Community of Writers Podcasts

My guest this week is poet Gustavo Hernandez, last on this show to discuss his breakout poetry collection Flower Grand First. He is out now with Bachelor, six dozen short poems, many of which appeared in leading journals, here assembled thanks to FlowerSong press. The poet Diane Seuss, a big fan, helpfully celebrates the conceit of these poems, in which “the speaker moves like a ghost, from affiliation to singularity and back again, from son, brother, uncle, lover, to a state of profound bachelorhood, a traveler moving through a house of mirrors who encounters and re-encounters himself.” Indeed, these poems, with a carefully insistent throughline and in conversation with themselves, are about person and place, both prismatic and somehow also panoramic. Born in Jalisco, Mexico, Gustavo Hernandez was raised in Santa Ana, where he still lives and has served as the poet laureate of Orange County, California.

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is María Dolores Águila, out now with A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez.  It’s a poetic work of YA historical fiction inspired by the defining early 1930s “Lemon Grove Incident,” a narrative which celebrates a victory over institutionalized racism in San Diego, the struggle for educational equity, and the power of community through a telling from the point of view of then-12 year old Roberto Alvarez, chosen as the plaintiff for the legal case which challenged the segregation of Mexican American public school students. Águila is the author of an acclaimed picture book, Barrio Rising: The Protest the Built Chicano Park. Her website, where you can learn more, helpfully defines her work and art: “Stories of Resistance and Resilience.”

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is journalist and activist Tracy Rosenthal, author of a terrific long piece at the new issue of a favorite online journal, Hammer & Hope, where they report on ICE raids in Los Angeles by way of the incredible Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU). Rosenthal is a frequent contributor to The New Republic, The Nation, the LA Times and is the author, with Leonardo Vilchis, of Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End The Housing Crisis, published by Haymarket. Rosenthal was a co-founder of the LA Tenants Union. Read the entire article, “Immigration Raids at This Home Depot Got More Aggressive but Less Effective. The LA Tenants Union Knows Why.”

Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio

The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

I present a performance edition of the show, a recording made at a recent reading hosted by Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation.  Thanks to Jimmy Vega, director, and Eric Ahlberg for recording. Playwright Daniel Olivas, poet Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, and short story writer Lisa Alvarez shared their work on a recent Friday night at LA’s longest-running literary and cultural arts venue. Today you’ll hear Alvarez (introduced by Olivas, author of Waiting for Godinez) read from her collection Some Final Beauty and Other Stories and Guzman-Lopez (introduced by Alvarez) read from his California Southern: Writing from the Road, 1992-2025. (More from that evening on a later episode.)  Meanwhile, both Alvarez and Guzman-Lopez explore, celebrate, and dramatize life, politics, place, and people in Southern California over decades in two breakthrough collections that could have been written only by devoted longtime chroniclers of our region.

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

A welcome regular on Bibliocracy, my end-of-year 2025 Fund Drive guest is Tom Zoellner, celebrated in a three-part series starting today which features his latest, The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War.  This remarkable book researches, reconsiders, and revises the story of slavery’s inevitable end, focusing on a singularly remarkable and game-changing historical moment. Imagine enslaved people finding refuge in a Union fortress, and then being used politically as assets (“contraband”) in one of the most ironic strategies in the struggle toward win emancipation. About this book Keisha N. Blain of Four Hundred Souls writes, “A vital, illuminating, and beautifully written book that affirms that Black people freed themselves.” This book is offered as a thank-you gift courtesy of publisher sponsor The New Press.

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

 My guest is Vishwas Gaitonde, a much-published short story writer out with his debut fiction collection, stories which dramatize, explore, interrogate and celebrate human connection. His On Earth As It Is In Heaven won the 2023 Orison Prize for fiction. About it Margot Livesy wrote “Gaitonde captures the struggle to belong within a family and within a culture, and how language unites and divides us.” Vishwas Gaitonde’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online with short stories in The Iowa Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Santa Monica Review, Epiphany, Gargoyle, and Mid-American Review.

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is the writer and Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster on his work in helping Monthly Review Press republish the classic Albert Einstein political essay “Why Socialism?”  It’s available now in a gorgeous small book featuring an introduction by Foster and an earlier essay by John J. Simon. Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”: The Enduring Relevance of His Classic Essay explains and contextualizes a forgotten history and celebrates the renowned scientist as a political radical, peace and justice activist, and public intellectual whose commitments are generally ignored or often misrepresented. “I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.” - Albert Einstein

Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio

The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is the multi-form writer Daniel Olivas, author of 13 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama including the subject of today’s Bibliocracy Radio, a play titled Waiting for Godínez: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, from the University of New Mexico Press.  Among other titles, he’s written Chicano Frankenstein: A Novel, and My Chicano Heart: New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions. He co-edited The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles and edited the landmark Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California. Olivas has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Jewish Journal, Zócalo, and The Guardian. When not engaging culture and literature, Olivas is a senior attorney with the California Department of Justice in Los Angeles where he specializes in land use, environmental enforcement, and affordable housing. 

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The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is poet and prose writer Abby Walthausen, out now with a new poetry collection titled A Swale a Sort of Swaddle, a remarkable collection exploring and celebrating and, importantly, complicating the joys and challenges of domesticity, parenthood, and engagement of our region --- ecosystem, politics, place, history --- with language and the wonder that arrives with a new child. In addition to hosting the podcast A Lovely Wallpaper, her poetry has appeared in Public Domain Review, Paris Review Daily, the Atlantic, Zocalo Public Square, Atlas Obscura, Common-place, Mutha, Extra Crispy, LARB, and LitHub. Fiction has been published by Gigantic, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Made in LA anthology, Sycamore Review and Santa Monica Review. Here’s the link to A Lovely Wallpaper. 

Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio

The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

My guest this week is Nicholas Reiner, a poet and teacher and Associate Director of Media & Storytelling at the ACLU of Southern California. As part of Bibliocracy’s recent series of shows featuring scholars and activists confronting, explaining, and resisting Trumpism and the fascist GOP agenda, I’ve asked Reiner to catch me up on the work of the ACLU of Southern California, and also ask what he’s doing lately as an literary artist. He discusses why he writes, and reads a poem. Nicholas Tino Reiner is an American poet of Mexican heritage. His debut poetry chapbook Levitations was co-winner of the inaugural Alta California Chapbook Prize, a bilingual edition from Gunpowder Press. His poems have appeared in Spillway, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Western Humanities Review, and Zocalo Public Square. He earned an MFA in Writing from UC Irvine.

Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio

The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.