About Nina and Friendship Advice

Let’s do this interview style.

Who are you, Nina Badzin?

I’m a Minneapolis-based freelance writer, podcaster, co-founder of the creative writing groups at ModernWell, wife, and mother of four. I’ve written extensively on friendship, parenting, marriage, changing habits, book reviews, best practices for writers using social media, and more. I’ve also had short stories published in over a dozen literary magazines, feature articles in print magazines, and essays on a variety of topics on websites and in newspapers. The podcast has been referenced in Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Woman’s Day Magazine, and elsewhere

Okay, that’s great, but why are people asking for your advice?

Great question! In 2014, Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger, two editors at the former HerStories Project (now MidStory Magazine) wanted to start a friendship advice column and they hired me. Here’s what they wrote about that decision at the time:

And why Nina? Because Nina is one of the first people that I turn to when I need clear, sensible wisdom about a situation in my blogging and writing life. And I’m not the only one! In fact, immediately after I started my blog, Nina was literally the first person that I contacted when I couldn’t make sense of Twitter. I soon read her Twitter tips, and I was hooked on her smart, engaging writing. She then became one of my (as well as Stephanie’s) blogging mentors. She’s been a huge supporter of HerStories from the beginning, and her guest post on her own friendship break became one of our most popular posts and one of our favorites.

~ Jessica Smock

What happened when HerStories ended?

In 2018 when Jessica and Stephanie told me they were ready to close HerStories after four years and move on to other projects, I debated about what to do with my advice posts. Was it time to move on from friendship?

NO. How could I ever move on from friendship? I kept answering questions on my own site, and in 2021 I started the podcast. Friendship is a topic I’ve been writing about in fiction and nonfiction for almost a decade. And I know from the situations people tell me in person, over email, text, in my Facebook group, and the anonymous advice form I’ve been responding to for years, that there are endless issues within friendship to cover.

Writers write about what interests them. Period. And people keep coming to me because they like my style of advice.

To be clear: I definitely don’t always get things right in my own friendships, which only makes the study of these non-romantic relationships that much more interesting to me. I love to offer others’ opinions in my answers, and I rely on readers’ comments, too. An unfortunate reality in migrating the posts from HerStories was the loss of four years’ worth of comments. There’s no way to move those. But going forward, I hope readers’ will continue to chime in.

Let’s connect over all things friendship!

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