Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, as well as the award-winning story collection Corpus Christi. He edited the craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

He joins Marrie Stone to talk about his latest story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals. These 12 pieces are masterclasses on managing time in short fiction, showing what dialogue can do, bringing setting to life, playing with POV (including 2nd person), and arranging a collection to read like an album. They discuss it all.

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(Recorded February 11, 2026)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)