Best Marcos McPeek Villatoro Podcasts (2024)

1
The Panther in the Cage 38:48

6y ago38:48

38:48

Today’s show is a recording of a poetry show I did at Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, where I teach. I took Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Panther,” memorized it, and performed it for the students, along with other poems that followed the theme. The all about the cages that we live in, ones that people put us in, ones that sometimes we …

1
Writer Susana Marcelo, The Old Country and New Writing 36:30

6y ago36:30

36:30

Susana Marcelo is a professor at California State University Northridge, a writer, poet, essayist, and. . .well, a lot more! In our interview, we spend time on what it means to write in the different genres (poetry, fiction, nonfiction), and how many of us like to push against those definitions, crossing from one genre to another. We spoke at the A…

1
Kennia Lopez: A New Voice in Literature 32:57

6y ago32:57

32:57

Ken Lopez is a Mexican and Salvadoran poet from Kansas City. She hopes her work will, like Chinua Achebe said, tell the story of the hunt from the perspective of the lion. She will be pursuing her MFA in poetry at Brooklyn College in the fall. I had the chance to interview her at the Associated Writing Program Conference in Tampa this past March, h…

1
José Orduña: Writing and Justice 29:13

6y ago29:13

29:13

I met José Orduña at the Associated Writing Program conference in Tampa, Florida this past spring. He had arrived at the conference about 48 hours after getting arrested in D.C. for civil disobedience, fighting for the rights of DACA recipients. José is a Professor of creative writing at the University of Nevada. His take on what “creative nonficti…

1
George Plimpton, Graywolf Press and the State of Literature Today 30:37

6y ago30:37

30:37

Today’s podcast of The Writing Bull offers you a two-fer: Years ago I had the opportunity to interview one of the founders and the editor of The Paris Review, George Plimpton. You might recognize him, his face popped up all over the place in the second half of the twentieth century, playing in a professional baseball game or a bit part in a movie. …

1
The Exiled Poet: Guisell Gomez 33:44

6y ago33:44

33:44

While I was at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Florida this past month, I met Guisell Gomez, a student of creative writing and a published poet. Born in Colombia, she and her family moved to the United States when she was a child. She remembers the move, the brutal act of being torn out of your own culture to live in another one. I ha…

1
Art and Madness 36:12

6y ago36:12

36:12

There are studies on the connection between the artistic impulse and mental illness. The best are books written by Kay Redfield Jamison, especially her “Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.” In that book, she charts hundreds of writers, from George Gordon Lord Byron to Virginia Woolf, and reveals how the mental …

1
Francisco Aragón: Literary Activist 44:24

6y ago44:24

44:24

Poet Francisco Aragón is doing is doing more for U.S. Latinx literature than any person I know. While writing his own work, he’s also always pushing and promoting the literary works of others, namely, the new Latinx writers on the block. He’s the son of Nicaraguan immigrants, born and raised in San Francisco, CA. He directs Letras Latinas, the lite…

1
Poet Alexandra Regalado: Life Seen Through the Bulletproof Glass 42:47

6y ago42:47

42:47

When I attended the Associated Writing Programs conference in Tampa, Florida in March, I sought out Latinos, because the last time I went to the conference, about ten years ago, AWP truly deserved the nickname that people of color gave it: “All White People.” “Matria,” by poet Alexandra Lytton Regalado. It’s a powerful collection that wraps you up,…

1
El Testimonio: César Vallejo y la búsqueda de mis raíces 25:36

6y ago25:36

25:36

Every once in a while I do a podcast in Spanish, and talk about what it means to be Latino today, in the U.S. Porque, para mí, el español siempre fue, y es, el idioma de amor–ese amor de la niñez, cuando las mujeres de la casa en mi pueblo natal, San Francisco, CA–las tías, primas, abuelas y mamá–me hablaron con ese ¡Ay mi corazón, rey de mi vida! …

1
The Salvadoran, Hip-Hop, Mormon Voice of William Palomo 45:16

6y ago45:16

45:16

I was at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Tampa in March, where students and professor of creative writing gather for a weekend. I had a great time, because I was on the lookout for Latino writers, and I found them. And this young man was a true find! William Palomo is the son of […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
Your Death Is Not a Blip 33:15

6y ago33:15

33:15

We all die. But, most people don’t like to think about that, which I think is a mistake. I find it helpful to consider my own death from time to time. It reminds me I’m alive. Poets help me to meditate on my own demise. A good poet will look death straight-on, and not flinch. […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
Brian Greene, String Theory, and the Fabric of the cosmos. Made Easy. 31:26

6y ago31:26

31:26

I interviewed Brian Greene a few years back, about his book The Fabric of the Cosmos. Now, I know this isn’t about creative writing, but the creative writer is always looking into other subjects and fields of study in order to feed her own work. And Dr. Greene is fascinating! My mind got bent all sorts of […]…

1
Why I Read Poetry 47:40

6+ y ago47:40

47:40

When my kids were little, I told them early on: don’t let your school get in the way of your education. Our education system kills beautiful things within us, and one of those casualties is our love for poetry. Poetry. I’m not talking Hallmark cards, or boxes of candies, or any of that shit. I’m talking […]…

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 4 41:04

6+ y ago41:04

41:04

I forgot to mention, the 1967 Mustang plays a big role in this novel. It’s practically another character. It’s the summer of 1978, a few months after Tony cut his wrist. The whole family knows about it, but, unlike other families who try to avoid such difficulties and pretend nothing’s wrong, the women of the […]…

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 3 53:34

6+ y ago53:34

53:34

In this part of the novel, you get a real taste of what some of us call “internalized racism.” This is when a non-white person starts to believe, on a subconscious level, what the racist world says of him: in young, sixteen-year-old’s Tony case, he’s seen as a mongrel, the mix of a white man […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 2 57:47

6+ y ago57:47

57:47

Tony and his Salvadoran-Appalachian family attend his uncle Jack’s funeral, where the mourners aren’t mourning–either the men are running in just to make sure he’s dead, and the two dozen women are lining up to look at their old lover one more time. Here, we learn why Uncle Jack is so important to Tony–we go […]…

1
Audio Book: The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 1 53:55

6+ y ago53:55

53:55

In the first pages of the novel, we meet Antonio “Tony” McCaugh Villalobos, an Appalachian-Salvadoran writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and far from his Salvadoran roots. He’s just published his first book, a literary novel, which means he didn’t get any money for it. He’s trying to write his next novel, but has writer’s block. […]…

1
The Art of Fiction: Outline Your Novel, or Don’t…Or, Yeah, Maybe 27:13

6+ y ago27:13

27:13

In class, the subject always comes up: should you outline your story, or not? That is, should you make a road map for your novel, one that you will follow like a disciple, from page one to the climax, three hundred pages later? Or, will you dare to step off the outline, if the story […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
An Interview With Pico Iyer 31:12

6+ y ago31:12

31:12

This is an interview with memoirist and travel author Pico Iyer, about his book Sun After Dark. It is about traveling and empathy–what does it mean to dwell in someone else’s culture for a while, especially we who come from the States, who are more privileged than most of the world? What does our home become, in […]…

1
The Art of Fiction Writing, Part 2: You Must Dream 26:42

6+ y ago26:42

26:42

Here I discuss writing how-to books, the ones I like in particular. I also talk about the writing process–what it’s like to dedicate your days to your story or poems. Hours up hours, you work until something in your brain clicks–the story comes alive in your skull. I also share with you one of my […]…

1
The Art of Writing Fiction 1 24:27

6+ y ago24:27

24:27

So, you’ve got a great story that you want to tell. It’s all made up, complete fiction, and you’re ready and raring to hit the computer keys and crank out a three hundred page novel. Or a ten page short story. Or a novella of eighty, ninety, one hundred pages. You’ve got the story in […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
El Testimonio, capítulo 1: El Nacimiento del Pocho 28:54

6+ y ago28:54

28:54

¡El primer podcast en español! (But, like any Salvadoran party, everyone is welcome) Aquí hablo de la vida del pocho–que significa, una fruta podrida, y un Latino que no sabe nada de su cultura, que no habla español, que está lejos de sus raíces. Pero, este pocho decidió, en su juventud, meterse en la cultura salvadoreña para […]…

1
T.C. Boyle and I Talk About Sex and More Sex and More Sex… 28:12

6+ y ago28:12

28:12

T. C. Boyle is one of our own southern California writers, and is an international figure. You can’t pin him down, can’t pigeonhole him. One novel is about the love between migrant farm workers and gringos who live in gated communities (Tortilla Curtain), another is about an eco-warrior whose daughter lives in a tree (A Friend […]…

1
Journal Writing 2 25:35

6+ y ago25:35

25:35

The one thing about keeping a journal–your subconscious leaks onto the page. That is, if you let it, which you should. This means dealing with disturbing images, notions, thoughts that come and you don’t know why. Unwelcome thoughts, perhaps. But the one who is a committed journal writer will allow that to happen, will even […]…

1
The Writer’s Life: Journal Writing 24:46

6+ y ago24:46

24:46

My first girlfriend, Nancy, gave me a journal when we were in high school. That was in 1977. Forty-one years later, I now have forty-five tomes on my shelves, over ten thousand pages that chronicle my life and the lives of those around me. They are a wealth of information. All my notes for my […]By Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
“Nighttime Reading With Marcos: Pablo Neruda” 16:01

6+ y ago16:01

16:01

This is a special segment of TWB podcast, called Nighttime Reading with Marcos. I read every night, and sometimes, when I’m really getting into it, I talk to myself. So I thought, what the heck, turn on the recorder and share it with listeners. This first one is on a poem by Chilean Pablo Neruda, […]…

1
The Art of Reading 25:22

6+ y ago25:22

25:22

As much as there is an art to creative writing, I also believe there is an art to reading. Most everyone can read. But most of us read only for information. Our eyes run across the Facebook page, taking in the news feeds and other people’s lives. Then our eyes move on. But, real reading–that is, reading […]…

1
TWB Podcast: What Is Aesthetics? And Why Should a Writer Care? 28:24

6+ y ago28:24

28:24

In class, we talk a lot about aesthetics, or the study of art–both appreciating it and creating it. It’s something the writer (the literary writer) is thinking about all the time, even if she doesn’t know she is. Walk with me into the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, where I once held a classroom with a […]…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Marcos McPeek Villatoro Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
The Writing Bull: a Podcast For Fearless Writers

Marcos McPeek Villatoro, Professor of Creative Writing, Mount St. Mary's University, Los Angeles

1
The Panther in the Cage 38:48

1
Writer Susana Marcelo, The Old Country and New Writing 36:30

1
Kennia Lopez: A New Voice in Literature 32:57

1
José Orduña: Writing and Justice 29:13

1
George Plimpton, Graywolf Press and the State of Literature Today 30:37

1
The Exiled Poet: Guisell Gomez 33:44

1
Art and Madness 36:12

1
Francisco Aragón: Literary Activist 44:24

1
Poet Alexandra Regalado: Life Seen Through the Bulletproof Glass 42:47

1
El Testimonio: César Vallejo y la búsqueda de mis raíces 25:36

1
The Salvadoran, Hip-Hop, Mormon Voice of William Palomo 45:16

1
Your Death Is Not a Blip 33:15

1
Brian Greene, String Theory, and the Fabric of the cosmos. Made Easy. 31:26

1
Why I Read Poetry 47:40

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 4 41:04

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 3 53:34

1
The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 2 57:47

1
Audio Book: The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 1 53:55

1
The Art of Fiction: Outline Your Novel, or Don’t…Or, Yeah, Maybe 27:13

1
An Interview With Pico Iyer 31:12

1
The Art of Fiction Writing, Part 2: You Must Dream 26:42

1
The Art of Writing Fiction 1 24:27

1
El Testimonio, capítulo 1: El Nacimiento del Pocho 28:54

1
T.C. Boyle and I Talk About Sex and More Sex and More Sex… 28:12

1
Journal Writing 2 25:35

1
The Writer’s Life: Journal Writing 24:46

1
“Nighttime Reading With Marcos: Pablo Neruda” 16:01

1
The Art of Reading 25:22

1
TWB Podcast: What Is Aesthetics? And Why Should a Writer Care? 28:24

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