On this episode, fiction writer Melissa Mogollon stops by the studio to talk about her debut novel Oyé, her time as a graduate student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and what she’s working on now. For her piece from the past, Mel shares a list she wrote during her time as a graduate student at the Workshop, one that she hoped would help her see ways to improve (even though we thought she was perfect!). We discuss her journey from DC insider to boarding-school (bored-in-school) teacher with pit stops in Iowa along the way.

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Melissa Mogollon holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a BA from the George Washington University. Originally from Colombia and raised in Florida, she now teaches at a boarding school in Rhode Island, where she lives with her partner and dog. Oye is her first novel.

Welcome to Sad Me of the Past, where we invite an established writer to revisit a piece they wrote in their tender years.

On this episode, we were joined by Joe Fassler, author and journalist, while he was in town for his reading at Prairie Lights! We talk about his new novel The Sky Was Ours, and the 10 year process of writing it, which began with a single short story at Iowa. Joe shares a piece of writing from his late teens, written while he was in the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. We discuss his journey from apathetic high school student to a highly recognized journalist and author, as well his tips, tricks and inspiration for aspiring writers everywhere. 

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Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado. He is an MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his fiction has appeared in The Boston Review and Electric Literature. In 2013, Fassler started The Atlantic's “By Heart” series, in which he interviewed authors—including Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Carmen Maria Machado, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more—about the literature that shaped their lives and work. That led to editing Light the Dark, a book-length collection that included favorites from “By Heart” alongside new contributions. Fassler's nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Longreads, and The Best American Food Writing. Fassler currently teaches writing at Vermont's Sterling College. The Sky Was Ours is his first novel.

We had Nam Le on the podcast, joining us before his reading at Prairie Lights! We talk about early writing influences, the importance of an extraordinary writing teacher, and the wilds of writing while parenting. Nam takes us on his writer's journey -- from a law firm in Australia to the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City. Join us for this fantastic talk!

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Nam Le's first book, The Boat, received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature, the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year, the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, a U.S. National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Fiction Selection, as well as other awards, fellowships and shortlistings. The Boat was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and Editor's Choice, the #1 fiction book of 2008 by The Oregonian, the best debut of 2008 by New York Magazine, and a book of the year by numerous venues around the world including The Guardian, The Independent, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The National Post, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Amazon and Publishers Weekly. The Boat has been translated into fourteen languages and its stories widely anthologised, adapted and taught.

For this episode we have Dan Beachy-Quick in the studio! Dan is in Iowa City as a guest lecturer for the Ancient Exchanges speaker series. His visit includes a reading at Prairie Lights Bookstore and a talk titled, "The “All-Bell Cosmos” and the “Fundamental Eros”: Poems that Think, Thoughts that Sing, and the Ongoing Practice of Ancient Poetics."

Dan (we call him "DBQ") is basically a celebrity around here. He has been monumental in many of our journeys as writers -- Lauren was an undergrad in the first poetry class he ever taught as a grad student at the Workshop -- and his work has been a part of our writing lives for so long. WE LOVE HIM!

Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has been long-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry, and supported by the Monfort, Lannan, and Guggenheim Foundations. He teaches at Colorado State University, where he is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar.

His three volumes of translations from ancient Greek are Stone Garland: Six Poets from the Greek Lyric Tradition, The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy, and Wind—Mountain—Oak: The Poems of Sappho. His poetry collections include North True South Bright (2003); Spell (2004); Mulberry (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry; This Nest, Swift Passerine (2009); Circle's Apprentice (2011); Of Silence and Song (2017); and Variations on Dawn and Dusk (2019). He is also the author of A Whaler's Dictionary (2008).

This Ancient Exchanges speaker series talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Translation Program, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Department of English, and the Magid Center for Writing.

Today we have Carmen Maria Machado with us to talk about her first forays into writing, share a piece of her early work and discuss her inspirations and motivations. We dig deep into the timeline of her career, looking at the childhood obsessions that drove her work, the online forums and journal spaces that bouyed her early writing, and her future projects!

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Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."

Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper's Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fictionand Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Find photos of our time in the studio, links to references, and more on on the Writing University website.

We have Rachel Yoder here to discuss her novel Nightbitch. We talk with her about her first attempts at writing in elementary school, her time in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and her wild experience adapting Nightbitch to a soon-to-be-released feature film starring Amy Adams.

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Find photos of the juvenalia that Rachel brought to the studio and more on on the Writing University website.

We have two guests with us today, Dave Kajganich and Vinnie Wilhelm, here to share some of their early, sophomoric writing and talk process, progress and new projects. In part two of today's podcast, novelist and screenwriter Vinnie Wilhelm shares a section from a novel he wrote in high school, entitled "SPAM."

Vinnie Wilhelm graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2004. He has published a collection of short stories, In the Absence of Predators, and currently lives in Los Angeles, where he has written for a bunch of TV shows, including Manhattan, The Terror, Castle Rock and Penny Dreadful.

Find images and media from the podcast here:

Find photos of the covers of the laminated "books" in this podcast and more on on the Writing University website.

We have two guests with us today, Dave Kajganich and Vinnie Wilhelm, here to share some of their early, sophomoric writing and talk process, progress and new projects. In part one of today's podcast, Dave shares a short story that he wrote in high school entitled "Martin Cowell Boom Boom Dead." Part Two will follow.

Dave Kajganich grew up in rural Ohio and studied fiction writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He now lives in Los Angeles and writes and produces for film and television, including A BIGGER SPLASH, SUSPIRIA, THE TERROR, and BONES AND ALL.

Find images and media from the podcast here:

Find photos of the covers of the laminated "books" in this podcast and more on on the Writing University website.