GrottoPod

Lewis Buzbee, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss the craft of books, and why we still love bookstores, even after (especially after) working at them.

Lewis Buzbee’s most recent novel is Diver. He is also the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, After the Gold Rush, Fliegelman’s Desire, as well as three award-winning books for younger readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, and Bridge of Time. His essays, poems, stories, and interviews have appeared in Lit Hub, Lit Stack, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, ZYZZYVA, Black Warrior Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A former bookseller and publisher, he’s taught writing in the San Francisco Bay Area for a long time now.

Other stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Nadine Gordimer
• Dog Eared Books in San Francisco, California
• Green Apple Books in San Francisco, California
• Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Grotto Nights at the Library, May 27 (the panel that Doug and T. K. are going to be on in May at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch, 6pm)
• Bookshop.org

Shingai Njeri Kagunda, T. K. Rex and Doug Henderson discuss editing fiction publications, the triumphant return of Fantasy Magazine, and creating space for underrepresented writers.

Shingai Njeri Kagunda (they/she) is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts MFA from Brown. Shingai’s work has been featured in The Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2020 and 2023 editions, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction in 2021, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2020. They have work in Omenana, Fantasy Magazine, FracturedLit, Khoreo, Baffling Magazine, Lightspeed, Psychopomp, Frivolous Comma and several anthologies including Africa Risen, Will This Be A Problem, and Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. Their debut novella, & This is How to Stay Alive, won the Ignyte Award for best novella in 2022. Their short story "Air to Shape Lungs", was chosen in 2023 for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy list and anthology. Their essay "Black Futurisms vs. Systems of Domination" was nominated for the 2025 British Science Fiction Association award, and their newly released novelette, We Who Will Not Die, was named Locus Recommended Reading. Shingai is the co-founder of Voodoonauts Summer Writing Workshop, a creative writing teacher, an eternal student, and a lover of all things soft and Black.

Other stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Fantasy Magazine
• Podcastle
• Voodoonauts Afrofuturist collective & workshop
• & This Is How To Stay Alive
• Ignyte Awards - centering the contributions and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) in Speculative Fiction
• FIYAH Magazine - speculative fiction by and about Black people of the African Diaspora
• Let the Star Explode - short story by Shingai Njeri Kagunda
• Hi From Shelling Point - story story by T. K. Rex, in Utopia Magazine
• Arley Sorg - Co-Editor of Fantasy Magazine
• Rooted & Written, BIPOC conference at the Writers Grotto
• The Nebula Awards
• British Fantasy Awards
• #PublishingPaidMe - link to the Vox explainer
• Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
• Sheree Renée Thomas
• Suyi Davies Okungbowa
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Just Keep Writing podcast
• Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center - a 1984 book about feminist theory by bell hooks

Nina Schuyler, Susan Kaye Quinn, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss writing climate fiction and one central theme: hope. How to have it, how to write it, and why it’s more important than ever.

Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. Her novel, Afterword, won the 2024 PenCraft Book of the Year in Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, and the PenCraft Spring Seasonal Book Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Her novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. Her novel, The Painting, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal are bestsellers. Her short stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies, The Writing Salon, and Book Passage. 

Susan Kaye Quinn is an environmental engineer turned author, writing and publishing speculative fiction since 2011. Lately, she writes hopeful climate fiction, trying to change the narratives that are destroying the world. You can find her short fiction in Reckoning, Solarpunk Magazine, and Grist's recently released Metamorphosis collection of solarpunk stories. All her short fiction and novels are on her website, https://susankayequinn.com/. She's the host of the Bright Green Futures podcast, stories to build a better world: https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/

Other stuff we talked about in the episode:

• The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger
• Songs of the Humpback Whale
• Sounds of Nature by Karen Bakker
• How to be Animal by Melanie Challenger
• Glide Memorial volunteer program
• The Great Derangement by Amitav Gosht
• The Hopepunk Panel at Watertown Public Library
• Object oriented ontology
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• "Mazes" short story by Ursula LeGuin
• Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future
• The Great Mississippi Tea Company
• Grist
• Bright Green Futures Anthology

Cynthia Gomez, M. M. Olivas, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss monsters, middles, invented towns, whose fear gets centered in horror, and counternarratives.

Stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Sundown in San Ojuela by M. M. Olivas (Mara)
• The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez
• Mara's website
• Cynthia's website
• Brent Lambert (author)
• Gordon White (author)
• Nancy Kress (author)
• Steven Graham Jones  (author)
• ¡Sangronas! Un Lista de Terror by M. M. Olivas (short story in Uncanny Magazine)
• Barbara Kingsolver (author)
• Doug's book, The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi- & Fantasy Role-Playing Club
• Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future (anthology with T. K.'s story)
• Our fundraiser for the 30th anniversary of the Writers Grotto

Margaret Juhae Lee, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss the differences between history and memoir, memoir and autobiography, research and worldbuilding, fiction and memory, plus generative writing, being a Taurus, internal reward systems, and putting yourself in the story.

Stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Margaret's book Starry Field
• Writing Day Workshops
• The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick

Roberto Lovato, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss scarlet macaws, breaking down structural inequality in publishing, and Rooted & Written—the first tuition-free professional conference for Writers of Color in the United States.

Stuff we talked about in the episode:

• Applying to Rooted & Written
• Cristina Rivera Garza
• Malcolm Harris Palo Alto 
• Roberto’s book Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas 
• The Prince of Evolution (book about Peter Kropotkin) by Lee Alan Dugatkin
• Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution by Pëtr Kropotkin
• Viet Nguyen
• Ta-Nahisi Coates
• Chaco Canyon
• Susan Ito
• Jesus Sierra
• Aditi Malhotra
• UNLV MFA 

Jonathan Escoffery, Celeste Chan, and T. K. Rex discuss education without a safety net, the intersection of racism, capitalism and belonging, ticking clocks and how to break them, finding Jamaican patties in the Bay Area, the intimacy of the second person, and needing the fear.

Stuff we talked about in the episode:

• If I Survive You - novel by Jonathan Escoffery
• Apex snap judgment panels
• Paul Beatty 
• Percival Everett
• Mat Johnson
• Nicole Dennis-Benn
• Marlon James
• Jennine Capó Crucet
• Toni Morrison
• Nella Larsen
• Langston Hughes
• Zora Neal Hurston
• Frederick Douglass
• The Wallace Stegner Fellowship
• A Lucky Man - novel by Jamel Brinkley
• Boston Writers of Color
• The Loft - Minneapolis-based org for writers
• The Booker Prizes

Jonathan's recommendations for Jamaican patties in the Bay Area:

• Calabash
• Minto’s Jamaican Juice Bar
• Level 13

Hugh Ryan, Mark Wallace and T. K. Rex discuss MFAs, finding out what kind of writer you are, queer history, pitching niche topics, tarantulas, finding the right peers and instructors for your writing, and the punkest thing ever.

Stuff we talked about in the episode:

• The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
• Bennington workshop
• C. L. Polk's Patreon
• New York Public Library research fellowship
• Pop-Up Museum of Queer History 
• Hide/Seek: Difference in Desire in American Portraiture
• Yaddo residency
• Watermill residency
• New York Foundation for the Arts
• Hugh’s Patreon

Lori Ostlund, Doug Henderson, and T. K. Rex discuss hopeful fiction, metaphor, the Midwest, balancing humor and darkness, crafting characters who feel like real people, the Flannery O’Connor award, and a third addition to the pantser/plotter dichotomy: poet.

Stuff we mentioned in the episode:

• Lori’s novella Just Another Family
• flannery o’connor award
• Flannery winner Iheoma Nwachukwu
• Rainbow Railroad