Blake Butler's Molly is a memoir about the suicide of his late wife, poet and memoirist Molly Brodak. It's one of the most controversial alt lit book of the past year – rightfully! – and, with photographs integrated and no line or chapter breaks, it's also a fascinating work of art.

(New tardiness record: we recorded this in April.)

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod

Email: [email protected]

Haha this was recorded like months ago. Please excuse the mess. More Good Writing coming on a reliably unreliable schedule.

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod

Email: [email protected]

What are more tools we can use to further develop theme and the point-of-view character's worldview? In her novel The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter regularly breaks the action with lists of facts.

• Find the photo of Ben that reminded Emily of Edward Cullen in the Two Dollar Radio Tattoo Club

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod

Email: [email protected]

Point-of-view characters. You love them. You understand them. They still do mean things. How can you keep your reader empathizing with your point-of-view character even if they do something villainous?

Also: Ben (a philosophy major) and Emily (an outdoor enthusiast) interpret the climax pretty differently.

• Read this short story before listening to the episode: "Algal Bloom" by Kathryn Harlan in Michigan Quarterly Review

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

Do you have to write about a topic in the chronological order that it happened in to understand it better? No, definitely not. In fact - maybe you shouldn't?

This episode, we discuss Enjoy Me Among My Ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald (2022). It's a memoir that uses 3 forms (diary entry, flash about an influential woman in her life, and essays) to explore sex work, academic theory, and how having a daughter changed her.

Order this book from The Feminist Press here

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

In this episode we consider what it takes to write young people in a way that feels both honest and honoring with a difficult piece of fiction by B.R. Yeager from his newest collection, Burn You the Fuck Alive.

Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

Carmen from Julia Armfield's debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea isn't necessary for the plot, but Emily got obsessed anyway (of course). In this episode, we discuss bringing side characters to life and using them to establish themes that your point-of-view character is too clueless to pick up on.

Other links:

• B.R. Yeager (friend of the pod)'s new story collection Burn You the Fuck Alive 

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

Today we discuss "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" with poet David van den Berg.

David's magazine - Prometheus Dreaming

His new book - Love Letters from an Arsonist

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

Emily has Ben read sections from Eula Biss's Having and Being Had this week because she knows he loves to think about capitalism. 

How can you come up with rules to how you write about a topic? Eula Biss sets out with constraints that make her essays both dreamlike and punchy.

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]

Happy (belated) Halloween, Good Writing subscribers! In today's episode, we discuss Shirley Jackson's 1959 gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House.

What makes this "psychological ghost story" work so well? Subjectivity. The characters tell us their subjection version of the events, which leaves the reader to fill in the gaps with maximum spookiness.

Plus, we discuss a sentence that Ben called "a literary kickflip" and a terrifying walk that Emily is nominating for most romantic moment of 1959.

• Emily recommends Abandon Me

Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.

Twitter: @goodwritingpod 

Email: [email protected]