Typewriter Talks

On our Season One finale our guest is Craig Pittman. Craig is a native Floridian, a best-selling author, a podcaster and an award-winning reporter. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him "the most destructive force on campus." In 40 years as a newspaper reporter, he covered a vari...

This week our guest is Gale Massey. Gale is an award-winning author drawn to stories exploring coming-of-age questions, the search for redemption, social justice issues, and complex character relationships. Her work illuminates the complexities of blood family and chosen family bonds. She is a member of the LGBTQ community living in the south and a seventh-generation Floridian;  these life experie...

This week our guest is L.L. Kirchner. L.L. is an author and award-winning screenwriter whose life and work as an expat in Asia became the basis of two memoirs, including Blissful Thinking: A Memoir of Overcoming the Wellness Revolution, and her previous title, American Lady Creature: (My) Change in the Middle East. A Qatar Memoir., named one of Bustle’s “11 Books to Battle the Blues.” A book criti...

This week our guest is Bill DeYoung. Bill was born in St. Petersburg, FL where he spent the first 21 years of his life. After a long time living in other cities, working at newspapers and learning how to write on a deadline, he came back to his hometown in 2014 and now spends most of his time wondering where the city he loved so much disappeared to. He is Senior Writer and Editor of the St. Pete C...

This week our guest is Yuki Jackson. Yuki is a Black and Japanese poet and educator. Her poetry has been published in literary journals such as Four Way Review and Cream City Review, for which she was nominated for a 2021 Best of the Net Award and the 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Yuki is a regular contributor for the "Poet's Notebook" column of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay and her work ha...

This week our guest is Lenore Myka. Lenore is the author of a prize-winning short story collection and the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in American Scholar, The Normal School, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, Quartz, New England Review, Five Points, and others. Her wo...

This week our guest is Susana Darwin. A Southerner by birth and a Chicagoan by temperament, Susana took a detour into politics, the law, and book publishing before returning to her early passion for film. Her award-winning narrative short “Hatboxes” (2013) appeared in 15 film festivals and conferences worldwide, and the musical short "Longer" (2020) appeared in 26 festivals, COVID be damned. Her 2...

This week our guest is Curtis Davis. Curtis was born and raised in Tampa, FL. He has been writing and performing poetry since a youth in high school and has since traveled all over the states competing in international, national, and regional poetry slam competitions. In 2018 he was ranked the 8th poet in the world after becoming a finalist in the Individual World Poetry Slam held in San Diego, CA...

This week our guest is Alia Luria. Alia holds an MFA in Fiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She writes a mix of science fiction fantasy novels, personal essays, and haiku. Her first novel,  Compendium , won the Indie Excellence Award in fantasy, was a silver medalist in the Reader’s Favorite Book Awards in fantasy, was a gold medalist in the eLit Awards for science fiction/fantasy, and wa...

This week our guest is Jarret Keene. Jarret earned his PhD in creative writing at Florida State University. A beloved and highly sought after professor, Dr. Keene is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he teaches American literature and the graphic novel.  He has written a travel guide, a rock-band biography, poetry collections and edite...

This week our guest is Barbara Riddle. Born and raised in New York, Barbara Riddle now lives and writes in two places: downtown St. Petersburg, Florida,  and in rural Maine in the town of Millinocket.  Barbara has worked as a dog-walker, artist’s model and biochemist but prefers writing fiction above all. In 2020-21  she served as Guest Fiction Editor of the journal Please See Me, devoted to impro...

This week our guest is Brian Petkash. Brian grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, a focal point of much of his writing (and much of his sports heartache). A former high school literature and creative writing teacher, he lives in Tampa with his partner Celeste and works as a marketing professional in both the game and comic book industries. Brian holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Tampa. His...

This week our guest is Heather Lang-Cassera. Heather is a a full-time lecturer with Nevada State University, a Tolsun Books publisher, a Black Fox Literary Magazine poetry editor, and a Clark County, Nevada Poet Laureate Emeritus. She was a 2022 Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellow. She is the author of Gathering Broken Light (Unsolicited Press, 2021), which was written with the support of a N...

This week our guest is Silk Jazmyne. Silk Jazmyne is a student of life who loves narrative in all its forms and the artistically strange. Speculative fiction writer, teaching artist for Kitchen Table Literary Arts, Grubstreet Writers, and The Porch. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Her work has appeared in Midnight & Indigo, African Writer Magazine, Ekphr...

This week our guest is Gianna Russo. Gianna is the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa, appointed by Mayor Jane Castor in 2019. She recently wrote “Glorious,” a poem for the Mayor’s second inauguration, and read it at the event in May, 2023.   Russo is the author of the poetry collections, All I See is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic, with photographer Jenny Carey (Madville Publishing,...

This week our guest is Jonathan Kile. Jonathan has lived in St. Pete, Florida since 2001. A rare genetic condition forced him to give up a career in sales in favor of a full-time position as father, husband, and writer. He blogs about his family travels and advocates for awareness of vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome at dontmakemeturnthisvanaround.com. He’s on the board of Keep St. Pete Lit and cont...

This week our guest is Mark Haber. Mark was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. He is the author of the 2008 story collection DEATHBED CONVERSIONS. His first novel, REINHARDT'S GARDEN, was published by Coffee House Press and nominated for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut novel. His second novel, SAINT SEBASTIAN'S ABYSS (2022), was also published by Coffee House Press and ca...

This week our guest is Sara Ries Dziekonski. Sara holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book,  Come In, We're Open , which she wrote about growing up in her parents' diner, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include  Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and  Marrying Maracuyá  (Main Street Rag 2021), which won t...

This week our guest is Nicole Caron. Nicole’s nonfiction has appeared in numerous trade publications and regional and literary magazines; she works with novelists and memoirists as a developmental and copy editor; and her freelance copywriting has won two regional American Advertising Federation Silver Addy Awards. Nicole lives in St. Petersburg and teaches at Ringling College Of Art + Design, whe...

This week our guest is Paul Willborn. Paul’s debut novel, Florida Hustle, earned a coveted Kirkus Star and in December was named one of the “100 Best Indie Books of 2022” by Kirkus. His 2019 short story collection, Cigar City: Tales from a 1980s Creative Ghetto won the fiction gold medal from the Florida Book Awards. A native of Tampa, Paul Wilborn collected multiple awards from the American Socie...

This week our guest is Chelsea Catherine. Chelsea has lived and worked all over the country. They won the Mary C Mohr award for nonfiction through the Southern Indiana Review and their second book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. In 2022, they spent a month in Alaska at the Alderworks Artists Retreat. They are part of a cohort of ValleyCreates artist grantees i...

This week our guest is Kerry Kriseman. Kerry is a St. Petersburg native and a graduate of University of South Florida with a B.A. Her latest book. "Accidental First Lady: On the Front Lines (and Behind the Scenes)" recounts 22 years of life as a political spouse to her lawyer-turned-politician husband. Kerry worked for the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) for 10 years in the Ne...

This week our guest is Lorraine Monteagut, PhD. Lorraine is a writer, astrologer, tarot reader and green witch. Copies of her recently published book, Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color, is available at bookstores nationwide and has been recently released in paperback. 

This week our guest is Brian Wedlake. After decades of working in the fashion world as a model and as a professional actor in Hollywood, Brian moved back to Florida in 2014 with his family where he picked up the pen again, which he hadn’t done since he won the North American Poetry Award at age 19.  In 2022 he was awarded First Place in Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition and named a finali...

This week our guest is Tyler Gillespie. Tyler is the author of the essay collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) as well as two poetry collections Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018) and the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023). He’s a fifth-generation Floridian, co-founder of the Florida Local Artist & Writer Network, and current...