READ TO ME with Becky Karush

The week on READ TO ME I read from UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle. We're here for three reasons. Ready? 1) Glennon, like so many artists, had big plans for the launch of this new book. So we're helping throw the party! 2) Imagining Glennon Doyle at a Gateless Writing salon—with the safety, the wild talent, the admiration for the work, the chocolate, and the Thai head massage—is an absolute mind delight. 3) Glennon gives us polar bears to love, and sensitive souls to venerate with patient, tender, humble cheer.

This week on READ TO ME, we're sitting on the porch with a song, "If You Could Hear Me Now," by The Mammals. Can you hear the bluejays and swallows in the background? They came around because The Mammals sing in the language of the earth. They put their verses together so that you fly on them, like a bird, in dips and swings. They take you to the horizon and spin it around, in harmony. Come learn how.

This week on READ TO ME, we have two pieces, "Esmeralda's Prayer" by Tennessee Williams and Drag Queens and Limousines by Mary Gauthier. It wasn't my genius to put them together. Mary did that, in honor of New Orleans, and artists and outcasts, and queer kids and dreamers, and that which lives on a hard edge, with a heart edge, and makes beautiful things. Enjoy.

This week on READ TO ME, we drop into two pages from THE RAVEN KING by Maggie Stiefvater. Is there a better genre to read right now that young adult fantasy? No. There is not. Earnest, funny, delicate, with enough desire and longing to burn an ocean... and, in this passage, a crow for a pet and Tarot cards, too. It's the writing of terror and hope. Of being tested. Of finding your friends. Of pushing on, because you love too much to let go. Enjoy!

This week on READ TO ME I am reading from AMERICAN SPY by Lauren Wilkinson. The book operates on several different layers of reality at once, and the words are written in a way that so masterfully lets us experience each one. American Spy provides us with a context, a woman spy in the middle of a UN speech, that is fascinating, with jolts of some of the most powerful types of energy. This book took me out of a state of anxiousness of our current politics and decision making, and took me to a place of interest, thrills, and passion. I hope it does the same for you.

This week I read from FRIENDSHIP by Lydia Denworth, a new friend of mine. In the opening pages, Lydia sidles us up to the science behind friendship by completely immersing us in scene. We learn how to locate the reader in the body. We see the beautiful shape of a non-fiction book's introduction. And you get to hear me in bliss, in an NYC hotel room, after the kindest party of my life, at which I exchanged friendship bracelets and ate apricot-studded cheese.

Hey, people listening with kids—There's one spot of tough language at 5:03. This week on READ TO ME, I read NOTES FROM A YARMULKE WEARER'S WIFE, a piece by my friend Dvora Rabino. We see how a brilliant, watchful woman's heart becomes her compass. We see antisemitism, and a man in a yarmulke as the living definition of "indefatigable." We see complexities and contradictions without answers. If you're walking with many tough truths at once, let Dvora's writing light up your path.

On the newest episode of the podcast, I'm reading from BLEACHERS: Fifty-Four Linked Fictions by Joseph Mills. Set at a pair of youth soccer games, the stories dip into the minds of the parents who shuttle their little athletes around. I read from "Interrobang," two pages filled with funny, frank buoyancy, hard-earned heart, and glorious, diverse farting. (Laugh now, but you'll see. And then laugh some more.)

READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we step into the most lyrical crises of faith in the song HOLIEST DAY by Rachel Ries, who performs as Her Crooked Heart, and PSALM 77 by a man named Asaph, maybe. Plus, an exquisite bonus interview with Vermont pastor and READ TO ME friend Matt Miller on what Psalm 77 means to him.