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The Hill Country Blues is, in effect for many of us, a form of early american music that is hiding in plain site. Take one part, fife and folk from the british isles,another part west african polyrhythms. Mix european balladeering with caribbean hypnotic rhythms. What begins as drum and fife music deep in the hills of northern Mississippi and Alabama blended with other blues from the region then heavily influenced the likes of Rock legends like Bo Diddley. We're re-discovering what Hill Country blues is all about. I'm joined by 2025 Massachusetts beat poet laureate Joshua Michael Stewart. Josh's Field Notes: A primer for you to engage the Hill Country Blues YOU SEE ME LIGHTNIN': LAST OF THE HILL COUNTRY BLUESMEN (Documentary) HILL COUNTRY BLUES Josh's (Spotify Playlist) the originators: RL BURNSIDE: see my jumper hanging on the line MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL: shake 'em on down JUNIOR KIMBROUGH: lonesome in my home ROBERT BELFOUR: my baby's gone Women pioneers: ROSA LEE HILL: rollin & tumblin JESSIE MAE HEMPHILL: streamline train Fife & drum: OTHAR TURNER: lay my burden down Youngins keepin the flame alive: RISING STAR FIFE AND DRUM BAND: Mississippi (sound like a pop band) NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS: meet me in the city (example of contemporary fife & drum) KENNY BROWN: you don't know my mind THE BLACK KEYS: coal black mattie (from Akron Ohio. Have a wide national following) HANK WILLIAMS JR: Georgia woman (influence on country music) OTIS TAYLOR: huckleberry blues (influence on new forms: Trance Blues) Current record labels that record & promote HCB Artists: FAT POSSUM RECORDS EASY EYE SOUND Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Massachusetts Review, Brilliant Corners, New Flash Fiction Review, and Best Small Fictions 2025. His latest book is Welcome Home, Russell Edson—a graphic novel & prose poem hybrid created in collaboration with illustrators Bret M. Herholz and Aaron J. Krolikowski.https://joshuamichaelstewartauthor.com What they say about JMS: There's a fearlessness in Joshua Michael Stewart's poetry—tough, tightly written narratives and monologues about living poor with broken people (some of whom are your closest relatives) in hard times. This heartfelt gritty work reminds me of the hardscrabble accounts of humanity in some of our best poets—the work of Ai, Bruce Weigel, and Linda McCarriston's landmark book, Eva-Marie. Stewart exercises the courage of truth telling and takes the revenge of real poetic craft. As Bruce Weigel says "Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what." Or as Stewart says, "Poets are the battered spouses of hope." You can't help but respect the maker of these streamlined vehicles, for his guts and his unsentimental, vivid poems. -Tony Hoagland
What does it take to keep your voice—and your purpose—strong through every season of life? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with my friend Bill Ratner, one of Hollywood's most recognized voice actors, best known as Flint from GI Joe. Bill's voice has carried him through radio, animation, and narration, but what stands out most is how he's used that same voice to serve others through storytelling, teaching, and grief counseling. Together, we explore the heart behind his work—from bringing animated heroes to life to standing on The Moth stage and helping people find healing through poetry. Bill shares lessons from his own journey, including losing both parents early, finding family in unexpected places, and discovering how creative expression can rebuild what life breaks down. We also reflect on 9/11, preparedness, and the quiet confidence that comes from trusting your training—whether you're a first responder, a performer, or just navigating the unknown. This conversation isn't just about performance; it's about presence. It's about using your story, your craft, and your compassion to keep moving forward—unstoppable, one voice at a time. Highlights: 00:31 – Hear the Flint voice and what it takes to bring animated characters to life. 06:57 – Learn why an uneven college path still led to a lifelong acting career. 11:50 – Understand how GI Joe became a team and a toy phenomenon that shaped culture. 15:58 – See how comics and cartoons boosted classroom literacy when used well. 17:06 – Pick up simple ways parents can spark reading through shared stories. 19:29 – Discover how early, honest conversations about death can model resilience. 24:09 – Learn to critique ads and media like a pro to sharpen your own performance. 36:19 – Follow the pivot from radio to voiceover and why specialization pays. 47:48 – Hear practical editing approaches and accessible tools that keep shows tight. 49:38 – Learn how The Moth builds storytelling chops through timed, judged practice. 55:21 – See how poetry—and poetry therapy—support grief work with students. 59:39 – Take notes on memoir writing, emotional management, and one-person shows. About the Guest: Bill Ratner is one of America's best known voice actors and author of poetry collections Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake (Slow Lightning Lit 2024,) Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press 2021,) To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press 2021,) and the non-fiction book Parenting For The Digital Age: The Truth Behind Media's Effect On Children and What To Do About It (Familius Books 2014.) He is a 9-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-time winner of Best of The Hollywood Fringe Extension Award for Solo Performance, Best of the Net Poetry Nominee 2023 (Lascaux Review,) and New Millennium "America One Year From Now" Writing Award Finalist. His writing appears in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio,) Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. He is the voice of "Flint" in the TV cartoon G.I. Joe, "Donnell Udina" in the computer game Mass Effect, the voice of Air Disasters on Smithsonian Channel, NewsNation, and network TV affiliates across the country. He is a committee chair for his union, SAG-AFTRA, teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District, and is a trained grief counsellor. Member: Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, National Storytelling Network • https://billratner.com • @billratner Ways to connect with Bill: https://soundcloud.com/bill-ratner https://www.instagram.com/billratner/ https://twitter.com/billratner https://www.threads.net/@billratner https://billratner.tumblr.com https://www.youtube.com/@billratner/videos https://www.facebook.com/billratner.voiceover.author https://bsky.app/profile/bilorat.bsky.social About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well on a gracious hello to you, wherever you may be, I am your host. Mike hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a voice actor, person, Bill Ratner, who you want to know who Bill Radnor is, go back and watch the old GI Joe cartoons and listen to the voice of Flint. Bill Ratner ** 01:42 All right. Lady Jay, you better get your battle gear on, because Cobra is on their way. And I can't bring up the Lacher threat weapon system. We got to get out of here. Yo, Joe, Michael Hingson ** 01:52 there you go. I rest my case Well, Bill, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Bill Ratner ** 02:00 We can't rest now. Michael, we've just begun. No, we've just begun. Michael Hingson ** 02:04 We got to keep going here. Well, I'm really glad that you're here. Bill is another person who we inveigled to get on unstoppable mindset with the help of Walden Hughes. And so that means we can talk about Walden all we want today. Bill just saying, oh goodness. And I got a lot to say. Let me tell you perfect, perfect. Bring it on. So we are really grateful to Walden, although I hope he's not listening. We don't want to give him a big head. But no, seriously, we're really grateful. Ah, good point. Bill Ratner ** 02:38 But his posture, oddly enough, is perfect. Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Well, there you go. What do you do? He practiced. Well, anyway, we're glad you're here. Tell us about the early bill, growing up and all that stuff. It's always fun to start a good beginning. Bill Ratner ** 02:54 Well, I was a very lucky little boy. I was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1947 to two lovely people, professionals, both with master's degree out at University of Chicago. My mother was a social worker. My father had an MBA in business. He was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. So I had the joy of living in a better home and living in a garden. Michael Hingson ** 03:21 My mother. How long were you in Des Moines? Bill Ratner ** 03:24 Five and a half years left before my sixth birthday. My dad got a fancy job at an ad agency in Minneapolis, and had a big brother named Pete and big handsome, curly haired boy with green eyes. And moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was was brought up there. Michael Hingson ** 03:45 Wow. So you went to school there and and chased the girls and all that stuff. Bill Ratner ** 03:54 I went to school there at Blake School for Boys in Hopkins, Minnesota. Couldn't chase the girls day school, but the girls we are allowed to dance with certainly not chase. Michael was at woodhue dancing school, the Northrop girls from Northrop girls school and the Blake boys were put together in eighth grade and taught the Cha Cha Cha, the waltz, the Charleston, and we danced together, and the girls wore white gloves, and we sniffed their perfume, and we all learned how to be lovers when we were 45 Michael Hingson ** 04:37 There you are. Well, as long as you learned at some point, that's a good start. Bill Ratner ** 04:44 It's a weird generation. Michael, Michael Hingson ** 04:46 I've been to Des Moines before. I was born in Chicago, but moved out to California when I was five, but I did some work with the National Federation of the Blind in the mid 19. 1970s 1976 into 1978 so spent time at the Iowa Commission for the Blind in Des Moines, which became a top agency for the Blind in well, the late 50s into the to the 60s and so on. So Bill Ratner ** 05:15 both my parents are from Chicago. My father from the south side of Chicago, 44th and Kenzie, which was a Irish, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Ukrainian neighborhood. And my mother from Glencoe, which was a middle class suburb above Northwestern University in Evanston. Michael Hingson ** 05:34 I Where were you born? 57th and union, north, south side, no, South Bill Ratner ** 05:42 57th union is that? Is that west of Kenzie? Michael Hingson ** 05:46 You know, I don't remember the geography well enough to know, but I know that it was, I think, Mount Sinai Hospital where I was born. But it was, it's, it's, it's a pretty tough neighborhood today. So I understand, Bill Ratner ** 06:00 yeah, yeah, my it was tough, then it's tough now, Michael Hingson ** 06:03 yeah, I think it's tougher, supposedly, than it was. But we lived there for five years, and then we we moved to California, and I remember some things about Chicago. I remember walking down to the local candy store most days, and had no problem doing that. My parents were told they should shut me away at a home somewhere, because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You guys are you're totally wrong. And they brought me up with that attitude. So, you Bill Ratner ** 06:32 know who said that the school says school so that Michael Hingson ** 06:35 doctors doctors when they discovered I was blind with the Bill Ratner ** 06:38 kid, goodness gracious, horrified. Michael Hingson ** 06:44 Well, my parents said absolutely not, and they brought me up, and they actually worked with other parents of premature kids who became blind, and when kindergarten started in for us in in the age of four, they actually had a special kindergarten class for blind kids at the Perry School, which is where I went. And so I did that for a year, learn braille and some other things. Then we moved to California, but yeah, and I go back to Chicago every so often. And when I do nowadays, they I one of my favorite places to migrate in Chicago is Garrett Popcorn. Bill Ratner ** 07:21 Ah, yes, with caramel corn, regular corn, the Michael Hingson ** 07:25 Chicago blend, which is a mixture, yeah, the Chicago blend is cheese corn, well, as it is with caramel corn, and they put much other mozzarella on it as well. It's really good. Bill Ratner ** 07:39 Yeah, so we're on the air. Michael, what do you call your what do you call your program? Here I am your new friend, and I can't even announce your program because I don't know Michael Hingson ** 07:48 the name, unstoppable mindset. This Bill Ratner ** 07:51 is unstoppable mindset. Michael Hingson ** 07:56 We're back. Well, we're back already. We're fast. So you, you, you moved off elsewhere, out of Des Moines and all that. And where did you go to college? Bill Ratner ** 08:09 Well, this is like, why did you this is, this is a bit like talking about the Vietnam War. Looking back on my college career is like looking back on the Vietnam War series, a series of delusions and defeats. By the time I the time i for college, by the time I was applying for college, I was an orphan, orphan, having been born to fabulous parents who died too young of natural causes. So my grades in high school were my mediocre. I couldn't get into the Ivy Leagues. I got into the big 10 schools. My stepmother said, you're going to Michigan State in East Lansing because your cousin Eddie became a successful realtor. And Michigan State was known as mu u it was the most successful, largest agriculture college and university in the country. Kids from South Asia, China, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America all over the world came to Michigan State to study agricultural sciences, children of rich farmers all over the world and middle class farmers all over the world, and a huge police science department. Part of the campus was fenced off, and the young cadets, 1819, 20 years old, would practice on the rest of the student body, uniformed with hats and all right, excuse me, young man, we're just going to get some pizza at eight o'clock on Friday night. Stand against your car. Hands in your car. I said, Are you guys practicing again? Shut up and spread your legs. So that was that was Michigan State, and even though both my parents had master's degrees, I just found all the diversions available in the 1960s to be too interesting, and was not invited. Return after my sophomore year, and in order to flunk out of a big 10 University, and they're fine universities, all of them, you have to be either really determined or not so smart, not really capable of doing that level of study in undergraduate school. And I'd like to think that I was determined. I used to show up for my exams with a little blue book, and the only thing I would write is due to lack of knowledge, I am unable to complete this exam, sign Bill ranter and get up early and hand it in and go off. And so what was, what was left for a young man like that was the theater I'd seen the great Zero Mostel when I was 14 years old and on stage live, he looked just like my father, and he was funny, and if I Were a rich man, and that's the grade zero must tell. Yeah, and it took about five, no, it took about six, seven years to percolate inside my bread and my brain. In high school, I didn't want to do theater. The cheerleaders and guys who I had didn't happen to be friends with or doing theater. I took my girlfriends to see plays, but when I was 21 I started acting, and I've been an actor ever since. I'm a committee chair on the screen actors guild in Hollywood and Screen Actors Guild AFTRA, and work as a voice actor and collect my pensions and God bless the union. Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Well, hey, as long as it works and you're making progress, you know you're still with it, right? Bill Ratner ** 11:53 That's the that's the point. There's no accounting for taste in my business. Michael, you work for a few different broadcast entities at my age. And it's, you know, it's younger people. It's 18 to 3418 years to 34 years old is the ideal demographic for advertisers, Ford, Motor Company, Dove soap, Betty, Crocker, cake mixes and cereals, every conceivable product that sold online or sold on television and radio. This is my this is my meat, and I don't work for religion. However, if a religious organization calls, I call and say, I I'm not, not qualified or not have my divinity degree in order to sell your church to the public? Michael Hingson ** 12:46 Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I can understand that. But you, you obviously do a lot, and as we talked about, you were Flint and GI Joe, which is kind of cool. Bill Ratner ** 13:01 Flynn GI Joe was very cool. Hasbro Corporation, which was based in Providence, Rhode Island, had a huge success with GI Joe, the figure. The figure was about 11 and a half inches tall, like a Barbie, and was at first, was introduced to the public after the Korean War. There is a comic book that was that was also published about GI Joe. He was an individual figure. He was a figure, a sort of mythic cartoon figure during World War Two, GI Joe, generic American soldier, fighting man and but the Vietnam war dragged on for a long time, and the American buying public or buying kids toys got tired of GI Joe, got tired of a military figure in their household and stopped buying. And when Nixon ended the Vietnam War, or allotted to finish in 1974 Hasbro was in the tank. It's got its stock was cheap, and executives are getting nervous. And then came the Great George Lucas in Star Wars, who shrank all these action figures down from 11 and a half inches to three and a half inches, and went to China and had Chinese game and toy makers make Star Wars toys, and began to earn billions and billions dollars. And so Hasbro said, let's turn GI Joe into into a team. And the team began with flint and Lady J and Scarlett and Duke and Destro and cover commander, and grew to 85 different characters, because Hasbro and the toy maker partners could create 85 different sets of toys and action figures. So I was actor in this show and had a good time, and also a purveyor of a billion dollar industry of American toys. And the good news about these toys is I was at a conference where we signed autographs the voice actors, and we have supper with fans and so on. And I was sitting next to a 30 year old kid and his parents. And this kid was so knowledgeable about pop culture and every conceivable children's show and animated show that had ever been on the screen or on television. I turned to his mother and sort of being a wise acre, said, So ma'am, how do you feel about your 30 year old still playing with GI Joe action figures? And she said, Well, he and I both teach English in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania school system, and last year, the literacy level of my ninth graders was 50% 50% of those kids could not read in ninth grade. So I asked the principal if I could borrow my son's GI Joe, action figures, comic books and VHS tapes, recordings of the shows from TV. And he said, Sure, whatever you want to try. And so she did, and she played the video tapes, and these kids were thrilled. They'd never seen a GI Joe cartoon in class before. Passed out the comic books, let him read comics. And then she said, Okay, you guys. And passed out notebooks and pens and pencils, and said, I want you guys to make up some some shows, some GI Joe shows. And so they said, Yeah, we're ready. All right, Cobra, you better get into the barber shop, because the barber bill is no longer there and the fire engines are in the way. And wait a minute, there's a dog in the street. And so they're making this up, using their imagination, doing their schoolwork, by coming up with scenarios, imaginary fam fan fiction for GI Joe and she raised the literacy level in her classroom by 50% that year, by the end of that year, so, so that was the only story that I've ever heard about the sort of the efficacy of GI Joe, other than, you know, kids play with them. Do they? Are they shooting each other all the time? I certainly hope not. I hope not. Are they using the action figures? Do they strip their guns off and put them in a little, you know, stub over by the side and and have them do physical battle with each other, or have them hump the woods, or have them climb the stairs, or have them search the trees. Who knows what kids do? Same with same with girls and and Barbies. Barbie has been a source of fun and creativity for lots of girls, and the source of of worry and bother to a lot of parents as Michael Hingson ** 17:54 well. Well, at the same time, though, when kids start to react and relate to some of these things. It's, it's pretty cool. I mean, look what's happened with the whole Harry Potter movement and craze. Harry Potter has probably done more in the last 20 or 25 years to promote reading for kids than most anything else, and Bill Ratner ** 18:17 that's because it's such a good series of books. I read them to my daughters, yeah. And the quality of writing. She was a brilliant writer, not only just the stories and the storytelling, which is fun to watch in the movies, and you know, it's great for a parent to read. If there are any parents listening, I don't care how old your kids are. I don't care if they're 15. Offer to read to them. The 15 year old might, of course, say mom, but anybody younger than that might say either, all right, fine, which is, which means you better do it or read, read a book. To me, sure, it's fun for the parent, fun for the kid, and it makes the child a completely different kind of thinker and worker and earner. Michael Hingson ** 19:05 Well, also the people who they got to read the books for the recordings Stephen Fry and in the US here, Jim Dale did such an incredible job as well. I've, I've read the whole Harry Potter series more than once, because I just enjoy them, and I enjoy listening to the the voices. They do such a good job. Yeah. And of course, for me, one of the interesting stories that I know about Jim Dale reading Harry Potter was since it was published by Scholastic he was actually scheduled to do a reading from one of the Harry from the new Harry Potter book that was coming out in 2001 on September 11, he was going to be at Scholastic reading. And of course, that didn't happen because of of everything that did occur. So I don't know whether I'm. I'm assuming at some point a little bit later, he did, but still he was scheduled to be there and read. But it they are there. They've done so much to help promote reading, and a lot of those kinds of cartoons and so on. Have done some of that, which is, which is pretty good. So it's good to, you know, to see that continue to happen. Well, so you've written several books on poetry and so on, and I know that you you've mentioned more than once grief and loss. How come those words keep coming up? Bill Ratner ** 20:40 Well, I had an unusual childhood. Again. I mentioned earlier how, what a lucky kid I was. My parents were happy, educated, good people, not abusers. You know, I don't have a I don't have horror stories to tell about my mother or my father, until my mother grew sick with breast cancer and and it took about a year and a half or two years to die when I was seven years old. The good news is, because she was a sensitive, educated social worker, as she was actually dying, she arranged a death counseling session with me and my older brother and the Unitarian minister who was also a death counselor, and whom she was seeing to talk about, you know, what it was like to be dying of breast cancer with two young kids. And at this session, which was sort of surprised me, I was second grade, came home from school. In the living room was my mother and my brother looking a little nervous, and Dr Carl storm from the Unitarian Church, and she said, you know, Dr storm from church, but he's also my therapist. And we talk about my illness and how I feel, and we talk about how much I love you boys, and talk about how I worry about Daddy. And this is what one does when one is in crisis. That was a moment that was not traumatic for me. It's a moment I recalled hundreds of times, and one that has been a guiding light through my life. My mother's death was very difficult for my older brother, who was 13 who grew up in World War Two without without my father, it was just him and my mother when he was off in the Pacific fighting in World War Two. And then I was born after the war. And the loss of a mother in a family is like the bottom dropping out of a family. But luckily, my dad met a woman he worked with a highly placed advertising executive, which was unusual for a female in the 1950s and she became our stepmother a year later, and we had some very lovely, warm family years with her extended family and our extended family and all of us together until my brother got sick, came down with kidney disease a couple of years before kidney dialysis was invented, and a couple of years before kidney transplants were done, died at 19. Had been the captain of the swimming team at our high school, but did a year in college out in California and died on Halloween of 1960 my father was 51 years old. His eldest son had died. He had lost his wife six years earlier. He was working too hard in the advertising industry, successful man and dropped out of a heart attack 14th birthday. Gosh, I found him unconscious on the floor of our master bathroom in our house. So my life changed. I My life has taught me many, many things. It's taught me how the defense system works in trauma. It's taught me the resilience of a child. It's taught me the kindness of strangers. It's taught me the sadness of loss. Michael Hingson ** 24:09 Well, you, you seem to come through all of it pretty well. Well, thank you. A question behind that, just an observation, but, but you do seem to, you know, obviously, cope with all of it and do pretty well. So you, you've always liked to be involved in acting and so on. How did you actually end up deciding to be a voice actor? Bill Ratner ** 24:39 Well, my dad, after he was managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines for Meredith publishing, got offered a fancy job as executive vice president of the flower and mix division for Campbell within advertising and later at General Mills Corporation. From Betty Crocker brand, and would bring me to work all the time, and would sit with me, and we'd watch the wonderful old westerns that were on prime time television, rawhide and Gunsmoke and the Virginian and sure Michael Hingson ** 25:15 and all those. Yeah, during Bill Ratner ** 25:17 the commercials, my father would make fun of the commercials. Oh, look at that guy. And number one, son, that's lousy acting. Number two, listen to that copy. It's the dumbest ad copy I've ever seen. The jingles and and then he would say, No, that's a good commercial, right there. And he wasn't always negative. He would he was just a good critic of advertising. So at a very young age, starting, you know, when we watch television, I think the first television ever, he bought us when I was five years old, I was around one of the most educated, active, funny, animated television critics I could hope to have in my life as a 56789, 1011, 12 year old. And so when I was 12, I became one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of radio stations with my friends John Waterhouse and John Barstow and Steve gray and Bill Connors in South Minneapolis. I named my five watt night kit am transmitter after my sixth grade teacher, Bob close this is wclo stereo radio. And when I was in sixth grade, I built myself a switch box, and I had a turntable and I had an intercom, and I wired my house for sound, as did all the other boys in the in the B, O, R, S, and that's brotherhood of radio stations. And we were guests on each other's shows, and we were obsessed, and we would go to the shopping malls whenever a local DJ was making an appearance and torture him and ask him dumb questions and listen obsessively to American am radio. And at the time for am radio, not FM like today, or internet on your little radio tuner, all the big old grandma and grandpa radios, the wooden ones, were AM, for amplitude modulated. You could get stations at night, once the sun went down and the later it got, the ionosphere would lift and the am radio signals would bounce higher and farther. And in Minneapolis, at age six and seven, I was able to to listen to stations out of Mexico and Texas and Chicago, and was absolutely fascinated with with what was being put out. And I would, I would switch my brother when I was about eight years old, gave me a transistor radio, which I hid under my bed covers. And at night, would turn on and listen for, who knows, hours at a time, and just tuning the dial and tuning the dial from country to rock and roll to hit parade to news to commercials to to agric agriculture reports to cow crossings in Kansas and grain harvesting and cheese making in Wisconsin, and on and on and on that made up the great medium of radio that was handing its power and its business over to television, just as I was growing As a child. Fast, fascinating transition Michael Hingson ** 28:18 and well, but as it was transitioning, how did that affect you? Bill Ratner ** 28:26 It made television the romantic, exciting, dynamic medium. It made radio seem a little limited and antiquated, and although I listened for environment and wasn't able to drag a television set under my covers. Yeah, and television became memorable with with everything from actual world war two battle footage being shown because there wasn't enough programming to 1930s Warner Brothers gangster movies with James Cagney, Edward G Michael Hingson ** 29:01 Robinson and yeah Bill Ratner ** 29:02 to all the sitcoms, Leave It to Beaver and television cartoons and on and on and on. And the most memorable elements to me were the personalities, and some of whom were invisible. Five years old, I was watching a Kids program after school, after kindergarten. We'll be back with more funny puppets, marionettes after this message and the first words that came on from an invisible voice of this D baritone voice, this commercial message will be 60 seconds long, Chrysler Dodge for 1954 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I watched hypnotized, hypnotized as a 1953 dodge drove across the screen with a happy family of four waving out the window. And at the end of the commercial, I ran into the kitchen said, Mom, mom, I know what a minute. Is, and it was said, it had suddenly come into my brain in one of those very rare and memorable moments in a person's life where your brain actually speaks to you in its own private language and says, Here is something very new and very true, that 60 seconds is in fact a minute. When someone says, See you in five minutes, they mean five times that, five times as long as that. Chrysler commercial, five times 60. That's 300 seconds. And she said, Did you learn it that that on T in kindergarten? And I said, No, I learned it from kangaroo Bob on TV, his announcer, oh, kangaroo Bob, no, but this guy was invisible. And so at five years of age, I was aware of the existence of the practice of the sound, of the magic of the seemingly unlimited access to facts, figures, products, brand names that these voices had and would say on the air in This sort of majestic, patriarchal way, Michael Hingson ** 31:21 and just think 20 years later, then you had James Earl Jones, Bill Ratner ** 31:26 the great dame. James Earl Jones, father was a star on stage at that time the 1950s James Earl Jones came of age in the 60s and became Broadway and off Broadway star. Michael Hingson ** 31:38 I got to see him in Othello. He was playing Othello. What a powerful performance. It was Bill Ratner ** 31:43 wonderful performer. Yeah, yeah. I got to see him as Big Daddy in Canada, Hot Tin Roof, ah, live and in person, he got front row seats for me and my family. Michael Hingson ** 31:53 Yeah, we weren't in the front row, but we saw it. We saw it on on Broadway, Bill Ratner ** 31:58 the closest I ever got to James Earl Jones. He and I had the same voice over agent, woman named Rita vinari of southern Barth and benare company. And I came into the agency to audition for Doritos, and I hear this magnificent voice coming from behind a closed voiceover booth, saying, with a with a Spanish accent, Doritos. I thought that's James Earl Jones. Why is he saying burritos? And he came out, and he bowed to me, nodded and smiled, and I said, hello and and the agent probably in the booth and shut the door. And she said, I said, that was James Earl Jones. What a voice. What she said, Oh, he's such a nice man. And she said, but I couldn't. I was too embarrassed. I was too afraid to stop him from saying, Doritos. And it turns out he didn't get the gig. So it is some other voice actor got it because he didn't say, had he said Doritos with the agent froze it froze up. That was as close as I ever got to did you get the gig? Oh goodness no, Michael Hingson ** 33:01 no, you didn't, huh? Oh, well, well, yeah. I mean, it was a very, it was, it was wonderful. It was James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer played Iago. Oh, goodness, oh, I know. What a what a combination. Well, so you, you did a lot of voiceover stuff. What did you do regarding radio moving forward? Or did you just go completely out of that and you were in TV? Or did you have any opportunity Bill Ratner ** 33:33 for me to go back at age 15, my brother and father, who were big supporters of my radio. My dad would read my W, C, l, o, newsletter and need an initial, an excellent journalism son and my brother would bring his teenage friends up. He'd play the elderly brothers, man, you got an Elvis record, and I did. And you know, they were, they were big supporters for me as a 13 year old, but when I turned 14, and had lost my brother and my father, I lost my enthusiasm and put all of my radio equipment in a box intended to play with it later. Never, ever, ever did again. And when I was about 30 years old and I'd done years of acting in the theater, having a great time doing fun plays and small theaters in Minneapolis and South Dakota and and Oakland, California and San Francisco. I needed money, so I looked in the want ads and saw a job for telephone sales, and I thought, Well, I used to love the telephone. I used to make phony phone calls to people all the time. Used to call funeral homes. Hi Carson, funeral I help you. Yes, I'm calling to tell you that you have a you have a dark green slate tile. Roof, isn't that correct? Yes. Well, there's, there's a corpse on your roof. Lady for goodness sake, bring it down and we laugh and we record it and and so I thought, Well, gee, I used to have a lot of fun with the phone. And so I called the number of telephone sales and got hired to sell magazine subscriptions and dinner tickets to Union dinners and all kinds of things. And then I saw a new job at a radio station, suburban radio station out in Walnut Creek, California, a lovely Metro BART train ride. And so I got on the BART train, rode out there and walked in for the interview, and was told I was going to be selling small advertising packages on radio for the station on the phone. And so I called barber shops and beauty shops and gas stations in the area, and one guy picked up the phone and said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you on the radio right now? And I said, No, I'm just I'm in the sales room. Well, maybe you should be. And he slams the phone on me. He didn't want to talk to me anymore. It wasn't interested in buying advertising. I thought, gee. And I told somebody at the station, and they said, Well, you want to be in the radio? And he went, Yeah, I was on the radio when I was 13. And it just so happened that an older fellow was retiring from the 10am to 2pm slot. K I S King, kiss 99 and KD FM, Pittsburgh, California. And it was a beautiful music station. It was a music station. Remember, old enough will remember music that used to play in elevators that was like violin music, the Percy faith orchestra playing a Rolling Stone song here in the elevator. Yes, well, that's exactly what we played. And it would have been harder to get a job at the local rock stations because, you know, they were popular places. And so I applied for the job, and Michael Hingson ** 37:06 could have lost your voice a lot sooner, and it would have been a lot harder if you had had to do Wolfman Jack. But that's another story. Bill Ratner ** 37:13 Yeah, I used to listen to Wolf Man Jack. I worked in a studio in Hollywood. He became a studio. Yeah, big time. Michael Hingson ** 37:22 Anyway, so you you got to work at the muzack station, got Bill Ratner ** 37:27 to work at the muzack station, and I was moving to Los Angeles to go to a bigger market, to attempt to penetrate a bigger broadcast market. And one of the sales guys, a very nice guy named Ralph pizzella said, Well, when you get to La you should study with a friend of mine down to pie Troy, he teaches voiceovers. I said, What are voice overs? He said, You know that CVS Pharmacy commercial just carted up and did 75 tags, available in San Fernando, available in San Clemente, available in Los Angeles, available in Pasadena. And I said, Yeah. He said, Well, you didn't get paid any extra. You got paid your $165 a week. The guy who did that commercial for the ad agency got paid probably 300 bucks, plus extra for the tags, that's voiceovers. And I thought, why? There's an idea, what a concept. So he gave me the name and number of old friend acquaintance of his who he'd known in radio, named Don DiPietro, alias Johnny rabbit, who worked for the Dick Clark organization, had a big rock and roll station there. He'd come to LA was doing voiceovers and teaching voiceover classes in a little second story storefront out of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. So I signed up for his class, and he was an experienced guy, and he liked me, and we all had fun, and I realized I was beginning to study like an actor at 1818, who goes to New York or goes to Los Angeles or Chicago or Atlanta or St Louis to act in the big theaters, and starts acting classes and realizes, oh my goodness, these people are truly professionals. I don't know how to do what they do. And so for six years, I took voice over classes, probably 4050, nights a year, and from disc jockeys, from ex show hosts, from actors, from animated cartoon voices, and put enough time in to get a degree in neurology in medical school. And worked my way up in radio in Los Angeles and had a morning show, a lovely show with a wonderful news man named Phil Reed, and we talked about things and reviewed movies and and played a lot of music. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm earning three times the money in voiceovers as I am on the radio, and I have to get up at 430 in the morning to be on the radio. Uh, and a wonderful guy who was Johnny Carson's staff announcer named Jack angel said, You're not still on radio, are you? And I said, Well, yeah, I'm working in the morning. And Ka big, get out of there. Man, quit. Quit. And I thought, well, how can I quit? I've always wanted to be a radio announcer. And then there was another wonderful guy on the old am station, kmpc, sweet Dick Whittington. Whittington, right? And he said at a seminar that I went to at a union voice over training class, when you wake up at four in the morning and you swing your legs over the bed and your shoes hit the floor, and you put your head in your hands, and you say to yourself, I don't want to do this anymore. That's when you quit radio. Well, that hadn't happened to me. I was just getting up early to write some comedy segments and on and on and on, and then I was driving around town all day doing auditions and rented an ex girlfriend's second bedroom so that I could nap by myself during the day, when I had an hour in and I would as I would fall asleep, I'd picture myself every single day I'm in a dark voiceover studio, a microphone Is before me, a music stand is before the microphone, and on it is a piece of paper with advertising copy on it. On the other side of the large piece of glass of the recording booth are three individuals, my employers, I begin to read, and somehow the text leaps off the page, streams into my eyes, letter for letter, word for word, into a part of my back brain that I don't understand and can't describe. It is processed in my semi conscious mind with the help of voice over training and hope and faith, and comes out my mouth, goes into the microphone, is recorded in the digital recorder, and those three men, like little monkeys, lean forward and say, Wow, how do you do that? That was my daily creative visualization. Michael, that was my daily fantasy. And I had learned that from from Dale Carnegie, and I had learned that from Olympic athletes on NBC TV in the 60s and 70s, when the announcer would say, this young man you're seeing practicing his high jump is actually standing there. He's standing stationary, and the bouncing of the head is he's actually rehearsing in his mind running and running and leaping over the seven feet two inch bar and falling into the sawdust. And now he's doing it again, and you could just barely see the man nodding his head on camera at the exact rhythm that he would be running the 25 yards toward the high bar and leaping, and he raised his head up during the imaginary lead that he was visualizing, and then he actually jumped the seven foot two inches. That's how I learned about creative visualization from NBC sports on TV. Michael Hingson ** 43:23 Channel Four in Los Angeles. There you go. Well, so you you broke into voice over, and that's what you did. Bill Ratner ** 43:38 That's what I did, darn it, I ain't stopping now, there's a wonderful old actor named Bill Irwin. There two Bill Irwin's one is a younger actor in his 50s or 60s, a brilliant actor from Broadway to film and TV. There's an older William Irwin. They also named Bill Irwin, who's probably in his 90s now. And I went to a premiere of a film, and he was always showing up in these films as The senile stock broker who answers the phone upside down, or the senile board member who always asks inappropriate questions. And I went up to him and I said, you know, I see you in everything, man. I'm 85 years old. Some friends and associates of mine tell me I should slow down. I only got cast in movies and TV when I was 65 I ain't slowing down. If I tried to slow down at 85 I'd have to stop That's my philosophy. My hero is the great Don Pardo, the late great Michael Hingson ** 44:42 for Saturday Night Live and Jeopardy Bill Ratner ** 44:45 lives starring Bill Murray, Gilder Radner, and Michael Hingson ** 44:49 he died for Jeopardy before that, Bill Ratner ** 44:52 yeah, died at 92 with I picture him, whether it probably not, with a microphone and. His hand in his in his soundproof booth, in his in his garage, and I believe he lived in Arizona, although the show was aired and taped in New York, New York, right where he worked for for decades as a successful announcer. So that's the story. Michael Hingson ** 45:16 Michael. Well, you know, I miss, very frankly, some of the the the days of radio back in the 60s and 70s and so on. We had, in LA what you mentioned, Dick Whittington, Dick whittinghill on kmpc, Gary Owens, you know, so many people who were such wonderful announcers and doing some wonderful things, and radio just isn't the same anymore. It's gone. It's Bill Ratner ** 45:47 gone to Tiktok and YouTube. And the truth is, I'm not gonna whine about Tiktok or YouTube, because some of the most creative moments on camera are being done on Tiktok and YouTube by young quote influencers who hire themselves out to advertisers, everything from lipstick. You know, Speaker 1 ** 46:09 when I went to a party last night was just wild and but this makeup look, watch me apply this lip remover and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, I have no lip. Bill Ratner ** 46:20 You know, these are the people with the voices. These are the new voices. And then, of course, the faces. And so I would really advise before, before people who, in fact, use the internet. If you use the internet, you can't complain if you use the internet, if you go to Facebook or Instagram, or you get collect your email or Google, this or that, which most of us do, it's handy. You can't complain about tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. You can't complain about tick tock or YouTube, because it's what the younger generation is using, and it's what the younger generation advertisers and advertising executives and creators and musicians and actors are using to parade before us, as Gary Owens did, as Marlon Brando did, as Sarah Bernhardt did in the 19 so as all as you do, Michael, you're a parader. You're the head of the parade. You've been in on your own float for years. I read your your bio. I don't even know why you want to waste a minute talking to me for goodness sakes. Michael Hingson ** 47:26 You know, the one thing about podcasts that I like over radio, and I did radio at kuci for seven years when I was in school, what I really like about podcasts is they're not and this is also would be true for Tiktok and YouTube. Primarily Tiktok, I would would say it isn't as structured. So if we don't finish in 60 minutes, and we finish in 61 minutes, no one's gonna shoot us. Bill Ratner ** 47:53 Well, I beg to differ with you. Now. I'm gonna start a fight with you. Michael, yeah, we need conflict in this script. Is that it The Tick Tock is very structured. Six. No, Michael Hingson ** 48:03 no, I understand that. I'm talking about podcasts, Bill Ratner ** 48:07 though, but there's a problem. We gotta Tone It Up. We gotta pick it up. We gotta there's a lot of and I listen to what are otherwise really bright, wonderful personalities on screen, celebrities who have podcasts and the car sucks, and then I had meatballs for dinner, haha. And you know what my wife said? Why? You know? And there's just too much of that. And, Michael Hingson ** 48:32 oh, I understand, yeah. I mean, it's like, like anything, but I'm just saying that's one of the reasons I love podcasting. So it's my way of continuing what I used to do in radio and having a lot of fun doing it Bill Ratner ** 48:43 all right, let me ask you. Let me ask you a technical and editorial question. Let me ask you an artistic question. An artist, can you edit this podcast? Yeah. Are you? Do you plan to Nope. Michael Hingson ** 48:56 I think conversations are conversations, but there is a but, I mean, Bill Ratner ** 49:01 there have been starts and stops and I answer a question, and there's a long pause, and then, yeah, we can do you edit that stuff Michael Hingson ** 49:08 out. We do, we do, edit some of that out. And I have somebody that that that does a lot of it, because I'm doing more podcasts, and also I travel and speak, but I can edit. There's a program called Reaper, which is really a very sophisticated Bill Ratner ** 49:26 close up spaces. You Michael Hingson ** 49:28 can close up spaces with it, yes, but the neat thing about Reaper is that somebody has written scripts to make it incredibly accessible for blind people using screen readers. Bill Ratner ** 49:40 What does it do? What does it do? Give me the elevator pitch. Michael Hingson ** 49:46 You've seen some of the the programs that people use, like computer vision and other things to do editing of videos and so on. Yeah. Bill Ratner ** 49:55 Yeah. Even Apple. Apple edit. What is it called? Apple? Garage Band. No, that's audio. What's that Michael Hingson ** 50:03 audio? Oh, Bill Ratner ** 50:06 quick time is quick Michael Hingson ** 50:07 time. But whether it's video or audio, the point is that Reaper allows me to do all of that. I can edit audio. I can insert, I can remove pauses. I can do anything with Reaper that anyone else can do editing audio, because it's been made completely accessible. Bill Ratner ** 50:27 That's great. That's good. That's nice. Oh, it is. It's cool. Michael Hingson ** 50:31 So so if I want, I can edit this and just have my questions and then silence when you're talking. Bill Ratner ** 50:38 That might be best. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Bill Ratner, Michael Hingson ** 50:46 yep, exactly, exactly. Now you have won the moth stories. Slam, what? Tell me about my story. Slam, you've won it nine times. Bill Ratner ** 51:00 The Moth was started by a writer, a novelist who had lived in the South and moved to New York City, successful novelist named George Dawes green. And the inception of the moth, which many people listening are familiar with from the Moth Radio Hour. It was, I believe, either late 90s or early 2000s when he'd been in New York for a while and was was publishing as a fiction writer, and threw a party, and decided, instead of going to one of these dumb, boring parties or the same drinks being served and same cigarettes being smoked out in the veranda and the same orders. I'm going to ask people to bring a five minute story, a personal story, nature, a true story. You don't have to have one to get into the party, but I encourage you to. And so you know, the 3040, 50 people showed up, many of whom had stories, and they had a few drinks, and they had hors d'oeuvres. And then he said, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. It's time for and then I picked names out of a hat, and person after person after person stood up in a very unusual setting, which was almost never done at parties. You How often do you see that happen? Suddenly, the room falls silent, and someone with permission being having been asked by the host to tell a personal story, some funny, some tragic, some complex, some embarrassing, some racy, some wild, some action filled. And afterward, the feedback he got from his friends was, this is the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life. And someone said, you need to do this. And he said, Well, you people left a lot of cigarette butts and beer cans around my apartment. And they said, well, let's do it at a coffee shop. Let's do it at a church basement. So slowly but surely, the moth storytelling, story slams, which were designed after the old poetry slams in the 50s and 60s, where they were judged contests like, like a dance contest. Everybody's familiar with dance contests? Well, there were, then came poetry contests with people singing and, you know, and singing and really energetically, really reading. There then came storytelling contests with people standing on a stage before a silent audience, telling a hopefully interesting, riveting story, beginning middle, end in five minutes. And so a coffee house was found. A monthly calendar was set up. Then came the internet. Then it was so popular standing room only that they had to open yet another and another, and today, some 20 years later, 20 some years later, from Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California to Minneapolis, Minnesota to New York City to Los Angeles. There are moth story slams available on online for you to schedule yourself to go live and in person at the moth.org as in the moth with wings. Friend of mine, I was in New York. He said, You can't believe it. This writer guy, a writer friend of mine who I had read, kind of an avant garde, strange, funny writer was was hosting something called the moth in New York, and we were texting each other. He said, Well, I want to go. The theme was show business. I was going to talk to my Uncle Bobby, who was the bell boy. And I Love Lucy. I'll tell a story. And I texted him that day. He said, Oh man, I'm so sorry. I had the day wrong. It's next week. Next week, I'm going to be back home. And so he said, Well, I think there's a moth in Los Angeles. So about 15 years ago, I searched it down and what? Went to a small Korean barbecue that had a tiny little stage that originally was for Korean musicians, and it was now being used for everything from stand up comedy to evenings of rock and roll to now moth storytelling once a month. And I think the theme was first time. And so I got up and told a silly story and didn't win first prize. They have judges that volunteer judges a table of three judges scoring, you like, at a swim meet or a track beat or, you know, and our gymnastics meet. So this is all sort of familiar territory for everybody, except it's storytelling and not high jumping or pull ups. And I kept going back. I was addicted to it. I would write a story and I'd memorize it, and I'd show up and try to make it four minutes and 50 seconds and try to make it sound like I was really telling a story and not reading from a script. And wish I wasn't, because I would throw the script away, and I knew the stories well enough. And then they created a radio show. And then I began to win slams and compete in the grand slams. And then I started submitting these 750 word, you know, two and a half page stories. Literary magazines got a few published and found a whole new way to spend my time and not make much Michael Hingson ** 56:25 money. Then you went into poetry. Bill Ratner ** 56:29 Then I got so bored with my prose writing that I took a poetry course from a wonderful guy in LA called Jack grapes, who had been an actor and a football player and come to Hollywood and did some TV, episodics and and some some episodic TV, and taught poetry. It was a poet in the schools, and I took his class of adults and got a poem published. And thought, wait a minute, these aren't even 750 words. They're like 75 words. I mean, you could write a 10,000 word poem if you want, but some people have, yeah, and it was complex, and there was so much to read and so much to learn and so much that was interesting and odd. And a daughter of a friend of mine is a poet, said, Mommy, are you going to read me one of those little word movies before I go to sleep? Michael Hingson ** 57:23 A little word movie, word movie out of the Bill Ratner ** 57:27 mouths of babes. Yeah, and so, so and I perform. You know, last night, I was in Orange County at a organization called ugly mug Cafe, and a bunch of us poets read from an anthology that was published, and we sold our books, and heard other young poets who were absolutely marvelous and and it's, you know, it's not for everybody, but it's one of the things I do. Michael Hingson ** 57:54 Well, you sent me pictures of book covers, so they're going to be in the show notes. And I hope people will will go out and get them Bill Ratner ** 58:01 cool. One of the one of the things that I did with poetry, in addition to wanting to get published and wanting to read before people, is wanting to see if there is a way. Because poetry was, was very satisfying, emotionally to me, intellectually very challenging and satisfying at times. And emotionally challenging and very satisfying at times, writing about things personal, writing about nature, writing about friends, writing about stories that I received some training from the National Association for poetry therapy. Poetry therapy is being used like art therapy, right? And have conducted some sessions and and participated in many and ended up working with eighth graders of kids who had lost someone to death in the past year of their lives. This is before covid in the public schools in Los Angeles. And so there's a lot of that kind of work that is being done by constable people, by writers, by poets, by playwrights, Michael Hingson ** 59:09 and you became a grief counselor, Bill Ratner ** 59:13 yes, and don't do that full time, because I do voiceovers full time, right? Write poetry and a grand. Am an active grandparent, but I do the occasional poetry session around around grief poetry. Michael Hingson ** 59:31 So you're a grandparent, so you've had kids and all that. Yes, sir, well, that's is your wife still with us? Yes? Bill Ratner ** 59:40 Oh, great, yeah, she's an artist and an art educator. Well, that Michael Hingson ** 59:46 so the two of you can criticize each other's works, then, just Bill Ratner ** 59:52 saying, we're actually pretty kind to each other. I Yeah, we have a lot of we have a lot of outside criticism. Them. So, yeah, you don't need to do it internally. We don't rely on it. What do you think of this although, although, more than occasionally, each of us will say, What do you think of this poem, honey? Or what do you think of this painting, honey? And my the favorite, favorite thing that my wife says that always thrills me and makes me very happy to be with her is, I'll come down and she's beginning a new work of a new piece of art for an exhibition somewhere. I'll say, what? Tell me about what's, what's going on with that, and she'll go, you know, I have no idea, but it'll tell me what to do. Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 Yeah, it's, it's like a lot of authors talk about the fact that their characters write the stories right, which, which makes a lot of sense. So with all that you've done, are you writing a memoir? By any chance, I Bill Ratner ** 1:00:46 am writing a memoir, and writing has been interesting. I've been doing it for many years. I got it was my graduate thesis from University of California Riverside Palm Desert. Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57 My wife was a UC Riverside graduate. Oh, hi. Well, they Bill Ratner ** 1:01:01 have a low residency program where you go for 10 days in January, 10 days in June. The rest of it's online, which a lot of universities are doing, low residency programs for people who work and I got an MFA in creative writing nonfiction, had a book called parenting for the digital age, the truth about media's effect on children. And was halfway through it, the publisher liked it, but they said you got to double the length. So I went back to school to try to figure out how to double the length. And was was able to do it, and decided to move on to personal memoir and personal storytelling, such as goes on at the moth but a little more personal than that. Some of the material that I was reading in the memoir section of a bookstore was very, very personal and was very helpful to read about people who've gone through particular issues in their childhood. Mine not being physical abuse or sexual abuse, mine being death and loss, which is different. And so that became a focus of my graduate thesis, and many people were urging me to write a memoir. Someone said, you need to do a one man show. So I entered the Hollywood fringe and did a one man show and got good reviews and had a good time and did another one man show the next year and and so on. So But writing memoir as anybody knows, and they're probably listeners who are either taking memoir courses online or who may be actively writing memoirs or short memoir pieces, as everybody knows it, can put you through moods from absolutely ecstatic, oh my gosh, I got this done. I got this story told, and someone liked it, to oh my gosh, I'm so depressed I don't understand why. Oh, wait a minute, I was writing about such and such today. Yeah. So that's the challenge for the memoir is for the personal storyteller, it's also, you know, and it's more of a challenge than it is for the reader, unless it's bad writing and the reader can't stand that. For me as a reader, I'm fascinated by people's difficult stories, if they're well Michael Hingson ** 1:03:24 told well, I know that when in 2002 I was advised to write a book about the World Trade Center experiences and all, and it took eight years to kind of pull it all together. And then I met a woman who actually I collaborated with, Susie Florey, and we wrote thunder dog. And her agent became my agent, who loved the proposal that we sent and actually got a contract within a week. So thunder dog came out in 2011 was a New York Times bestseller, and very blessed by that, and we're working toward the day that it will become a movie still, but it'll happen. And then I wrote a children's version of it, well, not a children's version of the book, but a children's book about me growing up in Roselle, growing up the guide dog who was with me in the World Trade Center, and that's been on Amazon. We self published it. Then last year, we published a new book called Live like a guide dog, which is all about controlling fear and teaching people lessons that I learned prior to September 11. That helped me focus and remain calm. Bill Ratner ** 1:04:23 What happened to you on September 11, Michael Hingson ** 1:04:27 I was in the World Trade Center. I worked on the 78th floor of Tower One. Bill Ratner ** 1:04:32 And what happened? I mean, what happened to you? Michael Hingson ** 1:04:36 Um, nothing that day. I mean, well, I got out. How did you get out? Down the stairs? That was the only way to go. So, so the real story is not doing it, but why it worked. And the real issue is that I spent a lot of time when I first went into the World Trade Center, learning all I could about what to do in an emergency, talking to police, port authorities. Security people, emergency preparedness people, and also just walking around the world trade center and learning the whole place, because I ran an office for a company, and I wasn't going to rely on someone else to, like, lead me around if we're going to go to lunch somewhere and take people out before we negotiated contracts. So I needed to know all of that, and I learned all I could, also realizing that if there ever was an emergency, I might be the only one in the office, or we might be in an area where people couldn't read the signs to know what to do anyway. And so I had to take the responsibility of learning all that, which I did. And then when the planes hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building, we get we had some guests in the office. Got them out, and then another colleague, who was in from our corporate office, and I and my guide dog, Roselle, went to the stairs, and we started down. And Bill Ratner ** 1:05:54 so, so what floor did the plane strike? Michael Hingson ** 1:05:58 It struck and the NOR and the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99 so I just say 96 okay, and you were 20 floors down, 78 floors 78 so we were 18 floors below, and Bill Ratner ** 1:06:09 at the moment of impact, what did you think? Michael Hingson ** 1:06:13 Had no idea we heard a muffled kind of explosion, because the plane hit on the other side of the building, 18 floors above us. There was no way to know what was going on. Did you feel? Did you feel? Oh, the building literally tipped, probably about 20 feet. It kept tipping. And then we actually said goodbye to each other, and then the building came back upright. And then we went, Bill Ratner ** 1:06:34 really you so you thought you were going to die? Michael Hingson ** 1:06:38 David, my colleague who was with me, as I said, he was from our California office, and he was there to help with some seminars we were going to be doing. We actually were saying goodbye to each other because we thought we were about to take a 78 floor plunge to the street, when the building stopped tipping and it came back. Designed to do that by the architect. It was designed to do that, which is the point, the point. Bill Ratner ** 1:07:02 Goodness, gracious. And then did you know how to get to the stairway? Michael Hingson ** 1:07:04 Oh, absolutely. And did you do it with your friend? Yeah, the first thing we did, the first thing we did is I got him to get we had some guests, and I said, get him to the stairs. Don't let him take the elevators, because I knew he had seen fire above us, but that's all we knew. And but I said, don't take the elevators. Don't let them take elevators. Get them to the stairs and then come back and we'll leave. So he did all that, and then he came back, and we went to the stairs and started down. Bill Ratner ** 1:07:33 Wow. Could you smell anything? Michael Hingson ** 1:07:36 We smelled burning jet fuel fumes on the way down. And that's how we figured out an airplane must have hit the building, but we had no idea what happened. We didn't know what happened until the until both towers had collapsed, and I actually talked to my wife, and she's the one who told us how to aircraft have been crashed into the towers, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth, at that time, was still missing over Pennsylvania. Wow. So you'll have to go pick up a copy of thunder dog. Goodness. Good. Thunder dog. The name of the book is Thunder dog, and the book I wrote last year is called Live like a guide dog. It's le
Today, we welcome writer Jen Julian to discuss her book Red Rabbit Ghost. Jen Julian is a writer from Eastern North Carolina. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and an MFA in Fiction from UNC Greensboro. Her short story collection, Earthly Delights and Other Apocalypses, was the winner of the Press 53 Fiction Prize and was published in 2018, and her debut novel, Red Rabbit Ghost, is out now through Orbit/Redhook, 2025. Recent work has appeared in Gulf Coast Magazine, The Harvard Advocate, swamp pink, hex, Bourbon Penn, Third Coast Magazine, Wigleaf, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among other places. She has won numerous awards, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net, and had her work recognized as notable in The Best American Short Stories 2023. Recommended in this episode: Alisa Alering's Smothermoss and Rebecca Baum's forthcoming The Brood NEWS: We have a Bookshop.org shop now! Find all of our favorite books at our shop–and help out small businesses. UP NEXT: We discuss Red Rabbit Ghost in more detail. Buy our books here, including our newest Toil and Trouble.
Alice Kaltman on Alice's Big Book of Mistakes Guest: Alice Kaltman Host: Molly Southgate Episode Title: Laughing at Life's Stumbles: Alice Kaltman on Mistakes, Growth, and Writing Honestly
A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the "sad grownups" a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children, a college professor dying from cancer, two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery, a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people, searching fervently for liberation, understanding, and even happiness, wherever and however they might be found. Amy Stuber's writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. She's the recipient of the Missouri Review's 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction, winner of the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. Her work received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIV, appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2023. She has a PhD in English, has taught college writing, and worked in online education for many years. Recommended Books: Rebecca Lee, Bobcat Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead Sonya Walger, Lion Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the "sad grownups" a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children, a college professor dying from cancer, two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery, a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people, searching fervently for liberation, understanding, and even happiness, wherever and however they might be found. Amy Stuber's writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. She's the recipient of the Missouri Review's 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction, winner of the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. Her work received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIV, appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2023. She has a PhD in English, has taught college writing, and worked in online education for many years. Recommended Books: Rebecca Lee, Bobcat Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead Sonya Walger, Lion Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
A neighborhood of picturesque content-creation houses perched on too-green lawns in a California desert; a meandering stampede of unleashed dogs on the streets of San Francisco; a skein of snow geese alighting in a state park in Missouri; an uncanny fundraising auction at an upscale suburban-DC prep school. Inhabiting these worlds of disconnection and dislocation are the "sad grownups" a middle-aged queer couple arguing over whether to have children, a college professor dying from cancer, two recent high school graduates plotting a robbery, a sixty-year-old counselor at a boys' summer camp sheltering herself from the realities of life-all connected more closely to the landscapes around them than to other people, searching fervently for liberation, understanding, and even happiness, wherever and however they might be found. Amy Stuber's writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. She's the recipient of the Missouri Review's 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction, winner of the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. Her work received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIV, appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2023. She has a PhD in English, has taught college writing, and worked in online education for many years. Recommended Books: Rebecca Lee, Bobcat Joy Williams, The Quick and the Dead Sonya Walger, Lion Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Song 1: “Twenty Wishes” (John V. Modaff, w/ lead guitar and mandolin by Dan Modaff)Poem 1: “You Weary Listening To Their First World Complaints” by Mikki Aronoff. Published in Gooseberry Pie. Mikki is featured this year in Best Microfiction 2025 and Best Small Fictions 2025.Fiction excerpt: Scene from the novel The Unmasking by Lynn C. Miller, published by UNM Press, 2020. www.lynncmiller.comFeed the Cat Break: “Bittersweet” (JVM.)Poem 2: “Fat Boy Poems” by Kelly Yenser, whose most recent collection is Walking Uphill at Noon. Kelly publishes fiction and poetry.Song 2: “Jesus & Satan Take a Nap,” (John V. Modaff.)Episode artwork by Lynda MillerTheme & Incidental Music by John V. Modaff, BMIRecorded in Albuquerque NM and Morehead KY.Produced at The Creek StudioNEXT UP on Episode 51: Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. Thank You to our listeners all over the world. Please tell your friends about the podcast. Lynn & John
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna's struggle to outrun her past. It's like she's stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025) peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you've left behind. Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Her short story “Solitária” was selected as a runner-up for the Kenyon Review's 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and appears in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue. Other short fiction appears in Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review, among others. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2020, and supported by the Vermont Studio Center. Recommended Books: Charlotte McConaughy, Migrations Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna's struggle to outrun her past. It's like she's stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025) peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you've left behind. Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Her short story “Solitária” was selected as a runner-up for the Kenyon Review's 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and appears in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue. Other short fiction appears in Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review, among others. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2020, and supported by the Vermont Studio Center. Recommended Books: Charlotte McConaughy, Migrations Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna's struggle to outrun her past. It's like she's stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025) peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you've left behind. Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Her short story “Solitária” was selected as a runner-up for the Kenyon Review's 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and appears in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue. Other short fiction appears in Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review, among others. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2020, and supported by the Vermont Studio Center. Recommended Books: Charlotte McConaughy, Migrations Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She's the author of two chapbooks and one poetry collection—This Strange and Wonderful Existence, Take Me Home, and Lightning is a Mother. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Find more information at: https://bethanyjarmulwriter.wordpress.com/ As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem that includes an unexpected vow. Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem about the happiest place on earth. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST! LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired February 11th, 2025) featuring poet Tina Barry on her spellbinding new book, I Tell Henrietta. Kristin Flynn, the artist who created the intense, expressive cover and interior art for I Tell Henrietta also joins us on the show. Visit:Tina Barry at Tina Barry writer and Kristin Flynn at https://www.kristinflynn.art Praise for I Tell Henrietta"Tina Barry's astonishing collection I Tell Henrietta explores thresholds between the dream world and wakefulness and between poetry and prose... " ---- Mary Biddinger, author of Department of Elegy"Tina Barry's startling and eclectic I Tell Henrietta pushes the hybrid aesthetic envelope forward....Suffused with astute observation, memory and crystalline imagery, Barry's collection is a must-read for those who love small works containing multitudes"---- Nathan Leslie, editor of Best Small Fictions, author of Hurry Up and RelaxTina Barry is a textile designer turned poet, short-fiction writer and editor. She is the author of I Tell Henrietta (Aim Higher, Inc., 2024) with art by Kristin Flynn, Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2019 and 2016).Her writing can be found in Rattle, Verse Daily, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, SWWIM, The Indianapolis Review, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, and elsewhere. Tina has five Pushcart Prize nominations and several Best of the Net and Best Microfiction nods. She teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com. Kristin Flynn earned a BFA in fashion design from Parsons School of Design, an AAS degree in Textiles from Rochester Institute of Technology, and studied painting at Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited in numerous group and solo shows, including the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, Stone Ridge Center for the Arts, Jane Street Gallery Studio 89, Brick Gallery, Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art, and Bard College.
In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me." Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before. Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center's Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually. Maria's fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature's The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me." Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before. Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center's Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually. Maria's fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature's The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me." Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before. Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center's Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually. Maria's fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature's The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me." Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before. Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center's Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually. Maria's fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature's The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry
Send us a textWriter & Co-Founder of Saltwater Coffee — Suhail's stories appear in Shenandoah, 3:AM, Passages North, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions twice. In 2022, he made the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist and Notable in Best American Food Writing.Click below for the full story.https://www.saltwaternyc.comhttps://www.ssmandani.comCheck out the website: www.drinkingonthejob.com for great past episodes. Everyone from Iron Chefs, winemakers, journalist and more.
Living just west of the Continental Divide, in the traditional homeland of Shoshone and Bannock peoples, sid sibo has won the Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award, and has work selected for the Best Small Fictions 2022 anthology, along with excerpts highlighted in the craft book Reader Centered Writing. Bison Books published a debut novel, The Scent of Distant Family, in 2024. Published stories can be found in the charity anthology Maine Character Energy, honoring victims of the 2023 mass shooting in Maine, as well as Fourth River (Tributaries), The Hopper, Orca, The Literary Hatchet, Cutthroat, Cardinal Sins and Brilliant Flash Fiction, among others. Positive news about people and planet can be found on the Acoustic Burro blog at sidsibo.com. Intro Music by Moby Gratis: https://mobygratis.com/ Outro Music by Dan-o-Songs: https://danosongs.com/ Host Mark Stevens www.writermarkstevens.com Watch these interviews on YouTube (and subscribe)! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBP81nfbKnDRjs-Nar9LNe20138AiPyP8&si=yl_seG5S4soyk216
John Brantingham and Jane Edberg published a unique and delightful book entitled MYDEAD. John's beautiful poetry is accompanied by Jane's vivid art. Neither an illustration nor and illumination, Jane's art adds additional meaning - perhaps even another perspective - to John's words. Their unique collaboration provided the ground for this spirited conversation.John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks' first poet laureate. His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines including Writer's Almanac, The North America Review, The Journal, Tears in the Fence, and Confrontation. He has been nominated for ten Pushcart Prizes and won a spot in The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022 and was a semifinalist in The Best Small Fictions 2018. He has written twenty-two books of poetry and fiction including The L.A. Fiction Anthology(Red Hen Press), Crossing the High Sierra (https://www.chollaneedles.com/), and California Continuum: Migrations and Amalgamations (http://www.pelekinesis.com/catalog.html) co-written with Grant Hier. His newest work is My Dead, created with the artist Jane Edberg. He lives with his wife and dog in a little house in Jamestown, New York where he spends most of his time in the basement where he's set up a writing studio next to a washing machine. He teaches all around the country at festivals and workshops and at Collins Correctional Facility.Find out more about him and buy his books at https://www.johnbrantingham.com/Chief Editor at The Journal of Radical Wonder: https://medium.com/the-journal-of-radical-wonder.Jane Bio: Jane Edberg holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Davis with an emphasis on photography and performance art. She teaches writing at California State University at Monterey Bay. She is a writing coach and offers writing workshops. She serves as the arts editor and a contributing editor at The Journal of Radical Wonder. Her writing is featured in the books, Death, and its Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Beautiful Lessons: Field Notes from The Death Dialogues Project; My Dead; BAM 42 Stories (to be released in 2024); and in many journals, including Cholla Needles, and Gyroscope Review. She is a Community of Writers alumna (Squaw Valley). Jane has an illustrated memoir titled The Fine Art of Grieving to be published in 2024 by Linen Presshttps://www.janeedberg.com/https://www.thefineartofgrieving.com/INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thefineartofgrieving/
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, among many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Like Happiness has been listed as a best books of the year so far by Elle, Bookshop.org, Libby. Recommended Books: Raquel Gutierrez, Brown Neon Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa Catherine Lacey, Pew Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, among many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Like Happiness has been listed as a best books of the year so far by Elle, Bookshop.org, Libby. Recommended Books: Raquel Gutierrez, Brown Neon Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa Catherine Lacey, Pew Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, among many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Like Happiness has been listed as a best books of the year so far by Elle, Bookshop.org, Libby. Recommended Books: Raquel Gutierrez, Brown Neon Mohammed El-Kurd, Rifqa Catherine Lacey, Pew Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
In this new series What's the TEA? host Jason Blitman gets the inside scoop on new books–authors are tasked with describing their books with 3 words using the letters T, E, and A. This first episode features Shannon Bowring talking to Jason about her new book Where the Forest Meets the River. Shannon Bowring has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net, and was recently selected in Best Small Fictions. She holds an MFA from University of Southern Maine Stonecoast and currently resides in Maine. The Road to Dalton is her first novel. Gays Reading is sponsored by Audible. Get a FREE 30-day trial by visiting audibletrial.com/gaysreadingSupport the showWATCH!https://youtube.com/@gaysreadingBOOKS!Check out the list of books discussed on each episode on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/gaysreading MERCH!Purchase your Gays Reading podcast merchandise HERE! https://gaysreading.myspreadshop.com/ FOLLOW!@gaysreading | @jasonblitman CONTACT!hello@gaysreading.com
Joanna Pearson discusses her debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark, as well as branding, homesteading online, Tressie McMillan Cottom, the weirdness of Threads and Goodreads, eerie vibes, using murdered-girl tropes while subverting them, unresolved creepiness in the novel, Rachel Monroe fandom, and more! Joanna Pearson's debut novel, BRIGHT AND TENDER DARK (Bloomsbury, 2024), is an Indie Next Pick and an Amazon Editors' Pick. Her second story collection, NOW YOU KNOW IT ALL (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), was chosen by Edward P. Jones for the 2021 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and named a finalist for the Virginia Literary Awards. Her first story collection, EVERY HUMAN LOVE (Acre Books, 2019) was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction, and the Foreword INDIES Awards. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, The Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and many other places. Joanna has received fellowships supporting her fiction from MacDowell, VCCA, South Arts, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the North Carolina Arts Council/Durham Arts Council. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and an MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Originally from western North Carolina, she now lives with her husband and two daughters near Chapel Hill, where she works as a psychiatrist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today on Midwest Weird: “Negation” by Jessica Klimesh. Jessica Klimesh (she/her) is a US-based writer and editor whose creative work has been published or is forthcoming in Cleaver, Flash Frog, trampset, Atticus Review, Brink, Club Plum Literary, Ghost Parachute, and Bending Genres, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net. Learn more at www.jessicaklimesh.com.Find a full transcript for this episode at www.midwestweird.com. _____Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions. We're the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.Submit your own work to Midwest Weird at www.midwestweird.com.
Grant Faulkner, the former Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and the co-host of the podcast, Write-minded. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. His stories have appeared in The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. His new book is The Art of Brevity, published by the University of New Mexico Press. Grant joins Barbara Demarco-Barrett to talk about The Art of Brevity and why writing good flash fiction can be difficult to get right, the role of dialogue in flash, what you want to leave a reader with at the end of a story, how writing flash fiction influences his longer prose, the most common mistake he encounters in flash, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We've stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You'll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on March 1, 2024) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
A new 'Craftwork' episode, about how to write flash fiction. My guest is author and editor Tommy Dean. Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. His writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Twitter Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Victoria Buitron is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, was the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022's Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf's Top 50. In 2023, she received the Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. She is currently the Competitions Editor for Harbor Review. She had the joy and privilege of selecting the nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the 2023 Connecticut Literary Anthology and will be returning in 2024 as the project's nonfiction editor. In winter 2024, she will be working with Tin House to complete her poetry book and will later attend a writing residency by Sundress Publications in Knoxville, Tennessee. Because she embraces creative chaos, she is also working on a novel about love, violence, and betrayal. We discussed her creative life between Spanish and English, her memoir, and how her mood sometimes dictates which language she will reading and writing in. Music by Oleksi Holubiev & Monument Music
Nicole "NK" Kelly is a writer, etc, based in Los Angeles and Mexico City. She received an MFA from the Programs In Writing at UC Irvine after writing a book about slutty girls who like to travel. For several years she was the programming director at a feminist art space in LA, and produced and hosted bitchface, an experimental audio series about art and power.A former Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and AIR Edit Mode Fellow, her fiction has appeared in Zzyzzva, Fiction Southeast, and Best Small Fictions, and her work has been heard on Afropunk's Solution Sessions, Black Mountain Radio, VICE's Source Material, and The Heart. Her audio memoir Divesting From People Pleasing was called “a shockingly intimate portrait of what it means to be alive in a human body.”She loves queer comedy, cultural criticism, and letting Black girls be weird and vulnerable, and easily finds humor and absurdity in life's most difficult rites of passage. A colonel's daughter who spent her childhood on military bases in the American south, she was never ever permitted to speak with a Southern accent. Join the upcoming Live Virtual Networking Workshop + Mixer. Make new connections and never wonder if you're networking the right way ever again. Learn more about The Werking Writer Schoolthewerkingwriter.com
Victoria Buitron joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the power of flash and lyric creative nonfiction, when chronology doesn't work, accountability partners and writing mentors, the trauma of being a women in the world, knowing our writing will be there for us even when we stop for a while, and her memoir in essays A Body Across Two Hemispheres. Help shape upcoming Let's Talk Memoir content - a brief survey: https://forms.gle/ueQVu8YyaHNKui2Z9 Also in this episode: -writer work-life balance -considering autofiction and fiction -lit mags like Brevity and The CItron Review Books mentioned in this episode: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy My Mother's Funeral by Adriana Paramo Into Thin Air by John Krakauer Victoria Buitron is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, SmokeLong en Español, Southwest Review, The Acentos Review, and other literary magazines. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022's Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf's Top 50. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, is the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner and available wherever books are sold. Connect with Victoria: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vic_toriawrites/ Website: https://victoriabuitron.com – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer's Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/ Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers
Adriana Elizabeth Herrera Bowen loves horses more than people and lives for junior rodeo competitions. For the first time, the All-Around Cowgirl saddle is within her reach. Except her old gray mare, Pearl, isn't as fast as she used to be, and another competitor has her eye on the same prize. So Adriana needs a faster horse. Is she willing to jeopardize her friendships and vet school dreams to win? Not if her parents have anything to say about it. Buy Breaking Pattern from Inlandia Books and Barnes and Noble BIO: Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and is spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her short stories have been anthologized in Rural Writers of Color (EastOver Press 2023), Made in L.A. Volume 4 and 5 (Resonant Earth 2022 and 2023), Ramblings & Reflections: SouthWest Writers Winning Words Anthology, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers' Workshop Festival 2022 and her young adult novel Breaking Pattern is forthcoming from Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. You can read her other work at http://tishareichle.com/
What is a Rodeo Queen, and does it come with a golden lasso like Wonder Woman gets? Tune in to get the answer to this hard-hitting question and more as we take a deep dive into the world of Breaking Pattern. Buy Breaking Pattern from Inlandia Books and Barnes and Noble BIO: Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and is spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her short stories have been anthologized in Rural Writers of Color (EastOver Press 2023), Made in L.A. Volume 4 and 5 (Resonant Earth 2022 and 2023), Ramblings & Reflections: SouthWest Writers Winning Words Anthology, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers' Workshop Festival 2022 and her young adult novel Breaking Pattern is forthcoming from Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. You can read her other work at http://tishareichle.com/
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch and Moon City Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story melissallanesbrownlee.com. We discussed the progressive disappearance of Hawaiian as a consequence of colonization, the role played by pidgin in Hawaiian society, how it is a refuge from the dominant, American culture, and a stigma at the same time, how English is both a colonizing language and the only mean to tell the truth about Hawaii to a worldwide audience.
Notes and Links to Ursula Villarreal-Moura's Work For Episode 207, Pete welcomes Ursula Villarreal-Moura, and the two discuss, among other topics, her early San Antonio Spurs' education, her omnivorous reading habits, particularly in her childhood, a formative writing contest and reading event, her transitioning from poetry to short stories and flash fiction, and salient themes addressed in her collection, including mental health issues, trauma, delusion, ideas of identity and self-perception, and imagination and story. Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square, Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Ursula Villarreal-Moura's Website Buy Math for the Self-Crippling Interview in Tri-Quarterly At about 2:20, Ursula shares her love of the Spurs and the ways in which the Spurs culture was infused in her schooling At about 5:00, Ursula talks about the ways in which she became an omnivorous reader, and how a Judy Blume book really flipped the reading switch At about 7:10, Ursula describes her first writing as “exotic,” including stories set in boarding schools At about 10:00, Ursula describes being “receptive” and maybe not as “expressive” in Spanish, and ideas of representations, including as an “Ursula” At about 13:30, Ursula talks about the “beautiful readings” she witnessed from Sandra Cisneros and the big impact At about 15:30, Ursula talks about the beginnings of her writing and writing career, including a memorable writing contest that she placed well in at a young age At about 20:55, Ursula responds to Pete's questions about genre and how Ursula sees her work in terms of flash fiction, short stories, poetry, etc. At about 23:45, Ursula describes short stories, including from Denis Johnson, Roberto Bolaño, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sandra Cisneros, Donald Barthelme, Tobias Wolff, and Amy Bloom that inspired her At about 26:00, Ursula At about 27:00, Ursula speaks to the idea that her work, like that of many women, is more likely assumed to be autobiographical At about 27:50, Ursula answers Pete's questions about the chronology of her book, and she describes how much of it was written in the library At about 29:35, Pete cites the collection's first story in asking Ursula about ideas of truth in storytelling and imagination At about 31:00, Ursula and Pete shout out past guest Oscar Hokeah's Calling for a Blanket Dance and an example of things being “true but unreal” At about 32:35, Pete cites an example of a story having to do with self-discovery and personas, and Ursula expands upon these ideas At about 33:55, The two reflect on the power of a story about mental health and Sophia Loren At about 36:20, Ursula reflects on meanings for the book's title, and Pete cites a Cherry Valance example from The Outsiders in connection to ruminations on seemingly life-changing experiences At about 39:30, Ursula reflects on the narrator's disappointment and despair after a nonchalant comment from a possible boyfriend At about 41:50, Ursula describes the ways in which therapy is featured in the book and differing ways in which it can be delivered in the real world At about 43:00, Ursula expands on items of “totems” At about 45:00, Pete highlights an important quote about “the power of suggestion” and Ursula describes how real-life events and ideas of “delusion” inspired a story in her collection At about 45:52-Ursula's cat makes an appearance! At about 47:10, Ideas of trauma affecting adult experiences and relationships is discussed At about 50:55, The two reflect on ideas of observers and how Ursula skillfully uses second and third-person At about 52:25, Ursula shares exciting new projects At about 54:50, Ursula gives out contact info and social media info and recommends Bookshop.org, Powell's, and McNally-Jackson as places to buy her book You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 208 with Sowmya Krishnamurthy, a music journalist and pop culture expert whose work can be found in publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, XXL, and Time. Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion comes out on October 10, which is the date the book will be published! Also, look out for a late October/early November print conversation with me and Sowmya that will be in Chicago Review of Books. Again, this episode will air on October 10.
Notes and Links to David Mura's Work For Episode 206, Pete welcomes David Mura, and the two discuss, among other topics, his early reading and writing and the ways in which his parents' imprisonment as Japanese-Americans affected their and his views of being an American, his more expansive reading as he matured that changed world views, the prescience and fullness and profundity of James Baldwin's writing, ideas of shame/guilt and white supremacy, the stories told about ”great” white men, and blind spots-unintentional and intentional-that have led to racism in policing, schooling, medical care, and so many other parts of American life. David Mura's memoirs, poems, essays, plays and performances have won wide critical praise and numerous awards. Their topics range from contemporary Japan to the legacy of the internment camps and the history of Japanese Americans to critical explorations of an increasingly diverse America. He gives presentations at educational institutions, businesses and other organizations throughout the country. David's Website David's Wikipedia Page Buy The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself Review for The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself from The Star Tribune At about 1:45, David discusses the ways in which Japanese-American concentration camps, language and ethnicity shaped his reading and family's life At about 6:30, David discusses the ways in which he now looks back at work that was trumpeted as about “great (white) Americans” that he read in the past, including a sharper view of Abraham Lincoln At about 11:00, David talks about the ways in which white Americans have failed to learn from past wrongdoing At about 13:00, David expands upon a meaningful and emblematic meeting between James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Robert F. Kennedy, and others At about 14:55, David describes the ways in which James Baldwin was prophetic in his depiction of the moral/spiritual emptiness of white racism At about 16:55, David responds to Pete's question about texts and quotes and passages and writers that thrilled and challenged him-he quotes (verbatim!) from an excerpt of a profound text from Baldwin-"The Devil Finds Work" At about 21:45, David recounts racist and transformative experiences that shaped James Baldwin's world view At about 24:35, David reflects on ideas of forgiveness and how Baldwin's views on Black and white people and myths and stories were shaped by experiences in New Jersey, the American South, and elsewhere At about 28:25, Pete details a memorable example of hypocrisy involving Tom Tancredo and past guest Gustavo Arellano At about 29:30, Pete asks David to further explain shame/guilt as it mentioned with regards to white racism in David's book At about 30:35, David reads a telling passage from his book related to the above question, and he references Tom Cotton and Ron DeSantis as two of many examples of denial of racism and white backlash At about 33:15, David continues talking about shame and guilt and likens reactions to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' work At about 37:00, David deals with the hypocrisy and white supremacy shown by Ron DeSantis' takedown of AP African-American history and ideas of white validation At about 40:00, Pete wonders if David sees any improvements and hope coming with younger generations and a more inclusive story; he brings up the ways in which Ruby Bridges' story is emblematic of conservative, Moms for Liberty backlash At about 44:45, The two discuss an infamous photo featuring Jerry Jones, and Pete cites a stunning story from the book involving Kiese Laymon and a racist incident with a future politician At about 47:30, David provides historical background on “blackness” and “whiteness” and the ways in which the white elite has promoted these ideas to working-class whites At about 49:40, Pete talks about ideas of reading and empathy, and he asks David about burdens and learning and working against ignorance At about 52:30, David tells a story of learning about different perspectives from Alexs Pate and from Black artists “laughing with pain” from DWB (Driving While Black) experiences At about 55:20, David relates a telling anecdote related to the movie and novelization of Amistad and the ways in which these two works of art showed disparate understandings of race and racism At about 1:00:30, David describes the potency of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart At about 1:03:15, Pete cites a moving specific and universal story from Douglas Kearney in the book, and David homes in on ideas of “what American means” to students of color in the Minneapolis area and connections to Black men killed by police and systemic racism At about 1:09:40, David cites medical racism and ignorant and regressive ideas cited in a 2016 study of white medical students; he cites connections At about 1:12:05, Pete and David wonder about the NRA's lack of action in support of the Black Panthers and Philando Castile At about 1:13:40, Moon Palace, Birchwood Books, and Magers & Quinn as good places to buy his book You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 207 with Ursula Villarreal-Moura, the author of Math for the Self-Crippling, Gold Line Press fiction contest winner; writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015 The episode will air on October 3.
Themes: Community, Small Business, Vulnerability, Empowerment, Bookstores, Self Exploration, Sacred Space, Relationships The first of a series of couples interviewsAlex Schneider is a designer and bookstore owner living outside Philadelphia with his wife and two rescue dogs. When he isn't reading or looking at memes he's contemplating his innumerable high school mishaps.Christina Rosso-Schneider is a writer and bookstore owner living outside of Philadelphia with her two rescue pups and bearded husband. In 2016, Christina received their MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from Arcadia University. She is the author of CREOLE CONJURE (Maudlin House, 2021) and SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications, 2020). Their writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. For more information: http://christina-rosso.com or on Twitter @Rosso_Christina.They both co-own the the independent bookstore, A Novel Idea, located in the East Passyunk neighborhood of Philadelphia - where they create & foster a space of diversity, inclusivity & engagement … helping their customers fall in love with books, for the first time or the millionth.A Novel Idea Bookstore in Philadelphia Their GoFundMe campaign HEREIn this interview we cover these powerful topics and more:- The independent bookstore - along with other types of small businesses - as a source of safety, idea sharing, community & conscious connection- The boundaries needed in running a small business as a couple- The fragility and endangerment of small businesses that create unique and important community & in-person connection- Asking for help from others and our community - how difficult it can be AND the empowerment and transformation that this practice generates- Owning our own needs and resisting a comparison of our needs to others' needs & difficulty- Giving back to & investing in those those who support what brings us deeper joy, connection, exploration, and community... & much more*SUMMER SALE Get 20% OFF your coaching journey by mentioning the Empowered Connection PodcastReach Out to Empowered Connection podcast host Damodar for your FREE Discovery Session - and start your 2023 journey of self & relational discovery & empowerment... for both individuals + couples who are ready to explore, illuminate + empower their lives & their relationships*Follow Damodar on Instagram for Daily Self Growth & Relationship Tips + Tools:@empoweredconnection.me*Upcoming Events:Empower + Evolve Yoga Teacher Training - Dive deep into all aspects of your yoga in conscious community and transform & empower your life - starts this September in Philadelphia, PA at Palo Santo Yoga!Divine Self Men's Circle more info here once a month in-person in Philadelphia & once a month online from around the world - click to learn more*Sponsored by Bhava Wellness & EMPOWERED CONNECTION
Guest host Erin Slaughter talks with Emma Bolden about leaving academia, editing for Screen Door Review, asexuality, southern influence, writing across genres and modes, her memoir THE TIGER AND THE CAGE (Soft Skull Press, 2022), fractal form, writing about other people, writing about embodied trauma, confessional literature, endometriosis, and more.Emma Bolden is the author of The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis, House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, her work has appeared in The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and journals including Mississippi Review, Seneca Review, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah.Erin Slaughter is the author of A Manual for How to Love Us, The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. She is the managing editor of Autofocus.Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Hi there, Today I am so excited to be arts calling Jan Stinchcomb! (janstinchcomb.com) About our Guest: Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Verushka (JournalStone, 2023), The Kelping (Unnerving), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, SmokeLong Quarterly and Menacing Hedge, among other places. A Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and The Best Small Fictions 2018 & 2021. She lives in Southern California with her family and is an associate fiction editor for Atticus Review. Find her at janstinchcomb.com or on Twitter @janstinchcomb. Verushka, now available from JournalStone: https://journalstone.com/bookstore/verushka/ About the novel: Someone is stalking Devon Woodward. They've been there all along, since before she was born, going back to her grandmother's time. Waiting for her. Watching. And the people who should be able to help, her own parents, are making everything worse. Devon is right to be afraid. Verushka, both victim and villain, is a half-human witch from the other side of the world. She will do anything to get what she needs from the Woodward family, but she may have finally met her match in young Devon. Will family conflict sabotage Devon's efforts to escape and put her in even greater danger? In this multi-perspective novel that is part fairy tale and part horror story, a young girl fights to uncover the truth and save her own life. Thanks this amazing conversation, Jan! All the best! -- Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent: much love, j https://artscalling.com/welcome/
Vincent Rendoni and Dion O'Reilly engage in a wide-ranging and lively discussion of life and poetry. He reads Monica Rico's "Poem in Consideration of My Death" from an anthology that, due to its representation of Latino life, influenced Vincent's decision to be a poet, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4, LatinNext. Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which was the winner of the 2022 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets. Previously, he was a 2022 Jack Straw Cultural Center Fellow and winner of the 2021 Blue Earth Review Flash Fiction Contest. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. His work appears in The Sycamore Review, The Texas Review, The Quarterly West, Another Chicago Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Author Stories - Author Interviews, Writing Advice, Book Reviews
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has published two books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He's also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project's Writer's Council, Lit Camp's Advisory Council, and Aspen Words' Creative Council. He's also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded.
Episode 173 Notes and Links to Rachel Heng's Work On Episode 173 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Rachel Heng, and the two discuss, among other things, her love of reading and her early relationships with the written word and multilingualism, her research and the family stories concerning Singapore's transformation and its history of ethnic diversity and kampong culture, the book's “complications” concerning the ways in which “The Great Reclamation” played in on micro- and macro levels for the people of Singapore, her beautiful portrayals of change, grief, and guilt, and her inspirations for writing the book. Rachel Heng is the author of the novels The Great Reclamation (Riverhead, 2023) and Suicide Club (Henry Holt, 2018), which has been translated into ten languages worldwide and won the Gladstone Library Writer-In-Residence Award. Rachel's short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's Quarterly, One Story, Kenyon Review, and has been recognized by anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best New Singaporean Short Stories. She was recently longlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award, “the world's richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story.” Her non-fiction has been listed among Best American Essays' Notable Essays and published in Al Jazeera, Guernica, BOMB Magazine, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Fine Arts Work Center and the National Arts Council of Singapore. Rachel received her MFA in Fiction and Playwriting from the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin, and her BA in Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University. Buy The Great Reclamation Rachel Heng's Webpage Rachel Speaks about The Great Reclamation on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon Oprah Daily Cover Reveal and Article about The Great Reclamation At about 7:50, Rachel discusses her mindset and emotions as her book tour begins with a March 28 event with Kirstin Chen and the book is published on March 28 At about 8:55, Pete asks about Rachel's early relationship with the written word and multilingualism; Rachel talks about a heavy diet of British writers in school in Singapore and her route to becoming a writer At about 12:40, Rachel discusses seeds for the book and research done for the book, including how the book came from a “curiosity to revisit that time” often referenced by older family members At about 14:35, Rachel speaks to the ethnic makeup of Singapore, and how British colonialism affected Singapore's ethnic history At about 16:40, Pete reads the book's epigraph and Rachel explains its connection to themes from the book, including Singapore's look to the future At about 19:10, The two characterize the Lee family At about 20:25, Pete cites the wonderful opening line of the book and asks Rachel about the meanings and personal significance of the kampong At about 23:55, Rachel expands upon ideas of the “kampong spirit” and the communal “national fabric” of Singapore for the duration of the book and now At about 25:40, Pete wonders if there any connection between recent pushes toward MAGA and her book's subject matter At about 26:50, Pete and Rachel discuss Uncle's character and sympathies for him At about 27:25, The two lay out early events in the book with Ah Boon and family locating ethereal islands and Rachel gives background on how POV and a key throughline inspired the beginning of the book At about 30:00, Pete talks about the slow inevitability of change in the book and asks Rachel about Pa's parenting style At about 31:40, Rachel gives background on Siok Mei, her family life, and what draws her and Ah Boon to each other At about 33:55, Pete highlights the powerful and beautiful flashbacks in the book At about 34:45, Pete cites Rachel's skill with recognizable yet dynamic characters At about 35:15, Pete quotes from the book to provide background on Ma and her marriage to Pa At about 35:50, Pete and Rachel discuss the significance of the Japanese occupation in 1942 and its aftereffects At about 38:30, Pete describes an important decision that Pa and Uncle are faced with during the Japanese occupation At about 39:25, Pete and Rachel discuss “The Disappearing Years” and the post-war attitude exhibited by Ah Boon and Singaporeans At about 42:15, The two discuss student protests that came about when Siok Mei and Ah Boon reacted to the real-life controversial case involving Nadra At about 44:30, Rachel talks about the “Gah Men” and the ways in which they acted and were perceived by the public At about 46:45, Natalie is discussed as representative of the government, especially with regard to diction like “greater good,” and Rachel describes parts of Singaporean history as “complicated” and “an interesting case study” At about 50:20, Rachel talks about the environmental effects of The Great Reclamation At about 51:25, Class division is described as a book theme through an anecdote from Natalie At about 52:30, Pete quotes government officials from the book and ideas of “greater good” At about 53:00, Pete compliments Rachel's depictions of grief and she speaks to inspirations for these depictions At about 54:40, Rachel explains a quote of hers regarding her perspective in writing this book while living in the US You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 174, another episode dropping today, March 28, celebrating pub day for Allegra Hyde. Allegra Hyde is a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and author of ELEUTHERIA, named a "Best Book of 2022" by The New Yorker. She's also the author of the story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, and her second story collection, THE LAST CATASTROPHE, is her new one. The episode will go live around noon on March 28.
Episode 174 Notes and Links to Allegra Hyde's Work On Episode 174 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Allegra Hyde, and the two discuss, among other things, her lifelong love of reading and love for librarians (like her mom!) and libraries, her varied reading and writing genres, inspirations for her dazzling and inventive worldbuilding, dark humor, the main throughline of her story collection, ideas of climate change, “global weirding,” action and inaction, encroaching technology, misogyny and patriarch with regard to climate issues, and why she has hope for our world. Allegra Hyde is the author of ELEUTHERIA, which was named a "Best Book of 2022" by The New Yorker. She is also the author of the story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her second story collection, THE LAST CATASTROPHE, is out in the world as of today, March 28, published by Vintage. A recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, Hyde's writing has also been anthologized in Best American Travel Writing, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her stories, essays, and humor pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, American Short Fiction, BOMB, and many other venues. Hyde has received fellowships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Lucas Artist Residency Program, the Jentel Foundation, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at Oberlin College. Buy The Last Catastrophe Allegra Hyde's Webpage Our Culture Mag Profile of Allegra Hyde and The Last Catastrophe At about 7:10, Pete compliments The Last Catastrophe, referring to Allegra's work as “prophet[ic],” and Allegra talks about her mindset with her book now entering the world At about 9:15, Allegra talks about her childhood relationships with the library, reading, and writing; she shouts out her love for The Chronicles of Narnia and audiobooks in general At about 10:45, Pete wonders about any childhood experiences that may have steered Allegra to particular types of reading At about 12:10, Pete highlights a particular story from the collection that is indicative of Allegra's skill with worldbuilding; she explains her approach to worldbuilding At about 14:10, Allegra describes the “privilege” in doing authorial research and she and Pete shout out librarians and decry the recent spate of book banning At about 15:40, Pete asks Allegra about who/what she is reading these days; she highlights Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon and Thornton Wilder At about 17:15, Pete references the book's blurb as “dazzling and inventive” (Alexandra Kleeman) and Allegra describes her approach in writing one of those “dazzling” stories At about 18:55, Allegra defines “retrofuturism,” and she describes how it was guiding her in these stories; she points out her story “Democracy in América” as an example At about 20:15, Allegra characterizes the throughline of her short story connection, defining and expounding upon the term “Global Weirding” At about 23:05, Pete cites an important and evocative opening line of the collection and asks Allegra about the line's larger meaning and if it served as a catalyst At about 24:45, Pete and Allegra discuss the plot and significance of the story “Mobilization” At about 27:55, Pete references a joke from Marc Maron and inaction on climate change/global weirdness; Allegra highlights the need to approach the crisis from a communal lens At about 29:20, Pete refers to grass and drought issues and its connection to wealth and At about 30:05, Pete quotes from the book and he and Allegra discuss ideas of optimism and pessimism regarding the future, particularly with regard to climate change/global weirdness At about 32:35, Pete references the story “Zoo Suicides” and Allegra speaks to the story's intent and how it was “after” Donald Barthelme and Dana Diehl At about 35:00, The two discuss the power of the dark humor in the book, and Allegra discusses the story “Afterglow” and its connections to global weirding and a more individual story of grief At about 38:45, Allegra discusses the gender identity of the narrator of “Democracy in América” and talk about issues particular to America, especially as seen from outside the US At about 40:55, Allegra describes the process of “Consignment,” which speaks to ideas of consumerism and an American obsession with youth and beauty, from the above story At about 42:25, Commodification and issues of wealth inequality are discussed with regards to her story collection, especially with regards to how wealth and global weirding are so closely linked At about 44:40, Pete highlights “The Future is a Click Away” as a standout story and he and Allegra discuss “The Algorithm” in the story as almost “mythical” and “god-like” At about 47:30, “Cougar” is discussed as another story that deals with encroaching technology, and Allegra talks about “merg[ing] real pieces from her life with research and imagination At about 49:40, “Endangered” and its statements on the state of art and artists, as well as captivity and endangerment in today's world, is discussed At about 52:30, Misogyny and what Allegra calls “the mysterious nature of ‘Chevalier' ” are discussed, as well as ideas of invisibilia, both by the world at large and by the narrator of the story, who may be more directed by love than she would let on At about 56:00, Allegra connects her stories to patriarchy and global weirding At about 58:00, Pete and Allegra discuss legislative action and other ways in which women and other oppressed groups are being ignored and degraded At about 58:55, Allegra explains why she “chafe[s]” against her writing being described as “satirical” At about 59:30, Pete laugh over the absurd and awesome story involving a woman At about 1:00:25, Allegra explains how she finds cause for optimism despite some often dark topics that populate the world and her work At about 1:03:15, Allegra shouts out her upcoming tour dates, and shouts out Ben Franklin/Mindfair Books as one of many places to buy her book At about 1:04:35, Allegra highlights her exciting upcoming project-there are caves involved! You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.
Episode 172 Notes and Links to Robert Lopez's Work On Episode 172 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Robert Lopez, and the two discuss, among other things, growing up on Long Island, his renewed vigor for, and focus on, reading and writing in his early 20s, his inspirations in writers like Hemingway and Carver, John D'Agata, Eula Biss, ideas of erasure and assimilation that populate the book, his Puerto Rican heritage, his love of tennis as a sport and as metaphor, the idea of "dispatches" and how they inform his book, and his writing style of understatement and braided narrative. Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River —named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. A new novel-in-stories, A Better Class Of People, was published by Dzanc Books in April, 2022. Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere, his first nonfiction book, was published by Two Dollar Radio on March 14 of this year. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction – Latino. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Buy Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere Robert Lopez's Webpage Sara Lippman Reviews Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere for Chicago Review of Books At about 7:15, Robert describes the experience of having a book recently out in the world At about 8:20, Robert discusses his adolescent reading habits At about 9:50, Robert gives background on how a TV production class senior year of college inspired him to become an ardent reader and writer At about 11:20, Robert responds to Pete's questions about Long Island and its cultural norms At about 14:15, Pete asks Robert about writers and writing that inspired him to become a writer himself; Robert points out a few, especially Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway At about 16:25, The two talk about their shared preference for Hemingway's stories over his novels At about 17:00, Pete shouts out Robert's paean to Hemingway's “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” At about 18:05, Robert speaks to the book's background and seeds for the book in response to Pete's questions about what it was like to write nonfiction/memoir At about 21:20, Pete cites a blurb by Eula Biss that trumpets the book's universality and specificity, leading Robert to define “Puerto Nowhere” At about 23:20, Pete and Robert connects a quote from the book to Robert's comment that the book is more in search of questions than answers/conclusions At about 26:05, Pete posits Sigrid Nunez's work as an analogue to Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere At about 27:15, Vivían Gornick, Maggie Nelson, Eula Biss, Ander Monson, John D'Agata are referenced as writers whose work is “in conversation” with Robert's At about 28:35, Pete asks about the structure/placing of the dispatches, and Robert describes how the book was put together with some sage advice from Eric Obenauf at Two Dollar Radio At about 30:50, Pete aska bout Robert's understanding of “dispatches” and what it was like to write in first-person/personally At about 32:25, Pete references two important lines from the book-the book's opening line and its connection to forgetting, and an important quote and its misquote from Milosz, which Robert breaks down At about 36:00, Pete and Robert highlight and analyze key quotes from the book dealing with Spanish language loss and forced and subtle assimilation and connections to cultural erasure At about 40:40, Robert discusses the parallel storyline from the book that deals with his grandfather, about whose journey to the States At about 42:20, Pete wonders if Robert still has designs ongoing to Puerto Rico and doing family research after the pandemic At about 43:40, Tennis references in the book are highlighted, and Robert talks about how and why he made connections to important topics in the book, like police violence and racism and loss in the family At about 51:35, Robert describes a good friend referenced in the book who is a great example At about 52:35, the two discuss second-generation Americans and forward and the realization that often there are many more creature comforts as the generations go in At about 55:10, Pete compliments the book's powerful understatement and a resonant image involving Robert's grandfather eating You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 173 and 174, TWO episodes dropping on March 28, celebrating pub days for Rachel Heng and Allegra Hyde. Rachel Heng is author of the novels The Great Reclamation-her new one-and Suicide Club, which has been translated into ten languages worldwide and won the Gladstone Library Writer-In-Residence Award. Her short fiction has been recognized by anthologies including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best New Singaporean Short Stories. Allegra Hyde is a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and author of ELEUTHERIA, named a "Best Book of 2022" by The New Yorker. She's also the author of the story collection, OF THIS NEW WORLD, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, and her second story collection, THE LAST CATASTROPHE, is her new one. The episodes air March 28.
Shannon McLeod is the author of the Nature Trail Stories, available from Thirty West Publishing. McLeod is the author of the novella, Whimsy (Long Day Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Hobart, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among other publications, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and featured in Wigleaf Top 50. Born in Detroit, she now lives in central Virginia. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drew Hawkins talks with Grant Faulkner about his new book, "The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story." Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project's Writer's Council, Lit Camp's Advisory Council, and Aspen Words' Creative Council. He's also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. WA "Drew" Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. You can find his work in The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Scalawag Magazine, HAD, No Contact, Rejection Letters, and in other places on the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He recently published The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story. He's also published Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories; the short story collection All the Comfort Sin Can Provide; Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (as editor); and Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. Find Grant online on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen to his podcast Write-minded and subscribe to his newsletter Intimations: A Writer's Discourse.How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you'll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. Join Rachael's Slack channel, Onward Writers: https://join.slack.com/t/onwardwriters/shared_invite/zt-7a3gorfm-C15cTKh_47CEdWIBW~RKwgRachael can be YOUR mini-coach, and she'll answer all your questions on the show! http://patreon.com/rachael Join my scribe of writers for LOTS more tips and get access to my 7-minute video that will tell you if you're writing the right book! Only for my writing community! CLICK HERE:➡️ How to Know If You're Writing the Right Book - https://rachaelherron.com/therightbook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Allegra Hyde is the author of the novel Eleutheria, available from Vintage. It is the official December pick of the TNB Book Club. Hyde's debut story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award through the Iowa Short Fiction Award Series. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, and The Best American Travel Writing. Originally from New Hampshire, she currently lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner, and Like Happiness (forthcoming with Celadon Books). A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square, Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015. Recommended Books: Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water Billy Ray-Belcourt, A Minor Chorus Alejandro Varela, The Town of Babylon Evie Wyld, The Bass Rock Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Looking at some traditional Western plot points today. Why might they be useful (or not)? How might we try to understand or subvert them? And why might this point in your book feel like your own dark night of the soul? Helping us answer these questions are authors Julie Carrick Dalton and Tara Lynn Masih.Tara Lynn Masih is a National Jewish Book Award Finalist and winner of a Julia Ward Howe Award, a Florida Book Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and multiple Foreword Book of the Year Awards. She is the author of the acclaimed novel My Real Name Is Hanna and editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. Tara also founded The Best Small Fictions series. How We Disappear is her second story collection. She lives in St. Augustine, Florida.Julie Carrick Dalton's debut novel WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG has been named to Most Anticipated 2021 book lists by CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, Parade, and Buzzfeed, and was an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best Books of the Month. Her work has appeared in Orion Magazine, The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Chicago Review of Books, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and other publications. She is an alum of Tin House, Bread Loaf, and GrubStreet's Novel Incubator and is a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League. She is a frequent speaker on the topic of fiction in the age of climate crisis at universities, libraries, and conferences. Her second novel, THE LAST BEEKEEPER, will be published in March 2023 by Tor/Forge Macmillan and is available for pre-order now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com