, lent them a kind of undeniable universality?

This episode is part of Missing Pages, Season 2 — a podcast series centered on publishing industry shifts, related controversies, and the literary grifters involved.

Listen here.