In this post-election show, Clarence Major (novelist, poet, painter, short story writer and essayist) joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Chicago Heat and Other Stories.   What’s been on his mind?  How do we love?  How do we connect?  Where do we find hope?  He shares this and more.

In the second half, Kelly Luce talks about her debut novel, Pull Me Under.  She talks about her time in Japan, and how a phenomena unique to Japan influenced her novel.  Kelly also discusses working with psychologically difficult characters, what a move to present tense did for the book, and how she became a serious writer after leaving her MFA program.

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(Broadcast date: November 16, 2016)

Gina Frangello, author of Every Kind of Wanting, joins Marrie Stone to talk about writing through difficult life circumstances, how literature can save us, the inspiration for her characters, and more.

In the second half, Francine Prose shares her novel Mister Monkey.  Everything is fodder for her writing.  She talks about embracing various points of view, how books have a life of their own, life coincidences, and how she tackled the “monkey problem.”

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(Broadcast date: November 2, 2016)

Author, former screenwriter, and Los Angeles therapist to creatives, Dennis Palumbo, talks with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett about writers block, writing fiction, writing for the large and small screen, and much more.

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(Broadcast date: Oct. 26, 2016)

Debut novelist Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World, talks with co-host Nicole Nelson about playing with point of view, her experience putting an earlier novel in a drawer, and how she found her agent.

In the second half, novelist Janice Y. K. Lee, author of The Expatriates, talks about balancing three different POV characters, not taking the easy way out, and the importance of trusting yourself and your voice when you struggle to write through to the end.

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(Broadcast date: October 5, 2016)

 

Poet and non-fiction author Patrick Phillips joins co-host Marrie Stone to talk about his book, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.  Phillips shares his experiences in hometown Forsyth County, Georgia, a township that remained essentially 100 percent white throughout most of the 20th century. He also talks about the responsibility of white writers to talk about race, his research process, the factors that existed in Forsyth that made this possible, and the complicated characters that emerged from history to bring this shadowy story to light.

In the second half, novelist Whitney Terrell discusses his latest novel, The Good Lieutenant.  As an embedded reporter in Iraq, Terrell tells the story of one female lieutenant and the forces and decisions that shaped the woman she became.  He tackles several points of view, a complicated structure, and shares his experiences of how it all happened.

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(Broadcast date: October 19, 2016)

Martin J. Smith, author of Combustion, and Aris Janigian, author of Waiting for Lipchitz at Chateau Marmont talk with Barbara about plotting (or not), creating suspense, publishing with a small press, and more.

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(Broadcast date: October 12, 2016)