Write, Publish, and Shine

In the conversation with Amy Friend, the artist discusses her creative process, the influence of her personal experiences on her work, and the themes of loss, longing, and home that pervade her art. Her childhood experiences, growing up in a neighbourhood populated by immigrants, and the stories she heard from them deeply influenced her work. She emphasizes the importance of play, openness, and le...

We are playing summer reading bingo these next few months, with 24 squares representing categories of books you can read. And you are invited. Grab your card to play along with us , then choose a row, column, or diagonal line, or complete the card. Why are we, a writing community and I, an instructor of writing courses, doing this book bingo? I answer this question in the episode. Listen as I dig...

Writer and Room contributor ViNa Nguyễn discusses their choice to deliberately write about joy as a writer who writes about grief and nostalgia. We also talked about their experimental writing and, in particular, the brilliant piece, A Nesting of Bracketed Bodies , which I published in Room 's “Ghosts” issue; they also read from the work for us, so prepare your earbuds for some delightful fiction...

Listen if you’ve been looking for books to support your writing practice, or maybe a list of books to give another writer in your life, or if you’ve been wanting to read with a community of writers, too, and need some guidance to get started. -- Writerly Reading for Your Summer Get your free bingo card and play along with us for Writerly Prizes. rachelthompson.co/bookclub Hosted on Acast. See acas...

Lina Lau, writer, mother, and owner of too many notebooks, has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanch, and Little Fiction/Big Truths. We discuss how flash memoir writing captures a moment and the characteristics required of memoirists. Lina also reads a 100-word story, bringing us into the experience of writing and publishing...

Welcome to our last instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities. I’m so happy to end this with the wonderful Cicely Belle Blain, the final member of my writing community who kindly agreed to join us to discuss limitations and disabilities when it comes to writing. Reading from Cicely’s bio: Cicely Belle Blain is a Black/mixed, queer femme activist, equity and...

Welcome to our semi-final instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities. In this episode, writer S.L. Shuter, a member of my Writerly Love Community, talks about embracing an identity related to her diagnosis and the push back she received for this. Set L. Shuter is a writer, filmmaker and storyteller from Toronto. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from T...

Welcome to the next instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities. In this episode, Crystal Randall Barnett, a member of my Writerly Love Community, adds to the conversations we’ve been having in this series of episodes on writing slowly and listening to your body. Crystal Randall Barnett is an emerging writer from Ontario. She has been published by The League...

Welcome to the fourth instalment of this string of episodes on the theme of writing with limitations and disabilities. Andrea Martineau is a writer, poet, bibliophile, and phytomaniac (I had to look that one up: a plant lover!) with a penchant for heritage buildings and their paranormal tenants. Her poetry has previously been published and shared in untethered magazine , Blank Spaces , [SPACE], Fi...

Welcome to my next conversation in this run of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations. In this episode, I sit down with Amy Yuki Vickers, a new writer in our community and a recent alum of my Lit Mag Love course. Amy is the author of the blog and newsletter The Intentional Hulk , writes short stories and personal essays, and is at work on a memoir. And, as she says in her bio, becau...

Welcome to the next episode in this run of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations. In this episode, a wonderful Writerly Love Community member, Olwen Wilson talks with me about following joy and writing with a chronic condition. We discuss labels and their conflicting appeal/repellent nature. And, what I suspect will be a through line of all these episodes: listening to our bodies a...

Welcome to the first interview in my series of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations. I sit down with a wonderful Writerly Love membership community member, Shantell Powell, a two-spirit author, artist, and self-described swamp hag who grew up on the land and off the grid. Her publication credits include Augur , Solarpunk Magazine , MetaStellar , The Deadlands , and honestly keep r...

The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive, which brings together my three courses: Write and Light, a course to get writers generating new, more profound work; Revision Love, my course on learning to self-edit your writing; and Lit Mag Love, my flagship course on getting published in literary journals. All of the resources mentioned in the episode are in the show notes at rachelthompson.co/podcast/79 Le...

In this episode, I sit down with our Community Facilitator, Meli Walker, to discuss what we do to make our online course community more accessible to writers with disabilities and limitations. This episode marks the beginning of a run of episodes focusing on writing with limitations/disability. Coming up, you’ll hear me talk with writers with various challenges about what they need to write, how t...

“Nothing has to happen in the story. There doesn't need to be explosions or big shocking twists. It's just enough to have well-developed characters and a beautiful world.” —Terese Mason Pierre, Augur Terese Mason Pierre is co-Editor-in-Chief of Augur , a Canadian speculative literature journal, and has published work in Hobart , The Puritan , Quill and Quire , and Strange Horizons . Her work has b...

Lina Lau, writer, mother, and owner of too many notebooks, has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanch, and Little Fiction/Big Truths. We talk about how flash memoir writing captures a moment, how Lina reads a 100-word story and brings us into the experience of writing it, and also about the characteristics required of memoiris...

All craft is political. It’s how we, as writers, resist injustices and dream up better worlds. So, listen to this conversation with the brilliant Kavita Das, and then take up your pen. Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work. She challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespecti...

During the Lit Mag Love course, writers can join Q&A calls with editors. In this replay episode, you will hear one such call with Mark Drew of the Gettysburg Review . Note that this call happened in the first year of the pandemic, so you’ll get an editor’s perspective on the kind of reflection missing from most writing during an intense moment—at least for this journal. You’ll also hear about...

In this episode, it’s my pleasure to welcome Christina Brobby, a wonderful lyric writer and instructor, to the podcast. We start by getting into what exactly lyric writing is, if you’re wondering, so that will be cleared up right away. Christina also delves into how the “filter is the form” as she wonderfully sums it up. Listen for more of our exploration of empathy for writers. And Christina also...

Memoirist Yolande House sits down with me for a book club conversation about Kae Tempest’s On Connection . It was a real pleasure to read this book alongside her and compare notes. And I hope those of you reading alongside us in our book club enjoy it. About On Connection : This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and...

This is the final episode in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine that take a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. Today it’s my delight to speak to another artist whose work we accepted for inside the issue. Sarah Esmi (she/her) is an Iranian-American mother, writer, collage artist, producer, director and lawyer. She...

This is the seventh, wow!, in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with our cover artist, Amy Friend, who was also the cover artist for the very first issue I edited for Room , called Mythologies of Loss. Amy Friend’s art truly resonates on...

This is the sixth in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with another incredible writer we published in the issue, ViNa Nguyễn. Our conversation went in many beautiful directions, including their choice to deliberately write about joy as a...

This is the fifth in my series of special episodes as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this episode, a luminous conversation with Room ’s Book Reviews editor, Micah Killjoy. We delve into reviewing as a practice for writers to understand craft, what Micah did differently with the reviews for this haunting issue, and h...

In this replay episode, Ellen Chang-Richardson and I both speak as editorial collective members at Room , and as editors of the (then) upcoming issue of Room ’s Ghosts issue. Ellen and I get a little into how things work behind the scenes at Room , and how we (the collective) are many people, all rolling up our sleeves to create space in literature, art, and feminism. This episode was recorded liv...