The ARTWIFE Podcast

In this short lil snack of an episode, we process some heavy shit and talk through the unique mixture of bleakness and hope stretching out ahead of us. Then Hannah runs down a list of her top 5 books & stories from the year, plus a few honorable mentions. Join us and find out if any of your faves made the list.

It's our first-ever movie night on the pod! We're looking at Challengers, a perfect film about three self-loathing, deeply unwell people visiting psychosexual drama upon each other repeatedly for more than a decade. The stuff dreams are made of! But what does it have to do with writing? Well, everything. In this episode, we talk about the power of indoctrinating your audience/readers with sub-perc...

This month, we're taking a field trip! Join us as we depart from our usual fare of writing & writers and romp instead into the realm of performance, performers, and the life of the artist. We're joined by astrologer Wonder Bright, who helps us understand how the astrological signatures in Barbra Streisand's birth chart are influencing and describing the way Barbra makes her art. Topics include the...

This month we're back with another SHORTS episode...and we're doing things a little differently this time! Rather than look at the craft of an individual piece of work, we're turning our attention to the question of emotional depth & honesty in creative writing more generally. What does emotional presence *feel like* in a piece of writing? And what does it feel like when it's missing? Finally, and...

The hero's journey...reimagined! We're celebrating 1 year of The ARTWIFE Book Club with Sayaka Murata's novel about a protagonist who passes through all the stages of the traditional hero's journey—a foray into the unfamiliar, a dark night of the soul, a return bearing a hard-won treasure—all without ever leaving her hometown. Hop in!

Studying the craft of writing with the help of lyrics from Taylor Swift? Don't threaten us with a good time! This month, we do a close reading of the lyrics from the song My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys off of The Tortured Poets Department. The story of this song gives us an opportunity to look at how a narrator can effectively communicate their conflicted mental state and convince us of both...

We read it, we loved it, and now we get to obsess over it...with the author! The book is Thieves, the writer is Valerie Werder, and Valerie herself joins us on this episode to talk about the creation of this astonishing book. We get practical (what can disciplines like sculpture and curation teach us about structuring a narrative?) and we get enigmatic (what the hell is a "self" anyway?) in equal...

ARTWIFE is back from spring break with a close look at Vinson Cunningham Is a Ritualistic Eater, a sublime essay published in Grub Street (read it here: https://www.grubstreet.com/article/vinson-cunningham-grub-street-diet.html). We articulate the work's skillful balance of technical expertise and emotional presence and ask ourselves...how the hell can we learn to write like this? Plus, the life &...

Annnnd we're back with the spring episode of the SHORTS edition! This time, we look at The Ice-Cream Truck, a flash essay from Souvankham Thammavongsa. (Read it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/the-ice-cream-truck-souvankham-thammavongsa) Craft discussion topics include: a look at the way spacing and paragraph breaks help us manage pacing and emphasis, how to think about our wri...

Our very first venture into science-fiction-adjacent literature on the pod! In our discussion about Jacqueline Harpman's 1995 novel, we revel in a book that rejects many of the fundamental elements that make up the construct of a book in the first place. Chapters? Hard pass. Traditional plot structure? No. Characters? Barely! We also make sure to carefully articulate all the ways in which human li...

TAYLOR SWIFT, EVERYBODY! In this episode, we learn from the master of storytelling *herself* about mood, manifesting a memorable atmosphere in our work, how distinct and specific imagery helps us experience even the most well-worn subject matter anew, and more. We also talk about how the structured nature of songwriting can serve as a guide when we're organizing our work in prose, so we can write...

Let's join hands and step into the peerless work of Saeed Jones, author of this 2019 memoir. This work teaches us what balance means in the craft of writing and invites us into the intersection between clarity and nuance. Topics include: remedying one of the main reasons editors reject work submitted to lit mags, why reading poets who write prose is so useful and instructive, and the characteristi...

Welcome to the ARTWIFE Book Club SHORTS edition! In this format, we'll look at shorter-form works like short stories, essays, and song lyrics. This time we discuss Taffy Brodesser-Akner's meditation on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Come see for yourself: this essay is a national treasure. Read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/magazine/taylor-swift-eras-tour.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8kw....

Dive face-first with us into this weird and wonderful 2018 novel from Otessa Moshfegh. We talk about the year 2000 (god help us), how even tropey character templates have the potential to become fully realized, engaging with art & literature using approaches that are less consumeristic and more interactive, and more! Have something to add to the conversation? Share your thoughts on this book here:...

In this episode, we explore We the Animals, a slim but gutting 2011 novel from Justin Torres. We get into the first person plural POV, the tension created by the gap between what readers know and what characters know, the way the human spirit seeks (and finds!) beauty even in the depths of despair, and much more. Share your thoughts on this book here: https://www.artwifemag.com/the-podcast

In the inaugural episode of The ARTWIFE Book Club, we discuss Samantha Hunt's inimitable 2004 novel, The Seas. We get into the shattered narrative structure, coping mechanisms, some of the most beautiful passages in the history of literature(!), and more. Have something to add to the conversation? Share your thoughts on this book here: https://www.artwifemag.com/the-podcast

Maybe you love to read, but you wish you had someone in your life who would rehash book plots with you as feverishly as they rehash concert experiences, TV shows, or movies. Or perhaps you're the type of person who wants to read more, but you struggle to stay focused on a book long enough to finish it. Wherever you land, we invite you to join us! Welcome to The ARTWIFE Book Club, the show that lov...