READ TO ME with Becky Karush: Recent Episodes
Becky Karush
Great writers don't just know how to write. They know how to listen for what they love. With Read to Me, you learn how to listen for the power and beauty in exceptional writing — and name, with brazen love, what is so, so good. This is how you begin to build your own power on the page.
Today, we read and love “River House” by Diana Whitney. This poem is from Diana's forthcoming October 2023 collection, DARK BEDS (June Road Press). Pre-order DARK BEDS here and anywhere you buy books: https://www.juneroadpress.com/bookstore
Leam more about the Read to Me podcast and your host, Becky Karush: www.readtomeliteraryarts.com
DARK BEDS, Diana's second collection, juxtaposes the conflicted emotions of motherhood and domesticity with the intoxicating promises of transgression. Fantasies fulfilled or imagined play out against the haunted backdrop of Vermont’s woods and fields, a landscape both harsh and magical, conjuring longing and grief, dissolution and repair. Here we see how time is reflected in our bodies, our children, our choices, and the natural world. Dark Beds is an anthem for the “sandwich generation”—tired adults caught between the demands of growing children and aging parents, yearning to reclaim desire and a sense of self. Sensual, elegant, and deeply resonant, these poems lay bare the dark beds of a marriage, a garden, a human life: the intimate places where truths are buried, exposed, and sown again in hope of renewal. Diana Whitney writes across genres with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. She is the editor of the bestselling anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves (2021), winner of the Claudia Lewis Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, Glamour, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Her first book, Wanting It, won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. Diana has received numerous grants for her writing, including from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Vermont Arts Council, and is completing her MFA in poetry at New England College. A feminist activist in her hometown and beyond, she lives in Vermont with her family and works as an editor and writing coach. https://www.diana-whitney.com/
https://www.juneroadpress.com/
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good
Today, we read from Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create A Life That Matters to You by Terri Trespicio. We trace a smart, beaming circle from the beginning of a wedding video, back to the beginning of a wedding video. Along the way, we get a completely new understanding of beginnings, endings, and the concept of forever.
Plus, the surprising appearance of Men in Black.
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good
Today, we revisit a 2019 episode on the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World, also called, in Mohawk, Ohénten Kariwatékwen: Words Before All Else.
This Address’s legacy is much bigger than the United States Thanksgiving tradition. People of the Haudenosaunee nations recite it before ceremonial and governmental meetings. Their civic life grows again and again from acknowledgment of the natural world, relationship to it, and gratitude for it.
Is it ok for a white reader, which is me, to recite and explore the Address? Yes. There is ample documentation that the Haudenosaunee nations offer it broadly to the world.
Thank you to the bevy of voices who helped me recite the Address in 2019. You remain magical.
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, sensuous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.
Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transfiguration, and be inside its world-making love.
Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.
www.readtomeliteraryarts.com
Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transmogrification, and be inside its world-making love.
Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.
www.readtomeliteraryarts.com
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing: listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.
Today, we read from The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon. (And hear my son build with legos in the deep background.) We get to see how the author isolates two college-student characters (a senior from herself, a freshman from the world) with body detail, relationships to books, and physical space. But we also get to see how the writing turns that double isolation into an inevitable, luscious meet-cute.
The podcast comes from Read to Me Literary Arts. You have a gift for writing. Here is where you can open it — with writing groups, coaching, book programs, and more. www.readtomeliteraryarts.com
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.
Today, we read from Beneficence by Meredith Hall. We love its stunning hat trick: conveying devastating grief and deep family love, doing so through the embodied action of its characters, and carrying everything in sentences that are light and joyful on their feet. Plus, we explore why we never need credentials to love the written word.
The podcast is a branch of Read to Me Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a writing gift! Now's the time to open it. readtomeliteraryarts.com.
On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.
Today, we read from The Book of Form and Emptiness, a stunning new novel from Ruth Ozeki. We love its radical premise, its clear-water sentences sparkling with gem-like words, and the voices of three distinct characters (not all entirely human). Plus, we explore how listening is like... magnificent fungus.
Join the Read to Me Podcast Club and get copies of all our Season 3 books! PLUS, online writing salons, monthly gift boxes, and a live podcast taping! Find the party at readtomeliteraryarts.com/podcastclub
On Read to Me, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good!
Today, we read from Megan Baxter's Farm Girl. Here, a body at work, precisely described in strong sentences, becomes the site of shimmering ideas about faith and hope. We get to see Megan's specific artistry with the luscious language of vegetables, too.
READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Join us at readtomeliteraryarts.com
On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what works on the page. And then understand why!
In this live episode, recorded in front of a Texas audience, I read from "The Wit and Wisdom of Ann Richards" by the incomparable Molly Ivins. It's an amazing piece about regionalism and racism and sexism and the power of the woman to prevail above what's expected of her. We listen for Ivins genius — to be funny, devastating, brilliant, and casual in every sentence.
READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Find the program that's right for you at readtomepod.com.
On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill for excellent writing — how to listen for what works on the page. (And then understand why.)
Today, we get to listen to the talented, generous, and so so so so smart poet MAURICIO NOVOA. His debut collection MEMORIAS FROM THE BELTWAY explores "themes of working-class survivalism and ingenuity, spiritual tenacity, hip hop articulations, and el exilio," per his co-publishers, FlowerSong Press and Red Salmon Press. In conversation, Mauricio is humble about himself but brilliant about the work. READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Find the program that's right for you at readtomepod.com.
On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what works on the page. (And then understand why.)
Today, I read the poem "Abuela Sestina" from Memorias from the Beltway by Mauricio Novoa. Then we get to love how perfectly the poetic form of the sestina serves this complex, country-hopping, bi-lingual, danger-filled, love-filled, bird-filled story.
READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Find the program that's right for you at readtomepod.com.
We read a selection from one of Mary Ruefle's beguiling essays, "TK NAME." Then we love the craft of it using the principles of Gateless Writing.
If I offered you a space where you could write and read your writing within a safe community, a space where you could grow as a writer, a space where you could break through your creative blocks, would you join me? If you’re tired of working in a bubble, then you’re ready for Read To Me Gateless Writing Salons. Join at readtomepod.com.
Your host Becky Karush got to be in a writing salon with author Jodi Paloni the other day, and man, was it dizzyingly hot-damn amazing to hear her work. In this episode, we read from Jodi's short story collection, THEY COULD LIVE WITH THEMSELVES.We see how secondary characters mirror each other to show the inner life of the main character. We learn how the short story is like both a bar band at a distance and a whale call heard above the water.
Join us this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com
In this episode, we read the lyrics of Wedding Song, from the Tony- and Grammy-winning musical HADESTOWN by Anais Mitchell. We get to love up the song's questions, the dares, the seduction, the reckless hope, the promises, the love. The episode was an experiment, too — the fifth-ever episode, the first with a live studio audience, the first reading lyrics. We didn't not know what we'd find on the road. (But now we know, and it was fun. No tragedies, just joy.)
Join us this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com
Today we get to talk to my friend Emily Bass, the debut author of the extraordinary book TO END A PLAGUE: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa. This book is…
- An essential history of a U.S. government program.
- A history of the evolution of AIDS activism, and human dignity activism, in the US and in several African nations, Uganda in particular.
- A history of some of people in whose bodies both the virus and the drug treatment lived.
- A history of the potential and the limits of foreign developmental aid.
And the book is a love letter to “people without visible power having enormous power.” And also a legislative thriller and a medical thriller and a heartbreaker and a roadmap for dealing with pandemics!
Em and I talk about writing puzzles, the work of managing decades of reporting, why she shows up in the narrative, and what PEPFAR and AIDS can teach us about handling the next plague.
Enjoy!
Join us this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com
I met author Emily Bass in 1996, right around the time she was meeting AIDS activists in New York City.
I met Em when we were summer camp counselors together.
Neither of us knew that we’d become longtime friends. Neither of us knew that she was right at the inception of a 20-plus year journey to research, report, and write her book, her first book, her book that’s out this week, the book called TO END A PLAGUE: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa.
Today, we get to celebrate Emily and her book — and read an excerpt from a stunning chapter called Small Heavens. Here we’re in Uganda in the early 2000s, just as PEPFAR, a massive American program to deliver AIDS drug treatment in Africa, is rolling through. From vivid sensory details to a global understanding of foreign aid to a reverence for the bodies that live these events, Emily gives us the world. Let’s go read with her.
Join READ TO ME this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com
Today we get to talk to the numinous and luminous Barbara Newman, author of the brand-new, to-be-published-on-July-27 young adult fantasy novel, THE DREAMCATCHER CODES. In this book, four girls, powered by the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, and secret messages from mystical dreamcatchers, join forces on a quest to recover a stolen piece of the coveted Crystal Horseshoe.
We had a rollicking time reading from the book in our last episode — and now we get to hear from Barbara! Catch our beautiful conversation about writing, dreams, the earth, intuition, and daughter.
Join us for our online Summer Writing Salons. We know you can write amazing things — and so you do! www.readtomepod.com
This week, we enter the realm of the mystical, the brave, and the female — and learn how to write a story as epic, as timeless, as magisterial and intimate from its very first words. And not just that. In the young adult fantasy novel THE DREAMCATCHER CODES by Barbara Newman, we get to hear a story written with LIFE as its enduring value, and magic as its flair. Plus, we get a semi-spiritual reckoning at an Indigo Girls concert.
Come write your stories! Join us at the READ TO ME summer writing salons at www.readtomepod.com.
Meet Sari Rosenblatt, extraordinary writer, teacher, observer, candy connoisseur, conversationalist, interviewee. Author of the acclaimed short story collection FATHER GUARDS THE SHEEP, Sari here talks about the family history inside the book, the life of work that came before book publication, and the many many many revisions that go into a single story. (80! Or more!)
Sari, I adore you to the moon. Thank you for this wild and beautiful talk.
Join the READ TO ME Salons — writing, reading aloud, and listening with generous, discerning attention that opens up your most brilliant work. www.readtomesalons.
Sari Rosenblatt is a consummate short story writer. Just look at Daughter of Retail, the lead story in her new collection, FATHER GUARDS THE SHEEP.
Place — she's got it. Pacing — she's got it. High and low stakes twisting around each other — she's got it. Character voice — she's got it. Pee-your-pants-funny — she's got it. That strange floating feeling like your scalp has detached from your skull that you get at the end of an exceptional short story — she's got it.
VERNA PIXLEY IN NEED OF A BRA — she's got it.
I really, really hope you treat yourself to this episode. Discovering Sari's work is like biting into great chocolate, or finding out that someone mailed you money.
Plus, you can hear why a beautiful young man and I didn't kiss in 1994.
But really, listen for this story that will knock your knickers off.
Join us for our Read to Me Summer Writing Salons! Come see for yourself what it's like to write knowing that your work will be loved for its incontrovertible strength.
www.readtomepod.com/gateless-writing-salons
Today we get to chat with my friend, Ann Braden — activist, founder of several grassroots organizations, podcaster, teacher, and author! I read (and cried over) an excerpt from her new book, Flight Of A Puffin, last week.
Today we talk to Author Ann about bringing characters to life, loving them, and giving them hope. About raising a book up with a village to support you. About reading with kids across the country. And more!
Join us for our Summer Writing Salons!
www.readtomepod.com/gateless-writing-salons
Ann Braden made a book out of heartstrings and glitter. FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN, for middle-grade readers, is both tough and whimsical, following four young people who are hurt and alone — until one tiny, delightfully illustrated act of kindness connects them. Changes them. Changes their communities. Lifts them up.
Do you know how rare that is, to make a book about moral courage and love that feels like a hummingbird? Ann Braden did, and we get to love why. And cry big, sloppy, happy heart tears.
Today on READ TO ME, we love WHY SOLANGE MATTERS by Stephanie Phillips. We love the mix of history, memoir, music writing, future-dreaming, feminism, and punk. We love the love for Solange Knowles and her music. We love the celebration of Black feminism and Black feminist punk music. We love sentences that are clear runways for passionate ideas.
Today we get to hang out with musician, fiber artist, medium, radio host, and all-around star Jocelyn Mackenzie — a creative and intuitive mind living in the body of a control freak with a love of spreadsheets! ⠀
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And if you think those two things cannot possibly exist in the same person, think again. Because she is here. She is real. And she is wonderful. Listen in and then get Jocelyn's new album, PUSH, from Righteous Babe Records.
Today on READ TO ME, we love a song about dental hygiene, the constrictions of modern adult life, the misappropriation of the human stress response, and the extravagant goddess-like holiness that is our true nature.
And mango leather.
Naturally.
Come love MANGO LEATHER by Jocelyn Mackenzie, an explosively talented, generous, and blooming beautiful artist who will blow up your preconditioned mind while wearing a glittering headdress.
Two introverts walk into a bar…well, to bring this up to date in the pandemic world - two introverts connect on zoom and talk of hope, connecting with nature, and being present!
A familiar name also pops up (Katherine May), proving it is a small world!
A world that needs love and James Crews shows us how!
What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to delve into an anthology of over 100 poems, on HOW TO LOVE THE WORLD, edited by poet James Crews!
We love on the introduction, that reminds us poetry can be for everyone, everyday, and the wonderful poem WONDEROUS by Sarah Freligh, sets the scene for the poems to come.
In this episode, I speak to Diana Whitney, editor of YOU DON’T NEED TO BE EVERYTHING, which we read FIVE poems from earlier this week and, my friend!
We talk about night time being a sacred space, misgendered barn cats, standing up for the principles within your work and welcoming home the outsider in you.
Come listen!
Imagine a collection of poems deftly organized around 8 emotional experiences. Imagine delving into each of those emotions and finding … you. Voices that speak to you. Lonely voices, strong voices, angry, curious.
Poems that you read with your heart and body. Poems that affect you.
This is YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE EVERYTHING: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves, edited by Diana Whitney.
SOPHIA by Jen Goldman is a sensuous journey in to a world of where there are beautiful sounds like ‘gaggle of grandmother’s giggle…silicone sillies…the laughter is baked into the linguine’. And the indulgent, luxury of leather handbags, inky black fountain pens with gold edges and crisp, white notecards. Oh and the FOOD! Well…you’ll want to eat a big bowl of pasta while listening to this!
CONTAINED by Abigail Braithwaite, is a slimline book of writing and illustrations, about 4” high by 11” wide, and representing the shape of the contained it was conceived in. The retro-fitted shipping container the is Abigail’s writing studio. How…cool!
In OTHER WISE by Mary-Lou Bagley we see the complicated, strained relationship between Emily Donne and her emotionally manipulative mother, not just through the words but through the movement of these two bodies. Their physicality brings their relationship into action, as awkward and painful as it is.
SPREE WEEK DAY 2, we dive straight in at Chapter 1 of THE YEAR OF NEEDY GIRLS by Patricia Smith. Here, the stakes of the entire novel are set with a sure hand, in just three pages. Here we meet Deidre, one half of the main couple of Deidre and Sara Jane. Deirdre is a teacher in a town that’s just been cleaved through the heart — even though no one quite knows it yet.
It's SPREE WEEK — a new author every day for a week! We kick it off with HOPE FROM DAFFODILS by Karen Coulters. It's our first ever romance writing on READ TO ME. Come hear Sophie and Brady meet-cute. True love can't be kept down!
In this episode, I spoke to Jo Ann Beard. JO ANN BEARD!
We talked about book covers becoming the faces of old friends. About the thin line between panic and inspiration, anxiety and excitement. About the perfect friend, the one who can listen, really listen, and love on your work.
Come listen and see why after the interview I called all my writing pals to revel in how much fun it was.
What do you do when you have been uncreated, when you have sunk into a place where the body is a prisoner and the mind, even in sleep, is wild with seeing. What do you do when you’ve moved through that sort of pain?
Spoiler alert! This excerpt we read from FESTIVAL DAYS the author JO ANNE BEARD, does not give us the answer.
And neither do I.
That's for your to mull over, sit with, experience and maybe come up with an answer. And then again, maybe not. Either is ok.
Come listen and mull with me. Link in bio.
In this episode we talk to Samantha Kolber, poet and author of 'Birth of a Daughter'. We featured the title poem last week, be sure to listen and meet me back here!
We talk about how darkness can make you happy. We talk about how to tame 'the beast'! We talk about how a four year old becomes the youngest ever cover artist.
Enjoy!
In birth, who is born? The child? The mother? The space between the two? Or the poem she will write? In Samantha Kolber’s poem BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER, the answer is yes.
In today’s episode, we see how a string of couplets, a constellation of near rhymes, and three gloriously smart questions make birth bigger and tougher, more connected and more free, born and reborn.
Plus, a melancholy communion with the land!
Meet Aliza Eliazarov, author and creator of ON THE FARM: Heritage and Heralded Animal Breeds in Portraits and Stories. (We featured the book last week.) You’ll hear how Aliza came to photograph animals, what it’s like to set up a portrait studio in a barn, what it feels like to connect with an animal just before the shutter clicks.
it’s a huge honor to learn from a photographer. My favorite thing is to talk to artists in other disciplines to learn how they do their magic. (And maybe that helps us do our own on the page!)
Photography and podcasts? Not natural dance partners.
But ON THE FARM by Aliza Eliazarov makes heritage and heralded farm animals into movie stars…into the muses for Dutch masters…into demigods carved into stone temples
So, today, we’re taking a leap. A leap like a goat to the top of a barn.
Today, we’re loving a photograph.
Specifically, we are going to listen to a photograph — and in doing so, fall in love with an angora goat named Chamomile.
Today we get to talk to the exuberantly powerful writer and healer Katina Makris, author of LOVING YOURSELF ENOUGH TO THRIVE.
How does a self-help book make the reader the sovereign star of the show? Just listen to LOVING YOURSELF ENOUGH TO THRIVE by Katina Makris. A Gateless-trained writer, a healer with decades of experience, a storyteller of flair, Katina empowers us with style, power, and the authority of love.
Enjoy, learn how to do this craft yourself — and find your power, pure Katina-style.
Visit today's blog post here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/katina-makris
Today we get to talk to Robert Jones, Jr, author of the novel THE PROPHETS, an instant NYT bestseller, received with immense critical praise and devoted readers. I loved talking with Mr. Jones. Imagine him with a portrait of James Baldwin over one shoulder, a portrait of Toni Morrison over the other, between them beautiful writer and person in a fine, fine suit and bowtie. Here is Robert Jones, Jr, and lucky, lucky me.
The PROPHETS by Robert Jones, Jr., is set on an antebellum plantation in Mississippi. The two main characters are two black boys, almost men, Samuel and Isaiah, both enslaved and in love with each other. Their love is this one bit of beauty in a place called Empty — until they’re betrayed by another enslaved man. Though happiness of any kind was never long in a place like Empty.
We get to read a piece near the end. It’s maybe 15 percent spoiler-y, but hearing it really will not affect your reading, because the book is so rich, so wild with voices of ancestors and characters and the land, and so fierce with action.
The character here is Maggie, an enslaved black woman, older, who was forced to work in the house. The only other thing you might need to know is that toubabmeans white person, white slaver.
This book is a wonder. Let’s read.
Katherine May is joining me for today’s author interview. We covered her book, Wintering, on the last episode of READ TO ME, so be sure to check out that episode before tuning into this one. During our conversation today, we talk about what happens in the body when we write and finding our rhythm that helps get all of the words onto the page. You’ll also hear which scenes Katherine struggles to write and how she overcomes them. Plus, Katherine shares the stories and authors that have greatly expanded her own writing. Visit this episode's blog post here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/mini-katherine-may
Today we read from WINTERING by Katherine May. We hear a series of short excerpts in which the narrator, Katherine May, and a friend swim swim in the winter ocean on the southeastern shore of England.
In a book that meditates on and gallops around the ideas of retreat, this scene splashes jubilantly, even crazily, into the heart of darkness, where we rest and repair. This is what iconoclasm looks like: Katherine May, writing about a cold ocean swim.
Visit today's blog post here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/wintering
Why settle for one icon when you could have two?
Today we read pieces from SONGTELLER by Dolly Parton & A PROMISED LAND by Barack Obama. Parton’s lyrics and Obama’s telling of the healthcare battle are like two strangers next to each other on a bus ride, having a great conversation.
They talk about dignity. About impossibility. About sorrow and family love. About faith, and rhythm, and the body on the page. They share snacks. I can’t wait for you to hear them talk as they ride.
Visit this episode's blog post here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/dolly-parton-and-barack-obama
Our next mini episode features Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth (and other amazing novels). Be sure to listen to the full episode on DISAPPEARING EARTH before diving in to today’s show.
Today Julia and I chat about what makes her happy, what great writing feels like in the body), what has helped to expand Julia’s craft, and much more goodness. Enjoy!
Visit this episode's blog post here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/mini-julia-phillips
Complex, beautiful, powerful characters are the heart of DISAPPEARING EARTH by Julia Phillips. In this episode, we get to walk alongside one deliciously guarded and broken heart. Oh! We meet Oksana. Never has ice been made so warm without melting. Settle in, get comfortable, and join us as we search for what Oksana loves best in the world.
For more info about this book and to read Becky's thoughts, visit here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/disappearing-earth
Our second mini-episode stars Kirun Kapur, author of WOMEN IN THE WAITING ROOM. (Listen to the full episode on Kirun’s poem TREATMENT in your podcast app or on my website by following the link below.)
Today Kirun and I chat about the books that make her happy, the craft that she’s drawn to, and what the body feels like when the writing is on fire.
For more info about this book and to read Becky's thoughts, visit here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/mini-kirun-kapur
This week on READ TO ME, we read the poem TREATMENT by Kirun Kapur.
Wild. It’s wild. Reading this poem, I feel a gathering up of my attention all along the front of my body — like I was a slack windsock that’s suddenly full and taut with wind.
And then that wind plays me, tosses me around into wryness and laughter, and then into devastation, and into intimacy —
into the straight hard line of a story and through circular eddies of a scene that doesn’t have a beginning or end —
so that by the end the skin along my arms feels taut, too, my heart feels open and pouring, my low belly is feeling a kind of drum beat of something like authority, or inevitability, and somehow a finch is singing on top of my head too.
Wild, right? Wild, courtesy of Kirun Kapur.
For more info about this book and to read Becky's thoughts, visit here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/kirun-kapur
This week on READ TO ME we are introducing our first mini episode, starring Makenna Goodman, author of THE SHAME. (Listen to last week's episode on THE SHAME.)
Today Makenna and I chat about the main character of THE SHAME, about books that make her happy, and about craft that she’s drawn to.
For more info about this book and to read Becky's thoughts, visit here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/mini-makenna-goodman
This week on READ TO ME, let's be thankful for sacred spaces, spaces where we are free to be and free to work. In my sacred space this week, the coffee shop, I read to you from THE SHAME by Makenna Goodman. Together we'll experience the power of monologue, being in the body, and the surge of a good story. Head on over to your favorite couch, your favorite coffee shop, or on your morning commute and join me as we listen for what we love.
For more info about this book and to read Becky's thoughts, visit here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/the-shame
This spring and summer and fall has been improbably glorious. Raging hot and dry. Grueling funk. Showing up for kids, for work, for your people, for your city, on the page because you have to, because you get to, because you want to. Because you are here.
So, let’s do what we do on this podcast, waking up after a seven-week rest, let’s turn ourselves to beauty in words, and lift up in eager awe the wonder that we find. Today, I am reading a song called "Gentle Soldier of My Soul", performed by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.
Visit this episode's show notes here: https://www.readtomepod.com/season2episodes/gentle-soldier-of-my-soul
Congressman John Lewis. Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman. We read op-eds from both in today's episode. Why both at once? Because sometimes pieces are like magnets; their poles line up. There’s something they want to say in tandem, or in chorus; some pattern that shows up when one layers over the other. So let's listen to John Lewis and Alexander Vindman, and we see what kind of love these two pieces together reveal.
Singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst does this special thing. Ready? She takes melody and rhythm and words and harmony and strings and winds and guitar — and she make glorious ships that she sets out from the harbor of her mind, sailing them to us on the current of her voice. Ready for more? Today I read to you HORSES IN THE SKY from Kris's new album LONG DAY IN THE MILKY WAY (pre-order it, right now). We're going to fly across the waves on consonants, on goddess choruses, on fantasy, on wisdom. It's beautiful, friends. It's magic.
Today we read "a dark scrawl" by Evie Shockley, and get this, get this, get this there is only ONE VOWEL used in every word of this poem.
One vowel. The letter A.
As a gymnastics move, this is AWESOME, like, she’s flipping, she’s flipping, she’s still flipping!!! SHE IS STILL IN THE AIR FLIPPING.
And then, and then — what happens to us when that one vowel sound, that open a and ahh and ahr, pellets us, like bullets in image after image of war?
It’s enough to love the artistry, the sheer attitude and talent of having one vowel sound in a poem. But Evie Shockley does more than impress us. Her work has more to do. Lucky, lucky us.
Why do middle grade books last and last and last? Books about wizards, books about twin girls with a red Spider Fiat, books about... babysitters? Because the writing dedicates itself to characters and action, and the best of them hold the author's heart and mind in the white space. Come listen to the warm authority and craft in KRISTY'S GREAT IDEA, the first book in the The Baby-sitters Club series by ANN M. MARTIN.
A year ago, I swam in the ocean before breakfast. So did Kelly, so did Elise. Lizbeth, Lisa, Eaddy, Jan. Sage. A clutch of my sister Gateless teachers. We swam to the dock. Lunched on the porch. Wrote in the morning. Improv'd in the evening. And one afternoon, we read aloud from THE SUMMER FLETCHER GREEL LOVED ME by Suzanne Kingsbury. We aren't able to gather this year, so we raise up this book by the founder of Gateless Writing, and we love its lush sorrow. Come swim with us.
Today we read an excerpt from THE SPACE BETWEEN by Janine DeBaise. It's an essay from The Hopper, an environmental literary magazine from Green Writers Press. We splash down the St. Lawrence River. We stop and walk below the high-water mark, in the space between environmental science reporting and family stories. We laugh around a campfire. We learn how the body arcs us into meaning, and how a single pronoun makes the reader a character in the story, too. Hop in the boat! I'll row.
This week on READ TO ME we go to the land! I read from the introduction to FARMING WHILE BLACK: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman. We look at the craft of guidebook writing. We savor the craft the global frame, and Penniman's expert use of it. We chomp on nutrient-rich sentences, and we see that mission statements do, in fact, have craft too. And we get to see food systems through the lens of apartheid, racism, freedom, community, and justice. We get to see Black traditions of organic farming and community agriculture. You're going to feel so fed, in every way.
Today we read the succulent poem BURIAL by ROSS GAY. Get this— it's one sentence! It's a poem that travels from ash and roots to plums and a father dancing, and it's one sentence long! Find out how a single line loops into a circle, and feels as cozy as a garden chat, and raises the dead, all casual-like, with fun.
Today on READ TO ME I am highlighting another wonderful Gateless writer, Elizabeth Alina, and her piece WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU FELT LONELY, a writing & photography collaboration with her partner, Parker Pfister. Read with me as we experience the delight of a journey that starts with repression but ends in liberation. That starts and ends with a question. That invites you to run with it to freedom. That hangs out in the woods!
Today on READ TO ME, I read from THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS by Sy Montgomery. Sy's love for animals and the earth goes out beyond her skin into millions of other people’s minds, into their bodies, so they sit crying on the sofa reading, and are so grateful for the heartbreak, and all the smoke it clears away. Come see how this love happens on the page.
This week I'm reading MASKED BLESSINGS by RUBEENA IANIGRO. This sensuous poem charts an evolution from passion to ecstasy, to rage to little hip checks of jokes (via a clock!) to a spiritual evolution on the narrator's terms. What?!? How does all that happen in one poem? Come hear Rubeena wield power on the page — and hear how I ended up sitting next to her on a couch in New York City.
Today on READ TO ME I read and love TONI MORRISON WAS THE GREATEST AMERICAN WRITER by Damon Young. He wrote it just after her death in August 2019. It's 700 words — and it goes from song lyrics to an ecology of black art to Toni Morrison as American literature itself to the central relationship of Toni Morrison and black people to America is it is today to Toni Morrison's legacy and directive. IN 700 WORDS. Devotees literature, disciples of truth, lend me an ear. There's a lot to love. Plus, we have a mini treatise on how this white woman can read and love this stupendous work by this black man without white supremacy stealing the show (and everything else). Maybe lend two ears?
Today on READ TO ME we pull up a chair for Food Can Hurt by Rene Denfeld, a new essay published in the new online magazine WE FOUND TIME from Zibby Owens. Reading to you from the backyard shed, I love up commas and clauses, grains of salt and the authority of the body, and arcs to meaning that build and build. Lucky you! You get to savor Rene Denfeld's words!
Today on READ TO ME, we cook dinner with the greatest heroine in children's literature. Heck, all of literature! Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary.
I wonder if Beverly Cleary chased after Ramona, like a mom gasping after a fast toddler. Or I wonder if writing Ramona was like coming to a buffet table always full. Either way, reading Ramona taught me to write, and Clearly gave solace to every independent heart.
Today on READ TO ME, we read the poem SMALL-TOWN MONTANA, 2019 by Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer. An accomplished, award-winning writer, Beneth's work is exquisite, sly, mischievous, and bold. And so smart. My goodness, so smart. And in direct lineage from Jane Eyre, the patroness of singular, passionate minds. Come with us into the grace of attention as we love this compressed and flaring jewel.
I think we could listen in again to this passage from Jane Eyre because it shows the strength of the narrator while fulling immersing me into the scene. This is writing at its best, writing that took me away from the current pandemic, even if was just for a few minutes.
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To the moors, to the moors we go! O, romantic and foreboding mists! O fierce upwelling of green! O proto-feminism, mettle, and a singular communion with God! O, O, Jane Eyre!
The week on READ TO ME I read from UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle. We're here for three reasons. Ready? 1) Glennon, like so many artists, had big plans for the launch of this new book. So we're helping throw the party! 2) Imagining Glennon Doyle at a Gateless Writing salon—with the safety, the wild talent, the admiration for the work, the chocolate, and the Thai head massage—is an absolute mind delight. 3) Glennon gives us polar bears to love, and sensitive souls to venerate with patient, tender, humble cheer.
This week on READ TO ME, we're sitting on the porch with a song, "If You Could Hear Me Now," by The Mammals. Can you hear the bluejays and swallows in the background? They came around because The Mammals sing in the language of the earth. They put their verses together so that you fly on them, like a bird, in dips and swings. They take you to the horizon and spin it around, in harmony. Come learn how.
This week on READ TO ME, we have two pieces, "Esmeralda’s Prayer" by Tennessee Williams and Drag Queens and Limousines by Mary Gauthier. It wasn't my genius to put them together. Mary did that, in honor of New Orleans, and artists and outcasts, and queer kids and dreamers, and that which lives on a hard edge, with a heart edge, and makes beautiful things. Enjoy.
This week on READ TO ME, we drop into two pages from THE RAVEN KING by Maggie Stiefvater. Is there a better genre to read right now that young adult fantasy? No. There is not. Earnest, funny, delicate, with enough desire and longing to burn an ocean... and, in this passage, a crow for a pet and Tarot cards, too. It's the writing of terror and hope. Of being tested. Of finding your friends. Of pushing on, because you love too much to let go. Enjoy!
This week on READ TO ME I am reading from AMERICAN SPY by Lauren Wilkinson. The book operates on several different layers of reality at once, and the words are written in a way that so masterfully lets us experience each one. American Spy provides us with a context, a woman spy in the middle of a UN speech, that is fascinating, with jolts of some of the most powerful types of energy. This book took me out of a state of anxiousness of our current politics and decision making, and took me to a place of interest, thrills, and passion. I hope it does the same for you.
This week I read from FRIENDSHIP by Lydia Denworth, a new friend of mine. In the opening pages, Lydia sidles us up to the science behind friendship by completely immersing us in scene. We learn how to locate the reader in the body. We see the beautiful shape of a non-fiction book's introduction. And you get to hear me in bliss, in an NYC hotel room, after the kindest party of my life, at which I exchanged friendship bracelets and ate apricot-studded cheese.
Hey, people listening with kids—There's one spot of tough language at 5:03. This week on READ TO ME, I read NOTES FROM A YARMULKE WEARER’S WIFE, a piece by my friend Dvora Rabino. We see how a brilliant, watchful woman's heart becomes her compass. We see antisemitism, and a man in a yarmulke as the living definition of "indefatigable." We see complexities and contradictions without answers. If you're walking with many tough truths at once, let Dvora's writing light up your path.
On the newest episode of the podcast, I’m reading from BLEACHERS: Fifty-Four Linked Fictions by Joseph Mills. Set at a pair of youth soccer games, the stories dip into the minds of the parents who shuttle their little athletes around. I read from "Interrobang," two pages filled with funny, frank buoyancy, hard-earned heart, and glorious, diverse farting. (Laugh now, but you’ll see. And then laugh some more.)
In this episode, I’m reading from a picture book, ALMA AND HOW SHE GOT HER NAME by Juana Martinez-Neal. A first for READ TO ME! I talk about the deliciousness of simplicity, how to listen for beauty, and why paying attention to your attention is the first step to mastery of craft.
READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we step into the most lyrical crises of faith in the song HOLIEST DAY by Rachel Ries, who performs as Her Crooked Heart, and PSALM 77 by a man named Asaph, maybe. Plus, an exquisite bonus interview with Vermont pastor and READ TO ME friend Matt Miller on what Psalm 77 means to him.
READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we celebrate World Read Aloud Day with SHE CAME TO SLAY: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. We get to love a middle-grade nonfiction book with driving action, pairs of nouns that start fires, scenes of historical violence that do not fetishize or dismiss Black pain, and Black history right at the heart of American history.
READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we read from PRESQUE TRÈS BIEN, a memoir cookbook. We get to love how Barbara Michelson writes stories as she cooks food — with elegance and slyness, balancing the clarity of instruction with the complexity of flavors (and the vast and funny truth of family).
READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. We begin Season 2 with the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address — also known as the "Words That Come Before All Else."
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, co-host Christopher and I read and love up a passage from DOUBLE FUDGE by Judy Blume. It's a wild, parrot poop-filled story, with much to love.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, co-host Christopher and I read and love up a passage from SUPERFUDGE by Judy Blume. We recorded this episode twice. Podcast production with an 8-year-old son and a 44-year-old mama moves in gyroscopic lines. But the passage is really funny. (Baby in the closet!)
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, young Chris and I come to you from a hotel room in Downeast Maine. We're just a few miles from where Judy Blume wrote FUDGE-A-MANIA! Come listen to Peter Hatcher tell us about a sailing trip, Jimmy Fargo's sardine-and-onion breath, and what you do when someone goes overboard. We special co-host Grampy Carl.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we begin the HOLIDAY FUDGE SERIES! With my co-host and son, Gus, age 8, we are reading from four Judy Blume books. Today we start with TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING. Join Gus and me in loving this book—and then try out a recipe for strawberry fudge. We love each other and we have a lot of great books. We hope you do too!
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we read from THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler. It's the terrifying passage that isn't only heartache. We learn how a character's observations show us their heart and smarts. We see how Butler puts degradation and humanity in the same sentence. We see how awful things can be, and are right now, but also how something better could be.
In this episode, we read from THE ARCHER by Taylor Swift and a short piece by Cass McCrory. We walk the tension wires connecting and separating desire and surrender and fear. We see selves on the edge of transformation, and laughing, and crying, and jumping in, and fighting back, and giving in. We see a pop song draw filaments of image and action that burn to illuminate love.
In this episode, we see how the short story is like both a bar band at a distance and a whale call heard above the water. We read from the dark heart of "Mabel, Mabel," from THEY COULD LIVE WITH THEMSELVES, linked stories by Jodi Paloni.
In this episode recorded under a blanket, we meet the putrid, mysterious, seductive, and star-studded skunk cabbage in Catherine Owen Koning and Sharon M. Ashworth's WADING RIGHT IN. We learn how sentences of clarity, authority, and service can generate reverence. We learn what it takes to fall in love with a wetland, or any place we may have been taught to overlook.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. What does academic writing look like when it is meant to live beyond the academy? How do you turn research and theory into public scholarship? What happens to story? What happens to sentences? What happens to rhythm? IBRAM X. KENDI shows us, as well as a vision for surviving, maybe someday curing, metastatic racism.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we hear a chorus made of a Slayer, a Candidate, and a Writer. BUFFY SUMMERS comes to us on the brink of final apocalypse in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S7E10. We get an excerpt from TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER’s The Gospel According to Marianne Williamson. Great writing calls to other greatnesses.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we read ROSH HASHANAH: 5780, a poem from Verandah Porche, one of the most original minds and poets I know. We see the gobstopping power of mirror structures. We live an immigrant history. We bless butterflies. We turn to the coming year charged to do better, and shown how.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, WE'RE IN TEXAS with a live, participating studio audience. IN TEXAS. We recorded at The Intensive, a three-day writing workshop in the Gateless tradition. In honor of great writing, the extraordinary attendees, and the fact that WE ARE IN TEXAS, we read from that unparalleled Texas columnist MOLLY IVINS, writing about that unmatched Texas leader, ANN RICHARDS.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we celebrate the launch of Paula Rizzo's brand new book, LISTFUL LIVING! How do you establish authority in a how-to book? How do you position the book to be in authentic service to the reader? How do you bring your personality into the sentences without making the book about you? This is how.
READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, to the moors, to the moors we go! O, romantic and foreboding mists! O fierce upwelling of green! O proto-feminism, mettle, and a singular communion with God! O, O, Jane Eyre!
READ TO ME is the Gateless Writing-inspired podcast where we listen for what we love. In this episode, we read a small piece of MADNESS, RACK, AND HONEY by Mary Ruefle. These collected lectures are about poetry (the writing, reading, and living of it), and here Ruefle writes about secrets. And opera. And Osage stories. And listening. How do you respond to work that is like the inside of a poem? You let it love you.
READ TO ME is the Gateless Writing-inspired podcast that trains us to listen for what we love. In this episode, we read DEMETER IN WINTER by Diana Whitney. It’s set in the brutal cold season, but the poem is hot, thick with imagery, thick with the mythic, climatic, and personal. We get to be inside a poem that makes you feel like you were rolled around in hot honey, licked clean by a catamount, and presented to the goddess queen.
READ TO ME is the Gateless Writing-inspired podcast that trains us to listen for what we love. In this episode, we first pay homage to Toni Morrison with a short excerpt from the perfect SULA, in honor of The Free Black Women’s Library. Because Morrison shaped American literature, one reading isn’t enough — so we also gravitate and catapult to Vickie Vértiz’s poem, ONLY WE MAKE BEAUTIFUL THINGS JUST TO DESTROY THEM.
READ TO ME is the Gateless Writing-inspired podcast that trains us to listen for what we love. In this episode, we read from the first novel from Suzanne Kingsbury, the founder of Gateless Writing. We sink into the heat of a Mississippi summer. We get to hear the final notes of the symphony of a novel — the terrible and tender resolution of a dark and passionate story.