Story Behind the Story

In her 2017 chapbook, Bitches of the Drought , poet and former Santa Cruz resident Lauren Eggert-Crowe explores what it's like when a woman's anger comes to the surface years after the object of her anger has left her life. Lauren's writing process in many ways mirrors those themes: while she wrote many of the poems in Bitches of the Drought over a single summer, it wasn't until years later that s...

When Andy Couturier was in his 20s, he and his wife Cynthia traveled to Japan to teach English and raise money to buy their own home. While there, he became friends with a group of people who organize their lives differently from the way most of us are used to. Instead of working full-time for a corporation, they grow their own food and work just enough to get by, spending their abundant free time...

Drawing inspiration for documentary theater practitioners like Anna Deveare Smith and Culture Clash, Luis 'xago' Juarez interviewed nearly 40 residents of East Salinas before writing reAlisal: Stories of East Salinas and the two other reAlisal plays that came before it. He wanted to tell the history of the Alisal using the words of the people who lived there, using their voices, and reshape the na...

THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT is the latest novel from Bay Area author giant Charlie Jane Anders. This critically acclaimed novel has led some to label Anders the successor to the queen of science fiction herself, Ursula K. Leguin. But Anders is a giant in the sci-fi and fantasy community in her own right. Her 2016 novel, ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, th...

The Disasters is M.K. England's debut young adult novel about a group of space academy washouts who are forced to step up and save the world after escaping a terrorist attack. It's a wildly entertaining romp through space that has been lauded for its nuanced representation of LGBTQIA characters and the way it handles mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. In this episode, I talk to E...

Katya Apekina's debut novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish , tells the story of Edie and Mae, two sisters who go to live with their estranged father in New York after their mother’s suicide attempt. It has received a great deal of attention for its unique form: the book is structured like an oral history, with a different narrator from one chapter to the next, interspersed with archival...

When Carly Gelsinger was thirteen, she joined Pine Canyon Assemblies of God, a radical evangelical church in rural Monterey County. For years, she was “on fire for God,” speaking in tongues, slaying demons, and following her angry and abusive pastor’s every word. Only when her life literally burned to the ground did she start to make the choices that would lead her to leave the church several year...