READ TO ME with Becky Karush

READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we celebrate World Read Aloud Day with SHE CAME TO SLAY: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. We get to love a middle-grade nonfiction book with driving action, pairs of nouns that start fires, scenes of historical violence that do not fetishize or dismiss Black pain, and Black history right at the heart of American history.

READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we read from PRESQUE TRÈS BIEN, a memoir cookbook. We get to love how Barbara Michelson writes stories as she cooks food — with elegance and slyness, balancing the clarity of instruction with the complexity of flavors (and the vast and funny truth of family).

READ TO ME is the podcast to listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. We begin Season 2 with the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address — also known as the "Words That Come Before All Else."

READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, co-host Christopher and I read and love up a passage from DOUBLE FUDGE by Judy Blume. It's a wild, parrot poop-filled story, with much to love.

READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, co-host Christopher and I read and love up a passage from SUPERFUDGE by Judy Blume. We recorded this episode twice. Podcast production with an 8-year-old son and a 44-year-old mama moves in gyroscopic lines. But the passage is really funny. (Baby in the closet!)

READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, young Chris and I come to you from a hotel room in Downeast Maine. We're just a few miles from where Judy Blume wrote FUDGE-A-MANIA! Come listen to Peter Hatcher tell us about a sailing trip, Jimmy Fargo's sardine-and-onion breath, and what you do when someone goes overboard. We special co-host Grampy Carl.

READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we begin the HOLIDAY FUDGE SERIES! With my co-host and son, Gus, age 8, we are reading from four Judy Blume books. Today we start with TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING. Join Gus and me in loving this book—and then try out a recipe for strawberry fudge. We love each other and we have a lot of great books. We hope you do too!

READ TO ME is the podcast where we listen for what we love, inspired by the Gateless Writing method. In this episode, we read from THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler. It's the terrifying passage that isn't only heartache. We learn how a character's observations show us their heart and smarts. We see how Butler puts degradation and humanity in the same sentence. We see how awful things can be, and are right now, but also how something better could be.

In this episode, we read from THE ARCHER by Taylor Swift and a short piece by Cass McCrory. We walk the tension wires connecting and separating desire and surrender and fear. We see selves on the edge of transformation, and laughing, and crying, and jumping in, and fighting back, and giving in. We see a pop song draw filaments of image and action that burn to illuminate love.

In this episode, we see how the short story is like both a bar band at a distance and a whale call heard above the water. We read from the dark heart of "Mabel, Mabel," from THEY COULD LIVE WITH THEMSELVES, linked stories by Jodi Paloni.