Story Behind the Story

If you listen to the radio, you have almost certainly encountered Stephanie Foo's work. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz in just 3 years, she joined the staff of Snap Judgment, first as an intern and then as a full-time producer, before she moved to New York to work on This American Life . But Stephanie’s numerous accomplishments and accolades hid an intense internal struggle that ultimately le...

I talk to author and playwright Calvin Kasulke about his debut novel, Several People Are Typing .

I talk to Monterey Bay Area poet, translator, and educator Kent Leatham about his writing.

I talk to Bay Area poet and educator Jamey Williams about his poetry collections BREATHING UNDER WATER and TO BE BLACK IS TO LOVE.

I talk to Monterey Bay Area writer Kenny Garcia about his poetry, the Monterey Poetry Festival, and his involvement with Boukra Press.

I talk to Namibian author Rémy Ngamije about his debut novel, THE ETERNAL AUDIENCE OF ONE.

I talk to astrologer and writer Alice Sparkly Kat, author of POSTCOLONIAL ASTROLOGY.

I talk to writer / game designer Stephen Granade about the differences between interactive and traditional fiction.

I talk to Bay Area local Ethel Rohan, author of IN THE EVENT OF CONTACT.

Muriel Leung is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her writing can be found in The Baffler , Cream City Review , Gulf Coast , The Collagist , and the Fairy Tale Review , among others. Her first book of poetry, Bone Confetti , won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. Of it, one reviewer said, “It...

Over his 35 year career, Jeff VanderMeer has published more than a dozen novels, and his non-fiction writing has appeared in the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , the Atlantic , Slate , Salon , and the Washington Post . His genre-defying novels and short stories frequently engage with ecological themes, including climate change, causing the New Yorker to dub him “weird Thoreau.” In 2014, An...

Finola Austin was born in England and moved to Northern Ireland when she was five; she is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut novel Brontë’s Mistress, is a retelling of the infamous affair between Anne, Charlotte, and Emily’s brother Branwell and a long-maligned married woman, Lydia Robinson, from Lydia’s perspective. Using themes from the Brontë sisters’ novels and weaving in original and...

In this episode, I talk to author Kamala Puligandla about her new novella, You Can Vibe Me on My FemmePhone , queer coming of age stories, and the function of humor in her writing. Puligandla lives in Los Angeles, where she also eats, snobs, wears elastic-waisted pants, skulks around the farmer's market, attempts to go to the Y, swipes on Tinder, and thrifts for flair that makes style pop. She is...

Elisa Gabbert is obsessed with disasters and how we perceive them. In The Unreality of Memory , which was released last year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Gabbert tackles pandemics, environmental disasters, the nature of pain and its perception, nostalgia and more. We talk about Gabbert's interest in these topics, the relationship between her poetry and her essays, and getting burned o...

In this month's episode, I talk to New York Times -bestselling author Lev Grossman about his new middle-grade fantasy novel, The Silver Arrow , which follows 11-year-old Kate and her younger brother Tom on a magical ecological adventure. It's a classic children's adventure novel in the style of The Phantom Tollbooth or The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler with an important modern message...

In this month's episode, I talk to author Adam Sass about his debut novel, Surrender Your Sons , a queer YA thriller set in a conversion therapy center in Costa Rica. Sass is a gay man himself, and he says he wrote Surrender Your Sons not as a story about queer pain, but as one of queer triumph. Over the course of this hour, we talk about depictions of coming out and conversion therapy in media, t...

Zaina Arafat grew up in two very different worlds with different sets of expectations. It left her with a profound sense of alienation and the feeling of being caught between two identities. As a queer woman who identifies as bisexual, she felt similarly torn. In her debut novel, You Exist Too Much , Arafat explores that feeling of unbelonging through an unnamed narrator who disappears into romant...

Kawai Strong Washburn grew up on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. Life on the Hāmākua coast gave him an appreciation for the natural landscape, as well as the stories and myths he learned in school and from his peers. In his debut novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors , Washburn follows the Hawai'ian-Filipino Flores family as they navigate the changing physical and socioeconomic landscape in Hawai'i. The...

Born and raised in Markham, Ontario, Jillian Christmas is a poet, enthusiastic organizer, and activist in the Canadian arts community with a focus on increasing anti-oppression initiatives in spoken word. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post and many other publications, including collections such as Matrix New Queer Writing (Issue 98), The Post Feminist Post , and the celebrated antho...

Environmental lawyer Rishi Reddi came to prominence as a writer in the early 2000s. Her short fiction has earned her a PEN Award as well as a nomination for the Pushcart Prize, and her story "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy" appeared in the 2005 edition of The Best American Short Stories. It was also featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” In April 2020, she published her first novel. Passage West explores...

Alka Joshi had a complicated relationship to her Indian heritage as a young girl. After immigrating from Rajasthan to the American midwest when she was 9, she was frequently bullied because of her race. It wasn't until she started writing The Henna Artist as an adult that she began to reclaim her cultural heritage. In our conversation, Joshi tells me that writing The Henna Artist allowed her to im...

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO is the author of the sparklingly surreal short story collection Her Body and Other Parties , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her memoir, In the Dream House , was named “Best Book of the Year” in 2019 by just about every major media outlet, including The New Yorker , TIME Magazine , The New...

Daniel Summerhill is a poet, a professor of Poetry and Social Action and Composition Studies at CSU Monterey Bay, and an Oakland native. He has performed his poetry on stages around the world, including at the Kwamashu Center in South Africa as part of a workshop sponsored by the US Embassy. He is the 2015 New York Empire State Grand Slam Champion, a 2015 Nitty Gritty Grand Slam Champion, and a re...

In this episode, I talk to comic writer Lilah Sturges about her work on Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship . Lumberjanes is a youth-oriented series that follows the adventures of a group of girls at a summer camp. It's known for its positive outlook and inclusivity, as well as its creative introduction of educational content. My conversation with Lilah touches on writing for a younger audience,...

In What is real? , Adam Becker details the century-long fight over the interpretation of quantum physics -- what this enormously successful theory, which has given us so much of the technology we use today, is actually saying about the world. Becker first encountered this controversy when, as an undergraduate student of physics at Cornell, a professor pooh-poohed his concerns over the implications...