Community of Writers Podcasts

I welcome back screenwriter and short story writer Janice Shapiro, out with her full-length graphic novel Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship, a coming-of-age story about young women who discover their place in the world.

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 welcome Dr. Nolan Higdon, a longtime media/civic literacy expert and critical media scholar, as well as activist and educator.

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 the art historian Stephen F. Eisenman, collaborator with legendary artist Sue Coe on the new collection The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism, out now from O/R Books.

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.

This week we simultaneously mark a maddening anniversary and celebrate joyful creative resistance with a reading of her 2021 short story “False Flag” by writer, teacher, and editor Lisa Alvarez.

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.

For  this month’s fund drive first edition I air an edited version of a terrific podcast hosted by writer Abby Walthausen featuring me --- of all people! --- as a guest. Its topic is the writer and artist whose work I curated for an exhibition on December 3rd through December 13 at Cerritos College.

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 host novelist and memoirist Chuck Rosenthal, author of the Loop trilogy and Never Let Me Go, among many books. His latest, Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest, is what writer Michael Ventura calls a “gentle phantasm,” a short book which imagines the role of the reader right into the writing, and into the lives of the writer and characters…here, the writer/characters John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Coleridge, Lord Byron, and their pals The Romantics.

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 host editor, anthologist, book reviewer, and essayist David L. Ulin, who has written about Los Angeles and Southern California for decades, assembling the defining Joan Didion collection for the Library of America, reviewing books and assigning articles and reviews of and about our literary region, and offering  his own original short stories and acclaimed essays too.

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.

Today, a reading by a favorite writer, Gary Amdahl, author of Visigoth, I Am Death, The Intimidator Still Lives in Our Hearts and, out now, The Creative Writers: A Burlesque of the Imagination on Totalitarian Themes in the Manner of Émile Cohl and Les Arts Incohérents Harry Everett Smith, and Hanna-Barbera. 

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 for today is poet and, lately fiction writer Brittney Corrigan.  Her recent poetry collection Solastalgia explored themes of ecological crisis and now, with The Ghost Town Collectives, she creates in short albeit very poetic short stories, a vision of the transformations around us, an emotional and political and mythic apprehending of the Anthropocene investigating and interrogating and imagining and observing the real-time, real-life global climate crisis in all its facets.

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 my annual program celebrating Banned Books Week (September 22-29) with special guest American Library Association (ALA) President Cindy Hohl. This year’s Banned Books Week 2024 theme is “Freed Between the Lines,” an observance of the freedom found in the pages of books and the need to defend that freedom from censorship.

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.