The Write Question: Recent Episodes
Lauren Korn
The Write Question is a weekly literary program hosted by Lauren Korn that features authors from the American West—and beyond—including James Lee Burke, Kate Lebo, Anne Helen Petersen, Robert Wrigley, Jess Walter, Stephen Graham Jones, Barry Lopez, Hoa Nguyen, Maggie Shipstead, Elissa Washuta, and others.
Earlier this spring, host Lauren Korn had the pleasure of chatting with some of NPR’s most notable podcast and news magazine hosts about recently published books. She spoke with Manoush Zamorodi about her book, ‘Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being’ (Flatiron Books); Scott Simon about his book ‘Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known’ (W. W. Norton & Company); and Alex Mayyasi and Sarah Gonzalez about ‘Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life’ (W. W. Norton & Company). Three books, four guests, one episode celebrating the bookishness of NPR.
For this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, Executive Director of the James Welch Native Lit Fest, taking place July 15-18, 2026.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Sean Hill about ‘The Negroes Send Their Love: Poems, Perspectives, and Possible Futures’ (Milkweed Editions).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Emily Haworth-Booth about motherhood and language in her debut novel, ‘Mare’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Mac Barnett, National Ambassador for Children’s Literature and the author of ‘Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children’ (Little, Brown & Company), his first book written for adults.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Courtney Maum, author of ‘Alan Opts Out’ (Little, Brown & Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Miriam Toews, author of the memoir ‘A Truce That Is Not Peace’ (Bloomsbury Publishing). Note: This conversation contains explicit references to suicide. If you or someone you love is struggling with a mental health crisis or in immediate danger, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ for NPR’s “Climate Solutions Week,” in 2026 leaning into local lessons, the TWQ team returns to Lauren Korn’s conversation with ecologist Mark Easter, author of ‘The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos’ (Patagonia Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in anticipation of her tour in Montana (Missoula, Bozeman, and Livingston), and in anticipation of NPR’s Climate Solutions Week, host Lauren Korn speaks with Hillary Rosner, author of ‘Roam: Wild Animals and the Race to Repair Our Fractured World’ (Patagonia Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ a celebration of mothers in all forms—a conversation with poet Preeti Vangani, author of ‘Fifty Mothers’ (River River Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Kim Fu, author of ‘The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts’ (Tin House Books; Zando Projects).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks to anthropologist Sally Thompson, author of ‘Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo and Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains’ (Bison Books; University of Nebraska Press). In this, the second half of their conversation, Lauren and Sally discuss Chiefs Victor and Charlo and the relationship between Jesuit missionaries and Montana’s native people. The two also talk at length about Chief Charlo’s 1876 speech, a lament of white politicians and settlers who evicted his people from the Bitterroot Valley after the tribe had always/only helped them, beginning with Lewis and Clark.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks to anthropologist Sally Thompson, author of ‘Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo and Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains’ (Bison Books; University of Nebraska Press). In this, the first part of a two part conversation, Lauren and Sally discuss how this book was conceived and they dig into the figure of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, his history and his motivations.
During this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with University of Montana journalism professor Jule Banville and audio producer Jad Abumrad about ‘The Obit Project,’ a collaborative podcast created by the UM School of Journalism and the Montana Media Lab that combines the art of audio storytelling and the obituary form to spotlight the multi-dimensional lives of real Montanans. This conversation was recorded in advance of Jad’s 2026 Dean Stone Lecture and University of Montana Democracy Summit Keynote Lecture, which takes place on April 13, 2026.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Wyoming-based author Nina McConigley about her novel, ‘How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder’ (Pantheon; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group). Nina is a spring lecturer for the Elk River Arts & Lecture series; she will appear in Livingston on April 16, 2026.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ for a live, pledge week episode, host Lauren Korn speaks with Allison De Jong: the Montana Natural History Center’s Communications Coordinator and the editor of ‘Montana Naturalist’ and ‘Field Notes.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with memoirist Fred Haefele, author of ‘The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks’ (Bison Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with University of Montana alum Andrew Martin (MFA ‘13), author of ‘Down Time,’ published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet, author, and educator Maya Jewell Zeller about her memoir-in-essays, ‘Raised by Ferns’ (Porphyry Press).
In this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks to journalist Leah Sottile about ‘Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age’ (Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Book Group). This is the second part of a two-part conversation.
In this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks to journalist Leah Sottile about ‘Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age’ (Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Book Group). This is the first part of a two-part conversation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Penobscot writer Morgan Talty, author of ‘Fire Exit’ (Tin House Books; Zando Projects), now available in paperback!
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Joanna Pocock, author of ‘Greyhound’ (Soft Skull Press).
This mini episode of ‘The Write Question’ features used bookseller Crystal Koosman, owner of Last Best Books in Missoula, Montana. What does her used book ethic look like? What’s trending right now?
In advance of his appearance in Helena at MT Book Co. on Monday, February 2, 2026, novelist David Guterson, author of ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ (Vintage Books), discusses his latest book, ‘Evelyn in Transit’ (W. W. Norton & Company).
In advance of his appearance in Livingston, Montana—as a guest of Elk River Arts & Lectures on January 23, 2026, at the Livingston Elks Lodge—novelist Colum McCann discusses the many themes and narratives found in his latest book, ‘Twist’ (Penguin Random House).
In this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with former Montana Poet Laureate Tami Haaland about her collection, ‘If I Had Said Beauty’ (Lost Horse Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Missoula, Montana-based writer Brian Buckbee, author of ‘We Should All Be Birds’ (Tin House Books; Zando Projects), written with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, who joins them for the first half of their conversation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with memoirist and renowned whitewater rafting guide Bridget Crocker, author of ‘The River’s Daughter’ (Spiegel & Grau), about her life lived along the Snake River in Wyoming.
This is the second part of a two-part conversation with University of Montana alumna Alice Bolin (MFA , ‘11), author of ‘Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse’ (Mariner Books; HarperCollins).
This is the first part of a two-part conversation with University of Montana alumna Alice Bolin (MFA , ‘11), author of ‘Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse’ (Mariner Books; HarperCollins).
Host Lauren Korn speaks with Andrew Limbong about NPR’s 2025 interactive book list of staff favorites, “Books We Love.”
On this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with debut novelist Eliana Ramage, author of ‘To the Moon and Back’ (Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn returns to her conversation with poet Christine Wu, author of ‘Familial Hungers’ (Brick Books). This episode first aired June 19, 2025.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with novelist and memoirist Abi Maxwell, author of ‘One Day I’ll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman’ (Alfred A. Knopf), now available in paperback.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with novelist Shobha Rao, author of ‘Indian Country’ (Crown Publishing Group). Shobha will be in Bozeman at Country Bookshelf on November 17th (with Shane Doyle); in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on November 19; and in Missoula at Fact & Fiction Books on November 20, 2025.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the second of a two-part conversation with novelist Chris Whitaker, author of ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ (Crown Publishing Group). This conversation was recorded live at the Ravalli County Museum in Hamilton, Montana, in partnership with Chapter One Bookstore.
This mini episode of ‘The Write Question’ is actually an excerpt of a much longer conversation with Lorissa Rinehart, author of ‘Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress,’ which publishes this Tuesday, November 4, 2025 (St. Martin’s Press). Absent from this excerpt, but included in the extended conversation, is Karen Sterk, the CEO of the Jeannette Rankin Foundation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the first of a two-part conversation with novelist Chris Whitaker, author of ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ (Crown Publishing Group). This conversation was recorded live at the Ravalli County Museum in Hamilton, Montana, in partnership with Chapter One Bookstore.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with co-owner of Hamilton’s Chapter One Bookstore, Marisa Neyenhuis—about her parents’ pledge parties and about the books she’s loving and recommending this year—for a live pledge week episode.
This week on ‘The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with poets Corrie Williamson, author of ‘My Mother’s Bear Gun,’ and Joe Wilkins, author of ‘Pastoral, 1994,’ both published by River River Books.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Helena, Montana-based novelist Sally Blakely, author of ‘Friends to Lovers’ (Canary Street Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Irish author Kevin Barry, author of ‘The Heart in Winter’ (Doubleday Books; Penguin Random House) and the featured speaker at the inaugural Festival of Irish Writing in Butte, Montana: October 3-4, 2025.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Christine Wu, author of ‘Familial Hungers’ (Brick Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the second half of a conversation with memoirist Melissa Febos, author of ‘The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex,’ out now from Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is a division of Penguin Random House.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ part one of a two-part conversation with memoirist Melissa Febos, author of ‘The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex,’ out now from Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is a division of Penguin Random House.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn returns to her conversation with Callan Wink, author of ‘Beartooth’ (Spiegel & Grau). This conversation originally aired January 23, 2025, under the title “There’s no end, really, or beginning to anything.”
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Lauren Westerfield, author of ‘Depth Control: Essays and Autofictions’ (Unsolicited Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with ecologist Mark Easter, author of ‘The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos’ (Patagonia Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with novelist Nathaniel Ian Miller, author of ‘Red Dog Farm’ (Little, Brown & Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Keetje Kuipers, author of ‘Lonely Women Make Good Lovers’ (BOA Editions).
This week, ‘The Write Question’ host Lauren Korn joins ‘A New Angle’ host Justin Angle in MTPR’s Studio B for a conversation with Cassidy Randall, author of ‘Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All Women’s Ascent of Denali’ (Abrams Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Oregon-based writer Joe Wilkins, author of ‘The Entire Sky’ (Little, Brown & Company). This episode originally aired December 12, 2024.
Host Lauren Korn speaks with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly about the paperback release of her memoir, ‘It Goes So Fast: The Year of No Do-Overs’ (Henry Holt & Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with journalist Amy Gamerman, author of ‘The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West’ (Simon & Schuster). This is the second part of a two-part conversation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with journalist Amy Gamerman, author of ‘The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West’ (Simon & Schuster). This is the first part of a two-part conversation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Jory Mickelson about ‘All This Divide’ (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing). This episode originally aired October 2, 2024.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Karen Russell, author of ‘The Antidote’ (Alfred A. Knopf), her sophomore novel. The two talk about soil ecology, developing caretaking relationships, her home state (Florida), her first novel, ‘Swamplandia!’ (Vintage Books), and more.
This week on ‘The Write Question’ Kimberly King Parsons discusses her debut novel, ‘We Were the Universe’ (out now in hardcover from Knopf and available in paperback from Vintage Books this June, 2025).
In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Linda Holmes, one of the hosts of NPR’s ‘Pop Culture Happy Hour’ podcast and the author of ‘Back After This’ (Ballantine Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with writer and translator Laura Marris, author of ‘The Age of Loneliness’ (Graywolf Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, author of ‘Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis’ (Doubleday).
Novelist and journalist (and gossip queen!) Kelsey McKinney, former host of the wildly popular podcast ‘Normal Gossip,’ discusses her first book of non-fiction, ‘You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Sarah Capdeville discusses her debut essay collection, ‘Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost: Essays on Solitude and Landscape’ (University of Mexico Press).
In celebration of Black History Month and in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jericho Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Tradition’ (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), will be a guest of the President’s Lecture Series at the University of Montana on February 6, 2025.
In advance of a February 23, 2025, event at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Hamilton, Montana—hosted by Chapter One Bookstore—Lauren Korn returns to her conversation with memoirist Stephanie Land, author of ‘Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education’ (Atria/One Signal Publishers).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Callan Wink, author of ‘Beartooth’ (Spiegel & Grau).
This week on ‘The Write Question’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Lauren Camp, current Poet Laureate of New Mexico and author of ‘In Old Sky: Poems Inspired by the Grand Canyon’ (Grand Canyon Observatory).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the second and final part of a two-part conversation with world-renowned wildlife biologist Diane K. Boyd, author of ‘A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery’ (Greystone Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the first part of a two-part conversation with world-renowned wildlife biologist Diane K. Boyd, author of ‘A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery’ (Greystone Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question’ host Lauren Korn is in conversation with novelist Julia Phillips, author of ‘Bear’ (Hogarth Press), her second novel centering sisterhood—this time on an island off the coast of Washington.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ just in time for the holidays, we return to “piecast” host Lauren Korn’s 2023 conversation with “pie lady” Kate Lebo, author of the revised and updated cookbook ‘Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter’ (Sasquatch Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Oregon-based writer Joe Wilkins, author of ‘The Entire Sky’ (Little, Brown & Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Haudenosaunee poet Kenzie Allen discusses her collection ‘Cloud Missives’ (Tin House Books).
Host Lauren Korn speaks with ‘Life Kit’ creator Meghan Keane, author of ‘Party of One: Be Your Own Best Life Partner’ (Chronicle Books).
For the Sunday morning encore of ‘The Write Question,’ we return to a conversation with Alicia Elliott, an established writer of non-fiction and author of the novel ‘And Then She Fell’ (Dutton Books, 2023).
Host Lauren Korn speaks with Andrew Limbong about NPR’s 2024 interactive book list of staff favorites, “Books We Love.”
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ an encore broadcast of a conversation with poet Emily Riddle, author of ‘The Big Melt’ (Nightwood Editions), a debut collection rooted in Nehiyaw (Cree) thought and urban millennial life events.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ the second part of a two-part conversation with Chris La Tray, Métis storyteller and Montana Poet Laureate (2023-2025), author of ‘Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home’ (Milkweed Editions).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in the first part of a two-part conversation, Chris La Tray, Métis storyteller and Montana Poet Laureate (2023-2025), discusses his memoir, ‘Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home’ (Milkweed Editions).
For this web exclusive episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Carl Phillips, author of ‘Scattered Snows, to the North,’ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007-2020’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), in advance of his appearance at the Missoula Art Museum on November 6, 2024.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Sarah Gerard about ‘Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable’ (Zando Projects).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn joins ‘A New Angle’ host Justin Angle and ‘Grounding’ host Sarah Aronson in Studio A for a live pledge week episode that centers climate: anxiety, ethics, and care.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ conservation journalist Ben Goldfarb discusses ‘Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet’ (W. W. Norton & Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with novelist Emily St. John Mandel about ‘Station Eleven’ (Vintage Books; Penguin Random House), now in its tenth year of publication.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Jory Mickelson about ‘All This Divide’ (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing).
In advance of his appearances in Montana, poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib speaks with host Lauren Korn about ‘There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension’ (Penguin Random House).
In this sneak peek of season eighteen of ‘The Write Question,’ you’ll hear memoirist Sarah Capdeville speaking about her debut memoir, ‘Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost: Essays on Solitude and Landscape’ (University of New Mexico Press).
For this mini episode, host Lauren Korn gives listeners a look into the eighteenth season of ‘The Write Question,’ coming this fall. In this sneak peak, you’ll hear Irish author Kevin Barry talking about ‘The Heart in Winter’ (Doubleday Books; Penguin Random House).
This week, MTPR is encoring host Lauren Korn’s conversation with podcasters and authors Nick Mott and Justin Angle; the three talk about the nuances of wildfire: ‘This is Wildfire: How to Protect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Community in the Age of Heat’ (Bloomsbury Publishing) “offers everything you need to know about fire in one useful volume.”
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks to Dr. Alan Townsend, author of ‘This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist’s Path from Grief to Wonder’ (Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with historian and author Betsy Gaines Quammen about ‘True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America’ (Torrey House Press).
For this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with NPR’s Rachel Martin about her new podcast, ‘Wild Card’—part-interview, part-existential game show.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Victoria Chang, author of ‘With My Back to the World’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a collection that engages with the paintings and writings of celebrated abstract artist Agnes Martin.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ we’re celebrating 50 years of children’s programming on Montana Public Radio. During this episode, host Lauren Korn speaks with critic, biographer, and historian Leonard S. Marcus, one of the world’s leading writers and scholars on children’s books and the people who create them.
On this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Jacqueline Winspear, author of twenty novels, eighteen of which comprise the Maisie Dobbs series. The last installment in that series, ‘The Comfort of Ghosts,’ will be published June 4, 2024. Jacqueline is appearing in Helena, Montana, on Monday, May 13, 2024, at the Helena Civic Center as a guest of the Lewis & Clark Library and the Lewis & Clark Library Foundation.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with author and environmental activist Rick Bass, author of ‘With Every Great Breath’ (Counterpoint Press), a collection of new and selected essays spanning nearly thirty years: from 1995-2023.
In this episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Melissa Kwasny, author of ‘The Cloud Path’ (Milkweed Editions), a collection that reckons with grief and its subsequent healing.
On this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Chloe Salmon, a director and producer at ‘The Moth Radio Hour’ and part of the editorial team behind ‘The Moth Presents: A Point of Beauty: True Stories of Holding on and Letting Go’ (Crown Publishing Group).
In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Métis author Toni Jensen, author of ‘Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land’ (Ballantine Books; Penguin Random House). Toni will be giving a reading in collaboration with the University of Montana’s Creative Writing Program on April 12, 2024, at the Missoula Art Museum.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Tessa Hulls about her graphic memoir, ‘Feeding Ghosts’ (MCD; Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the story of three generations of women in her family: her grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and Tessa herself.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Carmen Maria Machado, the headlining author at the 2024 Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, Washington, which takes place April 11th-14th.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Marie-Helene Bertino, author of ‘Beautyland,’ a novel about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe.
For this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with National Book Award Finalist Min Jin Lee, author of the novels ‘Pachinko’ and ‘Free Food for Millionaires.’ Min Jin is also the editor of ‘The Best American Short Stories’ anthology for 2023 and will be traveling to Kalispell, Montana, for the Wachholz College Center’s WCC Speaker Series on March 18, 2024.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Michael Finkel, author of ‘The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession,’ a true crime narrative that centers Stéphane Breitwieser, who carried out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—and stole more than three hundred objects.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with packers Arnold “Smoke” Elser and Eva-Maria Maggi, co-authors of ‘Hush of the Land: A Lifetime in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.’
In a cutting room floor excerpt from this week’s conversation with Arnold “Smoke” Elser and Eva-Maria Maggi, host Lauren Korn asks the two what they’ve learned from each other.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ we’re airing an encore: host Lauren Korn’s conversation with Bryce Andrews, author of ‘Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West’ (Mariner Books, HarperCollins), now out in paperback!
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Elise Atchison about her award-winning debut novel, ‘Crazy Mountain’ (Sowilo Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Kathleen McLaughlin, author of ‘Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry’ (Atria/One Signal Publishers), out now in paperback!
In the second part of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet, farmer, and Missoula, Montana, county commissioner Josh Slotnick about his second book of poetry, ‘If Only’ (Sandyhouse Press).
In the first part of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet, farmer, and Missoula, Montana, county commissioner Josh Slotnick about his second book of poetry, ‘If Only’ (Sandyhouse Press).
This week, ‘The Write Question’ creator and former host, Chérie Newman, returns Montana Public Radio to talk with Lauren about her debut memoir, ‘Other People’s Pets: Critters, Careers, and Capitalism in Yellowstone Country.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Alexandra Teague, author of ‘Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir’ (Oregon State University Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Emily Riddle, author of ‘The Big Melt’ (Nightwood Editions), a debut collection rooted in Nehiyaw (Cree) thought and urban millennial life events.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ just in time for the holidays, “piecast” host Lauren Korn speaks with “pie lady” Kate Lebo, author of the cookbook ‘Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter’ (Sasquatch Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with cartoonist Navied Mahdavian, author of the graphic memoir, ‘This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America’ (Princeton Architectural Press).
Host Lauren Korn speaks with Heather White, author of ‘One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet’ and the founder of a non-profit of the same name. Heather will be discussing both her book and her non-profit at the Missoula Public Library on December 6, 2023, at 6:30PM.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet D.M. Bradford, author of the collection ‘Bottom Rail on Top’ (Brick Books), a kind of archives-powered unmooring of American histories of antebellum Black life and emancipation.
Host Lauren Korn speaks with Andrew Limbong about NPR’s interactive book list of staff favorites, “Books We Love.”
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Stephanie Land, author of ‘Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education’ (Atria/One Signal Publishers).
In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with the host and executive editor of ‘Hidden Brain,’ Shankar Vedantam, about “Healing 2.0,” a month-long series that considers how we can change our lives—by taking a closer look at the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, the nature of loss, and whether we should try to do away with grief altogether.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Maya Jewell Zeller, author of ‘out takes/ glove box’ (New American Press). The two talk about Maya’s birth story, childhood, and motherhood; cars, trucks, and traveling; and Maya’s primal self—a psychology (and a poetics) borne of the sea and the woods, of the natural world.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ comedienne and writer Charlotte Macorn sits down with host Lauren Korn in the “city of many shoulders” for a live pledge week episode.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Livingston, Montana-based poet (and former Montana Poet Laureate) Michael Earl Craig, author of ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).
Livingston, Montana-based poet Michael Earl Craig (“Earl”) reads a poem from ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).
Livingston, Montana-based poet Michael Earl Craig (“Earl”) reads a poem from ‘Iggy Horse’ (Wave Poetry).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Erin Pringle, Spokane, Washington-based author of ‘Unexpected Weather Events’ (Awst Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in advance of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s appearance in Missoula, host Lauren Korn speaks with the author of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants’ (Milkweed Editions).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with with Alicia Elliott, an established writer of non-fiction, about her debut novel, ‘And Then She Fell’ (Dutton Books, 2023).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet Dara Barrois/Dixon (née Dara Wier) about the ethics of art-making and how her latest book of poetry, ‘Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina’ (Wave Poetry), both elucidates and confounds those ethics—particularly as it’s read alongside Barrois/Dixon’s essay titled almost identically, “Why Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina” (Action, Spectacle).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Healy, Alaska-based writer Christine Byl about her debut novel, ‘Lookout’ (Deep Vellum Publishing), which tells the story of the Kinzlers, a complex working-class family firmly rooted in northwestern Montana.
In Lauren’s conversation with podcasters and authors Nick Mott and Justin Angle, the three talk about the nuances of wildfire: ‘This is Wildfire: How to Protect Yourself, Your Home, and Your Community in the Age of Heat’ (Bloomsbury Publishing) “offers everything you need to know about fire in one useful volume.”
This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2022 conversation with Charmaine Wilkerson, author of ‘Black Cake,’ the story of a mother, a woman, whose traumas and histories she hid from her children—children who, after her death, are forced to confront their mother’s past, as well as their own identities in light of such shocking revelations.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Charles Finn about his collaborative collection, ‘On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West,’ a collection of free verse and prose poems, paired with a black-and-white landscape photographs from the Pacific Northwest and the American Southwest taken by photographer Barbara Michelman.
What is Claire Boyles’ American West? This week, host Lauren Korn returns to her 2021 conversation with the Colorado-based writer, the author of ‘Site Fidelity’ (W. W. Norton & Company).
This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2021 conversation with Idaho-based poet and essayist Robert Wrigley, who talks to trees—and about the difference between poetry and prose, about fatherhood, about music, and more!
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her 2022 conversation with novelist Jenny Tinghui Zhang about her debut novel, ‘Four Treasures of the Sky’ (Flatiron Books), the heartbreaking story of young Daiyu, kidnapped from Zhifu, China, in 1882.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Kaveh Akbar, whose sophomore poetry collection, ‘Pilgrim Bell’ (Graywolf Press), empties the self of the self—of one’s nation, or nations, of one’s family, of one’s knowledge—leaving only one’s hollowed, and hallowed, body.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren returns to her conversation with Andrew Sean Greer, or “Andy,” for this encore broadcast; the two chat about the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘Less,’ ‘Less Is Lost’ (Little, Brown and Company).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren returns to her conversation with poet Lynn Melnick; the two chat about her debut memoir, ‘I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton’ (University of Texas Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in the final half of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with Vancouver, Canada-based journalist John Vaillant, author of ‘Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World’ (Alfred A. Knopf).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ in the first of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn speaks with Vancouver, Canada-based journalist John Vaillant, author of ‘Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World’ (Alfred A. Knopf).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn chats with writer, teacher, and fly-fishing guide Micah Fields, author of ‘We Hold Our Breath: A Journey to Texas Between Storms’ (forthcoming, W. W. Norton & Company).
For this weekend broadcast of ‘The Write Question,’ journalist and novelist Alix Christie discusses her novel, ‘The Shining Mountains’ (High Road Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Vanessa A. Bee, author of the memoir ‘Home Bound: An Uprooted Daughter’s Reflections on Belonging’ (Astra House).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet and essayist Lisa Wells, author of ‘Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World’ (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet and professor Jane Wong about her debut memoir, ‘Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City’ (Tin House Books, 2023).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Bitterroot Salish novelist Debra Magpie Earling about her novel, ‘The Lost Journals of Sacajewea’ (Milkweed Editions).
‘The Write Question’ is celebrating Mother’s Day with writer, explorer, and life coach Steph Jagger—author of ‘Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains’ (Flatiron Books), which came out in paperback in March of 2023.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn chats with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Timothy Egan about ‘A Fever: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them’ (Viking Press).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ we return to host Lauren Korn’s 2022 conversation with the current U. S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, author of ‘The Hurting Kind’ (Milkweed Editions). Note: At the time of this conversation Ada hadn’t yet been named U. S. Poet Laureate.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Prince Shakur, activist, organizer, and author of ‘When They Tell You to Be Good’ (Tin House Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Bryce Andrews, author of ‘Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West’ (Mariner Books, HarperCollins).
This April, Montana Public Radio is celebrating National Poetry Month by airing readings by poets featured on ‘The Write Question.’ Here: U. S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, reading “Forsythia.”
In early March, a mini episode with writer, instructor, and landscape designer and historian Kathryn Aalto aired on MTPR. This week, we return to women nature writers: this is the full, extended conversation with Kathryn, author of ‘Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World.’
This week, TWQ host Lauren Korn joins ‘A New Angle’ host Justin Angle in his podcast studio for a conversation with environmental philosopher Christopher Preston, author of ‘Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Lynn Melnick about her debut memoir, ‘I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton’ (University of Texas Press).
In this TWQ mini episode, host Lauren Korn speaks with writer, instructor, and landscape designer and historian Kathryn Aalto, author of ‘Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with David Quammen, author of ‘Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus’—an in-depth, scientific look at the coronavirus pandemic that swept, and still sweeping, the globe.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ University of Montana alumna and poet Caylin Capra-Thomas chats to Lauren about her debut collection, ‘Iguana Iguana.’
Host Lauren Korn speaks with Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, the co-editors of ‘Wanting: Women Writing About Desire,’ an anthology of essays that explores desire, its ever-changing shape—and from multiple lenses of womanhood.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet Charles Finn about his collaborative collection, ‘On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West,’ a collection of free verse and prose poems, paired with a black-and-white landscape photographs from the Pacific Northwest and the American Southwest taken by photographer Barbara Michelman.
In this mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn sits down with author Anne “Annie” Lamott to talk about her seminal book on the craft of writing (and living), ‘Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life’ (Anchor Books), and about maintaining hope—during the writing process, yes, but also in a time of climate crisis and during political and social upheaval.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn speaks with Cree (nehiyaw) novelist Jessica Johns, author of ‘Bad Cree,’ the story of Mackenzie, a young Cree woman who returns, night after night in her dreams, to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt.
Marina Richie about her memoir, ‘Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher,’ in June of this year, of 2022, before it won the 2022 National Outdoor Book Award in the “Journeys” category.
In June, Terry Tempest Williams visited Missoula, Montana, to take part in the 2022 “In the Footsteps of Norman Maclean” literary festival, which was held at the Wilma Theater. In the second of a two-part conversation, host Lauren Korn and and Terry, a beloved writer and activist, talk about the festival—but also about sisterhood and Terry’s preoccupations with fragment, fracture, and beauty.
In June, Terry Tempest Williams visited Missoula, Montana, to take part in the 2022 “In the Footsteps of Norman Maclean” literary festival, which was held at the Wilma Theater. In this conversation, host Lauren Korn and the beloved writer and activist talk about the festival and the discussions it provoked: on hope and engagement; on building communities of care; on how the overturning of Roe v. Wade speaks to broader issues of human and non-human relationships.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Jules Ohman about her debut novel, ‘Body Grammar.’ ‘Body Grammar’ tells the story of Lou, a young photographer who, after a tragic hiking accident, finds herself in front of the camera, distracted by the dizzying world of international modeling.
This week, Lauren chats with Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Gallery Books, Saga Press). My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a meta-narrative homage to classic slasher films like Scream and Friday the 13th. Indeed, there are nearly 200 film references in this novel, hiding in plain sight, and they are a joy to encounter for horror film aficionados and novices alike.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Missoula, Montana-based illustrator and designer Molly Russell chats about creating TWQ’s brand and logo, which debuted in 2022.
Recorded during the 2022 Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, Washington, this episode features host Lauren Korn in conversation with co-editors Sharma Shields and Maya Jewell Zeller about their regional anthology, ‘Evergreen: Grim Tales & Verses from the Gloomy Northwest.’
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn is joined by award-winning journalist Nate Schweber. When Nate was in Missoula for the In the Footsteps of Norman Maclean Literary Festival, the two sat down to chat about his book, ‘This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild’ (Mariner Books).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren chats with the Senior Director and co-host of ‘The Moth Radio Hour,’ Meg Bowles. Bowles was one of five co-authors of ‘How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth’ (Crown Publishing Group).
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn and poet Taneum Bambrick talk about ‘Vantage’ and ‘Intimacies, Received,’ Bambrick’s two collections.
In the first mini episode of ‘The Write Question,’ host Lauren Korn sits down with NPR’s Legal Affairs Correspondent, Nina Totenberg, to talk about her memoir, ‘Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships.’
Lauren Korn chats with prolific author of the American West James Lee Burke about his latest novel, ‘Every Cloak Rolled in Blood.’
Lauren Korn chats with professor of food and farming Liz Carlisle, author of ‘Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming.’
This week on The Write Question, Lauren speaks with poets Mandy Smoker Broaddus (M.L. Smoker) and Natalie Peeterse, co-authors of ‘Thunderous,’ a graphic novel about Aiyana, a Lakota teenager trying to fit in with her high school peers, and in doing so, chooses to reject her Indigenous heritage.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren speaks with poets Mandy Smoker Broaddus (M.L. Smoker) and Natalie Peeterse, co-authors of ‘Thunderous,’ a graphic novel about Aiyana, a Lakota teenager trying to fit in with her high school peers, and in doing so, chooses to reject her Indigenous heritage.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren speaks with poets Mandy Smoker Broaddus (M.L. Smoker) and Natalie Peeterse, co-authors of ‘Thunderous,’ a graphic novel about Aiyana, a Lakota teenager trying to fit in with her high school peers, and in doing so, chooses to reject her Indigenous heritage.
Join host Lauren Korn in this encore broadcast of her conversation with essayist Elissa Washuta; they ‘conjure’ a conversation about pop culture parallelism and about maintaining control over one’s narrative.
This week during an encore broadcast of ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren chats with Greg M. Peters, author of ‘Our National Forests: Stories from America’s Most Important Public Lands’ (Timber Press).
This week, we revisit Lauren’s conversation with physician and writer Laura Kolbe, author of ‘Little Pharma’ (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), a book that uses poetry as the doctor’s tool into empathy, into the interior lives of patients and beyond the material relationships between bodies.
In twelve interconnected stories, collected in ‘Come West and See,’ Loskutoff’s fiction offers startling insights into America, its wounds and perpetual conflicts.
How and when do you divest yourself from an artist? What does it mean that we were all born under a different moon? This week, we revisit Lauren Korn’s conversation with poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.
This week during ‘The Write Question,’ we return to Lauren’s 2021 conversation with poet, essayist, and pie lady Kate Lebo about ‘The Book of Difficult Fruit,’ a dark and funny encyclopedia-memoir-essay collection-cookbook.
In this encore broadcast, Chérie Newman speaks with novelist Chad Dundas about his debut novel, ‘Champion of the World’: Set in the world of wrestling in the 1920s, a husband and wife are set adrift in a place where everyone has something to hide and not even the fights can be taken at face value.
In this encore broadcast, Sarah Aronson and Prageeta Sharma discuss the relationship between poetry and grief, both in regards to her loss as well as the collective uncertainty of COVID. The two also grapple with themes of misunderstanding, witness, and beauty in an effort to make sense of the what it means to be human.
This week on The Write Question, we revisit Lauren’s conversation with Shakespeare scholar Gretchen E. Minton; the two dive into, well, Shakespeare!
Join us for an encore broadcast of Sarah Aronson’s 2019 conversation with Missoula-based novelist Casey Charles, author of ‘The Monkey Cages.’
This week, we revisit Lauren’s conversation with Missoula-based author Deirdre “Dee” McNamer. The two talk about ‘Aviary,’ Dee’s novel based in an unnamed mountain town (a town a lot like Missoula) and a neglected retirement community, Pheasant Run.
This week, we’re revisiting Sarah Aronson’s 2019 conversation with Jeremy Smith about his book, ‘Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called “Alien.”’
This week, we’re revisiting Sarah Aronson’s conversation with poet Geffrey Davis. Davis’s award-winning second collection of poems reads as an evolving love letter and meditation on what it means to raise an American family.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet Ada Limón, author of ‘The Hurting Kind’ (Milkweed Editions) and host of the poetry podcast, ‘The Slowdown.’
Chloe Caldwell’s ‘The Red Zone’ is a coming-of-age story; it’s a love story—it’s a book about periods. And this is a conversation about periods.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet Eloisa Amezcua, author of ‘Fighting Is Like a Wife’ (Coffee House Press), a collection of poems that reveal the love story and tragedy of two-time world boxing champion “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valerie Ginn.
What is a divinatory poetics? Can texts be haunted? This week, we return to Lauren‘s 2021 conversation with Toronto-based poet Hoa Nguyen, in which the two dive into the narratives that prompted and sit within Nguyen‘s new book of poetry, ‘A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure’ (Wave Books).
From the freedom of her parents’ house and her grandmother’s flourishing garden, to the streets of Zhifu, China, and the saving grace of a modest calligraphy school, small Daiyu is taken to America, first to a California brothel and then to a small market in Idaho.
‘Black Cake’ is the story of a mother, a woman, whose traumas and histories she hid from her children—children who, after her death, are forced to confront their mother’s past, as well as their own identities in light of such shocking revelations.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with Bill Vaughn, author of ‘The Last Heir: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Two Montana Families’ (Bison Books), the story of the Burke and Herrin families, brought together by marriage.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren speaks with poet and novelist John Elizabeth Stintzi, JES, about ‘My Volcano’ (Two Dollar Radio; Arsenal Pulp Press), a meticulously-crafted tapestry of a novel—one in which a volcano emerges from the Central Park Reservoir in New York.
This week on ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren chats with Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, author of ‘Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk’ (Counterpoint Press). ‘Red Paint’ is part memoir and part family history—full of personal stories from the author’s childhood and her not-so-distant past, as well as the story of the Coast Salish people, a beautifully woven story of the women who came before her, of their strength and spirituality.
In this encore broadcast of a March 2021 conversation, host Lauren Korn and poet-essayist Paisley Rekdal, author of ‘Appropriate: A Provocation,’ dive into the nuances of cultural appropriation in literature. What is the difference between depicting a character unlike one’s self and appropriating their culture and identity? What is the difference between one’s politics and one’s ethics?
This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren chats with Greg M. Peters, author of ‘Our National Forests: Stories from America’s Most Important Public Lands’ (Timber Press).
This week during ‘The Write Question,’ Lauren chats with devotional poet Jos Charles, author of ‘a Year & other poems,’ her third full-length collection. These poems endure, as the poet has endured, loss and devastation—California wildfires, housing insecurity, the death of loved ones.
This week, Lauren speaks with Taiwanese poet Jennifer Huang about their debut collection, ‘Return Flight.’
This week, Lauren speaks with American naturalist, outdoorsman, and best-selling author Doug Peacock about his new book of essays, ‘Was It Worth It?: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home.’
This week Lauren chats with Renée Branum, author of ‘Defenestrate,’ a story of familial alienation and grief, of one family’s long-told lore and tightly-guarded love—told in a series of vignettes, or short chapters. Through the eyes of Marta, and twin brother Nick, ‘Defenestrate’ is the fragmented history of a family’s falling curse.
What do you get when you flood your body with the field recordings of recently extinct animals? This week during The Write Question, CAConrad, author of ‘AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration,’ talks with Lauren about their writing processes: the (soma)tic poetry rituals that result in poetry that shimmers, surprises, and sears.
This week, Lauren speaks with memoirist Danielle Geller, whose memoir, ‘Dog Flowers,’ is a book not only about her relationship to her late mother, absent for so much of her childhood, but about the strength and complexity of familial ties.
This week, Lauren speaks with Nathaniel Ian Miller, author of The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, the fictional story of Sven Ormson, a restless industrial worker who, in 1916, seeks adventure in a mining camp between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren talks with poet and memoirist Victoria Chang, author Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. The two explore the “a-synchronicity” of feelings and how silence can be used to both hide and protect.
In this special Sunday episode of The Write Question, the team gathers some of their favorite moments from 2021. Featuring excerpts from conversations with Caroline Patterson, Raymond Antrobus, Kerri Arsenault, Anthony W. Wood, and Stephen Graham Jones.
This week’s episode is an encore broadcast of Sarah Aronson’s conversation with Stephanie Land about her 2019 memoir, MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. 2021 brought a Netflix adaptation of the memoir. The critically acclaimed series prompted a surge in memoir sales for Land, as well as a renewed interest in labor rights and conversations about America’s working poor.
This week during The Write Question, Lauren talks with cultural critic Anne Helen Petersen, co-author, alongside Charlie Warzel, of Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, who re-imagines a future wherein our work lives are no longer our entire lives.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren talks with Bozeman, Montana-based essayist Amy Leach about her modern bestiary, The Everybody Ensemble, in which she brings together a cacophony of voices—of the many, many animals that populate our world.
This week during The Write Question, Idaho-based poet and essayist Robert Wrigley talks to trees. (And to Lauren! About the difference between poetry and prose, about fatherhood, about music, and more!)
This week Lauren chats with fiction writer Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast, a contemporary, eco-feminist Western in which a woman escapes to the northern Rocky Mountains after a violent encounter with a number of people close to her, including her husband and her half-sister. With leanings into and outside of the contemporary American West, into and outside of morality and goodness, this novel is a deep dive into myth, landscape, and freedom.
This week’s episode is an encore broadcast of Sarah Aronson’s conversation with CMarie Fuhrman about her nonfiction and work as co-editor for the anthology, Native Voices. This program was recorded in Spokane, Washington, during their Get Lit! literary festival with the generous support of Spokane Public Radio.
This week, Lauren talks with physician and writer Laura Kolbe, author of Little Pharma (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), a book that uses poetry as the doctor’s tool into empathy, into the interior lives of patients and beyond the material relationships between bodies.
This week, Lauren chats with Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Gallery Books, Saga Press). My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a meta-narrative homage to classic slasher films like Scream and Friday the 13th. Indeed, there are nearly 200 film references in this novel, hiding in plain sight, and they are a joy to encounter for horror film aficionados and novices alike.
This week, Lauren chats with wildlife biologist and journalist Doug Chadwick, the author of Four Fifths a Grizzly (Patagonia Works), a book that challenges the idea that humans are separate from nature, from the non-human world.
Lehua Taitano's work investigates queer indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora. In this conversation, Lehua delves into the oceanic world of her poetry collection, "Inside Me an Island," where matters of family, story, identity, voice, song, and bicycle mechanics come to light.
"This is a sunrise book, a book of revelations, of creekwalks and roadfood and ordinary sadnesses, ordinary joys—which are, in the end, the only kind. ‘I have a stake in this,’ La Tray writes. And so do you. So do you.” — Joe Wilkins
This week, Lauren is speaking with poet and bookseller (and bookstore owner!) Mara Panich, whose debut collection, Blood is Not the Water, is a meditation on the body, its desires, its vulnerabilities, and often its sorrows.
This week during The Write Question, Lauren chats with poet, essayist, and pie lady Kate Lebo about The Book of Difficult Fruit, a dark and funny encyclopedia-memoir-essay collection-cookbook.
This week, Lauren speaks with Missoula-based novelist Caroline Patterson, whose debut novel, The Stone Sister, is a fictionalized account of her own family’s history, of the sister she didn’t know she had—a sister who shares her name—and of the controversial institution that housed Montana’s abandoned children.
This week, Lauren speaks with Helena, Montana native Annie Connole, whose debut book, The Spring: A Mythic Memoir, chronicles the author’s episodic, almost encyclopedic encounters with grief, with the animals that crossed her path after the loss of her partner in 2014, both in her waking life and in her dreams. The Spring is the author’s grief in-process — a transformation, a resurrection.
This week, historian and scholar Anthony W. Wood talks about Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, 1877-1930, an in-depth account of the rise and fall of Montana’s Black communities in the 19th and 20th centuries, of the enduring narratives of white supremacy and cultural erasure in the Rocky Mountain West.
This week, Lauren speaks with poet Kaveh Akbar, whose sophomore poetry collection, Pilgrim Bell, empties the self of the self — of one’s nation, or nations, of one’s family, of one’s knowledge — leaving only one’s hollowed, and hallowed, body. An early review of Pilgrim Bell states, “The poetry of Kaveh Akbar reminds you that the body is a temple and that the most astounding shit happens in temples.” Yes. Pilgrim Bell is astounding.
In this lively conversation, Lauren and Missoula-based poet, ceramicist, and musician Kelly Schirmann talk about about her newest book of poetry, The New World, and about her creative practices. A hybrid collection of poetry and prose, The New World follows Schirmann’s attempts, failures, and re-attempts at understanding and articulating an era of immense social upheaval, political corruption, and environmental consequence, as well as her place, as an artist, within it.
With Home Waters, John N. Maclean, son of Norman Maclean, offers a companion or parallel narrative to his father’s beloved classic, A River Runs Through It.
Michael Punke’s Ridgeline is, broadly, about what is now known - though rarely talked about - as the Fetterman Massacre, which took place in 1866 in Wyoming’s Powder River Valley. The U.S. Army sent hundreds of soldiers, as well as women and children, to set up a fort in the region, eventually named Fort Phil Kearny, on what was the traditional land of the Lakota, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne. Listen to Lauren’s lively conversation with Punke about his empathetic and nuanced snapshot of a rarely-heard history of the American West now!
The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Learn more from David Owen on this episode of The Write Question.
Clocking in at 600 pages, Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle is the epic story of the fictional Marian Graves, a Missoula, Montana-born pilot, whose North-South around-the-world adventure is told painstakingly, achingly, and gracefully. This immense book, which spans multiple centuries and countries, is an enormously pleasurable read. Its generous narratives, pulsing with emotion and wonder, beg the question, “What will you do with your one life?”
This week on The Write Question, Lauren chats with Missoula-based writer Deirdre “Dee” McNamer about Aviary, a novel based in an unnamed mountain town a lot like Missoula. The novel, which is McNamer’s first since 2007’s Red Rover, centers a neglected retirement community, Pheasant Run, and the aging residents who live there. This is a conversation with one of Montana’s most beloved novelists and writing teachers, and it’s one you won’t want to miss!
This week on The Write Question, Lauren chats with J. Robert Lennon about peculiarity—in his new novel, Subdivision, his new collection of short stories, Let Me Think, and in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks—and encouraging student writers to find the peculiarities in their own experiences, to mine their inner freak.
This week on The Write Question, Lauren speaks with Canadian poet, editor, and community organizer Rebecca Salazar, author of sulphurtongue. The two tackle a number of questions: How is synesthesia an organizing principle of poetry? How can poets care for themselves in public spaces? What’s so funny about survival? What Canadian city closely resembles a moonscape? And just what is it about mouths?
What does ‘autobiography’ mean to poet Allison Cobb? What action(s) should readers consider after reading Plastic: An Autobiography? What do desire, joy, and grief have to do with the plastic industry? Listen now to find out!
This week, join Lauren Korn in a conversation with poet Raymond Antrobus, whose collection The Perseverance examines his D/deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education and language — both spoken and signed.
Are you more of a Stevie Nicks or a Christine McVie? Join host Lauren Korn (Christine McVie) and essayist Elissa Washuta (Stevie Nicks) as they conjure a conversation about pop culture parallelism and about maintaining control over one’s narrative—as well as being mindful of how and when others choose to share their own narratives, knowledge, and spiritual practices. Dive into these topics—and more!—on this week’s episode of The Write Question.
What is a divinatory poetics? Can texts be haunted? This week, Toronto-based poet Hoa Nguyen dives into the narratives that prompted and sit within her new book of poetry, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure.
How and when do you divest yourself from an artist? What does it mean that we were all born under a different moon? This week, join host Lauren Korn and poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib in a conversation about his 2021 must-read, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance.
This week on The Write Question, it’s a Lauren takeover! Host Lauren Korn chats with debut novelist Lauren Oyler during a conversation that centers social media: identity performance, vulnerability, feelings like pain, envy, and jealousy, and what it would mean to give up their own social media accounts.
This week, join Lauren in a conversation with Colorado-based poet and scholar Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne. Their conversation covers a lot, from imagining change, our dying planet and “confessional” poetry to the ethics of care — plus much, much more!