Best Bloomsday Literary Podcasts (2024)

1
ire'ne lara silva—Texas Poet Laureate 17:34

3M ago17:34

17:34

Phuc and Kate speak with the acclaimed and straight-up luminous Texas Poet Laureate, ire’ne lara silva, at the 2023 Writer’s Family Reunion sponsored by Writespace. We had the opportunity to chat about her process, the bold and unapologetic treatment of grief in her writing, and how she finds cracks of light in the depths. silva, who is an inductee…

1
AWP23—Enzo Silon Surin 21:44

4M ago21:44

21:44

Enzo Silon Surin writes, composes, and publishes artifacts on the “witness continuum”—art that he says “pays homage to the culture in which it was formed” and the necessity of generational change. Surin’s work spans librettos commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative, four poetry collections, and a musical-in-the-making. He also founded Centra…

1
AWP23—Alyson Sinclair 31:32

5M ago31:32

31:32

Does Alyson Sinclair sleep? We had to keep asking ourselves as we chatted it up with Alyson from the floor of AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Program)’s Conference and Bookfair. She’s done it all when it comes to the writing world—bouncing between the bureaucracy of big-four publishers—um, she sent faxes to Seamus Heaney?—to the hustle and …

1
AWP23—Chelsea Kern from CLMP 17:38

5M ago17:38

17:38

As Program Director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Chelsea Kern is the glue that holds so much of the indie literary world together, advocating for mission-driven independent publishers and magazines—and, with equal importance, introducing readers to the work this community produces. It is clear from our conversation, sh…

1
AWP23—Deema Shehabi 21:48

6M ago21:48

21:48

Poetry “carr[ies] the most human of voices” for Deema Shehabi, a Palestinian-American writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and Kenyon Review. Shehabi earned her undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Tufts University and Master’s in Journalism from Bost…

1
AWP23—Maha Ahmed 20:12

7M ago20:12

20:12

Exploring the specificities of a diaspora while also calling upon ancestral experiences is just one of the many threads Maha Ahmed weaves through her poetry. Like many members of diasporic communities, Maha’s experiences as an Egyptian American do not always resemble the grossly generalized “immigrant story.” We had the opportunity to chat with Mah…

1
AWP23—Matt Bell 27:26

7M ago27:26

27:26

Matt Bell is an author, English professor, and editor. He currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. In this episode live from the conference floor at AWP 2023, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of his indispensable book on the craft of writing, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. We al…

1
AWP23—Kristen Millares Young 15:00

8M ago15:00

15:00

Kristen Millares Young calls her novel Subduction “a study of recurrently going meta,” or “an examination of the longing that we have to be in contact with others who are not like us.” From exploring the notion of consent–not just sexually but also culturally–to the difficulty of the transmission of knowledge and the burden of whiteness, this novel…

1
AWP23—V.V. Ganeshananthan 19:51

8M ago19:51

19:51

V.V. Ganeshananthan is an author, poet, and journalist, whose works have been featured in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota as a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Ganeshananthan also co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fi…

1
AWP21—Amanda Niehaus 27:51

2+ y ago27:51

27:51

Amanda Niehaus has a PhD in Physiological Ecology. She is the author of numerous award-winning short stories, essays, and an acclaimed novel, The Breeding Season (Allen & Unwin, 2019). As part of her author profile (bestill our science-loving hearts) she writes: “Does science belong in literary fiction? As a scientist, I never thought so. But ficti…

1
AWP21—Sumita Chakraborty 27:54

2+ y ago27:54

27:54

Corraling the myriad ways Sumita Chakraborty’s poetry collection gets at the heart of grief all but flummoxed me. Its meaning is still washing over me. But I’ll say that poet Rishi Dastidar did what I couldnt do when she wrote that it’s “a book to hold close, an amulet that transmutes the intensities of grief into something uplifting, the attempt t…

1
AWP21—Vanessa Garcia 25:40

2+ y ago25:40

25:40

Vanessa Garcia is a Miami-based novelist, playwright, journalist, and visual artist. Much of her work centers on her Cuban homeland, where her parents and grandparents were born. She is the author of incredible essays you can find all over the web and an immersive theater production called The Amparo Experience. She is the dreamer and 3D printer of…

1
AWP21—Aimee Bender 26:54

2+ y ago26:54

26:54

Photo credit: Mike Glier Aimee Bender graduated from UC Irvine and teaches at USC. Her books have received accolades in all the major outlets: from the New York Times, LA Times, & MCSweeney’s, to Oprah. Her latest novel, published July 2020, is The Butterfly Lampshade. When I was rattling off the list of Bender’s books, Kate deadpanned, “So she’s b…

1
AWP21—Craig Santos Perez 20:28

2+ y ago20:28

20:28

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, and the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Habitat Threshold. He’s the recipient of many prizes, including the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award. An assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Santos…

1
AWP21—Farid Matuk 26:35

2+ y ago26:35

26:35

Farid Matuk’s poetry, essays, and translations from Spanish appear in a wide range of publications and anthologies. He is the author of the poetry collection, This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine), several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta), and The Real Horse (2018). He teaches in the MFA program at University of Arizona, whe…

1
AWP21—Michael Zapata 24:25

3y ago24:25

24:25

We talked to Michael Zapata about his novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. It was the winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Boston Globe and The Millions, and his debut novel. Zapata is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine as well as on the core faculty…

1
AWP21—Alison Hawthorne Deming 22:29

3y ago22:29

22:29

Alison Deming is so prolific and has been writing for so long that it was a bit overwhelming to pack into a 20-minute interview, but we tried our best. Hawthorne is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, where she founded the Field Studies in Writing Program in 2015. She has an MFA from Vermont College, a Stegner Fellowship, two po…

1
AWP21—Jeffrey Colvin 25:48

3y ago25:48

25:48

AWP 21 Episode—Jeffrey Colvin (Day 2, Episode 1) We talk to Jeffrey Colvin about his stunning new book, Africaville. Jeffrey Colvin is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Harvard, and Columbia where he earned an MFA in fiction. He is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and is assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. His debu…

1
Catherine Baab-Muguira 53:59

3y ago53:59

53:59

In honor of the launch of Catherine Baab-Muguira’s new book, Poe for Your Problems, we are re-releasing F***ing Shakespeare’s interview with her that we did back in 2019—where we talked about this book in its wee-baby stages. And now, here it is, all grown up like the big beautiful babe it is! Get ready for some perfect hot takes. Kate, Jess, Phuc,…

1
AWP21—Lilly Dancyger 24:00:00

3y ago24:00:00

24:00:00

Day 1, Episode 1 To kick off the podcast interviews at AWP, we were thrilled to talk to Lilly Dancyger. Her new memoir, Negative Space, comes out May 2021 with Santa Fe Writers Project. She’s the editor of the essay collection, Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger, and a contributing editor at Catapult. Among the other fantastic things with whic…

1
Mira Jacob, Author 56:01

3y ago56:01

56:01

If you have yet to read guest Mira Jacob’s 2019 memoir in conversations, Good Talk, we’re jealous. Praised for her “disarming wit,” Jacob achieves this by welcoming you into her indecision, her confusion, her wonder at raising a child against the backdrop of that tender point where politics meets the personal in 2016 America. In addition to it bein…

1
Jia Tolentino, author 42:58

3+ y ago42:58

42:58

The one and only Jia Tolentino was our guest on the show. We had Shipley’s donuts & it’s Britney’s Spears birthday all in honor of Jia. She’s a staff writer for the New Yorker and if you haven’t been living in a cave, you know she’s been on an international press tour for her first book, Trick Mirror, which she documented with her signature mix of …

1
Joy Preble, YA novelist 45:48

3+ y ago45:48

45:48

What do you get when you cross clever, sometimes soaring, sometimes heart-breaking, always beautiful prose with immortality, fantasy, and historical themes? Signature Joy Preble. Since 2009, when she published the first book in her Dreaming Anastasia series, she has been writing YA novels that will break your heart, restore your hope in the good th…

1
Thomas McNeely, novelist 43:45

3+ y ago43:45

43:45

We first met this episode’s guest at the WriteFest conference at Rice University. We found had all sorts of connections, as writers in this weird industry often do: he grew up in Houston like Kate did, and he has ties to Jessica’s Boston, where he lives and teaches. We are more than happy to showcase his work here on the show. From the gorgeous and…

1
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, poet 15:11

4y ago15:11

15:11

Welcome to our final installment of our special summer series, F***ing Shakespeare’s Shorts, where we interviewed the very tired but always brilliant souls who had books coming out in the time of the pandemic. For this final shorts episode, we spoke with poet Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers who shares with us the beautiful queering of poetic form in her b…

1
Shakespeare’s Shorts: Alexis Kienlen, novelist 16:17

4y ago16:17

16:17

Move aside, poets! (But just for one second!) Here near the end of our Shakespeare’s Shorts season, we finally caught hold of another fiction aficionado! Alexis Kienlen’s first novel, Mad Cow, came out this April from Now Or Never Publishing, but she’s also a two-time published poet. (We told you, poets: just hold on for one second.) In this episod…

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Ayokunle Falomo, poet 25:48

4y ago25:48

25:48

In this episode, we get to chat (and giggle and lose all sense of time) with an old friend, Ayokunle Falomo, whose first incendiary chapbook entitled African, American has been published. He has promised us that it will be available for purchase from New Delta Review as soon as COVID insanity ends! We talk with Ayo about the many steps of working o…

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Esther Lee, poet 23:51

4y ago23:51

23:51

Esther Lee is a poet (and letter-press artist!) who, along with her husband and cat Bowie, lives on a 35-foot sailboat called “Hope.” Currently, they’re living off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, where she writes poetry, blogs about her efforts at a zero-waste boat life, and occasionally takes phone calls from podcasters. Spit, her debut collec…

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Matthew Lippman, poet 20:57

4y ago20:57

20:57

Matthew Lippman’s most recent collection, Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, is the winner of the Levis prize from Four Way Books. He is the author of four other poetry collections—A Little Gut Magic, American Chew, Monkey Bars, and The New Year of Yellow. It was a delight to talk to Matthew about poetry, baseball, music, unfinished basements, and a wo…

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Juditha Dowd, poet 19:05

4y ago19:05

19:05

“It is my belief that we would not know John James Audubon today if it weren’t for [Lucy].” For our third installment of F***ing Shakespeare Shorts, Juditha Dowd reads from her gorgeously soft-spoken collection, Audubon’s Sparrow. The collection is a biography-in-poems that lyrically imagines the interiority and emotions of Lucy Bakewell, the wife …

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Jabari Asim, poet 18:57

4y ago18:57

18:57

Welcome to our second installment of Shakespeare’s Shorts, where your favorites from F***ing Shakespeare host the virtual book tour that no one would have wanted before COVID-19, but that is now giving us a literary lifeline as we’re locked inside! Join us as we keep our thumbs on the pulse of amazing new literature, so it doesn’t get lost to quara…

1
Shakespeare's Shorts: Lee Matalone, novelist 18:36

4y ago18:36

18:36

HEY! We made a thing: it’s the Virtual Book Tour Quarantine edition of F***ing Shakespeare, we’re calling SHAKESPEARE’S SHORTS! We wanted to get out there and see what’s happening in the land of books — talk with authors who have books out now, right this second, when it’s very hard to be out in the world with a new book because you can’t actually …

1
Bonus #AWP20 with Bloomsday Literary—Chris Cander and Amy Hanson 30:02

4y ago30:02

30:02

We have one more bit of brightness to send your way with this interview of two writers in the AWP Writer 2 Writer Mentorship program, mentor Chris Cander and mentee Amy Hanson. Chris was unable to attend the conference, like so many, but we were able to catch up virtually with both of them just after the conference closed. Short story writer Amy Wi…

1
Official podcast of #AWP20 LIVE with Bloomsday Literary—Day 3 1:46:19

4y ago1:46:19

1:46:19

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Here’s Day Three! Richard Z. Santos 1:22 Santos’ debut novel Trust Me came out on 3/31/20 from Arte Públi…

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Official podcast of #AWP20 with Bloomsday Literary—Day 2 1:47:07

4y ago1:47:07

1:47:07

Anna Lena Phillips Bell 0:58 Anna Lena is the editor and art director for Ecotone* and an editor for Lookout Books at the University of North Carolina—Wilmington. She talks about Ecotone’s mission and aesthetic, how to balance the two for publication, and dishes about her absolute stunner of a craft book, A Pocket Book of Forms. *While recording th…

1
F***ing Shakespeare Shorts

4y ago

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By Bloomsday Literary

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Official podcast of #AWP20 LIVE with Bloomsday Literary—Day 1 1:38:01

4y ago1:38:01

1:38:01

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Angela “AJ” Super 0:00 Angela Super is the author of Erebus Dawning, forthcoming from Aethon Books. We ca…

1
Phong Nguyen, novelist 46:21

4+ y ago46:21

46:21

Today on the show, Phong Nguyen, an absolute treasure trove of Twain trivia, author of The Adventures of Joe Harper. We do talk lots about writing dialect and the editors that love/hate it, why three-quarters of your way into writing a manuscript is the absolute sweet spot, and how living in Missouri and not Brooklyn is actually a blessing for the …

1
Abbigail Rosewood, novelist 49:12

4+ y ago49:12

49:12

On today’s show, we have novelist Abbigail Rosewood. Jessica, Phuc, Abbigail, and I discussed the virtues of buying hibiscus plants from people who unofficially sell them on the streets of Brooklyn. We bring you another arousing author-psycho-therapy session starring Your Past, and how maybe you shouldn’t always listen to workshops and/or the thing…

1
Jericho Brown, poet 56:37

4+ y ago56:37

56:37

On this episode of F***ing Shakespeare, our guest is the one and only Jericho Brown. Poets, lovers, and one who desires to hear beautiful language spoken by a beautiful voice, this episode is for you. We talk about Brown’s duplex, a poetic form he created for his new book “The Tradition,” his passion for his work and how he also doesn’t drive a Ben…

1
Bryan Washington, novelist 52:19

4+ y ago52:19

52:19

In today’s episode we have the 100% on-fire novelist, Bryan Washington, penning effing beautiful and raw stories straight out of the streets of Houston for his story collection Lot. He shares his ridiculously envy-enducing publishing journey for you, adding another to the longitudinal study that proves the traditional path to publication is a mythi…

1
Mark Haber, novelist 51:46

4+ y ago51:46

51:46

In the studio today to open SEASON 4 of the show—that’s right y’all F***ing Shakespeare is on our 4th season! To celebrate we have Houston’s own lit genius, Mark Haber. He’s our first returning guest, so we must be doing something right. He’s definitely doing all the things right. He’s here to talk Tolstoy’s dog problem, melancholy, the fun-house m…

1
Season 4 Announcement 1:22

4+ y ago1:22

1:22

By Bloomsday Literary

1
PSA-Houston Writers Coalition 2 1:21

5y ago1:21

1:21

By Bloomsday Literary

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Sarah Stankorb, journalist 1:03:07

5y ago1:03:07

1:03:07

Read all of Sarah’s work, but if we were forced to choose, here’s the place to start: Until We All Have Voices in Catapult Fabric of a Community, Gone Threadbare: A Tour of Ohio’s New Trump Country in Catapult The Crusading Bloggers Exposing Sexual Abuse in Protestant Churches in The Washington Post Magazine Teaching My Daughter That God Might Be a…

1
PSA-Houston Writers Coalition 1:37

5y ago1:37

1:37

By Bloomsday Literary

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Edan Lepucki, novelist 58:13

5y ago58:13

58:13

Novelist and genre shapeshifter Edan Lepucki is our guest on today’s show. Expert writing tips include: what to do when you realize you’ve spent four years writing two different novels that are actually the same, spoiler alert: Instagram poetry is probably not the answer. We talk about how having a baby is a great way to make you finish a project, …

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Tillie Walden, graphic novelist 36:53

5y ago36:53

36:53

Photo by Wayne Alan Brenner Today we settle the great debate once and for all: drafting, or revising? Our guest, graphic novelist, Tillie Walden, weighs in. (Spoiler alert: write, write, write, and think about perfection later.) We also consider the value of the “traditional” story, how Tillie prioritized the truth of her emotions when drawing her …

1
Anna Meriano, middle grade author 1:06:24

5y ago1:06:24

1:06:24

Photo credit: Rita Meriano Ever wondered what you should do if your professor thinks you should write literary fiction, but you know you’re going to write something else? Today’s guest, Anna Meriano, talks about how much she appreciated that prof and also why choosing to disregard his suggestion was the best decision she could have made. Also, we i…

1
Jessica Wilbanks, memoirist 1:02:24

5y ago1:02:24

1:02:24

Jessica’s Writing We Discussed When I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss “From Essay to Book: On ‘Mirrorings’” in Essay Daily “On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta” in Longreads Suggested Reads and Honorable Mentions from Jessica Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje Bluets by Maggie Nelson Cam…

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