GrottoPod

Novelist Dallas Woodburn joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read from her recent book, The Best Week that Never Happened, described as a "captivating, poignant story is perfect for teens on the brink of discovering who they are and what really matters." Woodburn is a former Steinbeck fellow in creative writing and the author of two earlier books of short fiction, Woman, Running Late, in a Dress and 3 a.m. She is also the host of the popular book-lovers podcast “Overflowing Bookshelves,” and founder of the organization Write On! Books.

We hope that this message finds you as well as can be. 2020 has contained a great deal of change for the GrottoPod, and for our production team. To fill you in: the Writers Grotto recently moved out of its physical offices in San Francisco, and we at GrottoPod consequently moved out of the podcast studio where we recorded so many of the interviews that we've broadcast on this show. Given these changes, we've decided to take an indefinite break from our regular release schedule; however, we will likely be bringing you the occasional reading from a Grotto member, so please stay subscribed. We'll be looking forward to reconvening with all of you down the line. Be well.

Preeti Vangani joins the GrottoPod this week to talk with producer Brad Balukjian about her evocative essay, "A Meditation on Bitterness," published in Bending Genres. Vangani is a brand manager turned poet and personal essayist who authored Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), and won the RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in  BOAAT, Juked, Gulf Coast and Threepenny Review, among other journals. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass Journal.

Poet Tess Taylor, who published two collections this year, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange and Rift Zone, joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read some of her poetry. Taylor is the author of three other books of poetry, including The Misremembered World, selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship, and The Forage House, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of poetry of 2016. She's also currently on the faculty of Ashland University’s Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program.

Journalist and author Roberto Lovato returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from his debut book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Paris and the United States. Until 2015, Lovato was a fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center and recently finished a teaching stint at UCLA. Lovato is also a Co-Founder of #DignidadLiteraria, the movement advocating for equity and literary justice for the more than 60 million Latinx persons left off of bookshelves of the United States and out of the national dialogue.

Maw Shein Win returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from her new book of poetry, Storage Unit for the Spirit House. Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks include Ruins of a Glittering Palace and Score and Bone. Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016-2018). She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. 

Roberto Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto and the author of "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas" (Harper Collins). He joins fellow writer Jesus Sierra in this week's episode to talk about the book. Lovato is also a co-founder of #DignidadLiteraria, the movement advocating for equity and literary justice for the more than 60 million Latinx persons left off of bookshelves of the United States and out of the national dialogue. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Paris and the United States. Until 2015, Lovato was a fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center, and recently finished a teaching stint at UCLA. His essays and reports from across the United States and around the world have appeared in numerous publications, including Guernica Magazine, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy magazine, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Der Spiegel, La Opinion, and other national and international publications.

Author and scientist Brad Balukjian joins the GrottoPod's summer reading series this week to share an excerpt from his new book, The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife. The Wax Pack. Out now, Wax Pack is the true story of tracking down all the players in a single pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards on a 11,341-mile road trip across the U.S. Balukjian is also a professor of biology at Merritt College in Oakland, California, where he teaches about the amazing plants, animals, and other organisms that cover our planet. His journalism has appeared in National Geographic, Discover, Rolling Stone, and many others.

Bonnie Tsui joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read an excerpt from her latest book, "Why We Swim." The book, published in April, offers cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water and swimming. Tsui is a journalist, a longtime contributor to the New York Times, and the author of "American Chinatown," the winner of the Asia/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She lives, swims, and surfs in the San Francisco Bay Area. "Why We Swim" was an Editor's Choice/Staff pick in The New York Times Book Review, which called it "an enthusiastic and thoughtful work mixing history, journalism, and elements of memoir."

Adam Smyer joins us on the GrottoPod this week to talk about his new book, You Can Keep That To Yourself: A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor. It's a pocket-sized translation guide designed to keep white folks out of trouble, and it couldn't be more timely. Smyer is also the author of the novel Knucklehead, which was the sole title shortlisted for the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He's an attorney, martial artist, and self-described "mediocre bass player" who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and cats. You Can Keep That To Yourself is out now.

Award-winning writer Vanessa Hua joins the GrottoPod summer reading series today to share a taste of her short story "VIP Tutoring" from her newly reissued collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities. Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of A River of Stars. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, among others. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Panama, and Ecuador, and her work appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

Writer Raina León joins the GrottoPod this week as part of our summer reading series to share her piece "Solstice in Solidified Sugar." León is a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn and sombra: dis(locate), and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self.

Food writer Rachel Levin continues our GrottoPod reading series in a special Shabbat episode. Listen in as she reads from EAT SOMETHING: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews, co-written with Evan Bloom, co-founder of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen in San Francisco. Levin, a Writers Grotto member, is also the author of Look Big: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds, and is a contributor to the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal.

Today on the GrottoPod we're kicking off our summer reading series, bringing you readings from Writers Grotto members. Today we're featuring Ann Kim, who reads from her brand-new novel, A Good Family, available now. Ann Kim (writing as A.H. Kim) was born in South Korea and immigrated to Ohio as a toddler. She went to Harvard College and Berkeley Law School and is a practicing attorney. She is the proud mother of two sons, cancer survivor, community volunteer, and member of the Writers Grotto. She lives in San Francisco with her husband. A Good Family is her first published novel.

Kevin Smokler is an author, documentary filmmaker and event host based in San Francisco. Today on the GrottoPod, he discusses his documentary, Vinyl Nation: A Deep Dig into the Record Resurgence, which debuted digitally on what would have been Record Store Day 2020 (April 19) in partnership with 200 independent record stores across the United States. Smokler is also the author of Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School and Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to '80s Teen Movies. For more info on how to see the film, go to the "Vinyl Nation" website: https://vinylnationfilm.com.

Taneum Bambrick's book, Vantage, is a fictionalized account of the poet's time spent working as the only woman on a garbage crew. Using unforgettable images, Bambrick tackles issues such as class, gender, and environmental degradation without sentimentality. Sharon Olds called the book "a work of art which also functions as a call, as if from under the ground, a cry from water and air." Join a chat with Bambrick about the complexities of writing about gender and class and the craft of depicting violence, and hear the poet read several of the poems from her award-winning collection. 

Yan Slobodkin is a historian of modern Europe, with a focus on French colonial and transnational history. He stops by the GrottoPod this week to discuss his current book project—a history of famine in 19th- and 20th-century North Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, and its relationship to changing ideas of scientific control, political obligation, and humanitarian ethics—and its relevance to the current coronavirus pandemic. (You can find his recent Slate op-ed, "Famine Is a Choice," here.) Yan received his Ph.D. in history from Stanford University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at The Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of the Knowledge at The University of Chicago.

Beth Lisick's debut novel, Edie on the Green Screen, is about a Bay Area Gen-X rebel, an "It Girl" in the late '90s who faces her own obsolescence in 2010s San Francisco. It is fundamentally about how we manage change, and the change our world has experienced since this story's inception only makes Edie and her travails more relevant to the moment. Join a chat about Lisick's self-described "crabby bartender," her myopia and troubled awakening, and the challenges of maintaining sanity as the pillars of your ego crumble. Lisick, co-founder of the Porchlight Storytelling Series, a wickedly entertaining live event that's lit up SF and other cities for 18 years, breathes new life into some of the city's best lost niches, characters, and scenes.

What can international literature teach us about our collective past, present and future in these chaotic times? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, producer and Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to Jesus Francisco Sierra, Mathangi Subramanian and Olga Zilberbourg about the appeal of international literature, its necessity in our increasingly connected world, and our favorite authors and books, including Akram Aylisli's Farewell, Aylis! (translated by Katherine E. Young), Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman, Wendy Guerra's Revolution Sunday (translated by Achy Obejas), and Yoko Ogawa's Revenge (translated by Stephen Snyder).  Over the course of the conversation, our guests briefly touched on a number of other books, including: Look at Him by Anna Starobinets, translated by Katherine E. YoungA Life at Noon by Talasbek Asemkulov, translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega  The Gypsy Goddess, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, and Exquisite Cadavers, all by Meena Kandasamy.Ghachar Ghochar, by Vivek ShanbhagMy Life in Trans Activism and The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. RevathiWomen Without Men by Sharhnush ParsipurLeonardo Padura: The Man Who Loved Dogs, Heretics, Havana Gold, Havana Black, Havana Blue, Havana RedGuillermo Cabrera Infante: Infante’s Inferno, Three Trapped TigersRoberto Bolano: By Night In Chile, The Third Reich, Amulet, The Skating Rink Celebrate International Day of the Book (April 23) by dipping into some of these titles!

For the better part of a decade, Lisa Hix, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, and GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks have been writing about antiques, vintage items, and collectibles at CollectorsWeekly.com. As a rule, these writers have tended to shy away from articles about the prices of objects or the celebrities who collect them, tried-and-true angles for journalists working the collecting beat. Instead, they’ve used antiques and collectibles as windows into our culture, each with its own surprising story to tell. In response, publications as varied as The New York Times, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and Elle have linked to articles at Collectors Weekly. In today’s episode of GrottoPod, Marks interviews his colleagues to discuss just a few of these stories—you can read hundreds more at Collectors Weekly.

Take the plunge into an episode on all things aquatic with Bonnie Tsui, whose new book, Why We Swim, dives into swimming history while offering poetic contemplation on the nature of this physical pursuit. The incredible characters in this book—including an Icelandic fisherman who defied death in the ice-cold sea, a Bay Area-based open water marathoner Kim Chambers, Olympic sprinting phenom Dara Torres, and practitioners of the Japanese nihon eiho tradition—provide the jumping off points for this discursive chat between Tsui and co-host Susie Gerhard.

Dignidad Literaria is a grassroots campaign for greater Latinx inclusion in the United States publishing industry that has grabbed the attention of activists and publishing executives alike. In this episode, Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to author and activist Roberto Lovato, one of the founders and driving forces behind Dignidad Literaria, about the spirit of the campaign, its goals, and its future. Lovato's new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Revolution and Redemption, comes out this fall.

Want to learn how to shape experience—or explore whole new worlds? Fact and fiction commingle and collide in today’s episode, the third of our special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice their craft. The first four covered character, dialogue, action, and humor; the two newest take on memoir and science fiction/fantasy. Each book also features a foreword by a Grotto writer. Today’s podcast is devoted to a conversation between two of those writers. Julie Lythcott-Haims, who wrote the foreword to Writing Memoir, and Dorothy Hearst, who wrote the foreword to Writing Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Lythcott-Haims is the author of two books, including the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience with racism and her journey toward self-acceptance. Hearst is the author of The Wolf Chronicles trilogy as well as other novels.

Gender wars, pandemics, and, of course, workaday clones: is it the daily news, or our shared future? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, co-producers Susan Gerhard, Daniel Pearce and Beth Winegarner plus special guest Andrew Braithwaite take on dark visions, with four of our favorite dystopian novels under discussion: Meg Elison's The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Naomi Alderman's The Power, and Ling Ma's Severance.

Cornelius Eady has published seven books of poetry, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, which won the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and Brutal Imagination, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in poetry. Running Man, a music-theatre piece Eady coauthored with jazz musician Diedre Murray, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1999 and received Obie awards for best musical score and lead actor in a musical. Eady is also the co-founder of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to the advancement of young African-American poets. In this episode of the GrottoPod, Cornelius talks with Cave Canem fellow and poet George Higgins in a wide-ranging conversation about improvisation, Cornelius’s new music project, the poet Sterling A. Brown, Jim Crow, recording in Elvis’s Memphis studio, Cave Canem, Rooted and Written and a photo shoot by the New York Times of the 32 black male writers of our time. 

This week we go inside Rooted & Written, a new Writers Grotto initiative by and for writers of color. Featured in this one-hour show: live poetry and prose readings from the first Rooted & Written workshop series in September, 2019, as well as discussions and reactions from the event. Rooted and Written's Melissa Pandika leads us on this behind-the-scenes tour, which also features an in-depth conversation between some of the members of the workshop's founding team -- Susan Ito, Aditi Malhotra, and Jesus Sierra -- talking about the inception and making of this community-empowerment program.