F***ing Shakespeare

ire’ne lara silva—Texas Poet Laureate Bloomsday Literary 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 i...

AWP23—Enzo Silon Surin Bloomsday Literary 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 Central Square...

AWP23—Alyson Sinclair Bloomsday Literary 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 bustle wo...

AWP23—Chelsea Kern from CLMP Bloomsday Literary 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, she...

AWP23—Deema Shehabi Bloomsday Literary 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 Boston Univers...

AWP23—Maha Ahmed Bloomsday Literary 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 Maha about writin...

AWP23—Matt Bell Bloomsday Literary 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 also discuss his...

AWP2023 Kristen Millares Young Bloomsday Literary 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...

AWP23—V.V. Ganeshananthan Bloomsday Literary 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/Fict...

AWP21—Amanda Niehaus Bloomsday Literary 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 fiction con...

AWP21—Sumita Chakraborty Bloomsday Literary 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 to keep...

AWP21 —Vanessa Garcia Bloomsday Literary 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 so many...

AWP21 —Aimee Bender Bloomsday Literary 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 basical...

AWP21—Craig Santos Perez Bloomsday Literary 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 Per...

AWP21—Farid Matuk Bloomsday Literary 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, where he is poet...

AWP21—Michale Zapata Bloomsday Literary 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 of Story...

AWP21—Alison Hawthorne Deming Bloomsday Literary 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 poe...

AWP21—Jerffrey Colvin Bloomsday Literary 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 debut novel...

FS-S03E02-Catherine-Baab-Muguira Bloomsday Literary 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, Ph...

AWP 21—Lilly Dancyger Bloomsday Literary 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 which she’s...

Mira Jacob, Author Bloomsday Literary 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 being hilarious...

Jia Tolentino, author Bloomsday Literary 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 whee...

Joy Preble, YA novelist Bloomsday Literary 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 things li...

Thomas McNeely, novelist Bloomsday Literary 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 yet t...

Shakespeare's Shorts: Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, poet Bloomsday Literary 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...