Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence, and the short story collection Verge.  Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her new nonfiction book is Reading the Waves.

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Sarah Chihaya is a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The New

Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York magazine, The

Atlantic, and The Yale Review, among other places, and she is the co-author of The

Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. She has taught at Princeton

University, New York University, and UC Berkeley. She is currently a contributing editor

at Los Angeles Review of Books and lives in Brooklyn. Her new book is Bibliophobia.

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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has been writing and sharing a poem a day since

2006—a practice that especially nourished her after the death of her teenage son in

2021. Her daily poems can be found on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils, or a curated

version (with optional prompts) on her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, available with

the Ritual app. Her poetry collection Hush won the Halcyon Prize. Naked for Tea was a

finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her most recent collections are All the Honey

and The Unfolding. In January 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore,

helping others through this platform to explore grief, bereavement, wonder, and love

through the voice of poetry. She is the co-hosts of a podcast on creative process called

Emerging Form.

This episode was recorded live at TACAW in Basalt, Colorado.

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Alan Shapiro was born in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Shapiro has published fourteen poetry collections, including A Dress Rehearsal for the Truth; By and By; Life Pig; Reel to Reel; Night of the Republic, a finalist for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize and the National Book Award; and Old War, winner of the Ambassador Book Award. 

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David Wroblewski is the author, most recently, of the novel Familiaris, his followup to the internationally bestselling The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award, and Midwest Bookseller Association's Choice award, in addition to being selected as one of the best books of the year by numerous magazines and newspapers.

This was recorded live at TACAW in Basalt, Colorado.

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Paolo Bacigalupi is an internationally bestselling author of speculative fiction. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, as well as being a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Paolo’s work often focuses on questions of sustainability and the environment, most notably the impacts of climate change. He has written novels for adults, young adults, and children, and his new book is Navola.

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This episode on literary friendship with Claire Messud and Amitava Kumar was recorded live at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado at the June 2024 Lit Fest. Learn more about Lighthouse.

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essay collection is called Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. Her recent novel is called This Strange Eventful History. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and four novels. His new novel is My Beloved Life. Kumar lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. He serves on the board of the Corporation of Yaddo.

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Boyce Upholt is a journalist and essayist whose writing has appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He is the winner of a James Beard Award for investigative journalism, and he lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.  His book is called The Great River: The Making & Unmaking of the Mississippi.

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Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Night Boat to Tangier, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Beatlebone, and City of Bohane as well as three story collections including Dark Lies the Island. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter lives in County Sligo, Ireland.  His new novel is The Heart in Winter.

We talked about the Irish in Butte, Montana, watching and writing westerns, Wuthering Heights, voice and character, Kevin’s writing process, comedy, and Annie Proulx.

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Amina Gautier is the author of four short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will

Be Happy, The Loss of All Lost Things, and The Best that You Can Do. Gautier is the recipient of the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award, the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Fiction.

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