F***ing Shakespeare

Phuc and Kate speak with the acclaimed and straight-up luminous Texas Poet Laureate, ire'ne lara silva, at the 2023 Writer's Family Reunion sponsored by Writespace.We had the opportunity to chat about her process, the bold and unapologetic treatment of grief in her writing, and how she finds cracks of light in the depths. silva, who is an inductee in the Texas Institute of Letters and an inaugural CantoMundo fellow, runs a workshop called “Forget Discipline,” where she and fellow writers practice the art of creating without constraints. Though she has authored books of poetry, short stories, and a forthcoming comic book, silva hardly considers herself prolific. “I've spent hours debating a comma,” she quipped in response to this characterization of her work, “I don't let anything go until I'm ready.” Perhaps these principles are what drive her acclaimed work, which has been described as “candid and fearless.” True to this portrayal, silva's work is unafraid of approaching heavier themes, and she recognizes this authenticity and honesty as critical to creating a space where readers can see themselves in her stories. This approach lends itself well to silva's exploration of grief in many of her works, which she artfully conceives of as a transformative process that signifies the importance of those close to us in our lives. Concluding with an elegant summation of her creative process, silva muses, “what's the point of transforming all these things if it's not to live a joyous life, if it's not to find love and friends and work worth doing and to appreciate our creativity?” We couldn't have asked for a more fitting conclusion for season 6 of the podcast. Stay tuned for more from the desks of Bloomsday Literary. If you've heard all the podcast episodes, and still want more, we have short interviews with publishing insiders in our Instagram Live archive series called “Dear Sirs.” Check it out @bloomsdayliterary on IG. Honorable mentions: Writer's Workshop, Macondo Workshop (next workshop begins July 23, 2024!)the eaters of flowers, Saddle Road Press silva's books and reviewsfor Uvalde by ire'ne lara silva Photo credit Jana Birchum

Enzo Silon Surin writes, composes, and publishes artifacts on the “witness continuum”—art that he says “pays homage to the culture in which it was formed” and the necessity of generational change. Surin's work spans librettos commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative, four poetry collections, and a musical-in-the-making. He also founded Central Square Press, an independent publisher of works that “reflect a commitment to social justice in regards to African-American, Caribbean, and Caribbean-American communities.”We had the pleasure of chatting with Surin about how he came to writing as means of documentation—from intuitively producing plays and operas about his childhood in Queens to developing his 10-minute play, “Last Train” (which has a forthcoming operatic adaptation). We discussed the juxtaposition of violence and tenderness in his collection, When My Body Was A Clinched Fist, winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Between witnessing the coup that forced Surin from Haiti and the “social violence” he saw in New York, he says he grew up in “state of violence.” It was by becoming a “clinched fist” that Surin says he protected his innate compassion and resilience. Finally, Surin celebrates how writing “saved [his] life” and speaks from the corner of publishing he's forged, where he's found that real-life audiences hungry for quality work “already exist." Honorable mentionsWhen My Body Was A Clinched Fist (recorded reading)American ScapegoatCentral Square PressCheesy love songs in the style of Barry White Bloomsday Literary in partnership with Official 2023 AWP Conference and Bookfair

Does Alyson Sinclair sleep? We had to keep asking ourselves as we chatted it up with Alyson from the floor of AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Program)'s Conference and Bookfair. She's done it all when it comes to the writing world—bouncing between the bureaucracy of big-four publishers—um, she sent faxes to Seamus Heaney?—to the hustle and bustle world (emphasis on the hustle) of independent presses. Currently, Alyson is the Owner/Publisher at The Rumpus and founder of Nectar Literary, a boutique publicity and communications firm for authors, independent presses, and literary organizations of all ilk. Making literary community might just be the crux of our conversation. After learning that hunker-down-and-drink-tea-all-day-with-page-turny-manuscripts editorial roles are not the default at an eye-opening internship, she turned to publicity. Connecting authors to the broader writing ecosystem thrilled her. Publicity and pitching media, in Alyson's eyes, is a fascinating form of problem solving. Her insight comes from a wide range of experiences in all corners of our ecosystem, spanning from soliciting advertising at a magazine, to setting off individually in the convoluted publishing universe, to coexisting with other literary collectives that share the same mission. Let's just say—both before and after soaking in this conversation—Bloomsday is a certified Alyson Sinclair fangirl. Honorable Mentions:Independent Press, Alice James BooksIndependent Press, City LightsLiterary Network, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP)Literary Magazine, CrazyhorseNonprofit Publisher, Graywolf PressDirector of Coffee House Press, Mark HaberNonprofit Publisher, McSweeney'sSeamus HeaneyYusef Komunyakaa Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

As Program Director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Chelsea Kern is the glue that holds so much of the indie literary world together, advocating for mission-driven independent publishers and magazines—and, with equal importance, introducing readers to the work this community produces. It is clear from our conversation, she has a passion for seeing big projects through to completion. We discussed the constant that is CLMP and how the literary landscape has transformed since the organization's founding in 1967—becoming increasingly global and digital. CLMP, with Chelsea's leadership, has taken these changes in stride with webinars, newsletters (that Bloomsday archives for reference religiously), and a listserv for magazines and presses to ask and answer each other's questions. As a proud member of CLMP, we can confirm that this listserv is one of the crown jewels/hidden gems of the organization, which always saves us from having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to oddly specific publishing questions Google doesn't have the answer to. We also explored Chelsea's personal journey, from a CLMP fellow working in Diversity & Inclusion to Program Director. A go-between who works to connect us needy presses with the grant gods themselves, she has spearheaded vital programs like the Literary Arts Emergency Fund. Chelsea could be considered literary royalty, but she is a magnanimous monarch. We are grateful to have shared space with her in this episode.Honorable Mentions:Literary Advocacy Organization, Academy of American PoetsFellowship Program, American Council of Learned SocietiesGrant, Literary Arts Emergency FundLiterary Coalition, LitNetLiterary Foundation, National Book FoundationWriting Mentorship Program, Writers in the Schools (WITS) Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 Conference and Bookfair.

Poetry “carr[ies] the most human of voices” for Deema Shehabi, a Palestinian-American writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and Kenyon Review. Shehabi earned her undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Tufts University and Master's in Journalism from Boston University, previously served as the vice president of the Radius of Arab American Writers, and has received four Pushcart prize nominations. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and Diaspo/Renga, the latter of which she co-wrote with Marilyn Hacker. In this episode, Shehabi shares how Diaspo/Renga emerged out of four years of email correspondence with Hacker. Together, we celebrate the collection as a testament to the “private humanity” between its two poets. Shehabi also speaks to the homes she's found in Palestine, Kuwait, and California and the “perpetual expansion and contraction” that accompanies exile and return in her life. In negotiating this state of flux in her relationship with language, Shehabi talks about the burden of translation and always having to “teach people how to read” when she writes. Finally, Shehabi gifts us a striking reading of her poem, “Tracery of Dune and Chamomile,” which is modeled after Marie Howe and gazes upon the truth of humanity and intersections.Honorable MentionsRadius of Arab American Writers Diaspo/RengaEdward Said, “Reflections on Exile”Naomi Shihab Nye“Migrant Earth”, featured as Poem-a-Day on Poets.org Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair Photo credit: Omar F. Khorsheed

Exploring the specificities of a diaspora while also calling upon ancestral experiences is just one of the many threads Maha Ahmed weaves through her poetry. Like many members of diasporic communities, Maha's experiences as an Egyptian American do not always resemble the grossly generalized “immigrant story.” We had the opportunity to chat with Maha about writing herself out of this pigeonhole, as well as how she experiences life as a student, scholar, and poet.She received her MFA at the University of Oregon, and is now a literature and creative writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston (Go Coogs!). She specializes in colonial Egypt, Arab-American diasporic literature, and Arabic to English translation. We talked with her about Rusted Radishes, a Beirut-based literary magazine, and the big-city-but-small-world way she was offered the position as its poetry editor. We dive deep into the US-centric and profoundly skewed notion that immigrants' stories only matter once they land on US soil. It is exactly for that reason, Maha insists, people of the diaspora can acknowledge ancestral ties to a place even when it may feel uncomfortable to do so with a hyphenated or dual identity. Honorable Mentions: Rusted RadishesArs Poetica, published in The Recluse, Issue 17Professor Tim Mazurek Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Matt Bell is an author, English professor, and editor. He currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. In this episode live from the conference floor at AWP 2023, we're celebrating the one-year anniversary of his indispensable book on the craft of writing, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. We also discuss his dystopian novel, Appleseed, and and his admiration for climate writing that restores hope for humanity.Listen to the full episode to find out what Bell means when he advocates for ‘radical revising' and his mission to conceptualize revision as a process that can transform a draft into a novel, rather than an assignment needed to be completed for school. We also discuss his dreamy ten-plus-year relationship working with Soho Press (shout out to the indie stalwarts!), and some of the advice he gives to his students: 1) allow readers space to figure out things for themselves, 2) experiment with non-traditional writing structures, and 3) work through tangly writing problems together. Finally, Bell ends this episode with advice for gaining inspiration for your next work and the unfortunate discovery that you can learn what your agent truly thinks of you through their editorial notes (writer beware!). Honorable Mentions: A Tree or a Person or a Wall, Bell's short story collection His incredibly good Substack (a must-read for any writer), No Failure, Only Practice In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, the “truly weird” novel (Matt's words) that was allowed to just be itself by the good editors at Soho PressLastly, while we're still down the rabbit hole, check out his non-fiction book-length essay on the video game, Baldur's Gate II. Photo credit Jessica Bell Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Kristen Millares Young calls her novel Subduction “a study of recurrently going meta,” or “an examination of the longing that we have to be in contact with others who are not like us.” From exploring the notion of consent–not just sexually but also culturally–to the difficulty of the transmission of knowledge and the burden of whiteness, this novel plumbs the depths of the human consciousness. Kristen is a prize-winning journalist and essayist who regularly writes essays, book reviews, and investigations for The Washington Post, The Guardian, Literary Hub, and much more. Her recent novel Subduction, published by Red Hen Press, was named a staff pick by The Paris Review, called “whip-smart” by The Washington Post, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and won the Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book awards. We had the privilege of speaking with Kristen about Subduction, including her writing process, how her journalism informs her work as a fiction writer, and her appreciation for Red Hen Press. We also learned about the importance of cultivating a strong professional relationship with an editor and how building trust with them can allow a writer to push for what they believe in. Honorable MentionsEllen Akins review of Subduction in The Washington Post [paywall]Michelle Bowdler's Is Rape a Crime Other Works by Millares YoungPie and Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and BoozeIn conversation with Brad Listi on the Otherppl podcast Photo credit Natalie Shields

V.V. Ganeshananthan is an author, poet, and journalist, whose works have been featured in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota as a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Ganeshananthan also co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast with Whitney Terrell, which explores writers and literature as mouthpieces for our cultural landscape. In this episode, we talk about Ganeshananthan's 18-year-long writing process for her latest novel. Ganeshananthan maps her journey with Brotherless Night, from “bluffing her way into” a novella class during her own time as an MFA student to her techniques for “fielding facial expressions” of doubt over the novel's completion. We revel in our common ground in the literary ecosystem, with Bloomsday poet Jabari Asim and Kate and Jessica's longtime mentor, Michael Knight, both appearing on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast. While fondly recounting how MFA writers at the University of Minnesota experiment in “speed-dating” to “workshop the workshop,” Ganeshananthan reflects on the value of an MFA program that isn't genre-siloed and the living body of work that speaks to writers of color. Finally, while celebrating the release of Brotherless Night and asking what's next for Ganeshananthan's writing, we try to “remember how to start things.” Honorable MentionsBrotherless Night by V.V. GaneshananthanFiction/Non/FictionUniversity of Minnesota MFALetters to A Writer of Color edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour SoomroCraft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das photo credit Sophia Mayrhofer Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Amanda Niehaus has a PhD in Physiological Ecology. She is the author of numerous award-winning short stories, essays, and an acclaimed novel, The Breeding Season (Allen & Unwin, 2019). As part of her author profile (bestill our science-loving hearts) she writes: “Does science belong in literary fiction? As a scientist, I never thought so. But fiction connects with readers, enabling them to empathise with imagined lives. So what better way to communicate?”She was studying a unique marsupial species where the male invests so much into their reproduction that they only survive one breeding season. The metaphor was just too rich. That's when she started writing The Breeding Season. What began as an award-winning short story eventually evolved into a novel—which was completely outside Amanda's comfort zone. But as both she and Jess agree, you just have to trick yourself by writing it piece by piece. Check out the full episode as we discuss this, and many other traits of scientists-turned-writers, as well as the organization she founded with author, Jessica White, called Science Write Now, a publishing platform and community-based forum for creative writing about science. Honorable Mentions:Author, Lidia YuknavitchAuthor, Alice SeboldAuthor, Krissy Kneen

Corraling the myriad ways Sumita Chakraborty's poetry collection gets at the heart of grief all but flummoxed me. Its meaning is still washing over me. But I'll say that poet Rishi Dastidar did what I couldnt do when she wrote that it's “a book to hold close, an amulet that transmutes the intensities of grief into something uplifting, the attempt to keep hold of wonder.” We are thrilled to get to talk to her today about this luminous debut collection and many other things, if we're lucky.We were surprised to hear that Sumita's introduction to creative writing and literary studies was in college. In her 13 years at AGNI Magazine, she worked in many capacities, eventually serving as poetry editor. It was in these positions that became accustomed to every angle of poetry publication before venturing in as poet herself. Sumita's time at AGNI provided her this comforting(?) insight: no matter how talented and brilliant you are, your poems might still be rejected because of reasons beyond your control. We talk about her decision to publish her collection Arrow with Alice James Books, what it means to be a “sad girl poet” trying to be a “happy girl poet,” and how to honor and dismantle grief while somehow still managing to be playful. (Spoiler alert: she does it!) Honorable Mentions:Poet, Lucy Brach Breido Rachel Mennies's The Naomi Letters from BOACortney Lamar Charleston's Doppelgangbanger from HaymarketTaylor Johnson's Inheritance from Alice James BooksAlice Oswald's Nobody from W.W. Norton and CompanyBridget Kelly's Song from BOALucille Clifton's The Book of Light from Copper Canyon Press

Vanessa Garcia is a Miami-based novelist, playwright, journalist, and visual artist. Much of her work centers on her Cuban homeland, where her parents and grandparents were born. She is the author of incredible essays you can find all over the web and an immersive theater production called The Amparo Experience. She is the dreamer and 3D printer of so many incredible projects. Shade Mountain Press saw the beauty in Garcia's 2015 novel, White Light, which interrogates one of Garcia's obsessions, color. What if this character was a color? What would it mean if a chapter is cardinal red? We talk about the inspiration for that novel, as well as her most recent project, a radio play called Ich Bin Ein Berliner. This autobiographical story details her reaction to the fall of the Berlin wall and its rippling effect throughout Cuba. We explode the myth of the solitary writer and the rewards inherent in creating art in a collaborative fabric of creatives. Honorable Mentions:Poet, William BlakeFAU Theater LabDirector and Garcia's creative partner, Victoria Collado

Aimee Bender graduated from UC Irvine and teaches at USC. Her books have received accolades in all the major outlets: from the New York Times, LA Times, & MCSweeney's, to Oprah. Her latest novel, published July 2020, is The Butterfly Lampshade. When I was rattling off the list of Bender's books, Kate deadpanned, “So she's basically taken all the best titles from the universe.” In this episode, Bender reads from her latest novel. Of it, an astute reviewer wrote, “[it's] as if we'd shrunk to fit inside a Joseph Cornell diorama... we feel as Francie does: that anything and anyone might be a two-way street, capable of passing from our side into theirs by means of illustration—or from their side into ours by means of emanation...and after ‘slipping into being...we really ought not to be here.'” Listen as we discuss why exposing your kids to things like modern dance and The Blue Man Group is a good thing, how to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on but also feel confident enough to vary your form as a writer, and remembering the mindless goodness (and potential writing prompt) in just staring at an object in space. (N.B. Your phone's screen does not count.)Honorable Mentions:Flannery O'Connor's reminder to us all:“There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.” (from O'Connor's essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”) Best writer note to your younger self: “Write what you like, kid. Enough of this posturing.”Aimee Bender's Incredible Backlist:The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakeThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt: StoriesThe Color MasterAn Invisible Sign of My OwnWillful Creatures: Stories

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, and the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Habitat Threshold. He's the recipient of many prizes, including the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award. An assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, Santos Perez teaches Pacific literature and directs the Creative Writing program there. Also, shout-out to his gorgeous blog.In this episode, we chat with Craig about his most recent poetry collection, published at the very beginning of the pandemic, which has as its core climate activism and anxieties about the future of the planet his daughters are inheriting. Perez gives his readers great insight into the connection between humans and their environments. In this collection, Perez uses what he coined as ‘recycled form'—taking the form of older poems and inserting his own content into it. Perez's Works:HachaSainaGuma'LukaoUndercurrent by Craig Santos Perez and Brandy Nālani McDougallCrosscurrentHonorable Mentions:Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 17Wallace Stevens's 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird William Carlos Williams's This Is Just To Say

Farid Matuk's poetry, essays, and translations from Spanish appear in a wide range of publications and anthologies. He is the author of the poetry collection, This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine), several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta), and The Real Horse (2018). He teaches in the MFA program at University of Arizona, where he is poetry editor for Fence, and serves on the editorial board for the book series Research in Creative Writing at Bloomsbury. In this episode, we talk about Matuk's newest collection of poetry, The Real Horse, and his intention behind not using punctuation throughout the book. Matuk passes on life-changing writing advice that he received about filling the negative space of a page and writing into the “weaving of self and other that's always around us.” During his time as a professor at the University of Arizona, he was able to publish his poetry with the university press there. That's also where he experienced, for the first time, the helpful process of the blind peer review. As we spoke about Matuk's work at Fence, the phrase “mutual entanglement” came up to describe the work being done there. Matuk leaves us with the question, “Which phrases and ways of naming the world that feel really powerful today will end up with quotation marks around them?”Honorable Mentions:University of Arizona PressFenceFence founder and editor, Rebecca WolffVisual Artist, Nancy Friedemann-Sanchez and her paintings of lace.Poet, Jorie GrahamPoet, John Ashbery

We talked to Michael Zapata about his novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. It was the winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Boston Globe and The Millions, and his debut novel. Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine as well as on the core faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University.This book is a wholly satisfying romp through the history of science fiction (even for the uninitiated!) with a healthy side-portion of theoretical physics. But please don't be intimidated. Zapata's prose is whimsical and yet gloriously skillful, encouraging us to “challenge our most potent ideologies.” Isn't that what good art is supposed to do?Honorable Mentions:The Yellow House by Sarah BroomWe by Yevgeny ZamyatinChilean author Roberto BolañoHungarian author László Krasznahorkai

Alison Deming is so prolific and has been writing for so long that it was a bit overwhelming to pack into a 20-minute interview, but we tried our best. Hawthorne is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, where she founded the Field Studies in Writing Program in 2015. She has an MFA from Vermont College, a Stegner Fellowship, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and multiple other fellowships, residencies and prizes. Her new book, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, was released by Counterpoint Press in August.Honorable mentions:Poet Pattiann RogersNovelist and short story writer Andrea BarrettScottish poet and essayist Kathleen JamieWriter and curator Rebecca SenfWriter Pam HoustonTrace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret SavoyThe Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco CantuGuerilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminist activist artistsDeming's daughter, artist Lucinda Bliss

AWP 21 Episode—Jeffrey Colvin (Day 2, Episode 1)We talk to Jeffrey Colvin about his stunning new book, Africaville. Jeffrey Colvin is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Harvard, and Columbia where he earned an MFA in fiction. He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and is assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. His debut novel, Africaville, is an expansive book, a genealogy of sorts that follows several family trees who have intertwined branches in an enclave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, called Woods Bluff and then later named Africaville.Honorable mentions:The 2001 New York Times article about Africville that spurred Colvin's novelZora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God Credit: Nina Subin

In honor of the launch of Catherine Baab-Muguira's new book, Poe for Your Problems, we are re-releasing F***ing Shakespeare's interview with her that we did back in 2019—where we talked about this book in its wee-baby stages. And now, here it is, all grown up like the big beautiful babe it is!Get ready for some perfect hot takes. Kate, Jess, Phuc, and Cat look behind the curtain at the self-appointed guardians of world culture. Cat celebrates indulging a rabbit hole of eccentric ideas as a freelancer and we all have a laugh about how her outstanding personal essay on how her highlights helped propel her career.* Plus, we endlessly appreciate Cat for being real with us about writing, success, and mental illness as she crowns Poe, word for word, “the most likely self-help guru in history.”Check out more of Cat's work on her website, her Contently page, and her Twitter.Cat's essays that we discussed in the podcast:“Edgar Allan Poe Was a Broke-Ass Freelancer” in The Millions“Buy All Your Furniture at Target, For Tomorrow We Die” in The Billfold“I Spent $11,537 Becoming a Blonde” in The Cut“The Seductive Scamming of Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes” in shondalandSuggested Reads & Honorable MentionsTigers are Better-Looking by Jean Rhys“Like This or Die” by Christian Lorentzen in Harper's Magazine (we discuss this article at 10:55)“The Literati of New York City” by Edgar Allan Poe“The Raven” by Edgar Allan PoeJ.W. Ostrom's works on Edgar Allan Poe's lettersElizabeth Holmes's net worth according to Forbes *Please note, we went out of our way not to say “highlight of her career.” You're welcome for the lack of bad puns.

Day 1, Episode 1 To kick off the podcast interviews at AWP, we were thrilled to talk to Lilly Dancyger. Her new memoir, Negative Space, comes out May 2021 with Santa Fe Writers Project. She's the editor of the essay collection, Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger, and a contributing editor at Catapult. Among the other fantastic things with which she's involved, she founded and co-hosts a reading series and newsletter (which you should subscribe to) called Memoir Monday.Honorable mentions:Artist Joe Schactman, Dancyger's father whose story her memoir pieces togetherWriter Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of WaterMemoir Monday's partner publications Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Narratively, The Rumpus, and Literary Hub

If you have yet to read guest Mira Jacob's 2019 memoir in conversations, Good Talk, we're jealous. Praised for her “disarming wit,” Jacob achieves this by welcoming you into her indecision, her confusion, her wonder at raising a child against the backdrop of that tender point where politics meets the personal in 2016 America. In addition to it being hilariously funny and a master class in dialogue writing, the turn of Good Talk (and for that matter her exquisite novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing), is that she doesn't flatten the world to make sense of it — she complicates it. She explains the stuff she knows, as well as the stuff she doesn't know, about a world we think we know but don't really. Before long, you're laughing, crying, and struggling to figure it out right along with her. In a talk she gave to young women writers at the NYC non-profit “Girls Write Now,” Jacob said that early on she didn't know why she wanted to be a writer, she just wanted to make words that made worlds. In the podcast, we talk about how Jacob taught herself how to draw for Good Talk, her publishing journey in an industry that still caters to an imaginary white audience, discussing race with people you love, and the importance of maintaining curiosity as a parent. For the rich conversations that come out of the worlds she has wrought, we are so lucky. Work by Mira Jacob:Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (2019)The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing (2014)Honorable mentions:Jason ReynoldsChris Jackson's work with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Victor LaValle, and Mat JohnsonThings we learned:Jacob's cat is named Samuel L. JacksonIf her characters remind you of your own Malayali mother so much that you need to tell her in a drunken letter, She WILL read and in fact cherish itIf you don't tell the people you're pitching your graphic novel to that you can't draw, they most likely won't ask, and then you can teach yourself to do it anywayWe should drop the word panache from our collective vocabularies ASAP Photo credit: In Kim

The one and only Jia Tolentino was our guest on the show. We had Shipley’s donuts & it’s Britney’s Spears birthday all in honor of Jia. She’s a staff writer for the New Yorker and if you haven’t been living in a cave, you know she’s been on an international press tour for her first book, Trick Mirror, which she documented with her signature mix of wheee and disbelief, echoing the rollercoaster of gratitude and surreality we all ricochet between several trillion times a day (when we’re not reeling from helplessness and despair). In every piece of her writing, Jia comes across just as baffled, heartbroken, and furious as the rest of us about the unjust forces we’ve unthinkingly given power to. But because she leads with a genuine desire to understand rather than a hastily applied authority, reading her feels like eavesdropping on a mind at work. Whether she’s documenting her ‘fucking Tatcha’ skincare addiction or peeling back the Lycra’d layers of ‘ideal’ womanhood, Tolentino creates a philosophy of curiosity that implicates herself, not to be coy or pseudo-anything, but because she knows/admits that even hard work, luck, and success don’t guarantee a reprieve from even a reluctant examination of contemporary culture. Reading Jia is self care in the grandest and the most basic sense: she polishes the grimy windows of modern life so we can see into and out from it, and, with our sharpened perceptions, come away with more compassion for ourselves and even, occasionally, for others.Work by Jia Tolentino:Trick Mirror Essays and Critique at The New Yorker (from Waxahatchee to Weinstein)Suggested Reading from Jia:The Yellow House by Sarah BroomWhen You Reach Me by Rebecca SteadIn the Dream House by Carmen Maria MachadoThe Supernova Era by Cixin LiuHonorable Mentions:“Does Who You Are at 7 Determine Who You Are at 63?” by Gideon Lewis-Krause for The New York Times MagazineRaymie Nightengale by Kate DiCamilloCheck out the New Yorker radio hour conversation between Rivka Galchen and Jia for more children’s literature love Photo credit Elena Mudd

What do you get when you cross clever, sometimes soaring, sometimes heart-breaking, always beautiful prose with immortality, fantasy, and historical themes? Signature Joy Preble. Since 2009, when she published the first book in her Dreaming Anastasia series, she has been writing YA novels that will break your heart, restore your hope in the good things life has to offer, and call attention to the ways in which humans fail one another disastrously.Sidenote, she’s a master of the meet-cute. There’s a very memorable scene in Finding Paris, in a Vegas diner with a neutron joke and a coconut cream pie that we’ll put up against any Nick Hornby or Four Weddings & a Funeral scene. YA Author Adam Silvera has likened her depictions of plucky teen detectives to Veronica Mars, and we agree. We had similar feelings of escape and sheer doughnut popping sweetness diving into Preble’s two series and her two standalone books — seven books in all. She’s a gem of a writer, a teacher, and a helluva of a bookseller too. We’re lucky to have her on the show. Topics discussed:Are we tired of the words feisty and plucky to describe our Strong Female Protagonists yet? We uncover all the ways it makes sense to draw young girls into YA readership with young and perfectly imperfect (read: actually human) characters by speaking with YA author Joy Preble about her books.We rehash the magical power of the deadline and what do do when your YA fantasy book comes out at the same time as Twilight.We also gleefully discuss Eli Wallach and his glorious role in the movie Holiday — if you need something to watch for the upcoming holiday season.Special bonus shout-out to the glorious & awe-inspiring pie (not the value or the pizza) buffet on I-45 north towards Dallas.Check out all of Preble’s lovely books here:Dreaming Anastasia (#1 in the series), Haunted (#2 in the series), and Anastasia Forever (#3 in the series)Finding Paris It Wasn’t Always Like ThisThe Sweet Dead Life (#1 in the series), The A-Word (#2 in the series)Honorable Episode Mentions:A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’EngleChicago Public Library system, Bezazian branchThe Queen of Nothing by Holly Black, winner of this year’s Goodreads prize in YA FantasyThe Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

Welcome to our final installment of our special summer series, F***ing Shakespeare’s Shorts, where we interviewed the very tired but always brilliant souls who had books coming out in the time of the pandemic. For this final shorts episode, we spoke with poet Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers who shares with us the beautiful queering of poetic form in her book, The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons, which came out this February from Acre Books. Elizabeth tells us about the dichotomy of her past publishing nightmares and the wonder of having a one-year-old bopping around the house, and we make fun of her for living in D.C. Ultimately, we all agree that The Tilt is truly a book for our times, as the poems explore the nature of solitude and forces of colonization. Plus, we all learn that Jessica is a top-notch social media stalker. You can book her any time for that quarantine-edition social media prowling that we’re all doing since we’re not seeing each other in person. (Obviously, we’re mostly kidding.) We hope you enjoy this final episode of our shorts series, and we’ll see you again soon for the next full season of the podcast!Instead of social media stalking your exes, pick up a copy of The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons and read some really good poetry. You can also find more from Elizabeth at her website or by following her on Twitter.Born and raised in North Carolina, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers was educated in the public schools and trained as both a dancer and musician. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College in Creative Writing and Dance and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Cornell University. She was an Oberlin Shansi Fellow from 2007-2009 at Shanxi Agricutural University (山西农业大学) in Taigu, China, where she taught English and dance. Rogers received the two-year fellowship at The Kenyon Review, and has held teaching positions in community settings and at multiple universities and colleges across the nation. Most recently, Rogers was the Murphy Visiting Fellow in English-Creative Writing at Hendrix College from 2016-2019, where she taught creative writing and mentored students in the Murphy Scholars Program. She is a Contributing Editor at The Kenyon Review and a volunteer for the Veterans' Writing Project. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her wife and baby.

Move aside, poets! (But just for one second!) Here near the end of our Shakespeare’s Shorts season, we finally caught hold of another fiction aficionado! Alexis Kienlen’s first novel, Mad Cow, came out this April from Now Or Never Publishing, but she’s also a two-time published poet. (We told you, poets: just hold on for one second.) In this episode we discuss about how Alexis did research for her book by simply doing her job as an agricultural reporter, and we meditate on the theme of the urban outsider in a rural setting. Along the way, Kate and Phuc finally learn where Canada is, and we hear mention of some steamy cowboy romances. Saddle up partner, because this episode is a wild, wonderful ride. Order a copy of Mad Cow from Bookshop.org, and while you’re at it, you can pick up Alexis’s poetry publications, 13 and She Dreams in Red, through your local indie. Finally, be sure to follow Alexis on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest bovine (and writing) news!

In this episode, we get to chat (and giggle and lose all sense of time) with an old friend, Ayokunle Falomo, whose first incendiary chapbook entitled African, American has been published. He has promised us that it will be available for purchase from New Delta Review as soon as COVID insanity ends! We talk with Ayo about the many steps of working on a decade-long project, and we tackle the age old question of writing between the personal and the political, the body of a nation and the body of an individual. Not to mention that he gives us chills with his reading. Now, please excuse us, as we take Ayo’s ultimate quarantine advice to just go and take a nap.Keep an eye out on the New Delta Review website for the availability of African, American. In the meantime, be sure to check out his other short collections, kin.DREAD and thread, this wordweaver must!Honorable Mentions:Solmaz Sharif / check out her first full collection, Look: Poems.Layli Long Soldier / check out her first full collection, Whereas: Poems.Marwa Helal / check out her most recent collection, Invasive Species.Selah Saterstrom / check out her novel Slab and Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics.Loyce Gayo / explore her work here.Ariana Brown / check out her collection of spoken word poetry put on the page, Sana Sana.Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa / check out their collected, Becoming//Black.Ayokunle Falomo is: a Nigerian, a poet who uses his pen as a shovel to unearth those things that make us human, a TEDx speaker, an American, and the author of kin.DREAD & thread, this wordweaver must! He and his work have been featured a number of publications in print (Local Houston magazine, Glass Mountain) and online (The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Hive Society, Squawk Back, Pressure Gauge Press). His work has also led to venues and stages around & outside of Texas. He enjoys walking & talking to himself (a lot) and sometimes, he is fortunate enough to have other people there to listen.Learn more about Ayo’s author site for more of his his work. Adding an extra photo of our bud because we really love this one :)

Esther Lee is a poet (and letter-press artist!) who, along with her husband and cat Bowie, lives on a 35-foot sailboat called “Hope.” Currently, they’re living off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, where she writes poetry, blogs about her efforts at a zero-waste boat life, and occasionally takes phone calls from podcasters. Spit, her debut collection, received both the Elixir Press Poetry Prize and Pushcart Prize nominations. On today’s episode, Lee reads from her brand-new and beautiful collection of poetry out now from Conduit Books and Ephemera, Sacrificial Metal. These poems offer a meditation through the lens of dance and human movement about the quiet dignities and alienation of illness, caregiving, and living in a racialized body. Part documentary poetics, part mourning diary, part textual choreography, and part nautical-inspired elegy, the poems in Sacrificial Metal, serve as inquiries about how we may become socialized or exiled from a community, along with how movement and dance offer possibilities of interconnectedness with one’s own body and a sense of collective identity.Find out more about Esther Lee and her amazing life’s work:EstherLee.ioWayfindersNow.comIf you’re feeling extra curious, check out more about Rudolf van Laban’s fascinating distillations of dance and movement here.

Matthew Lippman’s most recent collection, Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, is the winner of the Levis prize from Four Way Books. He is the author of four other poetry collections—A Little Gut Magic, American Chew, Monkey Bars, and The New Year of Yellow.It was a delight to talk to Matthew about poetry, baseball, music, unfinished basements, and a world-saving moment discussing this astounding video with Bobby McFerrin about neuroscience and the pentatonic scale that Lippman references in his own TedX Talk. Share both videos far and wide for what ails you. We will say this about Matthew’s collection: during this time, when things seem to continue to fall apart each day in new and horrifying ways, these poems feel like they will “love you many times from pockets, from sandwiches… from a rooftop with billowy sheets.” And that feels pretty damn good right now. Also, check out Lippman’s web-based project Love’s Executive Order, “dedicated to posting one poem a week that is directly related to the presidency of Donald Trump. A protest. A commentary. A running rumination on this part of our American story.”Find more of his work at his website.

“It is my belief that we would not know John James Audubon today if it weren’t for [Lucy].”For our third installment of F***ing Shakespeare Shorts, Juditha Dowd reads from her gorgeously soft-spoken collection, Audubon’s Sparrow. The collection is a biography-in-poems that lyrically imagines the interiority and emotions of Lucy Bakewell, the wife of the artist and naturalist John James Audubon. We also have a chat with Juditha about the empathic power of stepping into another’s shoes, and what it means the tell the stories of women who are too easily lost in historical records. This is a really owlsome episode, folks! Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems was released on May 19th from Rose Metal Press. You can order it here. Honorable Mentions:The National Audubon Society (of course!)John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard RhodesGerman composer Heinrich SchützJudith is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Mango in Winter, as well as poetry chapbooks, short fiction, and lyric essays. She reads with the Cool Women ensemble in the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia area and occasionally on the west coast. With her husband and two Maine Coon cats Juditha lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware River.Find more of Judith’s work at her blog.

Welcome to our second installment of Shakespeare’s Shorts, where your favorites from F***ing Shakespeare host the virtual book tour that no one would have wanted before COVID-19, but that is now giving us a literary lifeline as we’re locked inside! Join us as we keep our thumbs on the pulse of amazing new literature, so it doesn’t get lost to quarantine.And we have a particularly special guest on today’s episode! Jabari Asim’s poetry book Stop and Frisk comes out this Friday, Juneteenth 2020, from our very own press, Bloomsday Literary. Y’all, this book is already making national headlines. Part rap sheet, part concept album, Jabari’s Stop and Frisk is a deft piece of literature that couldn’t be coming out at a better time. The collection seems to sing from infinitely deep lungs, as Jabari dives into the epidemic of police brutality and what it means to be a Black person in a public space, armed with a poetic scalpel and the gift of persona poetry. As we chat, Jabari gives us a rec of an album to listen to in the morning before the day even begins. We also discuss unearned advantages and what it means to have enough privilege to pause and take a breath. Best of all, he gives an absolutely stunning reading from his book. If you’re curious about the poems between the pages of this “handsome volume” (his words, not ours!), then lend us your ear for just a few minutes. You can pre-order Stop and Frisk from Bloomsday Literary here.Also read his powerful collection of essays, We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival.Honorable Mentions:Nebraska by Bruce SpringsteenWhat’s Going On by Marvin GayeBobby McFarin by Bobby McFarin“A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert

HEY! We made a thing: it’s the Virtual Book Tour Quarantine edition of F***ing Shakespeare, we’re calling SHAKESPEARE’S SHORTS!We wanted to get out there and see what’s happening in the land of books — talk with authors who have books out now, right this second, when it’s very hard to be out in the world with a new book because you can’t actually be out in the world. One of those people who is all dressed up with a fancy new book, and nowhere to go, is the incredible Lee Matalone. Her new book, Home Making, is a sucker punch of gorgeousness. I was able to dip in a read a bit of it, and loved LOVED the opening (in fact, I have a deep connection to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where some of this novel takes place, as my grandparents lived at the foot of the Appalachian Trail in the Blue Ridge of North GA — so in a way, this felt a little bit like home for me, too). Author of Home Making, Lee Matalone, makes her F***ing Shakespeare debut to read from and talk about her debut novel. Order her new “novelette” here. Also read her fantastically unsettling “short little weird stories” (her own words!) here.Honorable mentions from Lee:Solmaz Sharif’s LookAlison Roman’s cookbook, Nothing FancyBenjamin Moser’s pulitzer prize winning Sontag biographySt. Augustine’s ConfessionsGarbage reality TV, LOVE ISLAND (Can I say how ridiculously gleeful it makes me to see Love Island directly following Confessions? Just me? )

We have one more bit of brightness to send your way with this interview of two writers in the AWP Writer 2 Writer Mentorship program, mentor Chris Cander and mentee Amy Hanson. Chris was unable to attend the conference, like so many, but we were able to catch up virtually with both of them just after the conference closed.Short story writer Amy Widmoyer Hanson’s writing has won the 2018 New Letters Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Iowa Review award judged by Kelly Link. She has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short story prize and is currently completing the draft of a new novel. Chris Cander, who is a friend to the show and the author of the beautifully penned novel, The Weight of a Piano, which we talked about extensively in season 3, joins us to discuss the writing process, highs and lows of the publishing journey, and how knowing someone who has been around the block a time or two is worth its weight in gold for a new writer. Turns out there’s plenty to be gained along the way as a mentor, too. Follow Amy Hanson @amywhanson1 and Chris Cander on Twitter and Instagram @chriscander.

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Here’s Day Three!Richard Z. Santos 1:22Santos’ debut novel Trust Me came out on 3/31/20 from Arte Público Press. The main character is an “East Coast political hack” who moves from D.C. to Sante Fe and “stumbles into corruption and danger.” We talked multiple POVs, airport mottos (Sante Fe: Connecting You to the World!), and the similarities between teaching American high school students and working on political campaigns. Having his novel helpfully ‘shredded’ by Tim O’Brien led to a final draft, and after “50 encouraging rejection” letters from agents, Arte Público said a resounding YES. Working with them was a great experience. He has a finished draft of his second novel, and he’ll be planning the Writers, Agents, and Editors Conference for the Writers League of Texas that will hopefully still be happening in June. Follow him on Twitter @richardzsantos.Yodassa Williams 12:26Delightful cannot even begin to describe Yodassa Williams, whose beautiful debut YA fantasy novel, The Goddess Twins, comes out on May 19th. It follows identical sisters who discover they are goddesses when their mother goes missing - “in other words, true life.” As a teen, Williams spent a summer in London with cousins who encouraged her to explore her creative side. Inspired by these black magical girls (“literal black girl magic”), her book is a coming of age run through the Fantasy filter (her dad’s obsession with Dune had to figure in somehow!). In 2014, a revelation at Burning Man resulted in Williams leaving her industry fashion job and writing The Goddess Twins. Her advice for finding a publisher? Look for publishing contests and use contest dates as your deadline. She continues to tell stories through words and clothing. Follow her at @yodawill on Twitter and @yodawill12 on instagram.Alia Volz 27:53We speak with Alia Volz about her fascinating debut memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, And The Stoning Of San Francisco. A hybrid of heavy social issues and personal history, the book comes out, surprise, surprise, on 4/20. Volz’s folks ran the first high volume cannabis edibles business in San Francisco - underground, illegal, and very popular. After AIDS hit SF, the famous brownies “became part of the dawn of medical marijuana” and “the transition from party drug to panacea.” The book started out as an oral history: Volz started recording her mom and other people in the community, and even a SFPD police officer! She shopped that version in 2009 and it did not sell because publishers thought the market was “too niche.” Now, of course, that seems quaint and hilariously short-sighted since cannabis culture is so ubiquitous (and big business). Ultimately Volz became even more interested in the historical context and used the memoiristic voice as a way “into and through” the 70s and 80s in SF. A Macdowell Colony fellow -“transformative” for her - Volz called out fellow authors Bridgett M. Davis (The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers) and Tony Dokoupil (The Last Pirate). Follow her @aliavolz.Sonia Hamer 42:00On this special installment of the Blazer, Danial Peña interviews Hamer, a student in the University of Houston Creative Writing program. “A lot of different kinds of nerd,” she talks about wearing orange to scare away viruses (her fave virus are bacteriophages) and how “Bacteriophages” could be a cool D&D character who casts spells.David Laidacker-Luna 45:12Fiesta Youth LGBT is an organization for kids 12-18 years old that meets every Tuesday in San Antonio. Laidacker-Luna connected with the LGBT Writers Caucus who invited Fiesta Youth to AWP. It’s their first conference ever, and both Laidacker-Luna and the kids who were able to attend are bowled over by the welcoming and fun group at AWP. Austin is an established partner and Fiesta Youth has a sister organization in Corpus Christi. Recently, the McAllen AIDS council visited to learn about opening their own facility in South Texas - it’s all about partnerships and how accepting people can be. Follow @Fiesta_Youth on Twitter.Chad Abushanab 55:13Abushanab is the author of the poetry collection The Last Visit, which won the 2018 Donald Justice Prize judged by Jericho Brown and now out from Autumn House Press. The collection began as Abushanab’s dissertation project. He read “Halloween” for us (on page 31!) - a triptych of masculinity, violence, and addiction. He drafted the last poem, a Ghazal, initially as one poem, but he and Jericho Brown simultaneously had the idea to break it up throughout the book. Ghazals appeals to Chad because of his Middleastern heritage and the intrinsic musicality (meter, rhyme) of the form. He was afraid to show his poems to his mom, so he dedicated the book to her. His enviable collection of bylines is the result of both doing the work of creating memorable poems, and being extremely particular about where he submits. He only queries poetry journals he absolutely loves, so that his poems can join a known and beloved poetry community. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @chad_abushanab. Viktoria Valenzuela 1:07:56The Blazer with Daniel Peña speaks with Valenzuela, who’s wearing a 100,000 Poets for Change t-shirt. People around the world wear the shirt on the last Saturday of September to mourn and continue to call out BP for the oil spill. Valenzuela hails from Oswego (near Daniel’s beloved Ithaca) and is wearing a “Prince purple” Mayan design swirl depicting a person breathing a flower into the air (i.e. poetry). Victoria is currently shopping her poetry chapbook about motherhood, In Bed. Her activism is human rights for mothers, including the mothers separated from their children at the borders. Daniel quotes Caroryn Forché: “It is possible that we are not human beings to them.” According to her, Daniel is wearing the wrong Puma. Follow all the things she’s doing for and about mothers @ViktoriaValenz.Tori Cárdenas 1:17:55We met at AWP last year in Portland, which makes us all old friends by now. Newly the Executive Editor of Skull + Wind Press - publisher of Leslie Contreras Schwartz’s new book WHO SPEAKS FOR US HERE - Cárdenas’ goal is to help all the different circles of writers in Albuquerque interact. The dream is to have a brick and mortar and a reading series. Their “sci-fi + green chili” podcast with a friend, Eminent Domain, will be recorded on set in Sante Fe, and they found an actor who sounds exactly like Cárdenas’ real life Grandpa: “I’ve sanded away my northern mountain Taos accent” so hearing it in this context is yet another reminder of how important both representation and language are, and how entwined the two are. David Heska Wanbli Weiden 1:32:05Winter Counts, a literary thriller-cum tale of identity set on the Rosebud Indian reservation, comes out from Echo Harper Collins in August 2020. A member of the Sicangu Lakota nation, David Heska Wanbli Weiden grew up in Denver and on Rosebud. The novel follows Virgil Wounded Horse, a so-called “enforcer,” who’s hired to dole out “justice” on the reservation. A law called the Major Crimes Act forbids native nations from prosecuting felonies that occur on the reservation. Since the FBI almost always declines to prosecute as well, someone like Virgil is hired to beat up the criminal. David’s agent, Michelle Brower of Aevitas, signed him on the spot at AWP 2018’s writer-to-agent program, and overall his journey was relatively smooth. Now he does everything he can to lift up marginalized voices as an AWP mentor. One of eight winners of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowships, an academic, and a teacher of fiction (he recs the Save the Cat series for plot), Wanbli Weiden enjoys “marrying” different genres of writing. Up next: a nonfiction collection of essays about the mass incarceration of American Indians along with a sequel to Winter Counts. His children’s book Spotted Tail was just nominated for the Colorado Book award for Children's book for 2019. Follow him on Twitter @WanbliWeiden and on Instagram @wanbliweiden. Annie Shepherd 1:40:52The Blazer with Daniel Peña interviews Shepherd, a doctoral student in the UH creative writing PhD program, who writes about small towns in West Texas around Lubbock Buddy Holly’s “the island.” The verdict on Daniel’s fashion? Too monochrome: “Gotta get some contrast.” The friction between elements is essential, in clothes and fiction writing.

Anna Lena Phillips Bell 0:58Anna Lena is the editor and art director for Ecotone* and an editor for Lookout Books at the University of North Carolina—Wilmington. She talks about Ecotone’s mission and aesthetic, how to balance the two for publication, and dishes about her absolute stunner of a craft book, A Pocket Book of Forms.*While recording the episode, I refer to Anna Lena as an editor at Ecotone. She is the editor and art director there. My sincerist apologies for the goof on the tape.Paulette Perhach 17:15On the mini segment of “Daniel’s Blazer,” Paulette Perhach talks with Daniel Peña about who she’s wearing, her book Welcome to the Writer’s Life, and how “Broke Back Mountain” was the best thing she’s read.Courtney Maum 22:57Courtney Maum—author of Costalegre—discusses her new book Before and After the Book Deal, a “what to expect when you’re expecting” for writers published by Catapult. She’s also, interestingly, a product namer for several cosmetic companies in Connecticut and host to a writers’ retreat called The Cabins. Norma Elia Cantú 44:52Norma Elia Cantú is the Norene R. and T. Frank Murchison Endowed Professor in Humanities at Trinity University as well as professor emerita at the University of Texas in San Antonio. She trekked the El Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2011 after an inspiring panel with Sandra Cisneros and then wrote a blog El Camino A Year Later about her experience. Her other works reflect her passion for the border, boundaries, and the culture of the regions. She is also a contributor to Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos.Michaeljulius Y. Idani 1:06:50Working with Rita Woods, Michaeljulius Idani is a mentee through the Writer-to-Writer Program hosted by AWP. He thanked his wife for her immense support and giving him the opportunity of honing his craft outside of academia. He’s also worked on the aesthetics of bookstagram on his Instagram account that pays homage to his early interest in photography of HBCs. (He’s also the velvety voice you hear in the opening credits for the AWP reels. Thanks Michaeljulius!) Christopher Miguel Flakus 1:20:18An MFA student at the University of Houston, Christopher Miguel Flakus talks with us about his experience as a founder and co-editor of the new Defunkt Magazine. Defunkt showcases “compelling, accessible, and culturally relevant work--anything the mainstream is ignoring or marginalizing.” It’s a glorious and artful nod to zine and punk culture. Jeneé Darden 1:36:04A reporter for outlets including NPR and KALW, Jenee Darden reminds us of the importance of broadcast and audio media. She also shares a mental health awareness anthology she’s contributed to, We’ve Been Too Patient, and her own collection of essays and poems, When the Purple Rose Blooms.

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference.Angela “AJ” Super 0:00Angela Super is the author of Erebus Dawning, forthcoming from Aethon Books. We caught up with her while she took a break from woman-ing the table for the Debut Novelists 2020 booth. She hands out lovely advice to up and coming writers/neophytes/worriers on her Bloggy Blog and was an absolute joy to kick off our AWP special episodes. Follow her on Twitter @AllBrevityWit, where she delivers lovely advice free of charge on how to #PitMad, #PracPic, and #FriFirst. Outspoken Bean 15:30Performance poet, teacher, and slam poetry coach talks with us about all the ways poetry can connect people in the community. Bean shares about his youth advocacy work for young writers with Space City Youth Slams. If you’re a young person looking for a way in, check for updates on Youth Poetry Slams and opportunities to engage. We talk five minute poems, #midweekstanzas. Bean loves his poetry kids so much, he is missing Coachella. That is dedication. Also we learn things about sand clocks. Bean would love to hear from you @outspokenbean on all the social media.Katharine Coldiron 37:10We speak with Katharine Coldiron about her gem of a novel, Ceremonials, a “bisexual ghost story about love and obsession,” inspired by the Florence and the Machine album of the same name. We talk about the non-profit organization, VIDA — for which she writes interviews — and the good work they do to shine light upon the gaps in representation across gender lines in all aspects of the publishing industry. We reference an amazing interview on the origin of VIDA in Literary Publishing in the 21st Century. Book Recommendation Bonus: check out Katharine’s listical, 5 Craft Books off the Beaten Path.Follow Katharine @ferrifrigida.Johnny Payne 58:30Director of the MFA program at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Johnny Payne, talks with us about how to make your creative writing sample especially attractive to the application committee. He talks about the virtues of finding a CWP that fits your exact needs and is honest about delivering on those. Continuing a favorite thread of this our beloved podcast, we address the concept of literary citizenship (i.e., why it pays to not be an a**hole). Craft book manual he teaches: Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays.Icess Fernandez 1:10:00We finish up Day 1 on an optimistic note from Icess Fernandez, author, teacher, and generally inspiring woman of all trades. From finding the right place to submit your work, to writing away the stigma of mental illness, and feeling fantastic doing it, we cover all the topics. Phuc channels the spirits of John Grisham or Johnny Cash (who can tell?). Icess dispenses quality writing advice in her blog and podcast, Dear Reader: Mental Health and the Writing Life. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Today on the show, Phong Nguyen, an absolute treasure trove of Twain trivia, author of The Adventures of Joe Harper. We do talk lots about writing dialect and the editors that love/hate it, why three-quarters of your way into writing a manuscript is the absolute sweet spot, and how living in Missouri and not Brooklyn is actually a blessing for the working writer. There’s the key, kids, get out of your big city cultural meccas and get thee to the Midwest! Our most prized nugget to come out of the show: Nguyen suggests Holden Caulfield should be rewritten as a 2019 incel, and we are here for it.Buy The Adventures of Joe Harper and more of Phong’s books:Roundabout: An Improvisational HistoryPages from the Textbook of Alternate History Memory Sickness, and Other StoriesHe has also gushed more with Full Stop about Joe Harper.Check out a few of his stories published elsewhere:a reprint of “Ho Chi Minh in Harlem” in Hyphen“Senior Paper: On Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Micah Lipshitz” in issue no. 1 vol. 11 of Pank Magazine“Demographic Futures” in issue no. 3 vol. 92 of Prairie Schooner“Two-Step and Wannabe” in issue 77 of Painted Bride QuarterlyPhong has also been a keynote speaker for Writefest in 2019 and on The Chattahoochee Review’s Guest Author Series for Alternate History. Visit his website for more works circulating or much-needed writing prompts, and/or check out his Twitter for vlogs and wonderful nuggets of knowledge. Photo credit: Sarah Nguyen US Cover, Outpost19

On today’s show, we have novelist Abbigail Rosewood. Jessica, Phuc, Abbigail, and I discussed the virtues of buying hibiscus plants from people who unofficially sell them on the streets of Brooklyn. We bring you another arousing author-psycho-therapy session starring Your Past, and how maybe you shouldn’t always listen to workshops and/or the things professors say out loud but maybe should not. Bonus: Jessica explores her abiding love and avocation for place as character . . . Basically if this episode were a reality TV show, our tagline What Happens When People Stop Being Colonizers and Start Getting Allowed to Write Their Own Freaking Stories.Abbigail’s debut novel If I Had Two Lives is available now. While you’re waiting for the book to come in, watch the most gorgeous of all book trailers, written and directed by Ash Mayfair for If I Had Two Lives here. Check out her other works and interviewsA short story called “Letum” which appears in Columbia Journal, “Maybe” in Green Hills Literary Lantern, “Stolen Things” in The Adirondack Review, “Banana Tree” in The Missing Slate.Fun fact: she was also an assistant fiction editor for The Missing Slate.An essay about how “Publishing Your Novel Won’t Cure You” Her take on the 2019 Winter Institute Her interview with Adroit Journal about how “Truth Has Many Faces”and with Columbia Journal on “Striving for the Sublime.”Abbigail’s Honorable MentionsElena FerranteÁgota KristófLabyrinthVisit Abbigail’s website for more of her inspiration from literature, movies, and music. Also follow her on Twitter or Instagram for more furry friends, plant love, and other musings. US Cover, Europa Editions

On this episode of F***ing Shakespeare, our guest is the one and only Jericho Brown. Poets, lovers, and one who desires to hear beautiful language spoken by a beautiful voice, this episode is for you. We talk about Brown’s duplex, a poetic form he created for his new book “The Tradition,” his passion for his work and how he also doesn’t drive a Bentley. I’m not going to ruin the surprise or anything, but Jericho sings. That’s all I’m gonna say; just listen.Brown’s writing can be found here:His latest collection, The Tradition, from Copper CanyonWhile you’re reading his work, check out his other collections, The New Testament and PleaseHis work also appears in issue 6 of The Bennington Review, the NYT, no. 226 of The Paris ReviewIf you cannot get enough of his reading voice, here he is reading more poems: “The Card Tables” and “Trojan” for the Poetry Foundation. And “Night Shift” and “Colosseum” on The New Yorker.Honorable mentions:Jericho discovered Laura “Ralphi” Burgess’s work and used it for the gorgeous cover for The Tradition.Shout out to Jericho’s fantastic colleagues at Emory: T Cooper, Hank Klinbanoff, Joseph Skibell, Tayari Jones, Tiphanie Yanique, Robyn Schiff, and Heather Christle.Visit Jericho’s website for more about him and/or follow him on Twitter to for your daily Jericho Brown dosage. Photo credit: John Mitchell US cover, Copper Canyon Press

In today’s episode we have the 100% on-fire novelist, Bryan Washington, penning effing beautiful and raw stories straight out of the streets of Houston for his story collection Lot. He shares his ridiculously envy-enducing publishing journey for you, adding another to the longitudinal study that proves the traditional path to publication is a mythical creature in line with the hippogriff, the Lochness, and the chupacabra. Other topics of discussion include: chupacabras, the Katy suburb of Houston, and it’s food scene (yes! There IS one) and the importance of finding an amazing agent and editor who really get your work, and — perhaps most importantly — why if you want to be a writer you shouldn’t be an asshole, and if you are a writer you should also not be an asshole. Buy/read all the things from Bryan Washington:His short story collection, Lot, is available here.Bryan’s most recent NYer story, “Visitor” and this gem of an interview (also from the NYer) on “stories that don’t make you feel worse”His new novel, Memorial, (forthcoming fall 2020) draws on his work in No.6 Fiction Issue, SPOOK magazine. Finding holiness in noodles from his Catapult series on Houston Ben Rybeck (former Houstonian now with The Center for Fiction) interviewed Bryan here for Lithub Honorable Mentions:Some of Bryan’s influences w/r/t place-as-characterAmerican Son by Bryan Ascalon RoleyReal World by Natsuo KirinoA Good Fall by Ha JinVida by Patricia EngelThe House on Mango Street by Sandra CisnerosAlso loves:Short story collection, Fly Already by Etgar Keret (Riverhead Books)Visit Bryan’s website for more about him and/or his Twitter for updates on his short stories, interests, and the food he’s digging. Photo Credit: David Gracia US Cover, Riverhead Books UK cover, Atlantic Books

In the studio today to open SEASON 4 of the show—that’s right y’all F***ing Shakespeare is on our 4th season! To celebrate we have Houston’s own lit genius, Mark Haber. He’s our first returning guest, so we must be doing something right. He’s definitely doing all the things right. He’s here to talk Tolstoy’s dog problem, melancholy, the fun-house mirror situation that is eastern European and central American literary scenes. His rich new novel Reinhardt’s Garden is discussed, as well as how to compel the authors who blurb you to use the word ‘genius.’ (Just kidding, not that one. He’s keeping that secret.) But we do get a bit of a bonus material-round makeover this season with a Haber-inspired esoterica category of questions to round out the show.Msrk’s influences are numerous, but click links below to expand your literary taste. You will not be disappointed:Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in ChileThomas Bernhard César AiraLászló Krasznahorkai’s double-novella set, The Last Wolf and HermanNew Directions’ championing of Latin American writers in the early aughtsDostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, ChekhovClarice Lispector Things we learned:How to write humidWhat’s wrong with FloridaHow to write believable man-splaining (LOL)How to end a publishing journey in tears, the good kindHow a bad translation is like a bad cheeseburgerShout-outsWorld Editions, feminist pressBrazos Bookstore Photo credit: Nina Subin

Read all of Sarah’s work, but if we were forced to choose, here’s the place to start:Until We All Have Voices in CatapultFabric of a Community, Gone Threadbare: A Tour of Ohio’s New Trump Country in CatapultThe Crusading Bloggers Exposing Sexual Abuse in Protestant Churches in The Washington Post MagazineTeaching My Daughter That God Might Be a Girl in The Washington PostRebecca Todd Peters take on male-dominated speech in the churchGetting Elected Upended My Home Life. But Here’s What I Hope I’m Teaching My KidsI Made Up Xennial 3 Years Ago, So Why is a Professor in Australia Getting All the Credit?Honorable Mentions:Sex abuse bloggers and activists Sarah mentions: Ashley Easter, Wartburg Watch, & Watch KeepSeveral Houston Chronicle stories on the sex abuse scandals linked here, here, and hereThe awesomeness that is Kevin McFadden, aka Christopher Pike (Remember these? I have very vivid memories of checking these out of the school library and tearing through them like a fiend, battling any kid in my path who was after the new one.)The Problem of Dirty HandsSusan Orleans The Library BookEmily Nussbaum and anything she writes, but also her new book I Like to WatchAlexandria Petri and any of her opinion pieces in The Washington Post, but especially this one called “On Giving Up”

Novelist and genre shapeshifter Edan Lepucki is our guest on today’s show. Expert writing tips include: what to do when you realize you’ve spent four years writing two different novels that are actually the same, spoiler alert: Instagram poetry is probably not the answer. We talk about how having a baby is a great way to make you finish a project, and the value of an editor who is really good at telling you you’re brilliant. Also: Phuc does virtual marriage counseling sponsored by the I.T. department at Bloomsday Literary.Buy all of Lepucki’s riveting work and also support her (budding) rescue-Maltese adoption habit by pre-ordering her Mothers Before photo project (inspired by her Instagram of the same name):CaliforniaWoman No. 17If You’re Not Yet Like MeCheck out these essays of Edan’s that we love:from the NYT series Modern Love: “Taking Marriage One Year at a Time”and this inspired by the novel Woman No. 17, “Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them”all the things she wrote for The MillionsSuggested Reads and Honorable Mentions:Edan and cohost Amelia Morris’ Mom Rage podcastAmelia Morris’ memoir Bon Appetempt: A Coming of Age Story (with Recipes!)Minding the Gap documentaryGood Talk by Mira JacobSally Mann selected works & photographyFinally, since we are huge dog people here on the show, in case you were wondering, Edan did not adopt the last available rescue Maltese in California. There are plenty. Find one of your very own here. photo credit: Pet MD**also what Kate looks like when she wakes up in the morning. photo credit: Adam Karsten

Photo by Wayne Alan Brenner Today we settle the great debate once and for all: drafting, or revising? Our guest, graphic novelist, Tillie Walden, weighs in. (Spoiler alert: write, write, write, and think about perfection later.) We also consider the value of the “traditional” story, how Tillie prioritized the truth of her emotions when drawing her memoir, and the quirky publishing journey that started to grab hold of her in high school. Listen in and find out why, in the end, we’re all just half baked cookies.Spend some time enjoying the resonance of Tillie’s work on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, or check out her website for a full list of publications. You can also join us in pre-ordering her upcoming book Are You Listening, which she talks about on the show.Tillie’s Books We DiscussedOn A Sunbeam (which is also 100% free online)Her memoir, Spinning Mini Meditations on CreativitySuggested Reads and Honorable Mentions:The Secret Place by Tana FrenchStudio Ghibli and the castle in the first 5 minutes of Tales from Earthsea (bonus photo of the castle below)“Making an Ice Queen” by Sarah Marshall on The Baffler Arren’s castle from the first 5 minutes of Tales from Earthsea (Studio Ghibli, 2006) Are You Listening? comes out Sept. 10, 2019

Photo credit: Rita Meriano Ever wondered what you should do if your professor thinks you should write literary fiction, but you know you’re going to write something else? Today’s guest, Anna Meriano, talks about how much she appreciated that prof and also why choosing to disregard his suggestion was the best decision she could have made. Also, we investigate the weird and fascinating triple Venn diagram of the arts, people who speaks Spanish, and firefighters in Houston. Follow Anna on twitter @annamisboring and check out her website here.Plus, don’t forget to grab yourself copies of Anna’s beautiful books, A Dash of Trouble and A Sprinkle of Spirits from the Love Sugar Magic series.*Suggested Reads and Honorable MentionsMatilda by Roald Dahl“Hot Dog, Katsa!” by Kristin Cashore on The Horn Book Inc.Rebecca Roanhorse (Trail of Lightning and others)Anne McCaffrey (Dragonsong, Dragonflight, and others)N.K. Jemisin (The Fifth Season, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and others)The Last 8 by Laura PohlClub de Cuervos television show, available on NetflixKim’s Convenience television show from CBC, available on Netflix and Amazon Primemiss translated poetry series by Elisa ChavezThe First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez (+ Anna’s essay on it called “Coco, the First Rule of Punk, and Every Mexican (American) Story Out There” on Nerdy Book Club)The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, the Three Magical Children and their Holy Dog by Adam GidwitzHurricane Child by Kheryn CallenderCilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire by Susan Tan The School Story by Andrew ClementsAnd be sure to take a peek at CAKE Literary, founded and run by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle J. Clayton, and their books including Tiny Pretty Things, The Belles, The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi, and others Bonus for our Houston listeners: Stop by El Bolillo or 85C Bakery Cafe for all of your pastry needs!We Also DiscussedThis article from KPRC/iHeart Radio, “Houston Hires Poet After Laying Off Firefighters” by Ken WebsterThe Superman horror movie, Brightburn (if you’re feeling really brave, here’s the trailer, but you can’t say we didn’t warn you that it’s scary and violent)Justin Cronin’s novels, including The Passage (he currently teaches a class on Narratives in Longer Fiction at Rice)The awesomeness of Coert Voorhees and Ian Schimmel, a lecturer in Creative Writing at Rice*A special thanks to Anna’s friends for pulling her away from a cheese plate at a party. It is because of you that the beautiful Love Sugar Magic books exist.

Jessica’s Writing We DiscussedWhen I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss“From Essay to Book: On ‘Mirrorings’” in Essay Daily“On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta” in LongreadsSuggested Reads and Honorable Mentions from JessicaRunning in the Family by Michael OndaatjeBluets by Maggie NelsonCameron Dezen Hammon’s upcoming memoir, This is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession“Shitty First Drafts” from Bird by Bird by Anne LamottThe Body Papers by Grace TalusanAutobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy“Mirrorings” by Lucy Grealy in Harper’s MagazineClaudia RankineRoxanne GayConvenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori)The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First-Century Amazon by Chris Feliciano ArnoldThe Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick“Me Talk Pretty One Day” from Me Talk Pretty One Day by David SedarisCharles D’AmbrosioBonus: Nick Flynn is telling us all to write at least 50 knockout pagesSuggested Reads and Honorable Mentions from Our Very OwnJesus Land: A Memoir by Julia ScheeresHalf a Life by Darin StraussThe Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DidionEducated by Tara WestoverThe Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto UrreaAlso DiscussedThe episode of “Bullseye with Jesse Thorn” (podcast) focused on Brian Raftery’s book, Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen. You can find the episode on the Maximum Fun network here.Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

Get ready for some perfect hot takes on today’s episode of F***ing Shakepeare with freelancer Catherine Baab-Muguira. She looks behind the curtain at the self-appointed guardians of the world of culture, celebrates indulging a rabbit hole of eccentric ideas as a freelancer, and we all have a laugh about how her outstanding personal essay on her highlights helped propel her career.* Plus, we endlessly appreciate Cat for being real with us about writing, success, and mental illness as she crowns Poe, word for word, “the most likely self-help guru in history.”Check out more of Cat’s work on her website, her Contently page, and her Twitter. Cat’s essays that we discussed in the podcast:“Edgar Allan Poe Was a Broke-Ass Freelancer” in The Millions“Buy All Your Furniture at Target, For Tomorrow We Die” in The Billfold“I Spent $11,537 Becoming a Blonde” in The Cut“The Seductive Scamming of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes” in shondaland Suggested Reads & Honorable MentionsTigers are Better-Looking by Jean Rhys“Like This or Die” by Christian Lorentzen in Harper’s Magazine (we discuss this article at 10:55)“The Literati of New York City” by Edgar Allan Poe“The Raven” by Edgar Allan PoeJ.W. Ostrom’s works on Edgar Allan Poe’s lettersElizabeth Holmes’s net worth according to Forbes *Please note, we went out of our way not to say “highlight of her career.” You’re welcome for the lack of bad puns.