AWM Author Talks: Recent Episodes
The American Writers Museum
In this weekly series, we air previously recorded conversations with leading authors, poets, graphic novelists, playwrights, songwriters, historians and more about craft, processes, influences, inspirations, and what it's like to live as a writer. These episodes are edited and condensed versions of our programs and they are a great way to discover new writers, listen to a program you missed, or relive a program that you loved!
Three finalists for the 2026 Nebula Awards—Amy Chu, Somto Ihezue, and Annalee Newitz—discuss their craft, why they write, and the state of speculative fiction today. Moderated by Tananarive Due, Toastmaster of the 2026 Nebula Awards, which are given annually by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.
Featured writers and their 2026 Nebula Award nominations include:
- Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Nebula Award for Best Novella)
- Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal by Amy Chu (Nebula Award for Best Comic)
- "We Begin Where Infinity Ends" by Somto Ihezue (Nebula Award for Best Novelette)
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About the writers:
AMY CHU is a multi-genre writer for graphic novels and animation. Her most recent book is the Nebula Award nominated Carmilla: The Eternal (Dark Horse / Berger Books) the final chapter in the award-winning Carmilla the First Vampire trilogy. She teaches at the Kubert School and the School of Visual Arts, and is a board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A frequent convention speaker, she has also judged the Harvey, Ringo and MoCCA awards. Amy holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a double bachelor’s degree in Architectural Design from MIT and East Asian Studies from Wellesley College.
TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.
SOMTO IHEZUE is a writer and filmmaker. He is an MFA fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. His writes about boyhood, land, disruption, and joy in Igbo communities. His work has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the British Fantasy Award, the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, and has appeared in Clarkesworld, POETRY, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sauúti, and others. He has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tin House, Clarion West, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Rabbit Island, and more. He was assistant editor of the Publishing Taught Me Anthology (SFWA & NEA) and co-editor of Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology.
ANNALEE NEWITZ writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of four novels: Automatic Noodle, The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in science. They are a writer for the New York Times and elsewhere, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Scientific American, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and Technology Review, among others. They were the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, and have contributed to the public radio shows Science Friday, On the Media, KQED Forum, and Here and Now. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.
This week, actress and humorist Annabelle Gurwitch discusses her new book The End of My Life Is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker. In this deftly comedic and deeply contemplative memoir, the New York Times bestselling author faces life's biggest curveball only to find resilience in the most unlikely places. Gurwitch discusses the memoir-writing process and the importance of humor in hard times with comedian Chelsea Hood.
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7th, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about The End of My Life Is Killing Me:
After Annabelle Gurwitch received an out-of-the blue diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer, an existential dread set in. Precision medicine offered a temporary reprieve—but instead of turning into a cancer warrior, Annabelle declared herself a cancer slacker. Her motto: no runs, no ribbons, no religion.
Told with her signature wit, warmth, and gimlet eye, Gurwitch draws inspiration from Greek mythology and TV comedies, Kermit the Frog and Samuel Beckett. She accidentally acquires an angel, embraces being in it "just for the sex," and finds herself on a European van tour selling merch for a heavy metal band.
In this hilariously and deeply affecting meditation on mortality, the actress and activist illuminates life with chronic disease, inequities in care, and celebrates tiny victories, the crusty ends of baguettes, the discreet pleasure of sucking at a hobby, and the unshakable bond of female friendship. She upends the notion of living each day as if it were your last, as she discovers you can carpe too much diem, embracing, instead, the extraordinariness of the ordinary.
About the speakers:
ANNABELLE GURWITCH is an actress, activist, and New York Times bestselling author of six books and a two-time Thurber Prize finalist. Her essays and satire have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post amongst other publications. Her books include the New York Times bestseller I See You Made an Effort and You're Leaving When? a New York Times "Favorite Book for Healthy Living." Annabelle co-hosted the fan favorite Dinner & a Movie on TBS and was a regular commentator on NPR. She is a Jewish mother, lung cancer survivor and patient advocate, a terrible ukulele player, and an unrepentant cat lady who lives in Los Angeles.
CHELSEA HOOD is a stand up comedian living in Chicago, IL by way of the comedy scenes in both Dallas, TX and Brooklyn, NY. You may have seen her on WGN, The CW Network's Eye Opener, or CW33's Nightcap. She was also featured on Stand Up Records' "Texas Mess" album recorded at SXSW. She was most frequently featured performer at Limestone Comedy Festival, one of eight chose as the Best of the Midwest at Gilda's LaughFest and a Comic to Watch at RIOT LA.
This week, acclaimed writers Daniel Kraus and Susan Orlean discuss the process of adapting books into film and television, as well as their latest releases. Kraus—who won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel Angel Down—developed the story for the film The Shape of Water and co-wrote the novel with Guillermo del Toro. Kraus also recently adapted his hit novel Whalefall into a feature film coming out this October from 20th Century Fox. Orlean—whose book The Orchid Thief lead to the creation of the film Adaptation—is currently at work adapting her bestselling nonfiction book The Library Book for television.
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7th, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About the speakers:
DANIEL KRAUS is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His latest novel, Angel Down, won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and was a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2025. His novel Whalefall won the Alex Award, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, The New York Times, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and more. With Guillermo del Toro, he cowrote The Shape of Water, based on the same idea the two created for the Oscar-winning film.
SUSAN ORLEAN is the author of nine books, including The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup; My Kind of Place; Saturday Night; and On Animals. In 1999, she published The Orchid Thief, a narrative about orchid poachers in Florida, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep. Her book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend won the Ohioana Book Award and the Richard Wall Memorial Award. In 2018, she published The Library Book, about the arson fire at the Los Angeles Public Library. It won the California Book Award and the Marfield Prize and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. It is being adapted for television. Her memoir, Joyride, was published in October 2025. Orlean has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992, and has also contributed to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Outside, and Esquire. She has written about taxidermy, umbrellas, origami, chickens, and a wide range of other subjects. She was a 2003 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. She lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles.
This week, religion scholars Reza Aslan and Ilan Stavans sit down with Emily D. Crews to discuss their new anthology, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands, a historic collection of the radicals and freethinkers that sparked a country's journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred.
This book and conversation are presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, of which Stavans and Crews were advisors. American Prophets is now on display at the AWM.
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about A Nation Wrestles with God:
Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles with God collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited dialogue, even change, and continue to influence a growing nation. From the pre-colonial to the present day, these landmark stories, poems, essays, letters, speeches, songs, comic strips, and more awoke new generations to free religious thought. On the occasion of America's 250th year of independence, and during a time of deep ideological division, this sweeping anthology is an urgent reminder of the pluralities that strengthen and unite us.
About the speakers:
REZA ASLAN is a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions. He is the author of numerous internationally bestselling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, currently in development at Fremantle Media with Pablo Larrain attached to direct. A former Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award, Aslan has helped craft the mythologies for Hollywood's most acclaimed franchises, including Dune, Game of Thrones, and The Leftovers. In addition to his writing and production work, he has served as host and executive producer of CNN's Believer and Rough Draft with Reza Aslan, and co-hosts the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake alongside Rainn Wilson. His latest book, An American Martyr in Persia, was nominated for the PEN/Jacqueline Beograd Weld Award. Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their four children.
EMILY D. CREWS is the Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In collaboration with its staff and faculty co-directors, she sets the research and programming agenda of the Marty Center. She also acts as its public representative and leads its partnerships with collaborators across the University, the city of Chicago, and beyond. A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School's PhD program in the History of Religions, Emily is a scholar of Christianities in Africa and the United States. Emily is the co-editor of Remembering Jonathan Z. Smith: A Career and Its Consequence (with Russell McCutcheon, 2020) and African Diaspora Religions in 5 Minutes (with Curtis J. Evans, 2024). She has published scholarly articles in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Religion and Theology, and numerous edited volumes, as well as articles for the public in Sightings and The Local Palate. She was recently a scholar-consultant on the Court Theatre's production of The Gospel at Colonus.
ILAN STAVANS is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic's Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile's Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans's work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen.
This week, acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan talks about writing baseball and his new book The First All-Star Game: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads. He is interviewed by comedian Joe Kilgallon.
This program took place at the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 6, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About The First All-Star Game:
- America was still reeling from the crash. Breadlines stretched around city blocks, and shantytowns sprawled in the shadows of skyscrapers. American optimism was fading—and baseball was in trouble, too. Owners slashed budgets, fans stayed home, and even the mighty Babe Ruth seemed to have lost some of his magic. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt offered hope, but just days before his inauguration, five shots rang out—missing the president-elect, killing the mayor of Chicago, and setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually bring together the world's best ballplayers for the first All-Star Game.
It was a newspaperman's idea: The Game of the Century. Put the world's best players on one field and let the public decide who belonged there. At a moment when some feared the national pastime would not survive the decade, Chicago would host the ballgame as the highlight of the 1933 World's Fair. The city hoped to shed its reputation as a haven for gamblers and gangsters and help restore America's standing on the world stage. But abroad, dark clouds were gathering. Hitler was Germany's new chancellor, and Mussolini had consolidated his power. As visitors strolled the fairgrounds, Italian warplanes flew overhead, and a zeppelin sent by the German delegation circled the city emblazoned with a swastika.
The First All-Star Game is the story of a nation and a sport at a crossroads, and a sweeping look back at baseball's early history and the America that shaped it. Deeply researched and filled with remarkable characters—legendary players like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Lefty Grove rubbing shoulders with Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and Charles Lindbergh—Randall Sullivan explores the history of an American obsession and captures the moment when both the sport and the nation found renewal in a single spectacle of hope.
About the speakers:
RANDALL SULLIVAN was a contributing editor to Rolling Stone for over twenty years. He is the author of Graveyard of the Pacific, Dead Wrong, The Price of Experience, LAbyrinth, The Miracle Detective, and Untouchable. His work has been published in, among many other places, Wired, Esquire, Outside, Men's Journal, Washington Post, and the Guardian. He lives in Oregon.
Described by the Chicago Tribune as having "a straight shooting, pull-no-punches style," JOE KILGALLON has performed at clubs and colleges all over America. He's been a personal opener for stars such as Hannibal Buress, Roy Wood Jr., and Matteo Lane. Joe has released 3 albums that have all debuted #1 on the iTunes Comedy Charts! Joe has appeared in NBC's Chicago Med and was a segment producer on MTV's Ridiculousness.
This week, we explore America at 250 years old, through lenses of migration, Black history, and queer liberation. Darius Bost and C. Riley Snorton discuss their book A Black Queer History of the United States. And Anna O. Law discusses her book Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants. Moderated by historian and author Valerie Gugala.
This episode is the first of many to come from the 2026 American Writers Festival. Co-hosted by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library, the American Writers Festival is a free literary event featuring in-depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. This conversation took place June 7, 2026 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about A Black Queer History of the United States:
A sweeping and introductory Black queer history of the United States centering queer and trans contributions to the Black freedom movement from slavery to Black Lives Matter. Through storytelling and other narratives, Snorton and Bost show how the Black queer community has always existed, regardless of the attempts to stamp it out, and how those in it continue to fight for their rightful place in the world.
More about Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship:
Presents a story of constitutional development that traces the confluence of the logics of slavery and settler colonialism in historical legal rulings and public policy about U.S. migration and citizenship. The book examines the division of labor between the national and state/local governments that endured for over a century, reasons why that arrangement changed in the late nineteenth century, and what the transformation meant for people subject to those regimes of control. Drawing into one study the migration policy histories of groups of people that are usually studied separately, and combining the methodologies of political science, history, and law, Anna O. Law reveals the unmistakable effects of slavery and Native American dispossession in modern U.S. immigration policy.
About the writers:
DARIUS BOST is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (University of Chicago Press).
VALERIE GUGALA is a historian and public speaker with a profound love for reading, particularly books that have faced censorship throughout history. Valerie’s keen interest in American history provides a rich backdrop for her talks, where she delves into the stories that have shaped the nation’s cultural and political landscape. With over 25 years of experience, Valerie has captivated audiences across the Chicago area and beyond. Her engaging presentations and insightful perspectives have made her a sought-after speaker for a wide range of groups and organizations.
ANNA O. LAW is the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights in the Department of Political Science at CUNY Brooklyn College. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who is mostly a legal historian now. She completed her PhD in Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications appear in political science, history, and law journals and investigate the interaction between law, history, and politics. Her first book, The Immigration Battle in American Courts (2010), examined the role of the federal judiciary in U.S. immigration. She teaches and researches in U.S. constitutional law, federal courts, U.S. immigration policy history, federalism, and race/ethnicity.
C. RILEY SNORTON is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and jointly appointed with the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia University. He is the author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and co-editor of Saturation: Race, Art and the Circulation of Value (MIT Press/New Museum, 2020) with Hentyle Yapp and The Flesh of the Matter: A Critical Forum on Hortense Spillers (Vanderbilt University Press, 2024) with Margo Natalie Crawford. He is also the co-author of A Black Queer History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2026) with Darius Bost. Snorton is currently working on his third single-author monograph, Black Trans Matters.
This week, the American Writers Museum and the Consulate General of Ireland, Chicago present a conversation with writer, entertainer, drag queen, LGBTQ+ rights activist and 'Queen of Ireland' Rory O'Neill, also known as Panti Bliss. O'Neill visited the AWM to celebrate Bloomsday—the annual global celebration on June 16 of Irish writer James Joyce that commemorates the events of his 1922 masterpiece, Ulysses.
O'Neill is joined by AWM President Carey Cranston for an alternative exploration of Joyce's work which sparkles with a few characters who can be considered part of the queer spectrum, through to LGBTQ+ writers and literature of today. O'Neill traverses the path to the equality and inclusion that exists in today's modern Ireland, vastly different from a century ago. O'Neill also discusses his own memoir Woman in the Making and his part in the campaign for marriage equality in Ireland in 2015.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This conversation originally took place June 16, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
Content alert: this conversation includes adult themes, topics, and language. Listener discretion is advised.
This week, pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong stops by to discuss her latest book Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America. Armstrong tells the definitive story of the creation and legacy of the beloved television show Parks and Recreation, with exclusive interview content from its cast, crew, and creators, as well as an introduction by Nick Offerman. Armstrong is interviewed by AWM Director of Programs Allison Sansone. The two are joined by special guest Ric Offerman, the mayor of Minooka, IL (and Nick Offerman's dad!)
This conversation originally took place April 22, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about Parks and Rec:
More than fifteen years after Parks and Recreation premiered, it has become a streaming and pop culture staple. It's beloved for its jokes, characters, and expressions—the show even created a now widely observed holiday, Galentine's Day. How did it all happen and how did the show transform from a ratings disappointment into a cult classic? Pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong reveals all this and more in the definitive history of the show, which is as full of humor, optimism, and heart as Parks and Recreation itself.
Through new and exclusive interviews, as well as deep insight and smart and entertaining pop culture analysis, Armstrong tells the story of how Parks and Recreation came to be: how it grew from The Office's success and Obama-inspired optimism, how producers assembled one of TV's most lovable casts but barely survived a mediocre first season, how the show found its voice by getting more political and more romantic, and how it became a cultural force despite middling ratings during its network run, going on to become a television savior of the Trump era and a modern classic.
For fans of the show, readers who enjoy behind-the-scenes stories, and everyone who loves a nostalgic deep-dive, Parks and Rec is an exploration of its legacy as an enduringly lovable modern comedy classic full of optimism and heart. Lovingly told and deeply researched, Parks and Rec is the ultimate history of the show that taught us what's important in life: friends, waffles, and work.
New York Times bestselling author JENNIFER KEISHIN ARMSTRONG has written nine books, including Seinfeldia, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Sex and the City and Us, When Women Invented Television, and So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls. She is the cofounder of the "Ministry of Pop Culture" Substack and a former local newspaper reporter. She lives in New Paltz, New York. She is also the co-host of the American Writers Museum podcast Dead Writer Drama.
This week, we chat with poet Naoko Fujimoto, a senior editor at RHINO Poetry. She stopped by the AWM the other week to discuss the work of translation, her poetry process, and her forthcoming book titled: of Women: 20 Japanese Female Poets / 20 Waka Poems, a collection of translated Japanese waka-poems, including text collage and haibun-style discourses on translation.
This conversation originally took place April 28, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about of Women:
of Women is a collection of translations of Japanese waka-poems from the seventh century to the twelfth century, featuring twenty female poets from this period, when Japanese women's literature flourished. This book includes poems by famous writers from the era, such as Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book) and Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji), and introduces some lesser-known female poets as well.
Waka compacts much information in a short form: words with double meanings, unfamiliar phrases, habits foreign to non-Japanese speakers, and hidden historical backgrounds. Direct translations would fail to capture the author's full intent, so of Women takes several approaches to capture the original sensory images, including text collage and haibun, short essays that provide historical context and introduce the author before each waka.
NAOKO FUJIMOTO was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a BA and MA from Indiana University. She is the author of the poetry collections We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan, Where I Was Born, and Glyph:Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory, as well as four chapbooks. She is associate and translation editor of RHINO and translation editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She organizes an online community at Working On Gallery and is a Bread Loaf Translation full scholarship recipient and the 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation.
This week, poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema K. Shehabi discuss their powerful new book Water to Water: Gaza Renga, a poetry collaboration in the call-and-response form of renga written during the conflict in Gaza. This conversation originally took place April 20, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
Praise for Water to Water:
"[A] stunning sequence of renga… We celebrate these two voices, bleeding in and out of each other, quicksilver, mercurial, eloquent in song and silence, even as they celebrate the human spirit in a ruptured world." —Mimi Khalvati
"This book's revolutionary form is most revolutionary of all in making serious political engagement and sophisticated poetic pleasure inseparable. —Fiona Sampson, Professor of Poetry, University of Roehampton
About the authors:
MARILYN HACKER is the author of twenty-one books of poems, including three collaborative books, and twenty-two collections of translations from the French. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous honors, including the National Book Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Argana International Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, editor of the Kenyon Review, and editor of the French literary journal Siècle 21. She lives between Paris and New York.
DEEMA K. SHEHABI is a Palestinian American poet and editor. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and the co-editor (with Beau Beausoleil) of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received NCBR's recognition award. She is also the winner of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize in 2018 and a recipient of Best of the Net nomination in 2021 as well as several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and her work has been translated into Arabic, French, and Farsi.
This week, religious studies professor Dr. Kati Curts discusses her book Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America, which illustrates how Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel. Though Ford's efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
This conversation originally took place March 5, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
More about Assembling Religion:
Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the "gospel of reincarnation," mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford's efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world.
This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, it examines Ford's mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford's impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.
DR. KATI CURTS is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a historian of religion, specializing in the history and culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. She teaches courses and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture.
This week, Maggie and Africa Brown discuss the legacy of their father—Oscar Brown, Jr.—and perform some of his work. This conversation originally took place February 26, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
Maggie and Africa Brown love doing what they do best together—singing with theatrics on stage. These "2 Brown Sisters" energetically merge their foundations in jazz with the melting pot of their mixed musical upbringing. The Browns' harmonious vocal blend radiates sisterly love and their often comical chemistry on stage. Their shows are always enjoyable and steeped in a rich musical legacy, which they proudly carry on from their father, singer, composer, playwright, and activist, Oscar Brown, Jr.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
More about the episode:
Oscar Brown, Jr. was a towering figure in American arts whose genius transcended categories. A poet, playwright, songwriter, actor, director, and activist, he embodied the very spirit of creativity fused with social conscience. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Brown used his words and music as instruments of truth, courage, and transformation. His career spanned theater, television, film, and jazz, leaving a body of work that was all at once entertaining, revolutionary, and timeless.
The 2 Brown Sisters grew up watching and internalizing their father at work, until they themselves began being part of the show. This performance offers songs and poetry to complement the celebration of African American History and Valentines Day. The 2 Brown Sisters will demonstrate glimpses of several of Oscar’s plays—written entirely in rhyming verse. They will also give insight into his own poetry form he called a "Long Song," which means: a poem with a large number of verses, that was composed to be accompanied with music or sung.
Thanks to their upbringing, the 2 Brown Sisters know how to turn poetry into theatre. This activity is part of the Brown family's year-long centennial celebration for Oscar Brown, Jr., born October 10, 1926.
In this episode, Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad discusses her book The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. This conversation originally took place January 29, 2026 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. Travel through vibrant spaces that trace the many paths of American faith, from sacred rituals to songs of devotion. Discover rare artifacts and creative works from literature, film, music, and comedy along the way. This isn't just an exhibit—it's a shared journey of reflection, inspiration, and connection through the stories that move us all. American Prophets is now open.
More about The Fire Inside:
The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America's greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism's most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment. She explores the writers' enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles.
This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities—ones that don’t shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths; that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.
About the author:
DR. RIMA VESELY-FLAD is the Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary. She is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017).
This week, scholars Lisa Marie Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson discuss their book Your Daughters Will Prophesy: Religion and Rhetoric in the Nineteenth-Century Woman’s Movement. Their work explores how four 19th-century women—Jarena Lee, Sarah Moore Grimké, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Frances Willard—used the Bible to claim their voice on the moral questions of their day. This conversation originally took place January 27, 2026 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
More about Your Daughters Will Prophesy:
Caught between their identity as Christians and social norms that silenced them, American women used scripture to claim moral and then rhetorical agency. They reinterpreted familiar biblical passages, recovered previously ignored stories about women, and contested passages used to circumscribe women’s activities. By strategically adopting a rhetorical posture of dissent, these women became prophetic voices in American society.
In Your Daughters Will Prophesy, Lisa Marie Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson analyze the argumentative resources four women—Jarena Lee, Sarah Moore Grimké, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Frances Willard—used to counter gendered restrictions and gain access to platform and pulpit, catalyzing what became known as the woman’s movement.
About the authors:
LISA MARIE GRING-PEMBLE is an associate professor at George Mason University. She is author of Grim Fairy Tales: The Rhetorical Construction of American Welfare Policy, and her writing has appeared in journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Speech andRhetoric and Public Affairs.
MARTHA WATSON is author and editor of several books, including Lives of Their Own: Rhetorical Dimensions in Autobiographies of Women Activists. She is a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.
This week, Emmy Award-winning journalist Mary Ann Ahern talks about covering religion, writing about Chicago's Pope, and shaping the public's perception and practice of faith. Ahern is interviewed by AWM President Carey Cranston. This conversation originally took place January 22, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
Mary Ann Ahern joined NBC 5 News in March 1989 and was named the station's Political Reporter in 2006. Most recently, Ahern was front-and-center at the Vatican for NBC 5 Chicago's extensive on-site coverage of one of the year's biggest international stories when Chicago native, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, became Pope Leo XIV. For her standout work at the Vatican, Ahern earned a pair 2025 Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
More about Mary Ann Ahern:
In her storied career, Ahern has covered political campaigns from the White House to Springfield to Chicago. She witnessed the transitions from Mayor Richard Daley to Mayor Rahm Emanuel to Mayor Lori Lightfoot to Mayor Brandon Johnson and traveled through the primary states for the 2008, 2012, 2016 presidential campaigns, just as she did in 1988 while a reporter in Atlanta.
She has covered presidential election nights from Texas, Boston, New York and Chicago and has covered presidential inaugurations from Washington, D.C.
She's gained recognition over the years for covering the religion beat and has reported from Rome on the selection of Pope Francis, Pope Benedict's farewell and the 2014 canonization of pontiffs John XXIII and John Paul II. Over the years she covered Pope John Paul II's many trips including Cuba and several World Youth Day events. Ahern followed Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's final years, the selection of both Cardinal Blase Cupich and Cardinal Francis George, the beatification of Mother Teresa, and the Pope's emergency meeting with the American Cardinals on the priest sex abuse crisis.
Music journalist Alan Light discusses spirituality and song, as well as his new book Don’t Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, whichexamines the enduring relevance of Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours 50 years after its release. He is interviewed by radio host Ryan Arnold. This conversation originally took place November 24, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about Don't Stop:
The author of The Holy or the Broken and former editor-in-chief of Vibe brings his "thoughtful and illuminating" (New York Times) insight to Fleetwood Mac's iconic album Rumours, celebrating its story, mythology, and enduring impact.
On January 1, 1975, struggling young singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham was invited to join the veteran blues band Fleetwood Mac. He agreed on the condition that his girlfriend, an equally unknown vocalist named Stevie Nicks, also be included. Within two years, Rumourswas born—and went on to become one of the most popular albums of all time.
Almost five decades later, it is the only classic rock record that still attracts young listeners and continues to top sales and streaming charts. In Don’t Stop, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Alan Light unravels the enduring allure of Fleetwood Mac's monumental album. Since its 1977 release, Rumours has captivated generations with its unparalleled blend of romantic turmoil and musical genius. Light explores the album's transformation from a pop phenomenon to a cultural touchstone, and its unique ability to remain relevant in today's rapidly changing music scene.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with current artists inspired by Fleetwood Mac, as well as fans who have only recently discovered the album, Light investigates what keep Rumours at the forefront of popular culture, from Glee to Saturday Night Live to Daisy Jones & the Six. Through insightful analysis and storytelling, Don't Stop celebrates the album's trail blazing sound and diverse voices, and the emotional depth that continues to fascinate audiences. From the incredible soap opera behind the album’s creation to its embrace in the age of TikTok, this book presents a kaleidoscopic view of a landmark work that has transcended its time.
Emmy Award–winning music journalist ALAN LIGHT is the author of numerous books including The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” (which was adapted into an acclaimed documentary), as well as Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain and biographies of Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, and the Beastie Boys. He was the cowriter of bestselling memoirs by Gregg Allman and Peter Frampton. Alan was a senior writer at Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief of Vibe and Spin. He contributes frequently
This week, scholar Christopher W. Hunt discusses his recent book Jimmy’s Faith: James Baldwin, Disidentification, and the Queer Possibilities of Black Religion. This conversation originally took place September 16, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open!
More about Jimmy's Faith:
The relationship of James Baldwin's life and work to Black religion is in many ways complex and confounding. What is he doing through his literary deployment of religious language and symbols?
Despite Baldwin's disavowal of Christianity in his youth, he continued to engage the symbols and theology of Christianity in works such as The Amen Corner, Just Above My Head, and others. With Jimmy's Faith, author Christopher W. Hunt shows how Baldwin's usage of those religious symbols both shifted their meaning and served as a way for him to build his own religious and spiritual vision. Engaging José Esteban Muñoz's theory of disidentification as a queer practice of imagination and survival, Hunt demonstrates the ways in which James Baldwin disidentifies with and queers Black Christian language and theology throughout his literary corpus.
Baldwin's vision is one in which queer sexuality signifies the depth of love's transforming pos-sibilities, the arts serve as the (religious) medium of knitting Black community together, an agnostic and affective mysticism undermines Christian theological discourse, "androgyny" troubles the gender binary, and the Black child signifies the hope for a world made new. In disidentifying with Christian symbols, Jimmy's Faith reveals how Baldwin imagines both religion and the world "oth-erwise," offering a model of how we might do the same for our own communities and ourselves.
DR. CHRISTOPHER W. HUNT is Assistant Professor of Religion at Colorado College, and received his PhD from the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Hunt’s work considers the relevance and meaning of Black religion for those on the margins or considered outside of traditional religious spaces.
This week, three writers of romance—Sajni Patel, Scarlett St. Clair, and Helene Wecker—discuss the role of religion in the romance genre. This conversation originally took place July 10, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open!
About the writers:
SAJNI PATEL is an award-winning author of romance and young adult novels and is perhaps best known for her debut, The Trouble with Hating You. Her works have appeared in numerous Best of the Year and Must-Read lists from Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Apple Books, Audiofile, Tribeza, Austin Woman, NBC, Insider, and many others. Her critically acclaimed YA dark fantasy, A Drop of Venom, from Disney Hyperion/Rick Riordan Presents fuses the Medusa myth with Indian mythology in what Booklist calls “a furious, action-packed fantasy” and Publisher’s Weekly calls “urgent and vital.”
1 New York Times bestselling author SCARLETT ST. CLAIR is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and the author of the Hades X Persephone Saga, the Adrian X Isolde series, fairytale retellings, and When Stars Come Out. She has a master’s degree in library science and information studies and a bachelor’s in English writing. She is obsessed with Greek mythology, murder mysteries, and the afterlife. Her newest book is Terror at the Gates.
HELENE WECKER is the author of The Golem and the Jinni and The Hidden Palace. Her books have appeared on The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller lists, and have won a National Jewish Book Award, the VCU Cabel Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and a Mythopoeic Award. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This week, scholar Thomas A. Tweed discusses his new book Religion in the Lands that Became America. A sweeping retelling of American religious history, Tweed shows how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age. Tweed is joined by fellow Indigenous Studies professor John N. Low. This conversation originally took place November 10, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.
More about Religion in the Lands that Became America:
Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begins the story much earlier—11,000 years ago—at a rock shelter in present-day Texas and follows Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, transnational migrants, and people of many faiths as they transform the landscape and confront the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming and from factories to fiber optics.
Setting aside the familiar narrative themes, he highlights sustainability, showing how religion both promoted and inhibited individual, communal, and environmental flourishing during three sustainability crises: the medieval Cornfield Crisis, which destabilized Indigenous ceremonial centers; the Colonial Crisis, which began with the displacement of Indigenous Peoples and the enslavement of Africans; and the Industrial Crisis, which brought social inequity and environmental degradation. The unresolved Colonial and Industrial Crises continue to haunt the nation, Tweed suggests, but he recovers historical sources of hope as he retells the rich story of America’s religious past.
About the speakers:
THOMAS A. TWEED is the Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. A past president of the American Academy of Religion, he is editor of Retelling U.S. Religious History and author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion and Religion: A Very Short Introduction.
JOHN N. LOW received his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan, and is an enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. He is also the recipient of a graduate certificate in Museum Studies and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Michigan. He earned a BA from Michigan State University, a second BA in American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota, and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.
Professor Low previously served as Executive Director of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, Illinois, and served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Indians of the Midwest Project at the D'Arcy McNi
This week, we revisit our Faith is Funny program with four comedians—Gibran Saleem, Hari Kondabolu, Peter Sagal, and Kate Sidley—who discuss the role of religion in comedy. This conversation originally took place June 23, 2025 and was recorded live at the Studebaker Theater.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s forthcoming exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets opens November 21, 2025.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About the comedians:
GIBRAN SALEEM is a writer and comedian whose work spans broadcast and digital platforms. Born in North Carolina to traditional Pakistani immigrants, he was raised in a Muslim household and began performing stand-up in New York while completing a graduate degree in psychology. A semi-finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship and alum of NYU’s Episodic Writers’ Room, he has also toured with Hasan Minhaj, appeared on FX, ABC, and Hulu, and continues to develop screenwriting projects and perform stand-up across the U.S.
HARI KONDABOLU is a comedian, writer & podcaster based in Brooklyn, NY. He has been described by The NY Times as “one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today.” He has performed on The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, John Oliver’s NY Stand-Up Show, @Midnight & has his own half-hour special on Comedy Central. A former writer & correspondent on the Chris Rock produced FX TV show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. In 2017, he released his critically acclaimed documentary The Problem with Apu on truTV.
PETER SAGAL is the host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the most listened-to hour on public radio. A playwright, screenwriter and journalist, he is also the author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How To Do Them and The Incomplete Book of Running, a memoir about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and other adventures while running long distances. On TV, Peter has made appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and other shows, and hosted Constitution USA with Peter Sagal for PBS and National Geographic Explorer for the NatGeo Channel.
KATE SIDLEY is a comedy writer and performer originally from Cleveland, Ohio. She writes for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and her work can be seen in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and Reductress. Kate has multiple Emmy-nominations, a Peabody Award, a Writers Guild Award and, thanks to her years of Catholic school, a visceral aversion to plaid wool skirts. Her forthcoming book is called How to Be a Saint: An Extremely Weird and Mildly Sacrilegious History of The Catholic Church’s Biggest Names.
American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
Beloved author Susan Orlean discusses her new book Joyride, a masterful memoir of finding her creative calling and purpose that invites us to approach life with wonder, curiosity, and an irrepressible sense of delight. Orlean is interviewed by journalist Chris Borrelli.
This conversation originally took place October 24, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about Joyride:
"The story of my life is the story of my stories," writes Susan Orlean in this extraordinary, era-defining memoir from one of the greatest practitioners of narrative nonfiction of our time. Joyride is a magic carpet ride through Orlean's life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile ("The American Man Age Ten") to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji.
Not only does Orlean's account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it's also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer's block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty.
While Orlean has always written her way into other people's lives in order to understand the human experience, Joyride is her most personal book ever—a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the excruciating collapse of her first marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother while mourning the decline of her own mother, sojourning to Hollywood for films based on her work including Adaptation and Blue Crush, and confronting mortality. Joyride is also a time machine to a bygone era of journalism, from Orlean's bright start in the golden age of alt-weeklies to her career-making days working alongside icons such as Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Anna Wintour, Sonny Mehta, and Jonathan Karp—forces who shaped the media industry as we know it today.
Infused with Orlean's signature warmth and wit, Joyride is a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us.
SUSAN ORLEAN has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Substack at SusanOrlean.Substack.com.
CHRIS BORRELLI is a longtime features writer at the Chicago Tribune and a Nieman fellow at Ha
This week in honor of Halloween, we discuss the use of religion and spirituality in horror writing. We are joined by leading horror writers Tananarive Due, Juan Martinez, and Matt Ruff. This conversation originally took place October 10, 2025 and was recorded live at the University of Chicago Divinity School. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s forthcoming exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets opens November 21, 2025.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About the authors:
TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory (winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.
She was an executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote “A Small Town” for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus, and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. They also co-wrote their Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, “Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!” She and her husband live with their son, Jason.
JUAN MARTINEZ is a writer and an associate professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of the horror novel Extended Stay (University of Arizona Press / Camino del Sol, 2023) and of the story collection Best Worst American (Small Beer Press, 2017). He is also the fiction editor for Jackleg Press. Juan lives with his family near Chicago.
MATT RUFF is the award-winning author of eight novels, including Fool on the Hill, Set This House in Order, Bad Monkeys, The Mirage, 88 Names, and the bestselling Lovecraft Country, which was adapted as an HBO series. His most recent book is The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country.
This week, religious scholar Paul Elie discusses his latest book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. This enthralling group portrait brings to life a moment when popular culture became the site of religious strife—strife that set the stage for some of the most salient political and cultural clashes of our day. Elie is interviewed by Emily D. Crews, the Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. This conversation originally took place May 30, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s forthcoming exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets opens November 21, 2025.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about The Last Supper:
Circa 1980, tradition and authority are in the ascendant, both in Catholicism (via Pope John Paul II) and in American civic life (through the Moral Majority and the so-called televangelists). But the public is deeply divided on issues of body and soul, devotion and desire.
Enter the figures Paul Elie calls "crypto-religious." Here is Leonard Cohen writing "Hallelujah" on his knees in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo's The Last Supper in response to the AIDS pandemic; Prince making the cross and altar into "signs o' the times." Through Toni Morrison, spirits speak from the grave; Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen deepen the tent-revival intensity of their work; Wim Wenders offers an angel's-eye view of Berlin; U2, the Neville Brothers, and Sinéad O’Connor reckon with their Christian roots in music of mystic yearning. And Martin Scorsese overcomes fundamentalist ire to make The Last Temptation of Christ—a struggle that anticipates Salman Rushdie's struggle with Islam in The Satanic Verses.
In Elie's acclaimed first book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Catholic writers ventured out into the wilds of postwar America; in this book, creative figures who were raised religious go to the margins of conventional belief, calling forth controversy. Episodes such as the boycott sparked by Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video and the tearing-up of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ in Congress are early skirmishes in the culture wars—but here the creators (not the politicians) are the protagonists, and the work they make speaks to conflicts that remain unsettled.
The Last Supper explores the bold and unexpected forms an encounter with belief can take. It traces the beginnings of our postsecular age, in which religion is at once surging and in decline. Through a propulsive narrative, it reveals the crypto-religious imagination as complex, credible, daring, and vividly recognizable.
PAUL ELIE is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. He is a senior fellow in Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Reli
This week, screenwriter and author Nicholas Meyer discusses his latest mystery novel Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing. In this latest book, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson delve into the world of art forgery. Meyer is interviewed by Allison Sansone, Director of Programs at the American Writers Museum.
This conversation originally took place September 18, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
PODCAST NETWORK HUB
More about Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing:
London, 189–: The great city is brought to a standstill by a series of blizzards and Sherlock Holmes is bored to distraction. It would take a miracle to bring a case to the detective’s door...
What arrives is not promising: a landlady who complains her artist tenant is behind on rent. Not exactly the miracle for which Holmes was hoping. But, next thing you know, there are several corpses and Sherlock Holmes and his biographer, John H. Watson, MD, find themselves drawn into one of the most bizarre cases of the great detective’s career. And into the cutthroat big business of Art, where chicanery and mendacity (and cut throats) proliferate.
What makes a work of art worth killing for? Is it the artist, his mistress, his dealer, or his blackmailer? The cast of characters is large. But are they perpetrators, accomplices, or victims? And just who is Juliet Packwood, with whom Watson has become infatuated?
Oh, and there’s one other problem: Is this a genuine Holmes case or a clever forgery? Is this the real thing?
If you can’t tell the difference, what is the difference?
About Nicholas Meyer:
NICHOLAS MEYER is the "editor" of several Watson manuscripts, including The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, which spent forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His screenplay of the film received an Oscar nomination. His film credits include writing and directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He wrote and directed Time After Time, co-created Medici: Masters of Florence, and directed The Day After, about nuclear war that attracted the largest audience ever for a television movie. A native of New York City, he lives in Santa Monica, California.
How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people? America's most beloved wiseass, Dave Barry, finally tells his life story with all the humor you'd expect from a man who made a career out of making fun of pretty much everything.
This week, Barry discusses his memoir Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass with Mark Bazer of The Interview Show. This conversation originally took place May 15, 2025 and was recorded live at Chicago Hope Academy. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
This episode is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit and programming initiative American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, which opens in November 2025. American Prophets is supported by a generous grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Class Clown:
In Class Clown, Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainment—there was no internet—and preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the sixties).
He began his journalism career at a small-town Pennsylvania newspaper where he learned the most important rule of local journalism: never confuse a goose with a duck. His journey then took a detour into the business world, where as a writing consultant he spent years trying, with limited success, to get corporate folks to, for God’s sake, get the point. Somehow from there he wound up as a humor columnist for The Miami Herald, where his boss was a wild man who encouraged him to write about anything that struck him as amusing and to never worry about alienating anyone.
His columns were not popular with everyone: He managed to alienate a vast army of Neil Diamond fans, and the entire state of Indiana. But he also developed a loyal following of readers who alerted him to the threat of exploding toilets, not to mention the fire hazards posed by strawberry pop-tarts and Rollerblade Barbie, which he demonstrated to the nation on the David Letterman show. He led his readers on a crusade against telemarketers that ultimately caused the national telemarketers association to stop answering its own phones because it was getting—irony alert—too many unwanted calls. He has also run for president multiple times, although so far without success.
He became a book author and joined a literary rock band, which was not good at playing music but did once perform with Bruce Springsteen, who sang backup to Dave. As for his literary merits, Dave writes: “I’ll never have the critical acclaim of, say, Marcel Proust. But was Marcel Proust ever on Carson? Did he ever steal a hotel sign for Oprah?”
Class Clown isn’t just a memoir; it’s a vibrant celebration of a life rich with humor, absurdity, joy, and sadness. Dave says the most important wisdom imparted by his Midwestern parents was never to take anything too seriously. This laughter-f
This week, we kick off our new exhibit and content initiative American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture with four writers of speculative fiction: N. K. Jemisin, Matthew J. Kirby, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nghi Vo. Moderated by Michi Trota, the panel of authors discuss religion in their writing, the importance of considering socio-spiritual systems when world-building, and how these influence the ways their characters move through the worlds they create.
This conversation originally took place April 22, 2025 and was recorded live at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture opens November 2025 at the American Writers Museum in Chicago. Learn more about the exhibit and upcoming programming schedule here. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about the writers:
N. K. JEMISIN is a fantasy author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow whose fiction has been recognized with multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Most of her works have been optioned for television or film, and collectively her novels, including the Broken Earth trilogy — The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky — have sold over two million copies. Her speculative works range widely in theme, though with repeated motifs: resistance and oppression, loneliness and belonging, and Wouldn’t It Be Cool If This One Ridiculous Thing Happened. In her spare time she’s into tabletop and video games, biking, fanfiction, and urban gardening. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, with her son and two cats.
MATTHEW J. KIRBY is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of numerous books for young readers, including The Clockwork Three, Icefall, The Lost Kingdom, the Dark Gravity Sequence, the Assassin’s Creed series Last Descendants, A Taste for Monsters, and Star Splitter. He has also written adult titles for the Assassin’s Creed and Diablo video game franchises. He has won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, the PEN Center USA award for Children’s Literature, and the Judy Lopez Memorial Award.
NNEDI OKORAFOR is the author of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestsellers, including Death of the Author, the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death, and Lagoon, currently in development at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. She has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Eisner Awards; multiple Hugo Awards; and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Born in Cincinnati to Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents, she now resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her daughter, Anyaugo.
NGHI VO is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful
This week, we discuss McSweeney’s new quarterly issue: McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers, featuring writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. We are joined by contributors and guest editors of the issue, Thi Bui and Vu Tran, as well as McSweeney’s Quarterly Editor Rita Bullwinkel. You can learn more about their work in the episode description below.
During the episode, Thi, Vu, and Rita mention upcoming events in celebration of this issue. You can learn more about these special events at the links below. We hope to see you at one of these!
Asian Art Museum | San Francisco | May 1 | 3:45 pmNatasha Reichle, Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art, leads a special curator's choice discussion with McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers co-guest editor Vu Tran and contributing author Doan Bui.
Tenderloin Museum | San Francisco | May 1 | 6:00 pmA block party in the heart of Little Saigon. Readings by Vu Tran and Doan Bui, plus a DJ set by Topazu.
University of Chicago | Chicago | May 15 | 5:00 pmCo-editors Vu Tran and Thi Bui will be joined by fellow contributor Isabelle Pelaud for a reading and celebration of the issue's publication.
This conversation originally took place April 7, 2025 and was recorded via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about The Make Believers:
In McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers (guest edited by Thi Bui and Vu Tran), ten writers of the Vietnamese diaspora write from the eclectic hodgepodge that is their shared imagination of what it means to be "Vietnamese." Packaged in a beautiful foil-stamped cigar box (with art by Bui on each and every surface), and including two booklets, one menu, and a glossary of broken Vietnamese, the work in this issue spans from highbrow to lowbrow, proper to naughty, logical to absurd, and painful to funny. Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, its contributors work across perspectives and multiple languages. In this completely singular, nothing-else-of-its-kind anthology, these artists write (and illustrate!) from a place of collective loss and joy.
Featuring work by: Doan Bui, Thi Bui, H'Rina DeTroy, Anna Moï, Hoài Huong Nguyen, Vaan Nguyen, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Bao Phi, Paul Tran, and Vu Tran. Order your copy of McSweeney's 78: The Make Believers here.
About our guests:
THI BUI is a writer and artist from Viet Nam, California, and New York, now planting roots in New Orleans. Best known for her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, she has also been a longtime educator in public high schools, a professor of comics, an organizer and artist-activist,
This week, author Sash Bischoff discusses her hit debut novel Sweet Fury, a twisty, thought-provoking novel in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bischoff is interviewed by author Kathleen Rooney. This conversation originally took place February 12, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About Sweet Fury:
When a beloved actress is cast in a feminist adaptation of a Fitzgerald classic, she finds herself the victim in a deadly game of revenge in which everyone, on screen and off, is playing a part.
"Cunningly ambitious, twisty, and immersive, it seduces you into a story so compelling that you aren’t ready for the sucker-punch of its deeper truths. This is a hell of a debut." —Rebecca Makkai
Lila Crayne is America’s sweetheart: she’s generous and kind, gorgeous and magnetic. She and her fiancé, visionary filmmaker Kurt Royall, have settled into a stunning new West Village apartment and are set to begin filming their feminist adaptation of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night.
To prepare for the leading role, Lila begins working with charming and accomplished therapist Jonah Gabriel to dig into the trauma of her past. Soon, Lila’s impeccably manicured life begins to unravel on the therapy couch—and Jonah is just the man to pick up the pieces. But everyone has a secret, and no one is quite who they seem.
A twisty, thought-provoking novel of construction and deconstruction in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and told through the lens of the film industry, Sweet Fury is an incisive and bold critique of America’s deep-rooted misogyny. With this novel, Bischoff examines the narratives we tell ourselves, and what happens when we co-opt others into those stories; and she probes the blurred lines between victim and perpetrator and the true meaning of justice.
SASH BISCHOFF is a writer and theater director. She has written plays that have been developed at theaters throughout the US. As a director, she has worked on Broadway and off. Broadway/National Tours include Dear Evan Hansen, The Visit, On the Town, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Shrek. Sash grew up as an actor and won the National Arts Award (NFAA) for Acting. She currently lives in New York with her husband and their many pets. Sweet Fury is her first novel.
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their vintage typewriters who compose poetry on demand. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows won the 2021 X. J. Kennedy Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in fall of 2022. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books, and her criticism appears in the New York Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spous
This week, poets CM Burroughs and Adrian Matejka discuss the groundbreaking legacy of poet Melvin Dixon, who "wrote extensively about the complexities of being a gay Black man" (Poetry Foundation). Presented by the Poetry Foundation. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
CM BURROUGHS is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago and author of The Vital System and Master Suffering, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, Lambda Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Ploughshares, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and Best American Experimental Writing.
ADRIAN MATEJKA is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), which was a finalist for the UNT 2022 Rilke Prize and the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. His first graphic novel Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century was published by Liveright in 2023. He serves as Editor of Poetry magazine.
From the Poetry Foundation: Scholar, novelist, and poet MELVIN DIXON was born in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA and a PhD from Brown University. Dixon wrote the poetry collections Change of Territory (1983) and Love’s Instruments (1995, published posthumously) and two novels, Trouble the Water (1989), winner of a Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction, and Vanishing Rooms (1991). Influenced by James Baldwin, Dixon wrote extensively about the complexities of being a gay black man. Speaking on this topic at a speech to the Third National Lesbian and Gay Writers Conference, Dixon said, "As white gays deny multiculturalism among gays, so too do black communities deny multisexualism among their members. Against this double cremation, we must leave the legacy of our writing and our perspectives on gay and straight experiences." Dixon produced scholarship on and translated writing by several African American writers, including Leopold Sedar Senghor, Geneviève Fabre, and Jacques Roumain. Dixon was the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and he taught at Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, Fordham University, Columbia University, and Williams College. He died from complications related to AIDS at age 42.
This week, writers from around the world discuss their journeys, finding community in creativity, and making a home in Chicago. Featuring multidisciplinary writers Nestor Gomez, Lani T. Montreal, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu; moderated by Jane Hseu. Presented by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
NESTOR "THE BOSS" GOMEZ traveled from Guatemala to Chicago with his family in the mid 80s. He was 15 years old, stuttered, didn’t know the English language and was undocumented. He didn’t have a voice. Today, he is an American citizen, speaks English with a sexy latinx accent and has become a storyteller. He has won the Moth slam more than 80 times. He is also the creator of 80 Minutes Around the World, a storytelling show that features the stories of immigrants, refugees, their descendants and allies.
LANI T. MONTREAL writes to create her home in the diaspora. She is a queer feminist Filipina writer/educator/performer/activist based in Chicago. Her poems and essays have been anthologized in journals and books, and her plays, produced in the Philippines, Canada, and the U.S. She is CIRCA Pintig’s resident playwright and a Chicago Dramatist Network Playwright. She is a two-time recipient of 3Arts Residency Awards, a 2017 VONA Writers of Color Workshop alumni, a 2017 Free Street Theatre Resident Artist, and a 2024 Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellow. She teaches writing at Malcolm X College.
UGOCHI NWAOGWUGWU is a multidisciplinary creative. Her poems have been published in Storm Between Two Fingers & Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different, both international anthologies released in the UK. Golden Shovel Anthology, honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, The Eternal Year of African People, and Wherever I’m At released nationwide. Not My President published by Third World Press in 2017. Her first book of poetry & prose entitled Seasons of Separation, in 2023. Ugochi also created an original pan African poetry form called, “Ike,” (pronounced EE-kay) #Ikepoem, paying homage to her Igbo heritage of Nigeria and fostering black appreciation worldwide.
JANE HSEU is Professor of English at Dominican University. She specializes in teaching/researching Asian American and Latinx literatures and writing creative nonfiction. In addition to academic essays, she has published personal essays on funky Chinese American names, growing up in her mother’s Shiseido cosmetics store, and mental health, literature, and community. Jane enjoys being in creative community, especially being an organizer for Banyan: Asian American Writers Collective and telling stories in Ada Cheng’s storytelling productions. She is currently working on a memoir about how her journey with mental health necessitates coming to terms with a family history of mental illness.
This week, two acclaimed children's book authors—Clothilde Ewing and Malcolm Newsome—discuss their visions and aspirations for children's literature. In particular, ways they have and will continue to both write and advocate for stories that feature BIPOC characters in settings and narratives that move beyond purely historical and overtly "cultural" experiences. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2025 and was recorded live at the 2024 American Writers Festival.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
CLOTHILDE EWING is the author of Stella Keeps the Sun Up (Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2022), Stella and the Mystery of the Missing Tooth (Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2023), and Stella and Roger Can’t Wait to Grow Up (Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2024).
MALCOLM NEWSOME is a traditionally published children’s book author and cyber security expert from the Chicago area. He is a married father of five who has a deep passion for telling stories of hope and possibilities. When he’s not writing or spending time with family, you’ll probably find him either reading, spending time outside in his mini-orchard, or being a lumberjack. His first children’s picture book, Dear Star Baby, released in April 2023. His second picture book, Sydney’s Big Speech, released with HarperCollins in February 2024. He also has several forthcoming titles with HarperCollins and Holt:Macmillan.
This week, award-winning writer and scholar Eve L. Ewing discusses her new book Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism. She is interviewed by AWM President Carey Cranston. This conversation originally took place February 10, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Original Sins:
If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.
In Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country’s racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.
By demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day.
EVE L. EWING is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, and a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series, and is currently writing Black Panther. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues.
This week, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, three of America’s leading romance writers—Xio Axelrod, Swan Huntley, and Claire Legrand—talk about how they write love stories and the love stories that inspired them. Moderated by author Pamala Knight.
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
Books by these authors:
A Crown of Ivy and Glass by Claire Legrand — A lush, sweeping, steamy, forbidden romance series starter that’s perfect for fans of Bridgerton and A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Girls with Bad Reputations by Xio Axelrod — All her life, Kayla heard the same refrain: Don’t be so loud. Don’t act so wild. Don’t take up so much space. Now she’s the beating heart of an up-and-coming rock band...and the whole world is going to know her name.
I Want You More by Swan Huntley — A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story.
About the writers:
XIO AXELROD [she/her] is a USA Today Bestselling author of contemporary fiction and romance. Growing up in the music industry, Xio began her recording career at a young age. Her experiences bring a lyrical quality to her writing and vibrancy to her characters, offering a unique perspective that adds depth and authenticity to the worlds she creates.
SWAN HUNTLEY’S novels include I Want You More, Getting Clean with Stevie Green, The Goddesses, and We Could Be Beautiful. She’s also the writer/illustrator of the darkly humorous The Bad Mood Book and You’re Grounded: An Anti-Self-Help Book to Calm You the Fck Down*. Swan earned an MFA at Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo. She lives in Los Angeles.
PAMALA KNIGHT writes historical paranormal, regency romance and mystery. She’s a member of the Regency Fiction Writers, Hearts through History and the Chicago-North Romance Writers where she’s a past president and programs chair. She’s the current co-chair of the biennial conference, Spring Fling.
CLAIRE LEGRAND used to be a musician until she realized she couldn’t stop thinking about the stories in her head. Now she is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels, most notably A Crown of Ivy and Glass and the Empirium Trilogy, as well as The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, the Edgar Award-nominated Some Kind of Happiness, and Sawkill Girls, which was nominated for both a Bram Stoker Award and a Lambda Literary Award. She is also one of the four authors behind The Cabinet of Curiosities, a critically acclaimed anthology of short stories for young readers. Her next book, A Song of Ash and Moonlight, came out in September 2024. When not writing, Claire enjoys tending to her many plants, learning about fashi
This week, authors Charisse Burden-Stelly and Andrew W. Kahrl discuss their recent work and writing Black history with journalist Arionne Nettles. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States by Charisse Burden-Stelly is a radical explication of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has infused the US government’s anti-communist repression. And in The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America, Andrew W. Kahrl reveals a history that is deep, broad, and infuriating, and casts a bold light on the racist practices long hidden in the shadows of America’s tax regimes.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, which is now traveling throughout the United States. Learn more and see where Dark Testament is now at this link here.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
DR. CHARISSE BURDEN-STELLY is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a 2023-2024 Charles Warren Center Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. A scholar of critical Black studies, political theory, political economy, and intellectual history, she is the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, the co-author of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and the co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings and of Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State.
ANDREW W. KAHRL is professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of the books The Land Was Ours and Free the Beaches.
ARIONNE NETTLES is a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. As a culture reporter in print and audio, her stories often look into Chicago history, culture, gun violence, policing and race & class disparities as a contributor to the New York Times Opinion, Chicago Reader, The Trace, Medium’s ZORA and Momentum, Chicago PBS station WTTW and NPR affiliate WBEZ. She is also host of Is That True? A Kids Podcast About Facts and the author of We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything.
This week, writer and researcher Gail Crowther discusses her new book Dorothy Parker in Hollywood, an expansive and illuminating study of legendary writer Dorothy Parker's life and legacy in Hollywood. Crowther is interviewed by Allison Sansone, Program Director at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place January 21, 2025 and was recorded live via Zoom.
We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Dorothy Parker in Hollywood:
The glamorous extravagances and devasting lows of her time in Hollywood are revealed as never before in this fresh new biography of Dorothy Parker—from leaving New York City to work on numerous classic screenplays such as the 1937 A Star Is Born to the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband's suicide. Parker's involvement with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, which led to her ultimate blacklisting, and her early work in the civil rights movement that inspired her to leave her entire estate to the NAACP are also explored as never before.
Just as she did with her "deliriously fast-paced and erudite" (Library Journal) dual biography of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, Gail Crowther brings Parker back to life on the page in all her wit, grit, and brilliance.
GAIL CROWTHER is a writer, researcher, and academic. She is the author of Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton, The Haunted Reader and Sylvia Plath, and the coauthor of Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning and These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath. Gail divides her time between the North of England and London. As a feminist vegan she engages with politics concerning gender, power, and animal rights.
This week, acclaimed authors Samira Ahmed and Jas Hammonds discuss their recent books, the state of young adult literature today, and the importance of young people seeing themselves in the stories they read. Ahmed's latest, This Book Won’t Burn, is a timely and gripping social-suspense novel about book banning, activism, and standing up for what you believe. From Hammonds comes Thirsty, an unflinching novel about addiction that bestselling author Courtney Summers called "sensitively wrought and gorgeously written."
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
SAMIRA AHMED is the bestselling author of Love, Hate & Other Filters; Internment; Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know; Hollow Fires; and the Amira & Hamza middle-grade duology, as well as a Ms. Marvel comic book mini-series. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including the New York Times, Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Vampires Never Get Old, and A Universe of Wishes.
JAS HAMMONDS was raised in many cities and between the pages of many books. They have received support for their writing from Lambda Literary, Baldwin for the Arts, and the Highlights Foundation. They are also a grateful recipient of the MacDowell James Baldwin Fellowship. Their debut novel, We Deserve Monuments, won the 2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent, among many other accolades.
This week, acclaimed poets Diana Khoi Nguyen and Cindy Juyoung Ok read selections of their work, followed by a discussion of their processes, themes, techniques, and more. Presented by the Poetry Foundation. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
A poet and multimedia artist, DIANA KHOI NGUYEN is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Root Fractures (2024). Her video work has recently been exhibited at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she currently teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
CINDY JUYOUNG OK is the author of Ward Toward from the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the translator of the forthcoming English translation of The Hell of That Star by Kim Hyesoon.
This week, acclaimed book critic and editor Donna Seaman discusses her new book River of Books: A Life in Reading, a memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor. Seaman is interviewed by AWM President Carey Cranston. This conversation originally took place December 16, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About River of Books:
With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman's journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.
*DONNA SEAMAN is the Editor-in-Chief at Booklist, a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, an adjunct professor for Northwestern University's Graduate Creative Writing Program, School of Professional Studies, and a recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Seaman created the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness; her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books, and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists*. She lives in Chicago. Visit: https://www.donnaseaman.com
This week, we take a look back at some of our top episodes of 2024 from both of our podcast series: AWM Author Talks and Nation of Writers.
This is our final episode of 2024. We’ll return next year with even more episodes featuring the writers you love and the stories they tell.
Presented in order of release date, we hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.
- Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
- Book title: So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It)
- W. S. Merwin
- Guest: Sonnet Coggins
- Audre Lorde
- Guest: R. O. Kwon
- The Lasting Influence of Lorraine Hansberry
- Panelists: J. Nicole Brooks, Natalie Y. Moore, and Ericka Ratcliff
- Gloria E. Anzaldúa
- Guests: AnaLouise Keating and ire’ne lara silva
- Freedom to Read
- Panelists: Heather Booth, Anna Claussen, Sara Paretsky, and Donna Seaman
- Level Up: Writing & Gaming
- Panelists: Keith Ammann, Derek Tyler Attico, Keisha Howard, Carly A. Kocurek and Samantha Ortiz
- Yay Panlilio
- Guest: Jen Soriano
- James Welch
- Guest: Stephen Graham Jones
- Mike Thomas and Rick Kogan
- Book title: Carson the Magnificent
Enjoying our podcasts? Consider donating to support our mission and programs like these.
This week, journalist Larry Tye discusses his recent book The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America with reporter Gregory Royal Pratt, accompanied by live jazz from the Richard D. Johnson Trio. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about The Jazzmen:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet.
This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America.
Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category. Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom. William James Basie, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans—the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller.
What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America's eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.
Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through the singular lens of the country's most gifted, engaging, and enduring African-American musicians.
About the writers:
LARRY TYE is a former reporter at the Boston Globe, off now writing books and running a Boston-based fellowship program for health journalists. The Jazzmen is his ninth book, with others including Home Lands, the upbeat tale of a thriving Jewish diaspora; Superman, the biography of America’s longest-lasting (Jewish) hero; and Bobby Kennedy, which looks at RFK’s transformation from Joe McCarthy’s protege to a liberal icon. Tye graduated from Brown University and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Tye is co-spearheading a drive to revive local journalism on Cape Cod, where he spends 90 percent of his time.
GREGORY ROYAL PRATT covered every day of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term and was deeply sourced in City Hall, as well as in the other offices of
This week, Mike Thomas, co-author of the Johnny Carson biography Carson the Magnificent, sits down with Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune to discuss the highly anticipated biography—twenty years in the making—of the entertainer who redefined late-night television and reshaped American culture. Thomas—who finished the project Bill Zehme started after Bill's passing—shares insights into the reporting process, picking up where Zehme left off, and the influence of Carson on today's comedy.
This conversation originally took place November 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Carson the Magnificent:
In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson—the only one he’d granted since retiring from hosting The Tonight Show a decade earlier. Zehme was tapped for the Esquire feature story thanks to his years of legendary celebrity profiles, and the resulting piece portrayed Carson as more human being than showbiz legend. Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005 and urged on by many of those closest to Carson, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography. He toiled on the book for nearly a decade—interviewing dozens of Carson’s colleagues and friends and filling up a storage locker with his voluminous research—before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023 his obituaries mentioned the Carson book, with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman calling it "one of the great unfinished biographies."
Yet the hundreds of pages Zehme managed to complete are astounding both for the caliber of their writing and how they illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history: A man who brought so much joy and laughter to so many millions but was himself exceedingly shy and private. Zehme traces Carson’s rise from a magic-obsessed Nebraska boy to a Navy ensign in World War II to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show—which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades. Without Carson, there would be no late-night television as we know it. On a much more intimate level, Zehme also captures the turmoil and anguish that accompanied the success: four marriages, troubles with alcohol, and the devastating loss of a child.
In one passage, Zehme notes that when asked by an interviewer in the mid-80s for the secret to his success, Carson replied simply, "Be yourself and tell the truth." Completed with help from journalist and Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, Carson the Magnificent offers just that: an honest assessment of who Johnny Carson really was.
MIKE THOMAS is the author of two critically acclaimed books, The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater and You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman. He spent more than fourteen years as an arts and entertainment features writer at the Chicago Sun-Times and is a regular contributor to Chicago&
This is our 200th episode! To celebrate the occasion, we’ve gone back in the vault for highlights from the ten most listened-to episodes of the past one hundred. So, that is episodes 101 through 199.
Enjoy these top ten clips, and listen to the full episodes wherever you get your podcasts. We have included the episode numbers so you can more easily find them.
Listen to the full episodes below:
- David W. Blight — The Legacy of Frederick Douglass (Ep. 111)
- Elie Mystal — Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution (Ep. 129)
- Comedy Writing Panel — Cristela Alonzo, Karen Chee, Peter Gwinn, Alexandra Petri & Peter Sagal (Ep. 125)
- Kim Michele Richardson — The Book Woman's Daughter (Ep. 105)
- Aaron Sorkin — To Kill A Mockingbird Play (Ep. 101)
- Leonard Moore — Teaching Black History to White People (Ep. 126)
- Ross Gay — Inciting Joy: Essays (Ep. 117)
- Joy Harjo & Marie Arana — U.S. Poet Laureate and Literary Director of the Library of Congress (Ep. 113)
- Imani Perry & Dawn Turner — South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Ep. 119)
- Ashley C. Ford & Eve L. Ewing — Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir (Ep. 130)
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
Two bestselling authors — Nicole Chung (A Living Remedy) and Lydia Millet (We Loved It All) — discuss the process and craft of writing a memoir with book critic Donna Seaman. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
A Living Remedy: A Memoir by Nicole Chung — A searing memoir of family, class and grief—a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost.
We Loved It All: A Memory of Life by Lydia Millet — This lucent anti-memoir from celebrated novelist Lydia Millet explores the pain and joy of being a parent, child, and human at a moment when the richness of the planet’s life is deeply threatened.
NICOLE CHUNG’S A Living Remedy was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen outlets. Her 2018 debut, All You Can Ever Know, was a national bestseller and finalist the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Time, the Atlantic, GQ, the Guardian, and Slate. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in the Washington, DC area.
LYDIA MILLET has written more than a dozen novels and short story collections, including Dinosaurs (2022) and A Children’s Bible, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction and one of The New York Times Book Review’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Millet has won fiction awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and PEN-Center USA and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; since 1999 she has also worked as a writer and editor at the Center for Biological Diversity. We Loved It All is her first work of nonfiction.
DONNA SEAMAN is Editor, Adult Books for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, a frequent presenter at various literary events and programs, and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.
This week, historian and biographer Paul Hendrickson discusses writing about his own family's history and his recent book Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer’s Life, the profoundly moving story of his father's wartime service as a night fighter pilot, and the prices he and his fellow soldiers paid for their acts of selfless, patriotic sacrifice. Paul is joined by book critic Elizabeth Taylor. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Fighting the Night:
In the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson, the author's father, kissed his twenty-one-year-old wife and two baby children goodbye. The twenty-five-year-old first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P-61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his night fighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where, for the last five and a half months of World War II, he flew approximately seventy-five missions, largely in pitch-black conditions. His wife would wait out the war at the home of her small-town Ohio parents, one of the countless numbers of American family members shouldering the burden of being left behind.
Joe Paul, the son of a Depression-poor Kentucky sharecropper, was fresh out of high school in 1937 when he enlisted in mechanic school in the peacetime Army Air Corps. Eventually, he was able to qualify for flight school. After marriage, and with the war on, the young officer and his bride crisscrossed the country, airfield to airfield, base to base: Santa Ana, Yuma, Kissimmee, Bakersfield, Orlando, La Junta, Fresno. He volunteered for night fighters and the newly arrived and almost mythic Black Widow. A world away, the carnage continued. As Paul Hendrickson tracks his parents' journey, together and separate, both stateside and overseas, he creates a vivid portrait of a hard-to-know father whose time in the war, he comes to understand, was something truly heroic, but never without its hidden and unhidden psychic costs.
Bringing to life an iconic moment of American history, and the tragedy of all wars, Fighting the Night is an intense and powerful story of violence and love, forgiveness and loss. And it is a tribute to those who got plunged into service, in the best years of their lives, and the sacrifices they and their loved ones made, then and thereafter.
PAUL HENDRICKSON is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner in 2003 for his book Sons of Mississippi. The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award. Hemingway’s Boat was a New York Times best seller. He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Since 1998, he has been on the faculty of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that, he was a staff writer at The Washington Post. He lives with his wife, Cecilia, outside Philadelphia and in Washington, DC.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR, Literary Editor at Large of the Chicago Tribune, has served as President of the NBCC. The co-author of American Pharaoh, she edited both
This week, author Rebecca Siegel offers media literacy advice and discusses her book Loch Ness Uncovered: Media, Misinformation, and the Greatest Monster Hoax of All Time, an extensively researched, myth-busting account of the world's most famous monster hoax—the Loch Ness Monster—and a cautionary tale on the dangers of misinformation. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Loch Ness Uncovered:
In 1934, a man was walking by a lake in the Scottish Highlands when he saw a long-necked creature swimming in the water. He grabbed his camera and snapped a photo. When the photo landed on the front page of the Daily Mail, it shattered the belief that paranormal creatures were pure fiction. But amid the monster-hunting craze, complex conspiracies soon emerged. The Loch Ness Monster became more than a mysterious sea creature—it became a phenomenon that caused people to question their assumptions and dig for the truth.
Meticulously researched through primary sources and in-depth interviews with key figures, Loch Ness Uncovered is the fascinating true story of the conspiracy that sparked intrigue worldwide. Complete with archival images, an engaging narrative, and a guide to media literacy, here is a nonfiction book that will transport young readers to the thrilling world of monster mania.
REBECCA SIEGEL has worked in children’s publishing for 18 years. Three of her books have received Starred Reviews in Booklist, including To Fly Among the Stars (Scholastic 2020), which was also named a Mighty Girl’s Book of the Year, and one of the National Science Teaching Association’s Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students. Another recent title, Mayflower (Quarto 2020) was named a 2021 EUREKA! Children’s Honor Book. Rebecca has two books publishing in 2024: Loch Ness Uncovered (Astra Young Readers) and The United States Book (Welbeck). Rebecca lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two daughters.
This week, acclaimed writers Renée Watson and Jabari Asim talk about Watson’s novel, skin & bones, as well as writing Black history and moving from writing for children to adults. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About skin & bones:
From the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and ultimately what gets passed down from one generation to the next.
At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she's happy in love and in friendship until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world.
Unmoored and grieving a major loss, Lena finds herself trying to teach her daughter self-love while struggling to do so herself. Lena questions everything she's learned about dating, friendship, and motherhood, and through it all, she works tirelessly to bring the oft-forgotten Black history of Oregon to the masses, sidestepping her well-meaning co-workers that don't understand that their good intentions are often offensive and hurtful.
Through Watson's poetic voice, skin & bones is a stirring exploration of who society makes space for and is ultimately a story of heartbreak and healing.
RENÉE WATSON is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Over the past decade she has authored fifteen young adult books, which have collectively sold more than a million copies. She received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together and high praise for 1619 Project: Born on the Water. Watson is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. She is also a writer-in-residence at The Solstice Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Program. Renée splits her time between New York City and Portland, Oregon.
JABARI ASIM is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. He directs the MFA program in creative writing at Emerson College, where he is also the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. His nonfiction books include The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why; What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future; Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life; and We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival. His books for children include Whose Toes Are Those? and Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis. His works of fiction include A Taste of Honey,
This week, scholar Marilyn Sanders Mobley visits the AWM to discuss her book Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing, which Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls a "powerful and learned meditation, and one that deserves a prominent place in the field of Morrison studies." Mobley is joined in conversation by poet Parneshia Jones. This conversation originally took place October 15, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing:
Toni Morrison’s readers and critics typically focus more on the “what” than the “how” of her writing. In Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing, Marilyn Sanders Mobley analyzes Morrison’s expressed narrative intention of providing “spaces for the reader” to help us understand the narrative strategies in her work.
Mobley’s approach is as interdisciplinary, intersectional, nuanced, and complex as Morrison’s. She combines textual analysis with a study of Morrison’s cultural politics and narrative poetics and describes how Morrison engages with both history and the present political moment.
Informed by research in geocriticism, spatial literary studies, African American literary studies, and Black feminist studies at the intersection of poetics and cultural politics, Mobley identifies four narrative strategies that illuminate how Morrison creates such spaces in her fiction; what these spaces say about her understanding of place, race, and belonging; and how they constitute a way to read and re-read her work.
MARILYN SANDERS MOBLEY is Emerita Professor of English and African American Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison: The Cultural Function of Narrative and a spiritual memoir, The Strawberry Room, and Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself.
PARNESHIA JONES studied creative writing at Chicago State University and earned an MFA from Spalding University. Her first book Vessel (2015) was the winner of the Midwest Book Award and featured in O, The Oprah Magazine as one of 12 poetry books to savor for National Poetry Month. Her poems have been published in anthologies such as The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), Poetry Speaks Who I Am (2010), and She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems (2011), edited by Caroline Kennedy. Jones serves on the boards of Cave Canem and the Guild Complex and the advisory board for UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry. She is the director of Northwestern University Press.
This week, in honor of Indigenous People’s Day, scholars Rose Miron and Jean O'Brien discuss the power and importance of indigenous storytelling, activism, history, and memory; as well as Miron’s book Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory.
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About Indigenous Archival Activism:
Who has the right to represent Native history?
The past several decades have seen a massive shift in debates over who owns and has the right to tell Native American history and stories. For centuries, non-Native actors have collected, stolen, sequestered, and gained value from Native stories and documents, human remains, and sacred objects. However, thanks to the work of Native activists, Native history is now increasingly being repatriated back to the control of tribes and communities. Indigenous Archival Activism takes readers into the heart of these debates by tracing one tribe's fifty-year fight to recover and rewrite their history.
Rose Miron tells the story of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation and their Historical Committee, a group of mostly Mohican women who have been collecting and reorganizing historical materials since 1968. She shows how their work is exemplary of how tribal archives can be used strategically to shift how Native history is accessed, represented, written and, most importantly, controlled. Based on a more than decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, Miron's research and writing is shaped primarily by materials found in the tribal archive and ongoing conversations and input from the Stockbridge-Munsee Historical Committee.
As a non-Mohican, Miron is careful to consider her own positionality and reflects on what it means for non-Native researchers and institutions to build reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations in the context of academia and public history, offering a model both for tribes undertaking their own reclamation projects and for scholars looking to work with tribes in ethical ways.
DR. ROSE MIRON is the Director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago and Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. Her research explores Indigenous public history and public memory within the Northeast and the Great Lakes regions. She holds a BA in History and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota.
JEAN O’BRIEN (citizen, White Earth Ojibwe Nation) is Regents Professor and McKnight Distinguished University Professor of History at University of Minnesota. O’Brien is a scholar of American Indian and Indigenous history. Her scholarship has been especially influential regarding New England’s American Indian peoples in relation to European colonial settlement. O’Brien’s works include: Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790, in which she demonstrates the persistence of I
This week, investigative journalists Shawn Cohen and Philip Eil share insights into their reporting processes, interviewing techniques, and writing true crime with honesty and sensitivity. Moderated by journalist Evan F. Moore. They also discuss their latest books:
College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight by Shawn Cohen. "She visited friends. She walked to a bar. She was right there…until she was gone. Investigative journalist Shawn Cohen breaks more than a decade of silence as he pursues the truth: what really happened to Lauren Spierer?"
Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the “Pill Mill Killer” by Philip Eil. "An obsessive true crime investigation of a bizarre and unlikely perpetrator, who’s serving the opioid epidemic’s longest term for illegal prescriptions—four life sentences."
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the panelists:
SHAWN COHEN is an investigative journalist specializing in crime and law enforcement reporting. He is currently working for the Daily Mail as a senior reporter on its exclusives team, breaking news on national stories. He has twenty-eight years of front-line experience covering everything from small-town murders and police corruption to Hurricane Katrina and mass shootings.
PHILIP EIL is an award-winning freelance journalist based in his hometown, Providence, Rhode Island. He is the former news editor of the alt-weekly newspaper, The Providence Phoenix. Since the paper’s close in 2014, he has contributed to The Atlantic, Men’s Health, the Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets. He has also taught writing and journalism classes at Brown University, Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the Columbia University School of the Arts. This is his first book.
EVAN F. MOORE is a Chicago-based writer whose work over time consists of topics at the intersection of sports, race, entertainment, news, and culture. Evan, an adjunct community journalism professor at DePaul University, is the co-author of the critically-acclaimed book, Game Misconduct: Hockey’s Toxic Culture and How to Fix It. Evan, who has won several journalism awards and nominations, is also a member of the Harold Washington Literary Award committee.
This week, prominent writers and game designers discuss crafting game narrative and representation within gaming communities. Featured panelists are Keith Ammann, Derek Tyler Attico, Keisha Howard, and Samantha Ortiz. Moderated by Carly A. Kocurek. Learn more about them below.
This episode is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit Level Up: Writers & Gamers, on display now through May 2025 at the American Writers Museum. Level Up explores the role of narrative and storytelling in gaming, from the 1970s to today. Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, Level Up enriches visitors' understanding of writing through fun and interactive formats, inspires young people to try a new form of writing, and encourages exploration of the worlds created through games. Join the adventure today!
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the panelists:
KEITH AMMANN is an ENNIE Award–winning writer based in Chicago. He’s the author of several books of advice for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons players, including The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing, and most recently How to Defend Your Lair, all published by Saga Press, and has written the blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing since 2016. He’s been a role-playing gamer and game master for more than thirty years. He likes to play outwardly abrasive helpers, out-of-their-element helpers, and genuinely nice, helpful helpers. Mostly, though, he plays non-player characters. And monsters.
DEREK TYLER ATTICO is a science fiction author, essayist, and photographer. He won the Excellence in Playwriting Award from the Dramatist Guild of America. Derek is also a two-time winner of the Star Trek Strange New Worlds short story contest, published by Simon and Schuster. He is the author of the bestselling, critically acclaimed Star Trek Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko from Titan Books. With a degree in English and History, Derek is an advocate of the arts, human rights, and inclusion. He can be found at DerekAttico.com and on social media platforms under the handle @Dattico.
KEISHA HOWARD is best known as the creator of Sugar Gamers, the world’s longest-running gaming & tech community geared toward inclusivity. What began as a multicultural gamer group is now an award-winning organization that supports it’s inclusive membership in finding their place in the rapidly growing industry, facilitating Sugar Gamers’ evolution from video game enthusiasts to game developers, writers, testers, voice and mo-cap actors, artists and designers. A consummate futurist, Keisha recognizes the potential for video games to transcend their role as entertainment and become a mechanism for inspiration and social change. As a true “geek of all trades” and first-wave gaming and esports influencer, Keisha’s experience spans from introducing game design/media literacy to underprivileged youth, such as her partnership with Adidas and the NBA on tech advocacy activations, to consulting Microsoft’s XBOX division as well as Logitech, Google, and Meta on Inclusive Game Strategy. A two-time TEDx Speaker, she is infectiously passionate and authentically plugged-in to the worlds of video games, AI, VR and geek culture. Keisha Howard identifies compelling ways for games & tech to intersect with any industry and inspires others around the infinite possibilities.
CARLY A. KOCUREK is a cultural historian specializing in the study of new media technologies and video gaming. She is the author of two books, Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade, which covers the early rise of video game arcades in the U.S., and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls, a consideration of Laurel’s career as researcher and game designer. With Jennifer deWinter, she co-founded and co-edits the Influential Game Designers book series for Bloomsbury. She is also a game designer specializing in experimental and serious games. Paste Magazine called her game Choice: Texas “one of the best games of 2014.” She served as lead writer and producer for The Spider’s Web, an alternate reality game embedded in a peer-reviewed journal article. In 2020, her print-and-play card game, Happy Ecosystems, was awarded the positive impact award for the Indiecade Climate Jam. At Illinois Tech, she teaches courses on digital culture, interactive storytelling, game design, and media history at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She also works with both undergraduate and graduate students on collaborative research and design projects.
SAMANTHA ORTIZ is a writer and Narrative Designer at Bad Robot Games. Over her five year career in the independent games space, she has worked on award-winning titles including Neon White, Tamales: Con Familia, and the 2021 Latinx in Gaming Unidos Jam winner, Comunicacion. She has also appeared on NPR and exhibited at ICIDS Hops Ahead. In her spare time, she volunteers as a program coordinator and mentor for the IGDA Foundation.
This week, we discuss the threat censorship poses to democracy as part of Banned Books Week, an annual event that highlights the value of free and open access to information. Presented by the American Library Association, this panel includes Heather Booth, Anna Claussen, Sara Paretsky, and Donna Seaman. The following conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the speakers:
HEATHER BOOTH is the Audiobooks Editor for Booklist and a reader’s advisory librarian at the Helen Plum Library in Lombard, IL. She is also serving her third term as a trustee at the Westmont Public Library. Booth, the mother of two teens, has focused on teen services, and has been involved in facing book challenges and preserving our freedom to read.
ANNA CLAUSSEN is the Policy and Outreach Coordinator – Libraries for the Illinois Secretary of State.
A Chicago-based author, SARA PARETSKY is one of only four living writers to have received both the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. Her latest V. I. Warshawski novel is Pay Dirt. Paretsky is an ardent freedom of speech advocate.
DONNA SEAMAN is the Editor-in-Chief for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. River of Books: A Life in Reading, will be out fall 2024.
This week, to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, hear from Marie Arana, the Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Joined by author Juan Martinez, Arana discusses the importance of preserving and uplifting Latino history and her new book LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority.
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About LatinoLand:
"A perfect representation of Latino diversity" (The Washington Post), LatinoLand draws from hundreds of interviews and prodigious research to give us both a vibrant portrait and the little-known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority, in "a work of prophecy, sympathy, and courage" (Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author).
LatinoLand is an exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana's life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise twenty percent of the US population, a number that is growing. By 2050, census reports project that one in every three Americans will claim Latino heritage.
But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. The largest groups are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Cubans. Each has a different cultural and political background. Puerto Ricans, for example, are US citizens, whereas some Mexican Americans never immigrated because the US-Mexico border shifted after the US invasion of 1848, incorporating what is now the entire southwest of the United States. Cubans came in two great waves: those escaping communism in the early years of Castro, many of whom were professionals and wealthy, and those permitted to leave in the Mariel boat lift twenty years later, representing some of the poorest Cubans, including prisoners.
As LatinoLand shows, Latinos were some of the earliest immigrants to what is now the US—some of them arriving in the 1500s. They are racially diverse—a random infusion of white, Black, indigenous, and Asian. Once overwhelmingly Catholic, they are becoming increasingly Protestant and Evangelical. They range from domestic workers and day laborers to successful artists, corporate CEOs, and US senators. Formerly solidly Democratic, they now vote Republican in growing numbers. They are as culturally varied as any immigrants from Europe or Asia.
Marie Arana draws on her own experience as the daughter of an American mother and Peruvian father who came to the US at age nine, straddling two worlds, as many Latinos do. "Thorough, accessible, and necessary" (Ms. magazine), LatinoLand unabashedly celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.
MARIE ARANA is a Peruvian-American author of nonfiction and fiction as well as the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress. She is the recipient of a 2020 literary award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Among her recent positions are: Director of the National Book Festival, the John W. Kluge Center’s Chair of the Cultures of the Countries of the South, and Writer at Large for the Washington Post. For many years, she was editor-in-chief of the Washington Post’s book review section, Book World. Marie has also written for the New York Times, the National Geographic, Time Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, Spain’s El País, Colombia’s El Tiempo, and Peru’s El Comercio, among many other publications. Her sweeping history of Latin America, Silver, Sword, and Stone, was named Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 by the American Library Association, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence. Her biography of Simón Bolívar won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Marie’s memoir, American Chica, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. She has also published two prizewinning novels, Cellophane and Lima Nights.
JUAN MARTINEZ is the author of the novel Extended Stay (2023) and the story collection Best Worst American (2017). He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Huizache, Ecotone, NIGHTMARE, NPR’s Selected Shorts, Mississippi Review and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Ploughshares and The Sunday Morning Transport.
This week, we celebrate the legacy of Lorraine Hansberry with J. Nicole Brooks, Natalie Y. Moore, and Ericka Ratcliff. This conversation originally took place August 22, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This program is presented in partnership with the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, which was created by The Lillys (conceived by Lynn Nottage and Julia Jordan) to honor Lorraine Hansberry’s legacy through the tour and permanent placement of a figurative sculpture of the playwright, while investing in those following in her footsteps through the creation of a fellowship which supports the living expenses of women and non-binary writers of color during their pursuit of graduate degrees.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the panelists:
J. NICOLE BROOKS is an actor, author and director. Selected acting credits include Lottery Day (Goodman Theatre, New Stages Festival), Beyond Caring, Death Tax, and RACE (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Immediate Family (Center Theatre Group) and House Home (Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, China). Directing credits include Mr. Rickey Calls A Meeting, Thaddeus & Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure and Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten. Brooks is author of HeLa, Fedra Queen of Haiti, Black Diamond, and 3 Weeks With Her Honor Jane Byrne. Television credits including recurring roles on Showtime’s The Chi and Comedy Central’s South Side. She is a multi-award winning artist honored by 3Arts, TCG Fox Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Black Ensemble Theatre Playwright of the Year, LA Ovation and Black Theatre Alliance. She is an ensemble member of Lookingglass Theatre Company.
NATALIE Y. MOORE is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago, whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is the author of the play The Billboard, set in Chicago. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
ERICKA RATCLIFF works to amplify the mission of Congo Square by celebrating the complexities of Black life and culture on stage. She is a member of The Chicago Women In Philanthropy, Women’s Leadership Mentoring Program (WLMP), the 2023 Points of Light Conference Host Committee, and artEquity’s BIPOC Leadership Circle. Ericka is a nominee for Broadway World Chicago’s 2022 Regional Awards for “Best Direction of a Play” for her work on What To Send Up When It Goes Down and was recently featured in NewCity Magazine for her accomplished work in theatre. She is an artistic associate with Lookingglass Theater and was a recipient of the Chicago 3Arts Make A Wave Award in 2017.
This Labor Day, we take a look at writing labor history with Steve Watkins, author of The Mine Wars: The Bloody Fight for Workers’ Rights in the West Virginia Coalfields. Watkins is joined by labor historian Rosemary Feurer.
The following conversation originally took place May 19th, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, biographers and novelists share what it is like to write about other writers. Mary V. Dearborn covers Carson McCullers, George Getschow covers Larry McMurtry, Harold Holzer covers Abraham Lincoln, and Monika Zgutsova covers Véra Nabokov. Moderated by Peter Coviello. This conversation took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
The books:
Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn — The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America’s greatest writers, based on newly available letters and journals.
Pastures of the Empty Page: Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry edited by George Getschow — A collection of essays that offers an intimate view of Larry McMurtry, America's preeminent western novelist, through the eyes of a pantheon of writers he helped shape through his work over the course of his unparalleled literary life.
Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration by Harold Holzer — From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln's grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.
A Revolver to Carry at Night by Monika Zgustova — A captivating, nuanced portrait of the life of Véra Nabokov, who dedicated herself to advancing her husband’s writing career, playing a vital role in the creation of his greatest works.
Is There God After Prince?: Dispatches from an Age of Last Things by Peter Coviello — Essays considering what it means to love art, culture, and people in an age of accelerating disaster.
The writers:
MARY V. DEARBORN holds a doctorate in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. She is the author of seven books—among them, Mistress of Modernism: The Life of Peggy Guggenheim and Ernest Hemingway. Dearborn has been a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Buckland, Massachusetts.
GEORGE GETSCHOW is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting and winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for distinguished writing about the underprivileged. He has earned numerous other awards for his writing and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2012 for "distinctive literary achievement." Today, as director of the Archer City Writers Workshop, he helps organize and conduct annual writing workshops in Archer City for professional writers and college and high school students from across the country.
HAROLD HOLZER is the recipient of the 2015 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize. One of the country's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer was appointed chairman of the US Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission by President Bill Clinton and awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. He currently serves as the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, City University of New York.
MONIKA ZGUSTOVA is an award-winning author whose works have been published in ten languages. She was born in Prague and studied comparative literature in the United States. She then moved to Barcelona, where she writes for El País, The Nation, and CounterPunch, among others. As a translator of Czech and Russian literature into Spanish and Catalan—including the writing of Havel, Kundera, Hrabal, Hašek, Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, and Babel—Zgustova is credited with bringing major twentieth-century writers to Spain. Her most recent book, A Revolver to Carry at Night is published by Other Press.
PETER COVIELLO is the author of six books, including Make Yourselves Gods, a finalist for the 2020 John Whitmer Historical Association Best Book Prize, and Long Players, a memoir selected as one of ARTFORUM's Best Books of 2018. His newest book, Is There God After Prince?: Dispatches from an Age of Last Things, was selected for The Millions' "Most Anticipated" list for 2023. He is Professor and Head of English at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
This week, dive into the New Fiction panel at the American Writers Festival. Four novelists — Donna Hemans, Jessica Shattuck, Yukiko Tominaga, and Michael Zapata — discuss their craft, process, and recent novels.
This week, we take a look back at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago with media historian Heather Hendershot. She is joined by fellow historian Kevin Boyle to discuss her book When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America.
The following conversation originally took place May 19th, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, we chat with members of the Ardent Dance Company about their upcoming ballet POE, based on the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe. Justine Kelly is the Artistic Director of Ardent Dance Company and Ben Locke is a dancer who plays the role of Poe in the upcoming show. You can learn more about Kelly and Locke below.
You can see Ardent Dance Company perform POE at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts on August 23rd and 24th at 7:30 pm, and August 25th at 3:00 pm. Learn more and get tickets here.
Justine and Ben are interviewed by Nate King, Digital Content Associate at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place July 23, 2024 and was recorded live via Zoom.
About our guests:
JUSTINE KELLY, originally from the DMV area, grew up with the Cecchetti method under the training of her mother, Cynthia Kiehnau. She has worked professionally with many DMV-based companies including Lindsay Taylor Dance, Maryland Youth Ballet, Virginia Civic Ballet and Bowie Contemporary Dance Company and has received training from Pam Moore, Rosemary Floydand, and Sonia Cromiller. Justine moved to Chicago in 2012 and founded Ardent Dance Company in 2016 to reimagine classical and historical literature as full-length contemporary works. Working with over 100 professional dancers nationwide and in Chicago to help create Ardent’s shows, Justine is very grateful for all the dancers who have worked so hard these past few months. It is the countless hours of time, sweat, and dedication that allows Ardent to be vulnerable, be dramatic, and laugh together to create these stories.
BEN LOCKE has been dancing with Ardent for over seven years, appearing in shows like Dracula, Les Mis, Pandora's Box, Poe and more. He has a double degree in Theatre and Human Services from Millikin University and is currently getting his graduate degree in TV/Film Writing at Boston University. Outside of dance, Ben is an actor, director, writer and casting director. His hope is to make the arts equitable and accessible for all. His plays can be found at The New Play Exchange.
This week, speculative fiction writers Darcie Little Badger, Michi Trota, and Suzanne Walker discuss their work, crafting other worlds with writing, and the science fiction genre at large. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
DARCIE LITTLE BADGER is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in TIME as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received the Newbery Honor, was a LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran and splits time between California and Texas.
MICHI TROTA is a five-time Hugo Award-winning Filipino American writer, editor, and narrative expert. Her work explores how to use empowerment, representation, and storytelling to attain collective liberation and to dismantle oppressive institutions, not just survive them. She is the Executive Editor at the environmental justice and advocacy nonprofit Green America and her publications include the Wing Luke Museum 2018-19 exhibit Worlds Beyond Here: Expanding the Universe of APA Science Fiction and Chicago Magazine, and she’s been featured in The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and CNN: Philippines. She is also a member of the Filipino Young Leaders Program 2022 Immersion cohort and a fire performer with Raks Geek/Raks Inferno Fire+Bellydance.
SUZANNE WALKER is a Chicago-based writer and editor. She is co-creator of the critically acclaimed, award-nominated graphic novel Mooncakes. Her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Uncanny Magazine, and the Star Wars anthology From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi. Her nonfiction works have appeared in a diverse array of publications, StarTrek.com, and academic anthologies. She has spoken on panels at numerous conventions on a variety of topics. She is a scholar of medieval Italian longsword and enjoys aerial silks, figure skating, and baseball. You can find her on Twitter or Instagram at @suzusaur.
This week, tune into the panel discussion Making Up True Stories: Novels and Books About Real People. Our featured writers are Amanda Flower, Sarah James, Brianna Labuskes, and Brianna Madia. Moderated by Dipika Mukherjee. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the 2024 American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the writers:
AMANDA FLOWER is the USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning mystery author of over twenty-five novels, including the nationally bestselling Amish Candy Shop Mystery Series, the Amish Matchmaker Mysteries, the Emily Dickinson Mysteries, the Katharine Wright Mysteries, and several series written under the name Isabella Alan. An organic farmer and former librarian, Amanda lives in Northeast Ohio and can be found online at AmandaFlower.com.
SARAH JAMES is the international bestselling author of The Woman with Two Shadows and Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen. Her work has appeared in Baseball Prospectus, Pittsburgh City Paper, Reductress, and more. Sarah is a graduate of the MFA Writing for Screen and Television program at USC and currently lives in Los Angeles.
BRIANNA LABUSKES is the Washington Post bestselling author of The Lost Book of Bonn, The Librarian of Burned Books as well as eight thrillers. For the first decade of her career, Brianna worked as a journalist for national news organizations covering politics and policy.
BRIANNA MADIA has lived a life of relentless intention, traveling the deserts of the American West in an old Ford van. She made a name for herself on social media with her inspiring captions-cum-essays about bravery, identity, nature, and subverting expectations. She lives in Utah with her four dogs. Her first book, Nowhere for Very Long, was a New York Times bestseller. Never Leave the Dogs Behind is her second book.
DIPIKA MUKHERJEE’S collection of travel essays, Writer’s Postcards (Penguin), was published in October 2023. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion and more, and she has been translated into French, Portuguese, Bengali and Mandarin Chinese. She is the author of the novels Shambala Junction (Aurora Metro, winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction) and Ode to Broken Things (Repeater Books, longlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize), and the story collection, Rules of Desire (Fixi).
This week, writers John Berendt and Taylor Mac discuss the Goodman Theatre’s world-premiere stage musical adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Berendt is the author of the original book the musical is based on, and Mac wrote the book for the adaptation.
The following conversation originally took place July 8th, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, journalist Mark Bowden discusses his new book The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It, co-written with Matthew Teague. Bowden is interviewed by reporter Natalie Y. Moore. This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the 2024 American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
MARK BOWDEN is the author of fifteen books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo, Hue 1968, and The Last Stone. He reported at the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and now writes for The Atlantic and other magazines.
NATALIE Y. MOORE is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago, whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
This week, we have the first of many programs from the 2024 American Writers Festival for you.
In this episode, comedians Jamie Loftus and Chelsea Hood talk about Chicago hot dogs, comedy writing, and Jamie’s cross-country journey to write Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs. Moderated by food writer David Hammond.
This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the panelists:
DAVID HAMMOND is the Dining and Drinking Editor for Newcity/Chicago, and a regular contributor of food/beverage-related articles to Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Men’s Book, Plate, Wednesday Journal, and Where Chicago. Between 2010-2014, he wrote weekly “Food Detective” and “What to Do With” columns for Chicago Sun-Times; since 2010 he has written weekly restaurant and product reviews for Wednesday Journal.
CHELSEA HOOD is a stand up comedian living in Chicago, IL by way of the comedy scenes in both Dallas, TX and Brooklyn, NY. You may have seen her on WGN, The CW Network’s Eye Opener, or CW33’s Nightcap. She was also featured on Stand Up Records’ “Texas Mess” album recorded at SXSW. She was most frequently featured performer at Limestone Comedy Festival, one of eight chose as the Best of the Midwest at Gilda’s LaughFest and a Comic to Watch at RIOT LA.
JAMIE LOFTUS is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, and podcaster. She wrote and starred in her own web series for Comedy Central. She regularly works on viral videos for Super Deluxe. She has credits in The New Yorker, Playboy Magazine, VICE, Reductress, Paste Magazine, and many more. She writes and hosts popular limited-run podcasts—"My Year In Mensa" (2019), "Lolita Podcast" (2020), "Aack Cast" (2021), and "Ghost Church" (2022)—and cohosts, with screenwriter Caitlin Durante, a podcast on the How Stuff Works Network called "the Bechdel Cast."
This week, we get spooky. National bestselling author Paul Tremblay discusses his latest summer blockbuster Horror Movie: A Novel. He is joined in conversation by fellow writer Gus Moreno.
The following conversation originally took place May 13th, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, bestselling author R. O. Kwon discusses her new novel Exhibit, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life. Kwon is joined by fellow author Nami Mun. This conversation originally took place May 5, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Exhibit:
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn't keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse?
Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
R. O. KWON is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
NAMI MUN grew up in Seoul, South Korea and Bronx, New York. For her first book, Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. Miles From Nowhere was selected as Editors’ Choice and Top Ten First Novels by Booklist; Best Fiction of 2009 So Far by Amazon; and as an Indie Next Pick. Chicago Magazine named her Best New Novelist of 2009.
This week, we present a panel discussion with a range of scholars exploring religion through narrative games. This is a special episode in conjunction with our new exhibit Level Up: Writers & Gamers, on display now.
The following conversation originally took place April 11th, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, acclaimed mystery writer Sara Paretsky discusses her new book Pay Dirt, the latest installment of her iconic V.I. Warshawski detective series. Paretsky is joined by Booklist editor Donna Seaman. This conversation originally took place April 16, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
See Sara and Donna at the American Writers Festival too! This entirely free literary event takes place May 19, 2024 at the Harold Washington Library Center in downtown Chicago, co-presented by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library. Sara and Donna are part of the Freedom to Read panel presented by the American Library Association.
More about Pay Dirt:
V.I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I.
Sabrina, one of Angela’s roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a missing person in a city where she knows few people and doesn’t have her trusted contacts is hard, but not as hard as the brutally negative reaction to the detective from some of the locals. When V.I. finds Sabrina close to death in a remote house, she lands herself in the FBI’s crosshairs and faces a violent online backlash. The men running the county’s opioid distribution are also not happy.
Discovering a dead body in the same house a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War. She finds that today’s combatants are just as willing as opponents in the 1860s to kill to settle their differences.
V.I.’s survival depends on keeping one step ahead of players in a game she never intended to play, before the clock runs down.
This week, we’re on a mission from God. Journalist and author Daniel de Visé discusses his book The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Classic. Hit it.
This conversation originally took place March 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about The Blues Brothers:
"They're not going to catch us," Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. "We're on a mission from God."
So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases.
Late and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to tepid reviews at best. However, in the 44 years since it has been acknowledged a classic: inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance; even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself; and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century.
The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and of course the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to SNL creator Lorne Michaels and Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers vividly portrays the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.
This week, pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong discusses her new book So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed With It). From the New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia comes the totally fetch story of one of the most iconic teen comedies of all time, Mean Girls, revealing how it happened, how it defined a generation, "like, invented" meme culture, and why it just won't go away, filled with exclusive interviews from the director, cast, and crew. Get in, loser. We're going back to 2004.
This conversation originally took place March 6, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about So Fetch:
It's been 20 years since Mean Girls hit theaters, winning over critics and audiences alike with its razor-sharp wit, star-making turns for its then unknown cast, and obsessively quotable screenplay by Tina Fey. Fast forward two decades and Mean Girls remains as relevant as ever. Arguably, no other movie from the 2000s has had as big of an impact on pop culture.
In So Fetch, New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, offers the first ever authoritative book about this beloved classic that shaped an entire generation. Based off revealing interviews with the director, cast, and crew, So Fetch tells the full story of the making of Mean Girls, from Tina Fey's brilliant adaptation of a self-help guide for parents of teen girls, to the challenges of casting Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and the iconic supporting players. So Fetch also explores the film's lasting cultural influence, from its role in the rise of Y2K tabloid culture, impact on girls of all ages and lgbtq+ culture, to how we use it to define female relationships to this day.
Timed for the 20th anniversary and the release of the new movie musical adaptation, So Fetch is the perfect companion for fans and anyone who understands that when it comes to Mean Girls' enduring legacy, the limit does not exist!
This week, award winning filmmaker Ed Zwick discusses his memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, a heartfelt and wry career memoir that gives a dishy, behind-the-scenes look at working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Zwick is interviewed by Carey Cranston, President of the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place February 8, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions:
"I'll be dropping a few names," Ed Zwick confesses in the introduction to his book. "Over the years I have worked with self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe, unheralded geniuses, hacks, sociopaths, savants, and saints."
He has encountered these Hollywood types during four decades of directing, producing, and writing projects that have collectively received eighteen Academy Award nominations (seven wins) and sixty-seven Emmy nominations (twenty-two wins). Though there are many factors behind such success, including luck and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz, he's known to have a special talent for bringing out the best in the people he's worked with, especially the actors. In those intense collaborations, he's sought to discover the small pieces of connective tissue, vulnerability, and fellowship that can help an actor realize their character in full.
Talents whom he spotted early include Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington, Claire Danes, and Jared Leto. Established stars he worked closely with include Leonardo DiCaprio, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Daniel Craig, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Jennifer Connelly. He also sued Harvey Weinstein over the production of Shakespeare in Love—and won. He shares personal stories about all these people, and more.
Written mostly with love, sometimes with rue, this memoir is also a meditation on working, sprinkled throughout with tips for anyone who has ever imagined writing, directing, or producing for the screen. Fans with an appreciation for the beautiful mysteries—as well as the unsightly, often comic truths—of crafting film and television won't want to miss it.
This week, journalist and historian Tim Spofford discusses his book What the Children Told Us: The Untold Story of the Famous “Doll Test” and the Black Psychologists Who Changed the World. Does racial discrimination harm Black children's sense of self? The "Doll Test" illuminated its devastating toll. Spofford is interviewed by AWM Program Director Allison Sansone. This conversation originally took place February 6, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about What the Children Told Us:
Dr. Kenneth Clark visited rundown and under-resourced segregated schools across America, presenting Black children with two dolls: a white one with hair painted yellow and a brown one with hair painted black. "Give me the doll you like to play with," he said. "Give me the doll that is a nice doll." The psychological experiment Kenneth developed with his wife, Mamie, designed to measure how segregation affected Black children’s perception of themselves and other Black people, was enlightening―and horrifying. Over and over again, the young children―some not yet five years old―selected the white doll as preferable, and the brown doll as "bad." Some children even denied their race. "Yes," said brown-skinned Joan W., age six, when questioned about her affection for the light-skinned doll. "I would like to be white."
What the Children Told Us is the story of the towering intellectual and emotional partnership between two Black scholars who highlighted the psychological effects of racial segregation. The Clarks' story is one of courage, love, and an unfailing belief that Black children deserved better than what society was prepared to give them, and their unrelenting activism played a critical role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. The Clarks' decades of impassioned advocacy, their inspiring marriage, and their enduring work shines a light on the power of passion in an unjust world.
This week, bestselling author Laurence Leamer discusses Truman Capote and his book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era, which served as the basis for FX's hit show Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote’s never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote’s ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans."
This conversation originally took place October 13, 2021 and was recorded live online.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Capote's Women:
"There are certain women," Truman Capote wrote, "who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich." Barbara "Babe" Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy's sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible.
Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer's block. While enjoying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel...one based on the remarkable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends.
For years, Capote attempted to write Answered Prayers, what he believed would have been his magnum opus. But when he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his closest female confidantes were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer re-creates the lives of these fascinating swans, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
In this special episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite moments from the top episodes of our two ongoing series – Nation of Writers and AWM Author Talks.
This week, award-winning author Gabriel Bump discusses his new novel The New Naturals, a touching, timely novel about an attempt to found an underground Black utopia and the interwoven stories of those drawn to it. He is joined in conversation by author Adam Levin. This conversation originally took place December 3, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about The New Naturals:
An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn’t look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman bereft after the loss of her newborn child, this hill becomes more than a safe haven—it becomes a place to start over. She convinces her husband to help her construct a society underground, somewhere safe, somewhere everyone can feel loved, wanted, and accepted, where the children learn actual history, where everyone has an equal shot.
She locates a Benefactor and soon their utopia begins to take shape. Two unhoused men hear about it and immediately begin their journey by bus from Chicago to get there. A young and disillusioned journalist stumbles upon it and wants in. And a former soccer player, having lost his footing in society, is persuaded to check it out too. But no matter how much these people all yearn for meaning and a sanctuary from the existential dread of life above the surface, what happens if this new society can’t actually work? What then?
From one of the most exciting new literary voices out there, The New Naturals is fresh and deeply perceptive, capturing the absurdity of life in the 21st century, for readers of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House. In this remarkable feat of imagination, Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us.
GABRIEL BUMP grew up in South Shore, Chicago. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and has won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award. Bump teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
ADAM LEVIN is the author of the novels The Instructions, Bubblegum, and Mount Chicago, as well as the story collection, Hot Pink. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and Playboy. He has been a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award winner, a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a National Jewish Book Award finalist. He lives in Chicago.
This week, author Clara Kumagai discusses her debut young adult novel Catfish Rolling, a wholly original and mind-bending debut YA novel about memory, family, and an earthquake that breaks apart time. This conversation originally took place October 28, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
Quick note: during this episode, Clara references photos from a slideshow she shared during the live in person program. You can view these photos by visiting the American Writers Museum’s YouTube channel.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Catfish Rolling:
There's a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls the land rises and falls. At least that's what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near one of these "zones"—the places where time has been irrevocably sped up or slowed down.
Sora's father leads a research team studying the zones, and even as his colleagues begin to fall ill, he refuses to stop entering the zones himself. Sora finds herself stuck and increasingly alone as her father starts behaving strangely—he's disoriented and his memory seems to be deteriorating. Sora, meanwhile, has been secretly conducting her own research on the zones, tracking down a time expert in Tokyo and surprising herself with a crush on a strikingly confident girl named Maya, another hafu girl with whom she forms an instant bond.
But when Sora's father disappears, she has no choice but to return home, with Maya in tow, and venture deep into the abandoned time zones to find him and perhaps the catfish itself...
This week, writers Jonathan Taplin and Michi Trota discuss the profound implications of AI for the future of writing and creative expression. They are interviewed by Allison Sansone, Program Director at the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place November 10, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
Taplin’s latest book The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto is a brilliant takedown and exposé of the great con job of the twenty-first century—the metaverse, crypto, space travel, transhumanism—being sold by four billionaires (Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, Elon Musk), leading to the degeneration and bankruptcy of our society.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about the panelists:
JONATHAN TAPLIN is a public intellectual, writer, film producer, and scholar. He is the director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a professor at the USC Annenberg School in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment until 2017. Since his graduation from Princeton University in 1969, his extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band, producer of major films such as Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, an executive at Merrill Lynch, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium.
MICHI TROTA is a five-time Hugo Award-winning Filipino American writer, editor, and narrative expert. Her work explores empowerment, representation, storytelling, and autonomy, and how to exercise those tools for collective liberation and to dismantle oppressive institutions, not just survive them. Her publications include the Wing Luke Museum 2018-19 exhibit Worlds Beyond Here: Expanding the Universe of APA Science Fiction and Chicago Magazine, and she’s been featured in The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and CNN: Philippines. She is also a member of the Filipino Young Leaders Program 2022 Immersion cohort and a fire performer with Raks Geek/Raks Inferno Fire+Bellydance.
This week, filmmaker and author Curtis Chin discusses his book Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, a memoir about coming of age and coming out. Chin traces his journey through 1980s Detroit as he navigated rising xenophobia, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reagan Revolution to find his voice as a writer and activist—all set against the backdrop of his family’s popular Chinese restaurant. Chin is joined in conversation by Grace Chan McKibben, Executive Director at the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community. This conversation originally took place November 7, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant:
Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone—from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples—could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where—between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions—he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself.
Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung’s, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy’s childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him—and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.
A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, CURTIS CHIN served as the non-profits’ first Executive Director. He went on to write for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in sixteen countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press, and the Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant will be published by Little, Brown in Fall 2023. His essay in Bon Appetit was just selected for Best Food Writing in America 2023.
GRACE CHAN MCKIBBEN is Executive Director at the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC), which seeks to empower the Chinese American communities in Greater Chicago through planning, advocacy, and organizing. For over 25 years, Grace has held senior level positions in education, government, corporate, and nonprofits and is a fierce advocate of equality, inclusion, and belonging for immigrants, persons of color, the low-income community, and the LGBTQ+ community. Grace is also co-founder of a pro-bono legal clinic in Chinatown, three consultancy firms, and a women’s choir, and serves on many volunteer boards and commissions, including the ACLU, City of Chicago’s Community Development Commission, and the State of Illinois Asian American Employment Plan Advisory Council.
This week, author and theater critic Patti Hartigan discusses her recent book August Wilson: A Life, the first authoritative biography of iconic playwright August Wilson. Hartigan is joined by actor and playwright J. Nicole Brooks. This conversation originally took place October 30, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom.
This episode is presented alongside our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, currently on display at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about August Wilson: A Life
August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson’s death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn’t research his plays but wrote from "the blood’s memory," a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors. She interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh (where nine of the plays take place) to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color.
PATTI HARTIGAN is an award-winning theater critic and arts reporter who spent many years on the staff of The Boston Globe. She divides her time between the Boston area and Charlottesville, VA.
J. NICOLE BROOKS is an actor, author and director. Selected acting credits include Lottery Day (Goodman Theatre, New Stages Festival), Beyond Caring, Death Tax, and RACE (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Immediate Family (Center Theatre Group) and House Home (Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, China). Directing credits include Mr. Rickey Calls A Meeting, Thaddeus & Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure and Black Diamond: The Years the Locusts Have Eaten. Brooks is author of HeLa, Fedra Queen of Haiti, Black Diamond, and 3 Weeks With Her Honor Jane Byrne. Television credits including recurring roles on Showtime’s The Chi and Comedy Central’s South Side. She is a mutli-award winning artist honored by 3Arts, TCG Fox Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Black Ensemble Theatre Playwright of the Year, LA Ovation and Black Theatre Alliance. She is an ensemble member of Lookingglass Theatre Company.
This week, Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new book A Man of Two Faces, a highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir in which he rewinds the film of his own life with insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism. Nguyen is joined by writer and professor Vu Tran. This conversation originally took place October 23, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About A Man of Two Faces:
Viet Thanh Nguyen expands the genre of personal memoir in A Man of Two Faces by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA™. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.
Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.
VIET THANH NGUYEN was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Committed, which continues the story of The Sympathizer, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, alongside seven other prizes. He is also the author of the short story collection The Refugees; the nonfiction book Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award; and is the editor of an anthology of refugee writing, The Displaced. He is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He lives in Los Angeles.
VU TRAN is the author of Dragonfish—a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year—as well as a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, the Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and the New York Times. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and is also the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of
This week, historian and author Sterling L. Bland Jr. discusses his book In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy. This conversation originally took place October 15, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the AWM's ongoing special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, on display now.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About In the Shadow of Invisibility:
With In the Shadow of Invisibility, Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. offers a long-overdue reconsideration of Ralph Ellison, examining the trajectory of his intellectual thought in relation to its resonances in twenty-first-century American culture. Bland charts Ellison's evolving attitudes on several central topics including democracy, race, identity, social community, place, and political expression. This compelling new exploration of Ellison's legacy stresses the perpetual need to reexamine the intersections of race, literature, and American culture, with particular attention to how the democratic principle has grown increasingly urgent in the nation's ongoing, and often contentious, conversations about race.
Arguing that Ellison saw racial and social identity as being inseparable from the nation's past and its complicated history of racial anxiety, In the Shadow of Invisibility traces the growth and transformation of Ellison's ideas across his life and work, from his early apprentice writing that culminated in his groundbreaking first novel, Invisible Man, through the posthumous publication of his unfinished second novel, Three Days before the Shooting.
Focused on his mythic vision of the promise of America, this book firmly situates Ellison in the sociopolitical environments from which his ideas arose, with close consideration of his published writings, including his influential essays on literature and jazz, as well as his working notes and correspondence. Bland foregrounds Ellison's thinking on the responsibilities of Black writers to examine democratic ideals, the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and the impacts of civil rights movements.
Interweaving biography, history, and literary criticism, and drawing from extensive archival research, In the Shadow of Invisibility reveals the extent to which Ellison's work exposes the contradictions inherent in American culture, arguing anew for the importance and immediacy of his writings in the broader context of American intellectual thought.
STERLING LECATER BLAND JR. is professor of English, African American studies, and American studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Voices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation and the editor of Understanding 19th-Century Slave Narratives and the three-volume African American Slave Narratives: An Anthology.
This week, playwright, poet, and author Pearl Cleage discusses her life and career with Remy Bumppo Theatre Artistic Director Marti Lyons. Remy Bumppo staged Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky in the fall of 2023. This conversation originally took place September 26, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about the speakers:
Pearl Cleage (she/her/hers) is an Atlanta-based writer whose plays include POINTING AT THE MOON, WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS, FLYIN’ WEST, BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY, and BOURBON AT THE BORDER, commissioned and directed by Kenny Leon at the Alliance Theatre. She is also the author of A SONG FOR CORETTA, written in 2007 during Cleage’s time as Cosby Professor in Women’s Studies at Spelman College. Her play, THE NACIREMA SOCIETY REQUESTS THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE AT A CELEBRATION OF THEIR FIRST ONE HUNDRED YEARS, was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and premiered in 2010, in a joint production by the ASF and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, directed by Susan Booth. Her plays have also been performed at Arena Stage, Hartford Stage, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Huntington Theatre, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Long Wharf Theatre, Just US Theatre, True Colors Theatre, Bushfire Theatre, the Intiman Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory Company, and Seven Stages. She is also an accomplished performance artist, often working in collaboration with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. They have performed at the National Black Arts Festival, the National Black Theatre Festival, and colleges and universities across the country. Cleage and Burnett also collaborated with performance artists Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones on the script for THE LOVE PROJECT, which premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2008, and is currently touring the country. Cleage is also an accomplished novelist. Her novels include “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,” a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club selection, “I Wish I Had a Red Dress,” “Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do,” “Babylon Sisters,” “Baby Brother’s Blues,” “Seen It All and Done the Rest,” and “Till You Hear from Me.” She is also the author of “Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman’s Guide to Truth,” a groundbreaking work of race and gender, and “We Speak Your Names,” a praise poem commissioned by Oprah Winfrey for her 2005 celebration of legendary African American women and written in collaboration with Zaron Burnett. Cleage has also written for magazines, including “Essence,” “Vibe,” “Rap Pages,” and “Ms.” In addition to her work as the founding editor of “Catalyst” magazine, a literary journal, she was a regular columnist for the Atlanta Tribune for ten years, winning many awards for her thought-provoking columns. She has also written for TheDefendersOnLine.com. Cleage has been awarded grants in support of her work from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulton County Arts Council, the Georgia Council on the Arts, the Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and the Coca-Cola Foundation. Her work has earned her many awards and honors, including an NAACP Image Award for fiction in 2008. Pearl Cleage is represented by Ron Gwiazda at Abrams Artists Agency in New York City. Her website is www.PearlCleage.net. She also maintains a Facebook fan page. www.pearlcleage.net.
Marti Lyons (she/her/hers) most recently directed the world-premiere of Galileo’s Daughter by Jessica Dickey at Remy Bumppo, Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberly at Northlight Theatre, Wife of a Salesman by Eleanor Burgess at Milwaukee Rep, Sense and Sensibility adapted by Jessica Swale at American Pl
This week, former television screenwriter Patty Lin discusses her new memoir End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood. She is joined by author, podcaster, and publisher Zibby Owens. This conversation originally took place October 5, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About End Credits:
The only script you can really write in life is your own.
What if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That’s what screenwriter Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers' rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time. While writing for Friends, Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.
This funny, fresh, eye-opening, and inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone trying to please their parents, maintain a love life, and find their way in the world—and will inspire countless dreamers to listen to their inner voices and know when it’s time to get out.
PATTY LIN is an author and former TV writer/producer whose credits include Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad. She has also written pilots for Fox, CBS, and Nickelodeon. Her Breaking Bad episode, "Gray Matter," was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Script of 2008 in the Episodic Drama category. She retired from television to save her sanity and began writing a book as an answer to the question, "Why would you quit such a cool job?" Her memoir, End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood, is out now. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
ZIBBY OWENS is an author, publisher, award-winning podcaster, CEO, bookstore owner, and mom of four. Creator and host of the award-winning, daily podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, Zibby is also the founder and CEO of Zibby Media, dubbed "the Zibby-verse" by the L.A. Times. It includes a publishing house, magazine, podcast network, retreats, classes, Zibby’s Book Club, and Zibby’s Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, CA. A regular contributor to Good Morning America and other outlets, she loves recommending books as "NYC’s Most Powerful Book-fluencer" (Vulture). A writer herself, Zibby has published a memoir, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, a children’s book Princess Charming, two anthologies, and a zillion essays. Her debut novel Blank comes out in March 2024. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Zibby currently lives in New York with her husband, Kyle Owens of Morning Moon Productions, and four children ages 8 to 15.
This week, writers Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and Sara Paretsky discuss their craft, the writing process, and the dangers of censorship and book bans. This conversation originally took place June 15, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This episode is presented in conjunction with Banned Books Week. Follow the link to learn more about this initiative from the American Library Association and see how you can take action to preserve open access to literature in your community.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the speakers:
JOANNE LEEDOM-ACKERMAN is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. She is editor of The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. A former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, Joanne is a Vice President Emeritus and former International Secretary of PEN International. She serves on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, the International Center for Journalists, Words Without Borders and Refugees International. She is an emeritus board member of Poets and Writers and Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and PEN American Center, where she served as a trustee. She is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Writers Museum.
SARA PARETSKY revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 when she introduced V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. By creating a detective with the grit and smarts to take on the mean streets, Paretsky challenged a genre in which women historically were vamps or victims. V.I. struck a chord with readers and critics; Indemnity Only was followed by twenty more V.I. novels. Paretsky detailed her journey from Kansas farm-girl to New York Times bestseller in her 2007 memoir, Writing in an Age of Silence, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. In addition, Paretsky has written two stand-alone novels, Ghost Country, and Bleeding Kansas, set in the part of rural Kansas where Paretsky grew up. She has published several short story collections, most recently Love & Other Crimes, and has edited numerous other anthologies.
This week, author Tom Piazza discusses his novel The Auburn Conference with Booklist editor Donna Seaman. This conversation originally took place September 10, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About The Auburn Conference:
It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in Upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers’ Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, The Auburn Conference vibrates with questions as alive and urgent today as they were in 1883—the chronic American conundrums of race, class, and gender, and the fate of the democratic ideal.
TOM PIAZZA is celebrated both as a novelist and as a writer on American music. His twelve books include the novels The Auburn Conference and City Of Refuge, the short-story collection Blues and Trouble, the post-Katrina manifesto Why New Orleans Matters, and the essay collection Devil Sent The Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America. He was a principal writer for the innovative New Orleans-based HBO drama series TREME and the winner of a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey. He lives in New Orleans.
DONNA SEAMAN is Editor, Adult Books for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, a frequent presenter at various literary events and programs, and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.
This week, author Kathleen Rooney discusses her new book From Dust to Stardust, a novel about Hollywood, the cost of stardom, and selfless second acts, inspired by an extraordinary true story. Rooney is joined by writer and lecturer Ignatius Aloysius. This conversation originally took place September 6, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
About From Dust to Stardust:
Chicago, 1916. Doreen O’Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage.
Her professional life in flux, Doreen trades one dream for another. She pours her wealth and creative energy into a singular achievement: the construction of a one-ton miniature Fairy Castle, the likes of which the world has never seen. So begins Doreen’s public tour to lift the nation’s spirits during the Great Depression―and a personal journey worth remembering.
A sweeping journey from the dawn of the motion picture era through turbulent twentieth-century America, From Dust to Stardust is a breathtaking novel about one determined woman navigating change, challenging the price of fame, and sharing the gift of real magic.
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their vintage typewriters who compose poetry on demand. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her poetry collection Where Are the Snows won the 2021 X. J. Kennedy Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in fall of 2022. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books, and her criticism appears in the New York Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.
Twice Pushcart nominated, IGNATIUS VALENTINE ALOYSIUS earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he won the Distinguished Thesis Award for fiction and is a lecturer in writing and experimentation there. A 2020-21 Creative Writing Fellow for the Ludington Writers Board and the Ludington Area Center for the Arts in Michigan, Ignatius is the author of the literary novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books, 2020), and his prose and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Olney Magazine, Thanatos Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Trampset, Tofu Ink Arts Press, and the Coalition for Digital Narratives, among other venues. He is a host and curator of the long-running reading series Sunday Salon Chicago, and he serves on the curatorial and diversity boards at Ragdale Foundation, an arts residency in Lake Forest, Illinois. Ignatius lives in Evanston and is a mayor-appointed board member of the Evanston Arts Council.
This week, authors and editors Rebecca Makkai, Daiva Markelis, and Lauren DeJulio Bell discuss their contributions to the collection Growing Up Chicago.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, contributing authors Luis Alberto Urrea, Juan Martinez, Joe Meno, and Jac Jemc discuss their work in the collection Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Short Stories.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, author Jabari Asim discusses his novel Yonder with journalist Evan F. Moore. This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
About Yonder:
The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century.
They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors' tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren't saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. Subject to the whims of their tyrannical and eccentric captor, Cannonball Greene, they never know what harm may befall them: inhumane physical toil in the plantation's quarry by day, a beating by night, or the sale of a loved one at any moment. It's that cruel practice—the wanton destruction of love, the belief that Black people aren't even capable of loving—that hurts the most.
It hurts the reserved and stubborn William, who finds himself falling for Margaret, a small but mighty woman with self-possession beyond her years. And it hurts Cato, whose first love, Iris, was sold off with no forewarning. He now finds solace in his hearty band of friends, including William, who is like a brother; Margaret; Little Zander; and Milton, a gifted artist. There is also Pandora, with thick braids and long limbs, whose beauty calls to him.
Their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence. He tells them that with freedom comes the right to choose the small things—when to dine, when to begin and end work—as well as the big things, such as whom and how to love. Do they follow the preacher and pursue the unknown? Confined in a landscape marked by deceit and uncertainty, who can they trust?
In an elegant work of monumental imagination that will reorient how we think of the legacy of America's shameful past, Jabari Asim presents a beautiful, powerful, and elegiac novel that examines intimacy and longing in the quarters while asking a vital question: What would happen if an enslaved person risked everything for love?
JABARI ASIM is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. He directs the MFA program in creative writing at Emerson College, where he is also the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. His nonfiction books include The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why; What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future; Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life; and We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival. His books for children include Whose Toes Are Those? and Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis. His works of fiction include A Taste of Honey and Only the Strong.
EVAN F. MOORE is the co-author of the book, Game Misconduct: Hockey’s Toxic Culture and How to Fix It. His work over time, which consists of topics at the intersection of sports, race, and culture, is featured in Rolling Stone, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, The Athletic, Chicago Reader, and ESPN, among many others. His hockey writing was featured in the 2019 edition of The Best American Sports Writing book series. Evan is an adjunct journalism professor at DePaul University.
This week, journalist Todd Brewster discusses his book Seen and Unseen: Technology, Social Media, and the Fight for Racial Justice, which he co-authored with Marc Lamont Hill. Brewster is interviewed by author Catherine Adel West. This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About Seen and Unseen:
A riveting exploration of how the power of visual media over the last few years has shifted the narrative on race and reignited the push towards justice by the author of the "worthy and necessary" (The New York Times) Nobody Marc Lamont Hill and the bestselling author and acclaimed journalist Todd Brewster.
With his signature "clear and courageous" (Cornel West) voice Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times bestselling author Todd Brewster weave four recent pivotal moments in America's racial divide into their disturbing historical context—starting with the killing of George Floyd—Seen and Unseen reveals the connections between our current news headlines and social media feeds and the country's long struggle against racism.
For most of American history, our media has reinforced and promoted racism. But with the immediacy of modern technology—the ubiquity of smartphones, social media, and the internet—that long history is now in flux. From the teenager who caught George Floyd's killing on camera to the citizens who held prosecutors accountable for properly investigating the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, ordinary people are now able to reveal injustice in a more immediate way. As broad movements to overhaul policing, housing, and schooling gain new vitality, Seen and Unseen demonstrates that change starts with the raw evidence of those recording history on the front lines.
In the vein of The New Jim Crow and Caste, Seen and Unseen incisively explores what connects our moment to the history of race in America but also what makes today different from the civil rights movements of the past and what it will ultimately take to push social justice forward.
TODD BREWSTER is a veteran journalist and historian who has worked as an editor for Time and Life and as a senior producer for ABC News. He is the coauthor, with Peter Jennings, of the #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Century, which spent nearly a year on the bestseller list, and the author of the acclaimed Lincoln’s Gamble. Brewster was the founding director of Center for Oral History at West Point and the executive producer of Into Harm’s Way, an award-winning documentary about the West Point Class of 1967. He has taught journalism at Temple University and Mount Holyoke College. A native of Indianapolis, Brewster was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2000. He lives in Connecticut.
CATHERINE ADEL WEST was born and raised in Chicago, where she currently resides. She graduated with both her Bachelors and Masters of Science in Journalism from the University of Illinois–Urbana. Her work is published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Five2One, Better than Starbucks, Doors Ajar, 805 Lit + Art, The Helix Magazine, Lunch Ticket and Gay Magazine. Author of Saving Ruby King, Catherine was named one of USA TODAY’S Black Authors You Should Know. The Two Lives of Sara is her sophomore novel.
This week, award-winning author Elizabeth Nunez discusses her novel Now Lila Knows, with Booklist editor Donna Seaman. This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Now Lila Knows:
Lila Bonnard has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the police. It turns out that the victim was a professor at Mayfield, and was giving CPR to a white woman who was on the verge of an opioid overdose.
The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witness in the case against the police. Unfortunately, Lila fears that in the current hostile political climate against immigrants of color she may jeopardize her position at the college by speaking out, and her fiancé advises her to remain neutral.
Now Lila Knows is a gripping story that explores our obligation to act when confronted with the unfair treatment of fellow human beings. A page-turner with universal resonance, this novel will leave readers rethinking the meaning of love and empathy.
ELIZABETH NUNEZ is the award-winning author of a memoir and ten novels, four of them selected as New York Times Editors’ Choice. Anna In-Between won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and was long-listed for an IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. Nunez also received the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in nonfiction for Not for Everyday Use; an American Book Award; and a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad and Tobago National Library. Her other novels are: Even in Paradise, Boundaries, Prospero’s Daughter, Bruised Hibiscus, Beyond the Limbo Silence, Grace, Discretion, and When Rocks Dance. She is a cofounder of the National Black Writers Conference and executive producer of the CUNY-TV series Black Writers in America. Nunez is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, where she teaches fiction writing. She divides her time between Amityville and Brooklyn, New York.
DONNA SEAMAN is Editor, Adult Books for Booklist. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, a frequent presenter at various literary events and programs, and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.
In this episode, authors Jocelyn Nicole Johnson and Rebecca Makkai discuss their work and Johnson’s acclaimed collection short story collection My Monticello.
This conversation originally took place at the American Writers Festival on May 15, 2022 and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About My Monticello:
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, "My Monticello," tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
In "Control Negro," hailed by Roxane Gay as "one hell of story," a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to "painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there." Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through "Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse."
United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.
JOCELYN NICOLE JOHNSON is the author of My Monticello, a fiction debut that was called "a masterly feat" by the New York Times and finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Johnson has been a fellow at TinHouse, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her writing appears in Guernica, The Guardian and elsewhere. Her short story "Control Negro" was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay, who called it, "one hell of a story" and read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts series. A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
REBECCA MAKKAI is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
This week, authors Logan Steiner and Elizabeth Blackwell discuss writing historical fiction and Steiner’s debut novel After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life.
The following conversation originally took place July 9th, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, Black writers and artists celebrate Juneteenth by discussing their crafts and their activism in the context of our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, on view now at the American Writers Museum.
Journalist Jaha Nailah Avery reads from and discusses her new book Those Who Saw the Sun, a collection of oral history narratives from the time of Jim Crow in the South. Then, a gallery talk by artists featured in Dark Testament. Chicago artists Dorothy Burge, Damon Reed, and Dorian Sylvain talk about their process, what it means to them to create representations of America’s legendary Black authors for the exhibit, and how the words and work of those writers affected the artists' renderings.
This conversation originally took place June 19, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, bestselling author LGBTQ+ rights activist Juno Dawson discusses her work and her debut picture book You Need to Chill!.
The following conversation originally took place June 22nd, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, bestselling author Lisa See discusses her new historical fiction novel Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, with Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
The following conversation originally took place June 12, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About Lady Tan's Circle of Women:
The latest historical novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China—perfect for fans of See's classic Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and The Island of Sea Women.
According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.
From a young age, Yunxian learns about women's illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other's joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.
But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.
How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? Lady Tan's Circle of Women is a captivating story of women helping other women. It is also a triumphant reimagining of the life of a woman who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.
This week, sex and relationship columnist Zachary Zane discusses his new essay collection Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto.
The following conversation originally took place June 6th, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
Content Warning: this conversation contains explicit language related to sexual themes. Listener discretion is advised.
This week, a panel of authors and educators from StoryStudio Chicago discuss the process of writing from multiple identities, often marginalized ones, and inspiring young people to do the same. The writers include Dionna Griffin-Irons, Jac Jemc, Juan Martinez and Frances de Pontes Peebles.
The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
About the panelists:
DIONNA GRIFFIN-IRONS is a writer, producer and Director of Talent Diversity and Development for The Second City U.S. and Canada. A Second City Detroit alumnus with 18+ years of experience as a performer, producer and facilitator, Dionna has taught 200+ workshops at colleges, corporate boardrooms, women’s shelters and worked with the United States Embassy in Norway and Latvia introducing improv as a tool for social change. Griffin-Irons’s outreach work has appeared in Diversity Journal publication, on NPR, ABC, NBC and numerous academic posts including her 2015 TEDx Talk at the University of Chicago. Producer credits include 20+ "Urban Twist" revues, Second City Southside, R.E.A.C.H. (Risky, Eclectic Artists Comedy Hour), Second City Black History Month Show, and Second City & NBC Break Out Comedy Festival. Her 2014 published work can be found in Rowan/Littlefield’s anthology Women, Writing and Prison. She is currently writing a memoir on the intersection of comedy, diversity and women in prison.
JAC JEMC is the author of the novels Empty Theatre; My Only Wife, winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award; The Grip of It; and the short-story collections A Different Bed Every Time and False Bingo, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction and finalist for the Story Prize. Jemc currently teaches creative writing at UC–San Diego.
JUAN MARTINEZ is the author of the short-story collection Best Worst American, winner of the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award. His work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, Norton’s Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America, and The Perpetual Engine of Hope: Stories Inspired by Iconic Vegas Photographs.
FRANCES DE PONTES PEEBLES is the author of the novels The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. She is a Creative Writing Fellow in Literature for 2020 from The National Endowment for the Arts. Her books have been translated into ten languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. Her second novel, The Air You Breathe, was a Book of the Month Club pick. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received a Fulbright Grant, Brazil’s Sacatar Foundation Fellowship, and was a Teaching Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her short stories and essays have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Zoetrope: All-Story, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Catapult, and Real Simple. Her novel, The Seamstress, was adapted for film and mini-series on Brazil’s Globo Network. She is proud to serve on the Board of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. In Spring 2019, she served as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
This week, we have a special episode with live music and lively conversation in celebration of the new one-of-a-kind anthology The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language.
The following conversation originally took place May 21st, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, bestselling author Nicole Chung discusses her new memoir, A Living Remedy, with Nina Li Coomes.
The following conversation originally took place May 16, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about A Living Remedy:
From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of family, class and grief—a daughter's search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost.
"In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them."
Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in — where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations — looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets.
When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens — less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.
Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another — and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.
This week, writers discuss their contributions to the anthology The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry. The panel includes editors and contributors Tara Betts, Mallessa James, Len Lawson, Cynthia Manick, and Craig Stevens. Moderated by Eve L. Ewing.
The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
More about The Future of Black:
The expansion of Marvel and DC Comics' characters such as Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Black Lightning in film and on television has created a proliferation of poetry in this genre—receiving wide literary and popular attention.
This groundbreaking collection highlights work from poets who have written verse within this growing tradition, including Terrance Hayes, Lucille Clifton, Gil Scott-Heron, A. Van Jordan, Glenis Redmond, Tracy K. Smith, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Joshua Bennett, Douglas Kearney, Tara Betts, Frank X Walker, Tyree Daye, and others. In addition, the anthology will also feature the work of artists such as John Jennings and Najee Dorsey, showcasing their interpretations of superheroes, Black comic characters, Afrofuturistic images from the African diaspora.
This week, acclaimed science fiction author John Scalzi discusses his recent book The Kaiju Preservation Society with fellow award-winning science fiction writer Michi Trota.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, poet Michael Warr reads and discusses his work, and brings his fellow poets and friends on stage to perform their work.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, we’re proud to present a conversation about the slippery slope of censorship and what you can do to preserve your community’s freedom to read. Young Adult and Children’s book author Jarrett Dapier appears in conversation with Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom and Kristin Pekoll, Assistant Director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Learn more about and get involved with Unite Against Book Bans, a national initiative from the ALA to empower readers everywhere to stand together in the fight against censorship. Open access for all people to books and stories of all kinds is critical to democracy, and we all need to ensure everyone has the freedom to read.
This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about the panelists:
Jarrett Dapier is the author of the picture books Mr. Watson’s Chickens (Chronicle Books), Jazz For Lunch! (Simon & Schuster), and The Most Haunted House in America (Abrams Kids). Also a librarian, he is the recipient of the 2016 John Phillip Immroth Award given by the American Library Association for his research which uncovered previously suppressed information about the 2013 censorship of the graphic novel Persepolis in Chicago Public Schools. His first graphic novel – Wake Now in the Fire – is based on this research and will be released by Chronicle Books in 2023.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone is director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation. For nearly two decades she has supported and advised libraries, librarians, and trustees addressing book censorship and privacy issues in their libraries. She is a former appellate litigator.
Kristin Pekoll is the Assistant Director at the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. She is a former youth librarian from Wisconsin and a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan who happens to live in Chicago Bears country. She is the author of Beyond Banned Books: Defending Intellectual Freedom throughout Your Library published by ALA Editions in 2019.
This week, students from the National Student Poets Program discuss their work and the importance of poetry in the lives of young people today.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, a panel of Chicago poets reads from and discusses their contributions to the recent collection Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, bestselling mystery novelist Amanda Flower discusses her latest multi award nominated novel Because I Could Not Stop for Death: An Emily Dickinson Mystery. In this first book in an all new series, Emily Dickinson and her housemaid, Willa Noble, realize there is nothing poetic about murder…
Flower is joined by author and scholar Peter Coviello to discuss her book and Dickinson’s literary legacy.
The following conversation originally took place March 26th, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, Caits Meissner and Nicole Shawan Junior discuss their contributions to The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison. They are joined by Alicia Brown.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival.
This week, Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr.—Emmett Till's cousin, best friend, and the last surviving witness of the night Till was lynched—discusses his book A Few Days Full of Trouble with co-author Christopher Benson.
The following conversation originally took place March 16th, 2023 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, historian and author Deborah Cohen discusses her book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War. Cohen is joined in conversation by Daniel Greene, President and Librarian at the Newberry Library.
The following conversation originally took place at the American Writers Festival on May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live.
This week, Natalie Y. Moore discusses her play The Billboard with J. Nicole Brooks. As a play and a book, The Billboard is a cultural force that treats abortion as more than pro-life or pro-choice.
The following conversation originally took place at the American Writers Festival on May 15th, 2022 and was recorded live.
This week, political scientist Dr. Clarence Lusane discusses his book Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy. He is interviewed by journalist Arionne Nettles.
The following conversation originally took place February 23, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Twenty Dollars and Change:
Twenty Dollars and Change places Harriet Tubman's life and legacy in a long tradition of resistance, illuminating the ongoing struggle to realize a democracy in which her emancipatory vision prevails.
America is in the throes of a historic reckoning with racism, with the battle for control over official narratives at ground zero. Across the country, politicians, city councils, and school boards are engaged in a highly polarized debate about whose accomplishments should be recognized, and whose point of view should be included in the telling of America's history.
In Twenty Dollars and Change, political scientist Clarence Lusane, author of the acclaimed The Black History of the White House, writes from a basic premise: Racist historical narratives and pervasive social inequities are inextricably linked--changing one can transform the other. Taking up the debate over the future of the twenty-dollar bill, Lusane uses the question of Harriet Tubman vs. Andrew Jackson as a lens through which to view the current state of our nation's ongoing reckoning with the legacies of slavery and foundational white supremacy. He places the struggle to confront unjust social conditions in direct connection with the push to transform our public symbols, making it plain that any choice of whose life deserves to be remembered and honored is a direct reflection of whose basic rights are deemed worthy of protection, and whose are not.
This week, activist and author Will Jawando discusses his book My Seven Black Fathers: A Young Activist’s Memoir of Race, Family and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole. He is joined by Ambassador Carolyn Curiel.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about My Seven Black Fathers:
Will Jawando tells a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color at a time when Black men are routinely stigmatized. As a boy growing up outside DC, Will, who went by his Nigerian name, Yemi, was shunted from school to school, never quite fitting in. He was a Black kid with a divorced white mother, a frayed relationship with his biological father, and teachers who scolded him for being disruptive in class and on the playground. Eventually, he became close to Kalfani, a kid he looked up to on the basketball court. Years after he got the call telling him that Kalfani was dead, another sickening casualty of gun violence, Will looks back on the relationships with an extraordinary series of mentors that enabled him to thrive.
Among them were Mr. Williams, the rare Black male grade school teacher, who found a way to bolster Will's self-esteem when he discovered he was being bullied; Jay Fletcher, the openly gay colleague of his mother who got him off junk food and took him to his first play; Mr. Holmes, the high school coach and chorus director who saw him through a crushing disappointment; Deen Sanwoola, the businessman who helped him bridge the gap between his American upbringing and his Nigerian heritage, eventually leading to a dramatic reconciliation with his biological father; and President Barack Obama, who made Will his associate director of public engagement at the White House--and who invited him to play basketball on more than one occasion. Without the influence of these men, Will knows he would not be who he is today: a civil rights and education policy attorney, a civic leader, a husband, and a father.
Drawing on Will's inspiring personal story and involvement in My Brother's Keeper, President Obama's national initiative to address persistent opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color, My Seven Black Fathers offers a transformative way for Black men to shape the next generation.
This week, acclaimed writers Ashley C. Ford and Eve L. Ewing discuss Ford’s memoir Somebody’s Daughter. One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Somebody's Daughter:
Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she doesn't know what he did to end up there. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father's incarceration...and Ashley's entire world is turned upside down.
Somebody's Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.
This week, legal analyst and author Elie Mystal discusses his book Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution, with professor Ivy Wilson. This episode is presented in conjunction with the AWM's special exhibit and content initiative Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice.
The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past.
Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media.
You don't need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don't need to accept the "whites only" theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn't have to be.
This week, professor and author Richard Bradford discusses his book Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer, the first biography to examine Mailer's life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama. Bradford is interviewed by AWM Program Director Allison Sansone.
The following conversation originally took place January 20, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.
The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction—Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters—to lovers and editors—which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels.
Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible - but justified - criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer's ferocious personality and writings.
This week, professor and historian Brooks E. Hefner discusses his book Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow, a deep dive into mid-century African American newspapers, exploring how Black pulp fiction reassembled genre formulas in the service of racial justice. Hefner is interviewed by journalist Evan F. Moore.
The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow
In recent years, Jordan Peele's Get Out, Marvel's Black Panther, and HBO's Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new.
As Brooks E. Hefner's Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy.
These popular stories differ significantly from contemporaneous, now-canonized African American protest novels that tend to represent Jim Crow America as a deterministic machine and its Black inhabitants as doomed victims. Widely consumed but since forgotten, these genre stories—and Hefner's incisive analysis of them—offer a more vibrant understanding of African American literary history.
This week, author and professor Leonard Moore discusses his book Teaching Black History to White People. Moore is joined in conversation by Laura McEnaney, Vice President for Research and Education at the Newberry Library.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
More about Teaching Black History to White People:
Leonard Moore has been teaching Black history for twenty-five years, mostly to white people. Drawing on decades of experience in the classroom and on college campuses throughout the South, as well as on his own personal history, Moore illustrates how an understanding of Black history is necessary for everyone.
With Teaching Black History to White People, which is "part memoir, part Black history, part pedagogy, and part how-to guide," Moore delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. He poses provocative questions, such as "Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?" and "What came first: slavery or racism?" These questions don't have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race. Moore includes a syllabus and other tools for actionable steps that white people can take to move beyond performative justice and toward racial reparations, healing, and reconciliation.
We thought we’d kick off 2023 with an episode full of laughs! In this episode, comedy writers Cristela Alonzo, Karen Chee, Peter Gwinn, Alexandra Petri and Peter Sagal discuss their crafts and the role of comedy writing in American culture.
The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week we take a look back at some of our favorite moments from the top episodes we released in 2022. From Poet Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners to screenwriters, novelists and more, we hope you enjoy entering the minds of these writers.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week, celebrate the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem The Waste Land with scholar and professor Jed Rasula, author of What the Thunder Said: How The Waste Land Made Poetry Modern. Rasula discusses his book and the enduring impact of The Waste Land with poet and scholar Reginald Gibbons.
The following conversation originally took place December 6th, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom.
This week, we discuss The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 anthology with guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, series editor John Joseph Adams, and bestselling author Veronica Roth. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of contemporary science fiction and fantasy.
This conversation originally took place November 13, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
About the speakers:
REBECCA ROANHORSE is a New York Times bestselling and Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. Rebecca has published multiple award-winning short stories and five novels, including two in The Sixth World Series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun for the Rick Riordan imprint, and her latest novel, the epic fantasy Black Sun. She has also written for Marvel Comics and for television, and had projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and Paramount TV. Find her Fiction & Non-Fiction HERE.
JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the editor of more than thirty anthologies, such as Wastelands and The Living Dead. He is also editor (and publisher) of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed, and for five years he was the editor of the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Tome of Heroes. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com.
VERONICA ROTH is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Poster Girl and Chosen Ones, the short story collection The End and Other Beginnings, the Divergent series, and the Carve the Mark duology. She was also the guest editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Learn more at veronicarothbooks.com
This week, writers from Central and Eastern Europe stop by the AWM on the Ukrainian and Dissident Writers Tour, presented by The Continental Literary Magazine.
Sándor Jászberényi, editor-in-chief of The Continental Literary Magazine, moderates a panel of writers aimed at promoting cultural exchange between Central Europe and the writers of the United States. In tumultuous and dangerous times like the ones we currently face, literature becomes even more important, as these writers demonstrate. Máté Makai, author of the 4th NOIR issue, and Dániel Levente Pál, executive director of The Continental Literary Magazine, join Jászberényi in conversation on this important topic.
The following conversation originally took place November 8th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
The Continental Literary Magazine is a thematic quarterly English-language literary and public affairs journal. It is a shared platform providing a space for Central and Eastern European literature to gather ground abroad, and to form a partnership with English literature. This is Central European literature, culture, and traditions as they are — edgy and classy.
This week, Stuart N. Brotman and John Palfrey discuss Brotman’s new book The First Amendment Lives On, a collection of conversations with free speech scholars and advocates.
The following conversation originally took place November 7th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live.
This week, Imani Perry, recent recipient of the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction, discusses her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. Perry is joined by Dawn Turner.
This episode is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, in which Perry and her work is featured. Explore Dark Testament today at the American Writers Museum.
The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
This week, we present the Fierce Reads Nonfiction Panel, a discussion of the various forms of nonfiction writing with five authors who work in the genre. In order of appearance, the writers are Achut Deng and Keely Hutton, Alex Graudins, Ashley Woodfolk, and Jessica Vitkus.
Quick note: Alex Graudins is a cartoonist and presented a slideshow of her work during her segment. If you would like to watch this, it is available on the American Writers Museum’s YouTube channel.
This conversation originally took place October 25th, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom.
This week, bestselling author Ross Gay discusses his new essay collection Inciting Joy. In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. This conversation originally took place November 1, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live.
This episode is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice. Explore the exhibit now at the American Writers Museum.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
About the book: In Inciting Joy, which Ada Limón calls "brilliant," Ross Gay once again proves a luminous observer of our shared humanity. From gardeners offering their abundance to the conviviality of pickup basketball games, from public displays of skateboarding to private heartaches, such as caring for his dying father, Gay investigates how joy and sorrow are inextricably linked.
"My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow—which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common, sorrow—might draw us together," Gay ponders. "It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive."
Looking clear-eyed at the injustice, political polarization, and destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the possibility of joy is available to us if we seek the things in our lives that prepare the ground for that joy. Then, moving beyond what incites joy, he explores what joy incites, suggesting perhaps a wild, unpredictable, transgressive and unboundaried solidarity among us.
ROSS GAY is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His newest collection of essays, Inciting Joy, was released by Algonquin in October of 2022.
To celebrate Halloween, this week’s episode is magical! Acclaimed authors Dhonielle Clayton and Jacqueline Woodson discuss Clayton’s recent middle grade debut The Marvellers, a fantasy adventure set in a global magic school in the sky.
This conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the inaugural American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB
Dhonielle Clayton spent most of her childhood under her grandmother’s table with a stack of books. She hails from the Washington, D.C. suburbs on the Maryland side. She is the author of the Tiny Pretty Things series (recently adapted by Netflix) and The Belles series. She earned an MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University and an MFA in Writing for Children at the New School. Now, she is a librarian at Harlem Village Academies, is one of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks librarians, and co-founder of CAKE Literary. The Marvellers is her debut middle grade novel.
Jacqueline Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and she was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, as well as the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Her dozens of books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Year We Learned to Fly, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and the picture book Each Kindness, which won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award.
This week, acclaimed authors Reyna Grande and Juan Martinez discuss Grande’s life and writing, in particular her two most recents books: A Ballad of Love and Glory, a historical novel set during the Mexican-American War; and an anthology of immigrant voices she co-edited called Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings.
This conversation originally took place October 16th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, photographer Carell Augustus discusses his new photography book Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments with journalist Arionne Nettles.
This episode is presented in conjunction with our new special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, now open.
This conversation originally took place October 13, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
This week, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and Literary Director of the Library of Congress Marie Arana explore the themes of their roots, their creativity, and how their origin stories feed them and their work.
This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the inaugural American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
In 2019, Joy Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position and only the second person to serve three terms in the role. Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. She is also the author of two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, which invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her “poet-warrior” road. She has edited several anthologies of Native American writing including When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, and Living Nations, Living Words, the companion anthology to her signature poet laureate project. Her many writing awards include the 2019 Jackson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts.
Marie Arana is a Peruvian-American author of nonfiction and fiction as well as the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress. She is the recipient of a 2020 literary award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Among her recent positions are: Director of the National Book Festival, the John W. Kluge Center’s Chair of the Cultures of the Countries of the South, and Writer at Large for the Washington Post. For many years, she was editor-in-chief of the Washington Post’s book review section, Book World. Marie has also written for the New York Times, the National Geographic, Time Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, Spain’s El País, Colombia’s El Tiempo, and Peru’s El Comercio, among many other publications. Her sweeping history of Latin America, Silver, Sword, and Stone, was named Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 by the American Library Association, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence. Her biography of Simón Bolívar won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Marie’s memoir, American Chica, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. She has also published two prizewinning novels, Cellophane and Lima Nights.
This week, historian and author Kelly Lytle Hernández sits down with writer Michael Zapata to discuss her book Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands. The recently released book fills in one of the largest gaps in our history textbooks: the 1910 Mexican Revolution, which remade both Mexico and the United States.
This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the inaugural American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
This week, historian and author David W. Blight talks with scholar Keidrick Roy about the work and legacy of Frederick Douglass. Blight edited the recently published collection of Douglass’s public writings from the Library of America. This edition is the largest single-volume selection of Douglass’s writings ever published, including 34 speeches and 67 pieces of journalism.
This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, on which Keidrick Roy served as lead curator. The immersive exhibit is now open to the public and is included with admission. The American Writers Museum is open Thursday through Monday from 10 am to 5 pm.
This conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the inaugural American Writers Festival and was recorded live.
This week, author David Maraniss discusses his new book Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, the definitive biography of a great American athlete who struggled most of his life to overcome racist stereotypes.
Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lucas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History).
Maraniss is interviewed by Kelly Wisecup, professor of English and director of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University, where she is also an affiliate of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research.
This week, bestselling mystery novelist Sara Paretsky chats with Booklist editor Donna Seaman about Overboard, the latest book in Paretsky’s “V.I. Warshawski” detective series.
This conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live as part of the museum’s inaugural American Writers Festival.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, beloved children’s book authors Andrea Beaty and Betsy Bird chat about Beaty’s career, her writing process, the publishing industry, and how much fun it is to write for kids.
This conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live as part of the museum’s inaugural American Writers Festival.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and writer Bekah Brunstetter discuss the process of adapting The Notebook, the romance novel by Nicholas Sparks, into a musical for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The world premiere musical opens September 6th, 2022. Learn more here.
This conversation originally took place August 17th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, author and Broadway director Schele Williams discusses her children’s picture book Your Legacy: A Bold Reclaiming of Our Enslaved History with journalist Arionne Nettles. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum on May 15, 2022 as part of the inaugural American Writers Festival. We hope you enjoy entering the mind [...]
This week, author Kim Michele Richardson discusses her new book The Book Woman’s Daughter with American Writers Museum Program Director Allison Sansone. This conversation was recorded live for the American Writers Festival on May 15, 2022 in Chicago. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, journalist and author Kosoko Jackson discusses his young adult novel Survive the Dome with writer and educator Jacoby Cochran. The Hate U Give meets Internment in this pulse-pounding thriller about an impenetrable dome around Baltimore that is keeping the residents in and information from going out during a city-wide protest. This conversation was [...]
This week, acclaimed writers Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen discuss Kingston’s writing and legacy in light of the new collection of Kingston’s work from the Library of America, edited by Nguyen. This conversation was recorded live for the American Writers Festival on May 15, 2022 in Chicago. We hope you enjoy entering the [...]
This week, bestselling author Sudhir Venkatesh discusses his new book, The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race for a Gun, and a Community United to Save Them. This conversation originally took place July 6th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM [...]
On July 11th, 1960, Harper Lee’s iconic novel To Kill A Mockingbird was originally published. To celebrate the 62nd anniversary of this literary event, this week screenwriter Aaron Sorkin chats with professor Ivy Wilson about how he adapted Lee’s novel for the stage. This conversation was recorded for the American Writers Festival on May 15th, [...]
This is a special week…it is our 100th episode! To celebrate, we’re counting down our top ten most listened-to podcasts from the past three years and sharing highlights from each. From poets to journalists to novelists and more, we hope you enjoy entering the minds of these writers. Listen to the full episodes below: Alice [...]
This week, we honor the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with comic artist Archie Bongiovanni, who discusses their graphic novel The Stonewall Riots: Making A Stand for LGBTQ Rights, a History Comics book. Archie is joined by journalist Andrew Davis, executive editor of the Chicago-based LGBTQ+ media outlet Windy City Times. This conversation was [...]
This week, we are excited to release the first of many episodes recorded live during our American Writers Festival on May 15th, 2022, which featured more than 75 leading writers from across the country. In this episode, writer Vincent Tirado discusses their young adult novel Burn Down, Rise Up with journalist Andrew Davis. We hope [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with author and historian Aaron Sachs about his new book Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times, a double portrait of two of America’s most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them—and their uncanny relevance to our age of [...]
This week, author Karl Marlantes discusses his novel Deep River, which the Washington Post called, “an engrossing and commanding historical epic about one immigrant family’s shifting fortunes.” This conversation originally took place August 7th, 2019 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, opera librettist Gene Scheer discusses the process of transforming Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick into a critically acclaimed opera. He is joined by Northwestern University Professor Betsy Erkkila. This conversation originally took place April 24, 2019 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. [...]
This week, Fortune 500 CEO Douglas Conant and writer Amy Federman discuss their co-authored book The Blueprint: Six Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights. They are interviewed by John Estey, immediate past Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place April 7, 2021 and [...]
This week, editor Andrew S. Curran and biological anthropologist Nina G. Jablonski discuss Curran’s new book Who’s Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race. Curran co-edited the book with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This conversation originally took place May 4th, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you [...]
This week, bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan discusses her memoir Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs with special guest Kathy Griffin. This conversation originally took place May 13th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. Programming note: this conversation includes adult themes and language, listener discretion is advised. We hope you enjoy entering the [...]
This week, 93XRT radio host Terri Hemmert chats with critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Joan Osborne about the music industry, songwriting, and her cover album Songs of Bob Dylan. This conversation originally took place May 18th, 2019 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM [...]
This week, we chat with Katherine Schweit, the former head of the FBI’s active shooter program and author of the recent book Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis. Schweit is interviewed by Chad Riley, a member of the Chicago Council of the AWM. This conversation originally took place March 31, 2022 [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with editor Jennifer Minton Quigley about her recent anthology Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century. They are joined by contributing writers Bindu Bansinath, Aleksandar Hemon, and Laura Lippman. This conversation originally took place [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with bestselling author Elizabeth Berg about her recent memoir I’ll Be Seeing You, a beautifully written, poignant love story of caring for her parents in their final years. This conversation originally took place November 16th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering [...]
This week, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers, discusses his book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner with journalist Rick Perlstein. This conversation originally took place December 7th, 2017 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum discusses her recent book The Poison Squad, which tells the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change. This conversation originally took place August 15, 2019 and was recorded live [...]
This week, we talk about science writing! Anthropologist and author Sarah Parcak discusses her book Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past with Adler Planetarium astronomer and artist Lucianne Walkowicz. This conversation originally took place August 13th, 2019 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston chats with writer and educator Deborah Nelson Linck, author of the forthcoming illustrated biography Pauli Murray: Shouting for the Rights of All People. This conversation originally took place February 22nd, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom. This program is presented in conjunction with the launch of our newest [...]
This week, writer-director Rebecca Hall discusses her recent Netflix film Passing with Northwestern University professor Dr. Ivy Wilson. This conversation originally took place October 21st, 2021 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. Quick programming note: we enter this conversation in progress. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, writers Nancy Johnson and Catherine Adel West discuss Johnson’s hit debut novel The Kindest Lie. This conversation originally took place February 8th, 2022 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with author Hanif Abdurraqib and illustrator Ashley Evans about their new children’s book Sing, Aretha, Sing!, a striking picture book biography about the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. This conversation originally took place February 2nd, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering [...]
This week, author Angela Terry talks about her novel Charming Falls Apart with Olivia Bedi and Katy Mickelson, members of the Chicago Council of the American Writers Museum. This conversation originally took place January 27th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. Throughout this episode, you will hear references to Angela’s new novel, which is [...]
This week, for our first episode of 2022, AWM President Carey Cranston sits down with Layla Saad, author of the New York Times bestselling book Me and White Supremacy. This conversation originally took place February 5th, 2020 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. Layla will be joining us this coming February 17th [...]
This week, tune into a conversation between Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude, and Stacie Williams, whose book Bizarro Worlds references Lethem’s characters and storylines to explore racism and gentrification. This conversation originally took place March 15th, 2019 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering [...]
This week, editors Nina Bennett and Marie Bennett discuss rediscovering and reprinting 1920s author Gertrude Beasley’s banned memoir My First Thirty Years. They are joined by Beasley scholar Dr. Celia Marshik, Professor of English at Stony Brook University. This conversation originally took place December 8th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you [...]
This week, bestselling author Scott Turow discusses his novel The Last Trial with Olivia Bedi, a member of the AWM Board of Trustees. This conversation originally took place June 24th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week, award-winning writers Sigrid Nunez and Charlotte Wood discuss Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through. This conversation originally took place September 24th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week, editor Andrew Blauner chats with acclaimed writers A. O. Scott and Rafia Zakaria about their contributions to the essay anthology Now Comes Good Sailing: Writers Reflect on Henry David Thoreau. This conversation originally took place October 21st, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a [...]
This week, two former military officers and award-winning authors, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, discuss their recent book 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. This conversation originally took place March 31st, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone speaks with journalist Tom Roston about his new book The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five. This conversation originally took place October 15th, 2021 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM [...]
This week, award-winning writers Asali Solomon and Rebecca Makkai discuss Solomon’s new novel The Days of Afrekete. This conversation originally took place October 26th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME
This week, just in time for Halloween, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks with historian Scott Peeples about Edgar Allan Poe and his book The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City. This conversation originally took place October 27th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the [...]
This week, hear from Joanne Lee Molinaro about her new cookbook The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen. Molinaro is interviewed by Christie Maliyackel, a member of the Chicago Council of the American Writers Museum. This conversation took place October 12th, 2021 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with playwright and screenwriter Sarah Gubbins, who most recently adapted the screenplay for the film Shirley starring Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson. This program originally took place July 6th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM [...]
This week, our celebration of Hispanic American Heritage Month continues with Juan Martinez, author of the short story collection Best Worst American. This program is hosted by the Chicago Council of the American Writers Museum, a group of dedicated professionals who plan and host fundraising events for the museum. It originally took place June 10th, [...]
This week, we have a fun panel of writers who are featured in the anthology Dear McSweeney’s: Two Decades of Letters to the Editor from Writers, Readers, and the Occasional Bewildered Consumer. This program is hosted by McSweeney’s senior editor Daniel Levin Becker. It originally took place September 21, 2021 and was recorded live via [...]
This week, AWM Program Director, Allison Sansone, chats with Lilliam Rivera about her latest middle grade novel Never Look Back, which blends a touch of magical realism into a timely story about cultural identity, overcoming trauma, and the power of first love. This program originally took place November 10, 2020 and was recorded live via [...]
This week, AWM Program Director, Allison Sansone, talks with Shay Bravo, a Mexican born author who has now lived half of her life in the U.S. Shay began sharing her work online through Wattpad when she was fifteen years old and has connected with over 100,000 followers. Historically Inaccurate won the 2019 Watty Awards and [...]
This week, historian and critic Leonard S. Marcus discusses his book You Can’t Say Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk About Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have To Tell. Marcus is joined by Meg Medina, one of the authors featured in the book. This program took place August 12th, 2021 and was [...]
This week, hear from journalist and editor Elly Fishman about her book Refugee High: Coming of Age in America, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel award. The book tells the story of a year in the life of a Chicago high school that has one of the highest proportions of refugees of any school [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks with Charles Ardai, editor of the short story anthology Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury. This program took place August 17th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. This is the final of three episodes in a row about Bradbury in the [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston talks with former chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises Christie Hefner about the landmark publication and its relation to Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451 in particular. This program took place May 25th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. This is the second of three episodes in a row [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston talks with Dr. Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury’s authorized biographer and author of The Bradbury Chronicles. He is also the author of his own short story collection Dark Black, which is hauntingly thrilling. This is the first of three episodes in a row about Bradbury in the lead-up to his [...]
This week, Kathleen Rooney talks about her recent novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey with fellow writer Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. This program took place August 13th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. Learn more about and order Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey here. We hope you enjoy [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with renowned poet and a leader of the Black Arts Movement Dr. Haki Madhubuti about his recent collection Taught By Women: Poems as Resistance Language. This program took place May 20, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with writer and researcher Jess McHugh about her recent book Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books. This program took place June 1, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
June is Immigrant Heritage Month and we are celebrating all month long by sharing past programs presented in conjunction with our special exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today. This exhibit has been extended through 2021 and you can explore it in person at the American Writers Museum or online at My-America.org. This week, [...]
This week, program director Allison Sansone chats with writer and professor Aaron Bobrow-Strain, whose book The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez tells the true story of a Mexican teen mother journeying through the U.S. immigration system and the obstacles she faces. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
June is Immigrant Heritage Month and we are celebrating all month long by sharing past programs presented in conjunction with our special exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today. This exhibit has been extended through 2021 and you can explore it in person at the American Writers Museum or online at My-America.org. This week, [...]
June is Immigrant Heritage Month and we are celebrating all month long by sharing past programs presented in conjunction with our special exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today. This exhibit has been extended through 2021 and you can explore it in person at the American Writers Museum or online at My-America.org. We kick [...]
This week, Nicole Chung discusses her memoir All You Can Ever Know with fellow writer Rebecca Makkai. This conversation originally took place November 27th, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. VIEW ALL PODCAST EPISODES HERE
Today is Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday…may he stay forever young. To celebrate, we caught up with Sean Latham, Director of the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies and editor of the new essay anthology The World of Bob Dylan. This program took place May 13th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy [...]
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and we continue our celebration of that with writers Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and T Kira Madden who discuss their writing habits and contributions to the book Go Home!, an anthology of Asian diasporic writers musing on the notion of “home”. This conversation originally took place March [...]
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and we continue our celebration of that with June Hur, author of The Silence of Bones. This conversation originally took place April 29th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and we begin our celebration of that with R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries. This conversation originally took place July 31st, 2019 and was recorded live. Kwon is also one of more than 30 writers featured in our special exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee [...]
Our National Poetry Month celebrations continue with acclaimed poets Rigoberto González and Johanny Vázquez Paz. This program took place April 15th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. All podcasts and episodes here.
Our National Poetry Month celebrations continue with indigenous poets Layli Long Soldier, Mark Turcotte, and Tanaya Winder who read from and discuss the recent book When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. This program took place November 19th, 2020 and was recorded live [...]
Celebrate Arab American Heritage Month with Sahar Mustafah, who discusses her recent novel The Beauty of Your Face. This conversation took place April 8th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. Mustafah also put together a list of some of her favorite and most influential books by Arab American writers. Check out that reading list [...]
This week, we kick off National Poetry Month with former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who is interviewed by Irish Ambassador to the US Daniel Mulhall. This conversation took place December 8th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. ALL PODCAST EPISODES HERE
This week, pop culture historian and bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong discusses her new book When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today. This conversation took place March 23rd, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a [...]
This week, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz discusses his memoir Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation with Princeton University professor Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones. This conversation took place March 9th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, acclaimed Irish-American writers Alice McDermott, Joseph O’Neill and Irish Ambassador to the United States Daniel Mulhall discuss their work, their approach to writing, and their shared Irish heritage. This program originally took place October 29th, 2020 and was recorded live over Zoom. Hear more immigrant and refugee writers [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston chats with award-winning New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. This conversation was recorded live via Zoom on February 26th, 2021. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, renowned mystery writer Sara Paretsky discusses her book Shell Game, her writing process and more. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in October 2018. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
This week, NPR correspondent Aarti Shahani discusses her memoir Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares with fellow NPR correspondent Sonari Rhodes Glinton. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in October 2019. This program was the first in a series of programs presented in conjunction with our special exhibit My America: [...]
This week, Harvard scholar Dr. John Stauffer discusses the legacy of Frederick Douglass, particularly his use of early photography. This lecture was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in March 2019. Quick programming note: Dr. Stauffer used photographs to go along with his presentation. If you would like to see those, you can watch [...]
This week, Jasmine Guillory discusses her romance novel The Wedding Party with writer and poet Diamond Sharp. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in July 2019. Quick programming note: this discussion contains explicit language and references to sex, it is a romance novel after all…Listener discretion is advised. We hope you [...]
This week, we sit down with Walter Mosley and discuss his work and the craft of writing. This program took place October 24th, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. At the time, Mosley’s novel John Woman had just been published. Mosley’s latest Easy Rawlins mystery comes out tomorrow, February 2nd! Quick [...]
This week, iconic young adult author Gary Paulsen discusses his new middle grade memoir Gone to the Woods, his own survival story. He is joined by children’s book author and librarian Betsy Bird. This program took place January 12th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a [...]
For our first episode of 2021, we chat with renowned writer Jacqueline Woodson. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. This [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with award-winning NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff. This conversation took place September 3rd, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. This is our final Author Talks episode of the year. We are taking a couple weeks now to rest but we will return in January with more [...]
This week, hear from Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz about his new illustrated memoir Chance: Escape from the Holocaust. Presented in partnership with the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. This conversation took place October 13th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston chats with Pulitzer Prize-winner and global energy expert Daniel Yergin about his timely new book The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations. This conversation took place October 8th, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. Quick programming note: near the 20 minute mark, Carey and Daniel [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with writer and historian Catharine Arnold about her recent book Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History. This conversation took place May 26, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [...]
This week Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl book club, discusses her essay anthology with fellow writer Charlene Carruthers. This conversation was recorded November 5, 2018 live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “As Black women we define ourselves, [...]
This week we hit the funny pages and talk about the anthology The Peanuts Papers with editor Andrew Blauner, contributing artist Chris Ware and cartoonist Ivan Brunetti who honor the legacy of Charles Schultz and his iconic Peanuts comic strip. This conversation was recorded November 4, 2019 live at the American Writers Museum. We hope [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston chats with Dr. Manisha Sinha about the legacy of Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists from her book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. This conversation was recorded live May 28, 2020. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Much [...]
Today, we discuss the legacy of Nelson Algren with Colin Asher, author of the biography Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren. This was originally recorded live at the American Writers Museum June 25th, 2019. Quick note: the end of this podcast episode includes a Q&A with the live audience, [...]
This week we discuss the legacy of Norman Mailer with J. Michael Lennon, Mailer’s archivist and authorized biographer, and Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. This conversation was originally recorded August 27, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. EPISODE [...]
This week, we present an excerpt from a previously recorded conversation with author and historian Nicholas Buccola about his recent book The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America. To watch the full program as well as view an accompanying photo slideshow, visit the American [...]
This week, get your peanuts and Cracker Jack ready because we’re chatting with essayist Joe Bonomo and sportswriter Rick Telander about their favorite baseball writing. This program took place and was recorded in June when Major League Baseball was still on hiatus. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Baseball [...]
Today, in recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day, we talk with Native poets and performing artists Frank Waln and Tanaya Winder, who will also play some of their powerful music. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I really believe in helping people heal through the [...]
This week, AWM Facilities Supervisor, Cristina Carrera, chats with former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera about his new collection Every Day We Get More Illegal. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more podcast episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Instead of more openness, the doors seem to be bigger and tighter [...]
This week, AWM Assistant Director of Programming and Education, Sonal Shukla, chats with Adrianna Cuevas, debut author of the middle grade fantasy novel The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I pretty much live in my own head most of [...]
We continue celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month this week with singer-songwriter Louie Pérez, lead singer of Los Lobos, who chats with radio broadcaster Catalina Maria Johnson about his work and writing. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to all podcast episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Everything I’ve written has always come [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston sits down with bestselling author and immigrant rights advocate Julissa Arce to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I’ve been very motivated and very inspired by young undocumented people now who are [...]
This week, AWM President Carey Cranston sits down with author and historian Michelle Duster who discusses the indelible impact and lasting legacy of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “[Wells] felt the need to write her own autobiography because [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone sits down with Isabel Ibañez to chat about her Bolivian heritage, writing process, and her debut Young Adult Fantasy novel Woven in Moonlight. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Home sort of felt like two places and [...]
This week, we honor Ray Bradbury’s recent Centennial on August 22nd with more science fiction. The prolific writer John Scalzi talks about his novel The Consuming Fire, how he wrote it in just two weeks, and his affinity for wombats. Yes, wombats. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more [...]
This week, journalist Dan Sinker talks with Annalee Newitz about Annalee’s recent time-traveling, punk rock novel The Future of Another Timeline. This is the second of four conversations with science fiction and fantasy writers in honor of Ray Bradbury’s Centennial on August 22. Admission to the AWM is also free of charge that day to celebrate Bradbury’s [...]
In this episode, American Writers Museum Program Director Allison Sansone chats with renowned screenwriter and comics writer J. Michael Straczynski about his recent memoir Becoming Superman. This is the first of four conversations with science fiction and fantasy writers in honor of Ray Bradbury’s Centennial on August 22. Admission to the AWM is also free [...]
This week, Booklist editor Donna Seaman talks with Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey about her powerful new memoir Memorial Drive, which recounts the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather and the impact that moment has had on Trethewey’s life and work. We hope you enjoy [...]
This week, Booklist editor Donna Seaman chats with Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, which was a selection for Oprah’s Book Club. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Prison is family separation. It’s happening on our border but it’s also happening right in [...]
This week, we are thrilled to present a discussion between award-winning poets Ross Gay and Eve L. Ewing, who talked about Gay’s recent collection The Book of Delights. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “My first impulse when I have a delight, when I [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks with writer and disabled rights advocate Keah Brown about her essay collection The Pretty One. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “What I want so badly is disabled characters who aren’t plot devices for somebody else. [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks to award-winning poet Saeed Jones about his memoir How We Fight For Our Lives, which tells his incredible story of a young, black, gay man from the south fighting to carve out a place for himself in the world. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of [...]
This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone talks to National Book Award finalist David Treuer about his book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, a sweeping history of Native American life from the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 to today. This conversation was originally recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering [...]
This week, we are pleased to present a discussion between AWM Program Director Allison Sansone and graphic novelist Ngozi Ukazu about the latest installment in her popular Check Please! series. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here.
This week we are pleased to present Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami, who chats with American Writers Museum President Carey Cranston about her forthcoming book Conditional Citizens. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here.
This week we are pleased to present writers Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kao Kalia Yang, and Vu Tran who’ll discuss their contributions to the anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. This conversation was originally recorded at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes [...]
This first episode of the American Writers Museum podcast is a discussion between Sandra Cisneros and Fernando A. Flores, who visited the AWM in May 2019.