Craft Talks

Here it is! The final episode of CraftTalks season three –featuring our 2024 St. Louis Literary Award recipient Jamaica Kincaid.

Anthony Arnove is the editor of several books, including Voices of a People’s History of the United States, which he co-edited with historian Howard Zinn, and Voices of a People's History of the United States in the 21st Century , which he co-edited with Haley Pessin. Arnove also was a founder of Haymarket Books - which publishes work from writers like Angela Davis, Rebecca Solnit, and 2022 St...

Donna Murch is an associate professor at Rutgers University and the author of “Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives." Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jacobin – among others. In this Craft Talk, Murch spoke with hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig about writing from oral history and the archive , how she writ...

Amitava Kumar is the author of several books of nonfiction and four novels, and his work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, Harper’s and many other publications. He’s been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and his novel Immigrant, Montana was named as one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2018. In this CraftTalk, hosts Kate Essig & Ted Ibur talk to Kumar about what it looks like t...

Mahogany L. Browne is a poet, a young adult novelist, a children's book writer, the founder and executive director of the media literacy organization JustMedia, and the first ever Poet Laureate of New York's Lincoln Center. In this CraftTalk, Browne joins hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig on the day of the release of her 2023 poetry collection, Chrome Valley, to talk collaboration, creating...

Derrick Goold is the St. Louis Post Dispatch Cardinals beat writer, a two-time Missouri Sports Writer of the year, an MLB Network contributor, and the host of the best podcast in baseball called The Best Podcast in Baseball. Hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig caught up with Goold right after the 2023 Cardinals season ended, and he shared with Craft Talks his approach to writing as a creative endeavor...

This week Saint Louis University welcomes St. Louis Literary Award Recipient Jamaica Kincaid – and launches a new season of the CraftTalk podcast. Join hosts Ted Ibur and Kate Essig as they preview what's in store this season on CraftTalk.

Ron Austin is one of those rare writers that you know is going to be a powerhouse in the publishing industry one day, and that day may be very soon. His exceptional debut is a collection of short stories called Avery Colt is a Snake, A Thief, A Liar.  I could not help comparing it to one of my favorite creative nonfiction memoirs, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. McCourt's autobiography that c...

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels,  The Bronze Drum  (Grand Central Publishing, 2022),  Roundabout: An Improvisational Fiction  (Moon City Press, 2020) and  The Adventures of Joe Harper (Outpost19, 2016), winner of the Prairie Heritage Book Award; and two story collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (C&R Press, 2019) and Memory Sickness and...

Professor Phyllis Weliver discusses her newest book, The Arrow Tree , a creative nonfiction memoir about recovering from long-haul COVID. We discuss a wide range of topics including the shift to creative nonfiction instead of more traditional "scholarly" writing for an academic audience. Professor Weliver delves into a wide array of subjects in this discussion. Some of the topics we cover include...

Victor Wang grew up in Northern China. Shortly after being sent to a Maoist “agricultural reeducation camp” for more than two years, he returned to Chinese society graduating with a BFA from The Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, one of three top art institutes in China. After graduation, Mr. Wang taught there for four and a half years and was sent to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana as a...

Rachel Greenwald Smith is a scholar and storyteller who seamlessly connects topics ranging from poetry to governing systems, punk music, economics, aesthetic innovations in the art and culture, motherhood, social unrest, and more. This interview delves into her new book, On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an America Idea, as well as Ms. Greenwald Smith's literary (and musical) influence...

Howard Schwartz is a prolific writer who has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He is widely considered among the top Jewish folklorists in the world. In searching for themes and images for his work in various genres, Professor Schwartz has often found his inspiration in biblical, midrashic, and kabbalistic lore. Many of his works retell ancient folktales, reflecting his belief in the impo...

We cover a lot of ground with writer/professor, Ethan Rutherford, soon after the release of his second collection of short fiction, Farthest South , published by A Strange Object. Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in BOMB , Tin House , Ploughshares , One Story , American Short Fiction , Post Road , Esopus , Conjunctions , and The Best American Short Stories .  His first book, The Peripa...

Originally from San Diego, California, Kahlil Robert Irving is an artist currently living and working in the USA. He attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University in St. Louis (MFA Fellow, 2017); and the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA, Art History and Ceramics/Sculpture, 2015). His work has been exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; the Arizona S...

David Keplinger is a Professor of Literature in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Long Answer (2020) published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press, and The World to Come (Conduit Books and Ephemera, 2021), a collection of prose poems which has won the 2020 Minds on Fire Prize. David has been awarded man...

Ted Mathys is an assistant professor of Creative Writing in the English Department at Saint Louis University. He is recently named president of the prestigious and venerable St. Louis Poetry Center, which was created in 1946. Mr. Mathys is also the curator for the 100 Boots Poetry Series at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Ted Mathys is the author of   Gold Cure ( Coffee House Press, 2...

Jeanette Batz Cooperman is one of the most recognizable names in Missouri journalism, a veritable institution in the field. She is a 2020 inductee into the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame and was named to the FOLIO:100 list of the “best and brightest” in the magazine industry nationwide. The award-winning Batz-Cooperman was previously an editor and staff writer for  St. Louis Magazine for twelve...

Edward McPherson, associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, is the author of three books: Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat (Faber & Faber), The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats (HarperCollins), and The History of the Future: American Essays (Coffee House Press). He has written for the New York Times Magazine , the Paris Review , the American Scholar ,...

Monica Sok, a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University,  is a Cambodian American poet and the daughter of refugees. She is the author of the brand new A Nail the Evening Hangs On from Copper Canyon Press. Ms. Sok's work has been recognized with a "Discovery" Prize from 92Y. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Poetry Society of America, Hedgebrook, the Elizabeth George Foundatio...