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 ...

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 reci...

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, Nev...

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, ...

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 Pa...

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:...

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,...

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 Sept...

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." F...

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 Sc...