Former Boston Phoenix editor Nina MacLaughlin discusses her book _Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter_—a book for anyone who has ever dreamed of changing tracks: the story of a young woman who quit her desk job to become a carpenter. (Photo: [Vicky Hugheston/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/vicky_dom/ ""))
Nina MacLaughlin is the author of _Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung_, a re-telling of Ovid's Metamorphoses told from the perspective of the female figures transformed, published by FSG/FSG Originals in November, 2019. Her first book was the acclaimed memoir _Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter._ Formerly an editor at the _Boston Phoenix_, MacLaughlin then worked for nine years as a carpenter, and is now a books columnist for _The Boston Globe_. Her work has appeared on or in _The Paris Review Daily,_ _The Believer, American Short Fiction,_ the _Los Angeles Review of Books,_ _The Wall Street Journal, Meatpaper,_ and elsewhere. She carves spoons and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.