It's our first-ever miniseries! Over seven episodes, Little Oracles: Divinations chronicles an ongoing conversation in poems between poet Sandra Yannone and yours truly. We'll debut poems in progress, discuss the creative process, and dig into what it means to collaborate with and draw inspiration from other thinkers, makers, and creators. 

I'm so excited to share this super-special series with all of you! 

Enjoy, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

IG: @littleoracles

Hard to believe we're closing out Season Two: Play as Practice, but here we are! This season has been such an amazing few months of imagination and experimentation and collaboration, and I'm so grateful to all of you who show up week after week to hang out in our little corner of curiosity and creativity here on the Internet.

Season Three heralds a new miniseries to round out the year (find out more in the episode!), and since it'll be a bit different in terms of format, we're announcing the Asynchronous Book Club themes and picks for November and December today!  

November | Lost & Found: Family Stories

• The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
• Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
• Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra

December | Big Book Energy

• Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Thanks so much for being here, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• Find every episode of the pod in the new Little Oracles Archive
• The Little Oracles origin story | S01:E01 | ABC, Read with Me
• Get some oomph from these eps about starting your next creative project | S02:E15 | The Hot Takes Episode: The Inspiration Fallacy & I'm Your Bucklebury and S02:E18 | Hauntings I: A Micro-Series Debut, My Golden Ghouls, & October ABC Picks

IG: @littleoracles

Remember back in S02:E18, how I said I was haunted by friendship? Well, this episode is the culmination of one of those friendly hauntings, featuring a new short fiction piece by yours truly, with an original soundscape by the unmatched, ultra-marvelous Kaitlin Bruder — performer, graphic artist, producer, and co-creator of the Thin Places Radio podcast. 

Collaborating with Kaitlin was a dream, and I can’t wait for you to hear how she took this short story to a lush, layered, and wholly unearthly level with her artistry.

Happy Halloween, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• Kaitlin's links | Website: www.bruderkaitlin.com; Thin Places Radio: Spotify (and anywhere else you get pods)
• The Thin Places Radio episode + my extreme paean to TPR | S01:E13 | Creative Chat with Thin Places Radio: The Lure of Liminality, Asynchronous Connection, & Top Cryptids
• The Kristen O'Neal episode | S02:E19 | Hauntings II with Kristen O'Neal: The Comfort of Horror

IG: @littleoracles

Welcome to another horror-licious Creative Chat, featuring the inimitable Shannon Joy Rodgers, an Emmy-wining writer, performer, inline skater, director, editor — she kinda does it all. 

After seeing Shannon’s slyly comedic horror short, A Moment of Your Time — which is currently running the festival circuit before its wider release — I couldn’t wait to have her on the podcast to talk all kinds of things, including:

• the humor/horror Venn diagram;
• how her early years as a skater influenced her editing and storytelling;
• the value of diversity in media; 
• the beauty of artistic collaboration (she co-wrote and co-starred in AMOYT with her husband, Ross Bryant);
• and (of course) what horror movies she’s loving right now. 

Shannon is just so much fun to chat with; I’m sure you’ll love her insights, too. Enjoy, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.

Resources

• Shannon's links | Website: shannonjoyrodgers.com; Instagram: @shannonjoyrodgers & @amoyt_film 
• Media discussed | A Nightmare on Elm Street, feat. Freddy Krueger (film franchise, 1984-); Child's Play, feat. Chucky (film, 1988); Maximum Overdrive (film, 1986); Hellraiser (film franchise, 1987-); Candyman (film, 1992); Talk to Me (film, 2023); Scream VI (film, 2023); M3GAN(film, 2022); The Glass Cannon Network (RPG entertainment network, featuring Ross Bryant, aka Shannon's husband & A Moment of Your Time co-writer and co-star)

IG: @littleoracles

This week, I’ve got some haunted Little Reviews for all you ghouls and goblins out there! We’re discussing three books about passing through the veil  — perfect for this ghastly, ghostly time of year: 

• Where the Wild Ladies Areby Aoko Matsuda (trans. Polly Barton)
• This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
• Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

A NOTE ON CONTENT & SPOILERS
I highly encourage you to look into content warnings for every book I discuss before you pick it up; we want reading to be safe for everyone. <3

I refuse to spoil plot, but I do talk about what you can glean from the book jacket, authorial and narrative choices, formal elements, and my overall impressions and takeaways. If you're wary of getting spoiled on *anything,* then maybe bookmark this episode and come back when you've read the books herein.

Take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

IG: @littleoracles

Welcome to a very special horror-forward Creative Chat with the amazing Kristen O'Neal: author of Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses, and the co-creator of the Thin Places Radio podcast (TPR).

After an amazing chat with Kristen and her TPR collaborator Kaitlin Bruder back in Season One, I wanted to invite her back on the podcast to talk more about why she finds comfort in horror, her thoughts on the emerging (and nebulous) genre of "cozy horror," and what's haunting her right now, horror-wise — in fact, the second half of this chat is a veritable what's-what of horror film recommendations. (CW: Mentions of body horror; medical talk; horror films and imagery with moderate detail.)

Kristen is an unmitigated delight; I'm so glad to share our conversation with all of you. Enjoy, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.

Resources

• Kristen's links | Website: kristenonealwrites.com; Instagram: @discountgoblin; Thin Places Radio: Spotify (and anywhere else you get pods)
• Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal
• The Thin Places Radio episode + my extreme paean to TPR | S01:E13 | Creative Chat with Thin Places Radio: The Lure of Liminality, Asynchronous Connection, & Top Cryptids
• Media discussed | The Babadook (film, 2014); His House (film, 2020); The Ring (film, 2002); Saw (film franchise, 2004-); The Ritual (film, 2017); Annihilation (film, 2018); Stephen Graham Jones (author) | The Exorcist (film, 1973); Night of the Living Dead (film, 1968); Possession (film, 1981); Alien (film, 1979); The Birds (film, 1963); Get Out (film, 2017); Nope (film, 2022); Lake Mungo (film, 2008)

IG: @littleoracles

It’s October, and for me, that means chill autumn vibes, maybe decorating with a skeleton or two, and cozying up with some of my favorite haunted reads.

It also means I’m kicking off a micro-series of episodes, dubbed Hauntings: five episodes all about reaching through the veil, or that cozy-haunted feeling of a cherished memory, or the comfort of horror. (More on that in one of our Creative Chats this month!)

In this episode, though, I’m sharing some of my “Golden Ghouls” — that is, the things that haunt me in a good way, and spur my creative practice. Maybe they’ll spark something for you, too.

I’m also extending the series theme to our October Asynchronous Book Club, and I’ve got three books for you — remember, you can read whatever you want, whenever you want, and always be sure to check content warnings before you dive in: 

• Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (one of our original January Immortal Beloveds that we’re meting out across the year)
• Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (a favorite of Instagram’s Weird Women Book Club, @weirdwomenbookclub)
• Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson (one of my annual October reads; I love this collection, the 2017 Penguin edition of which includes a foreword by another of my favorite authors, Ottessa Moshfegh <3)

Enjoy … if you dare! (I’m just kidding. Kind of.) And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• On the meta meaning of this podcast | S1:E21 | Last Words, Words, Words: Season Finale (Or Is It?) + Teasing Season Two
• Writing about writing | Refuse to Be Done (Matt Bell); One Writer's Beginnings (Eudora Welty); Meader, Spiral, Explode (Jane Alison | Bonus Kenyon Review essay on M,S,E by Ruth Joffre); Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)

IG: @littleoracles

Welcome back to another Johnversation, wherein I sit down with graphic artist and game designer (and my partner) John Harper! This season, we're digging into aesthetic and mechanical iteration: John takes us through his process for creating art, playtesting his games, and co-running a food lab in our home kitchen.

I love talking with John about creative practice and process, and I'm sure you'll love hearing his insights (and his tips and tricks for making amazing steak). 

Enjoy, and, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• John's social media | Twitter: @john_harper, Instagram: @onesevendesign, Substack, Bluesky: @johnharper
• The first Johnversation | S01:E17 | Creative Chat with John Harper: Cataloging Inspiration, Remixing Tropes, and Decommodifying Craft
• John's games, including AGON | johnharper.itch.io and Evil Hat Productions
• Cold-sear steak video | America's Test Kitchen on YouTube

IG: @littleoracles

It's Little Reviews time, and today we're talking about dissonance — you know, that feeling of dissolution from the self; from memories; even from reality. I've got three books on the roll today: 

• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (trans. Stephen Snyder)
• The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, our ABC pick for May (including a reference to The Tiger's Wife, which I reviewed in S02:E18 | Books Like a Surrealist Fable (feat. Téa Obreht & Ruth Ozeki))
• Second Place by Rachel Cusk, which I mentioned in S02:E12 | The Critical Conceit: Divine Creativity, Compliment Sandwiches, & September ABC Picks

A NOTE ON CONTENT & SPOILERS
I highly encourage you to look into content warnings for every book I discuss before you pick it up; we want reading to be safe for everyone. <3

I refuse to spoil plot, but I do talk about what you can glean from the book jacket, authorial and narrative choices, formal elements, and my overall impressions and takeaways. If you're wary of getting spoiled on *anything,* then maybe bookmark this episode and come back when you've read the books herein.

Take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

IG: @littleoracles

Pass the popcorn, because it's time for some hot takes!

While these takes might not cause any cultural schisms, they nonetheless represent a couple of convictions I hold about creativity and creative practice, as illustrated by cornhole, solarpunk quilting RPGs, the movie Tombstone, AND crucial plot-points in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s kinda wacky! And bildungsroman-y! And sentimental!

Enjoy, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• S01:E11 |  Hot Takes! Creativity Isn't What You Think & The "Right Time" Lie + April Book Club Picks (referenced in this week's episode)
• American Cornhole League Championships
• Tombstone (film) 
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy (books, films)

IG: @littleoracles