Brian Broome, author of the debut memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods, discusses growing up in rural Ohio, how he was discovered by a literary agent at a storytelling event, how he navigates writing about family, how he approaches structure and revision, and the story in his memoir that made Laura cringe the hardest (that’s a compliment). Broome also answers questions from Page Count listeners surrounding challenges faced by working-class writers and the recent Goodreads review bombing controversy.

Brian Broome is the author of Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books, 2021), which won the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, Publisher Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction, and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir/Biography. He is K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Broome has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He also won a VANN Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for journalism in 2019. Broome lives in Pittsburgh.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library and hosted by Laura Maylene Walter. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

In honor of Toni Morrison Day on February 18, Page Count took a field trip to Lorain Public Library to tour the Toni Morrison Reading Room. Cheri Campbell, Local History and Archives Librarian, guides listeners through the room while providing history, lore, and anecdotes about Morrison’s life and storied literary career. From Morrison’s time growing up in Lorain (including how she got hired, fired, and hired once more at Lorain Public Library), to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature and beyond, this episode is a must for Morrison fans.

To see some of the images mentioned in this episode—including Toni Morrison’s high school yearbook photo, pictures from her appearance at the reading room dedication, and more—read our accompanying blog post, “Inside the Toni Morrison Reading Room.”

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

We’re honored to share this episode of Wild Precious Life, a Cleveland-based podcast hosted by Annmarie Kelly, to remember the life and work of Echo Brown. Brown was the celebrated author of BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED, THE CHOSEN ONE, and the one-woman play, BLACK VIRGINS ARE NOT FOR HIPSTERS. She died in 2023, at the age of thirty-nine, after a long illness. In this episode, which originally aired in 2022, she and Annmarie Kelly discuss health, writing, creativity, and the art of discovering—and creating—magic in life as well as on the page.

Listen and subscribe to Wild Precious Life and follow Annmarie Kelly.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Author and Writer’s Digest editor-at-large Jessica Strawser answers publishing questions from Page Count listeners, defines “book club fiction,” shares insights gleaned from her career as a six-time novelist, and discusses her latest novel, THE LAST CARETAKER.

Strawser is the author of the book club favorites ALMOST MISSED YOU, NOT THAT I COULD TELL, FORGET YOU KNOW ME, A MILLION REASONS WHY, and THE NEXT THING YOU KNOW. Her sixth novel, the instant USA Today bestseller THE LAST CARETAKER, surrounds a resident caretaker on a nature reserve who discovers her new home hides a safe house aiding domestic violence victims. In addition to her career as a novelist, Strawser is the editor-at-large and columnist at Writer’s Digest, where she served as editorial director for nearly a decade. 

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

In a live episode recorded at the Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival, Ross Gay and Alison Stine discuss joy, trash, the art of writing quickly and without pressure, novel drafting, revision, writerly obsessions, creating art in a burning world, and, of course, why we must bring each other French fries. 

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He is also the author of three collections of essays: The Book of Delights,  Inciting Joy, and, most recently, The Book of (More) Delights. Photo credit: Natasha Komoda.

Alison Stine is the author of the novel Trashlands, which was longlisted for the 2022 Reading the West Book Award, a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award, and longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her first novel, Road Out of Winter, won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Her next novel, Dust, is forthcoming in 2024. She is also the author of three poetry collections and a novella.

This conversation was recorded before a live audience at Youngstown State University on October 21, 2023 at the Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

We’re excited to share this excellent interview about the art of running a reading series from Index for Continuance, which is produced by the CSU Poetry Center and hosted by Hilary Plum and Zach Peckham. In this conversation, Hilary Plum speaks with novelist Sarah Rose Etter about reading series and their place in the literary landscape. From practical tips surrounding running a series—gleaned from Etter’s time hosting TireFire in Philadelphia—to advice for writers stepping up to the microphone to give readings of their own, this episode offers a crash course in literary community, performance, and citizenship.

Index for Continuance is a podcast focusing on small press publishing, politics, and practice by engaging editors, writers, publishers, critics, booksellers, and organizers involved in independent, small press, DIY, and community literary work in conversation. Index for Continuance aims to build an archive of grassroots knowledge that can serve the future of publishing. Learn more about the CSU Poetry Center, which produces Index for Continuance.

Sarah Rose Etter the author of the novels Ripe (Scribner, 2023), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Time Must-Read Book of 2023, and The Book of X (Two Dollar Radio, 2019), winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award. Her short fiction collection, Tongue Party, was selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the 2011 Caketrain Award.

On a related  note, listen to Unicorn-Level Books with Two Dollar Radio, Page Count’s interview with Two Dollar Radio editors Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf.

Page Count returns with a new episode on January 2: the recording of an in-person conversation with Ross Gay and Alison Stine at the Youngstown Fall Literary Festival.

Searching for the perfect books to fill out your holiday shopping list? We’ve got you covered with recommendations from the owners of two independent bookstores in Ohio. Suzanne DeGaetano of Mac’s Backs in Cleveland and Greg Kornbluh of Downbound Books in Cincinnati suggest books to gift readers of all ages and genres, from picture books to graphic novels, poetry, works of nonfiction, cerebral literary novels, and beyond.

We encourage listeners to visit (or order online from) Mac’s Backs, Downbound Books, and other independent bookstores this holiday season.

Recommendations from Mac’s Backs:

• The Voice in the Hollow by Will Hillenbrand

Recommendations from Downbound Books:

• Free Throws, Friendship, and Other Things We Fouled Up by Jenn Bishop

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode celebrates youth writing, art, editing, and publication. Laura is joined by Alex Ashbrook, a teaching artist with the nonprofit Lake Erie Ink, along with Anna Lucia and Alba Cristina Del Rio Ochoa, two members of the Teen Book Project editorial board. Anna and Alba Cristina discuss their vision for the Teen Book Project, how youth across Northeast Ohio can submit to the anthology or get involved, skills they’re gaining from their work with the editorial board, and what they each love most about writing and art.

Lake Erie Ink will accept submissions from youth in Northeast Ohio for the Some Thing To Say anthology until December 31, 2023. Learn more about the Teen Book Project and how to submit at the Lake Erie Ink website, and follow The Teen Book Project on Instagram.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

In this special live episode, Laura Maylene Walter interviews Elissa Washuta, author of the essay collection WHITE MAGIC. Their wide-ranging conversation covers the craft of essay writing, research and memory mining for nonfiction writers, revision, rejection, unique writing residencies, cultural appropriation, witchcraft, and more. Washuta also offers on-the-spot literary tarot readings to Laura and five audience members.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the author of White Magic, Starvation Mode, and My Body Is a Book of Rules. With Theresa Warburton, she co-edited the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Elissa is an associate professor at The Ohio State University, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

This episode was recorded before a live audience on September 23, 2023, at Cleveland Public Library as part of Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator writing conference.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Author Katharine Beutner takes a trip down memory lane with Laura to discuss their shared experience as editors of their high school literary magazine (!) before turning to a discussion of craft and crime. Beutner discusses the inspiration for her new novel, KILLINGLY; the art of historical fiction; writing novels vs. poetry; research; revision; women’s colleges in the late 1800s; evolving attitudes surrounding queerness at the turn of the twentieth century; the ethics of fictionalizing an actual missing-person case; cat fanciers of yore; and more.

Killingly, a New England Gothic novel surrounding the aftermath of a student’s disappearance from Mt. Holyoke College in 1897, was published by Soho Press in June 2023. Beutner is also the author of Alcestis, a queer retelling of the Greek myth, originally published in 2010 and re-released by Soho Press in September 2023. This interview was conducted in May 2023.

To see images of Whispering Minds, the high school literary magazine discussed in this episode, follow Ohio Center for the Book’s new Instagram account! Finally, for the chance to have your writing or publishing inquiry answered by Laura and a guest on a future episode, submit your questions via this online form.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.