PWN's Debut Review

For the final episode of Season Five, Courtney Harler speaks with two Courtneys, Courtney Zoffness and Courtney Maum. Maum is, of course, a returning guest, and Zoffness is new to the podcast.

Courtney Zoffness is the author of the debut memoir in essays called Spilt Milk, out in 2021 from McSweeney’s. As a fiction writer, Zoffness was the second-ever woman to win the Sunday Times Short Story Award in 2018, the world’s richest prize for a single short story. She’s taught for many institutions and currently directs the creative writing program at Drew University.

Courtney Maum is the author of several novels, and most recently the memoir called The Year of the Horses, out in 2022 from Tin House. She’s also helped countless writers navigate the publication process with her craft guide, Before and After the Book Deal. Courtney Maum is a writing coach and executive director of the nonprofit learning collaborative called The Cabins.

Today we talk about the humble beginnings and early invisible work of writers, vulnerability, publication and promotion in the digital age, distractibility, reading recommendations, and more.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

Today Courtney speaks with two talented memoirists, Amy Long and Emma Bolden.

Amy Long is the author of the debut memoir, Codependence, winner of the 2018 Essay Collection Competition with the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Amy holds an MFA from Virginia Tech and an MA from the University of Florida. She’s also the creative genius behind Taylor Swift as Books, the very popular Instagram account.

Emma Bolden is the author of several chapbooks and collections of poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Her debut memoir, Tiger in a Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2022.

We discuss advocacy and agency in women’s health, social media in service to the literary community, narrative structure and voice in memoir, and the joy found in artistic anticipation.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve invited back to the podcast one of our favorite poets, Mihaela Moscaliuc. Anna Qu, a prose writer, also joins the conversation.

Anna Qu is the author of the critically acclaimed Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and teaches writing, both fiction and nonfiction, for several graduate programs. She’s currently serving as a Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of three collections of poetry: Cemetery Ink, Immigrant Model, and Father Dirt. Currently a program director and associate professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey, she’s also a brilliant editor and translator. The two “Deep Cut” poems Mihaela shares with us in this episode can be found now in the current issue of the Gettysburg Review.

Today we talk about navigating multiple languages and cultures, negotiating familial traditions and expectations, as well as overcoming shame and guilt as immigrant writers.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

Today, for Episode Five of Season Five, I’m talking with Janice Obuchowski and William Pei Shih. Janice and William first met as scholars at the 2017 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and now continue to admire and support one another’s work.

Janice Obuchowski is the author of The Woods, a short story collection that won the prestigious John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2022. More stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Electric Literature, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

William Pei Shih’s short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories 2020, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Asian American Literary Review, The Masters Review, Carve Magazine, and many others. William is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in Fiction. He lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.

Today’s topics include getting MAs and MFAs, melding critical analysis and creative writing, balancing interiority and exteriority, drafting and revising, swerving between literary genres, crafting sentences and structures, as well as exploring rural and urban landscapes in short fiction.

We are taking a short spring break. We'll be back Tuesday, April 11, with Episode 6.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

Krystal A. Sital and Peter Mountford join me for Episode Four of Season Five.

Krystal A. Sital is the author of the memoir Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad, a finalist for the PEN America Emerging Writers Award. Her essays have been anthologized in A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home as well as Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences in the Trump Era. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, ELLE, The Huffington Post, Today’s Parent, Salon, Catapult, LitHub, and elsewhere. Krystal currently teaches nonfiction writing.

Peter Mountford is the author of two novels: A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism, which won the 2012 Washington State Book Award in Fiction, and The Dismal Science, which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Southern Review, The Atlantic, The Sun, Granta, The Missouri Review, and Writer’s Digest. Peter is also a writing coach and developmental editor.

In this episode, we discuss writing a collaborative, code-switching memoir; learning, through failure, ways to capture and hold the reader’s attention; and using voice, language, point of view, and setting to craft vivid, engaging, authentic prose on the page.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

For Episode Three of Season Five, Courtney talks to Lisa Lee Herrick and Lee Herrick. Yes, to be clear, they are married.

Lisa Lee Herrick is an award-winning Hmong-American writer, illustrator, and producer. A 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in Creative Nonfiction as well as a 2021 Finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Lisa is currently at work on her debut memoir.

Lee Herrick is a Korean-American poet and professor. He is the author of three books of poetry: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. Lee Herrick was appointed as California Poet Laureate on November 18, 2022.

Today we discuss language and power, immigration and adoption, and curiosity and empathy.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

For Episode Two of Season Five, Ray Brunt joins Courtney once more to talk with Pablo Cartaya.

Pablo is the award-winning author of several books for children and young adults, as well as a screenwriter, speaker, and educator. His debut novel, The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, published in 2017. His latest novel, The Last Beekeeper, a climate dystopia, published in July of 2022.

Today’s topics include authenticity, voice, creative process, community, family, culture, identity, pandemic parenting, environmental responsibility, unions, and the literary adoration of abuelas.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

We launch Season Five with two wonderful writers, Rebecca Makkai and Meghan Lamb.

Rebecca is the author of four novels and a collection of short stories. Her novel The Great Believers was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her latest novel, I Have Some Questions for You, publishes today  from Penguin Random House.

Meghan has authored several books, as well. Her debut novel, Failure to Thrive, launched in 2021, and her latest novel, Coward, published in September 2022 from Spuyten Duyvil. Meghan is also the lead singer of an eighties cinema-inspired band called Kill Scenes.

In this first episode of the new season, we talk about how to be a “real writer,” how to pick the perfect title for your book, how to find strange jobs in strange towns, and how to break the rules.

Content Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing material, including graphic descriptions of death.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

For Giving Tuesday, we chat with Nathalia Garcia, a first-generation Brazilian-American and brilliant emerging poet. In recent years, Nathalia has been both a dedicated student and an assistant instructor at Project Write Now. Jennifer Chauhan returns as guest cohost to recall her memories of first meeting Nathalia.

For this final episode of Season Four, Nathalia also shares her love of words, water, nature, and people watching. We also explore the ideas of “haunted prose” and “alive poems." Finally, Nathalia introduces us to electro swing.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.

We have three guests today, an editor and two contributors of When There Are Nine, a poetry anthology in tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Rebecca Evans, one of the anthology’s editors, is a Jewish poet, memoirist, radio show cohost, writing instructor, war veteran, and mother. Carla Schick is a Queer activist for liberation and education as well as a lover of jazz and language. Harrison Solow is an award-winning author, university lecturer, Hollywood adviser, and former Franciscan nun. Both Schick and Solow contributed poems to the anthology. 

We’re so thrilled to speak to this diverse and incredibly accomplished group of women today on Episode Seven of Season Four. All three share and discuss poetry from the anthology. We also talk about the ongoing struggle for equal rights, using words to paint our pictures, living and creating in the midst of terrible grief, and collecting poems both timely and timeless.

PWN's Debut Review is hosted by Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio. Learn more at projectwritenow.org.