Like a lot of life plans over the past few weeks, this episode veered from our original schedule. We’d planned to discuss the joys and challenges of creating things with friends, but instead we found ourselves talking about these strange times. In this emergency episode of Emerging Form, we talk about how COVID-19 is changing what and how we write, and how it’s affecting all kinds of creative careers. Warning: we get a bit emotional at times. Topics include toilet paper hoarding, coronavirus anxiety, the importance of the arts, financial insecurity, online alternatives to in person events and how our lives are different now. We check in with our fabulous audio producer, Rob Dozier, and then we talk with our scheduled guest, Sarina Bowen, a USA Today best-selling author who has written more than 30 contemporary novels and is cohost of the #amwriting podcast. 

Read Rosemerry’s daily poems

Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

Rob Dozier

Sarina Bowen

#amwriting podcast

coronavirus image by pixabay

Tonight I Pray for All the Doctors, the Nurses

the Healthcare Workers

And tonight I think

of the seventeen Italian doctors,

dead. And the hundreds

of thousands of people

whose test results were positive.

And all the doctors, nurses,

health care workers—

some right here in our town.

I think of them eating breakfast,

reading the same discouraging news,

then kissing their loved ones,

putting on their shoes,

and walking out the door,

though resolution’s as elusive

as last month’s peace—

the peace we didn’t

even know we had.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe