GrottoPod

For the better part of a decade, Lisa Hix, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, and GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks have been writing about antiques, vintage items, and collectibles at CollectorsWeekly.com. As a rule, these writers have tended to shy away from articles about the prices of objects or the celebrities who collect them, tried-and-true angles for journalists working the collecting beat. Instead, they’ve used antiques and collectibles as windows into our culture, each with its own surprising story to tell. In response, publications as varied as The New York Times, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and Elle have linked to articles at Collectors Weekly. In today’s episode of GrottoPod, Marks interviews his colleagues to discuss just a few of these stories—you can read hundreds more at Collectors Weekly.

Take the plunge into an episode on all things aquatic with Bonnie Tsui, whose new book, Why We Swim, dives into swimming history while offering poetic contemplation on the nature of this physical pursuit. The incredible characters in this book—including an Icelandic fisherman who defied death in the ice-cold sea, a Bay Area-based open water marathoner Kim Chambers, Olympic sprinting phenom Dara Torres, and practitioners of the Japanese nihon eiho tradition—provide the jumping off points for this discursive chat between Tsui and co-host Susie Gerhard.

Dignidad Literaria is a grassroots campaign for greater Latinx inclusion in the United States publishing industry that has grabbed the attention of activists and publishing executives alike. In this episode, Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to author and activist Roberto Lovato, one of the founders and driving forces behind Dignidad Literaria, about the spirit of the campaign, its goals, and its future. Lovato's new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Revolution and Redemption, comes out this fall.

Want to learn how to shape experience—or explore whole new worlds? Fact and fiction commingle and collide in today’s episode, the third of our special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice their craft. The first four covered character, dialogue, action, and humor; the two newest take on memoir and science fiction/fantasy. Each book also features a foreword by a Grotto writer. Today’s podcast is devoted to a conversation between two of those writers. Julie Lythcott-Haims, who wrote the foreword to Writing Memoir, and Dorothy Hearst, who wrote the foreword to Writing Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Lythcott-Haims is the author of two books, including the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience with racism and her journey toward self-acceptance. Hearst is the author of The Wolf Chronicles trilogy as well as other novels.

Gender wars, pandemics, and, of course, workaday clones: is it the daily news, or our shared future? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, co-producers Susan Gerhard, Daniel Pearce and Beth Winegarner plus special guest Andrew Braithwaite take on dark visions, with four of our favorite dystopian novels under discussion: Meg Elison's The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Naomi Alderman's The Power, and Ling Ma's Severance.

Cornelius Eady has published seven books of poetry, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, which won the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and Brutal Imagination, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in poetry. Running Man, a music-theatre piece Eady coauthored with jazz musician Diedre Murray, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1999 and received Obie awards for best musical score and lead actor in a musical. Eady is also the co-founder of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to the advancement of young African-American poets. In this episode of the GrottoPod, Cornelius talks with Cave Canem fellow and poet George Higgins in a wide-ranging conversation about improvisation, Cornelius’s new music project, the poet Sterling A. Brown, Jim Crow, recording in Elvis’s Memphis studio, Cave Canem, Rooted and Written and a photo shoot by the New York Times of the 32 black male writers of our time. 

This week we go inside Rooted & Written, a new Writers Grotto initiative by and for writers of color. Featured in this one-hour show: live poetry and prose readings from the first Rooted & Written workshop series in September, 2019, as well as discussions and reactions from the event. Rooted and Written's Melissa Pandika leads us on this behind-the-scenes tour, which also features an in-depth conversation between some of the members of the workshop's founding team -- Susan Ito, Aditi Malhotra, and Jesus Sierra -- talking about the inception and making of this community-empowerment program.

As the year races to a close, we revisit the adrenaline rush of five key books: one inspired in part by SCUM Manifesto scribe Valerie Solanas; another powered by a Great Dane; a play-by-play plus backstory on the epic James Baldwin-William F. Buckley debate of yore; a biographer attempting to reveal his secret sauce; and one book to help us detox from it all, on defusing women's stress. Along with an introduction to 16 books published by Grotto writers in 2019, this rangy conversation involving Amelia and Emily Nagoski's Burnout, Sigrid Nunez's The Friend, Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is Upon Us, Andrea Long Chu's Females, and Robert Caro's Working has something for just about everyone.

Michael Frank is the author of the memoir The Mighty Franks, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection that was named one of the best books of 2017 by The Telegraph and The New Statesman and won the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize. In October, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published What Is Missing, his first novel. In this episode of the GrottoPod, Frank chats with author and Grotto instructor Lindsey Crittenden about What Is Missing, which The New Yorker has described as “a penetrating examination of how a life can be defined by contingency and surprise.” The two writers and friends also discuss the roles they have played as early and trusted readers of each other’s work.

Writer Lucy Jane Bledsoe, whose new novel is Running Wild, interviews fellow authors Pam Berkman and Dorothy Hearst. Berkman and Hearst's new children's book is Filigree's Midnight Ride, the first entry in a series about, as Berkman says, "turning points in history, particularly American history, from the point of view of a dog who was there." Filigree's Midnight Ride tells the story of Paul Revere's ride, and of a Pomeranian, Filigree, who assumes that he can't help Revere because of his small size.

In this lively discussion, the writers discuss the differences between writing for children and writing for adults, the challenges and delights of writing historical fiction, and the dynamics of co-authorship and collaboration.