The Inner Loop Radio: A Creative Writing Podcast

What can memory tell us about the space between fiction and nonfiction? First released in September 2020, author Timothy Denevi shows us how to turn memory into story and to shift our focus from current events to writing in this Inspiration Takeover, a series of mini-episodes with different writers who offer us a little dose of inspiration.

Timothy Denevi is the author of Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism (PublicAffairs, 2018) and Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (Simon & Schuster, 2014). His essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Salon, The Normal School, and Literary Hub. He received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and he's been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Tim is an assistant professor at George Mason University.

What if you could have quality and quantity in your writing? Or maybe just feel like you can produce freely? Mecca Jamilah Sullivan gives her secret to prolificacy with advice on writing routines, submissions and rejections, and self-care. We get to hear from her novel, Big Girl, now out in paperback, and each of us prepares an application to the generous Society for Cloud Inquiry and Enthusiasm.

Rachel catches up with short story writer, Rion Amilcar Scott, and they talk about visiting historical plantations, squeezing writing between kids and work, and the intrigue of the Titan submersible, all on this month’s episode of Just Checking In, a series of informal chats with some of our favorite writers.

There’s nothing you know better than your own life, right? So why research a memoir? Rachel and Courtney discuss how research can enrich personal stories with John Kropf, author of Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the Legacy of a Crayon Company from University of Akron Press and The Inner Loop Author’s Corner June spotlight. Plus, a color-coded free-association game!

You want to write, but can’t seem to get started. What if what’s stopping you is you? Poet Joshua Weiner talks about how to get out of your own way when you’re stuck. He shows us what can result when you take critical reading to the next level in this Inspiration Takeover, a series of mini-episodes with different writers who offer us a little dose of inspiration.

Joshua Weiner is the author of three books of poems, a book of prose about the refugee crisis in Europe, and his translation of Nelly Sachs's Flight & Metamorphosis is forthcoming. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Larry Levis Award from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. He has served residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and spent a year in Berlin on an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. He is the poetry editor of Tikkun magazine and is professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The odds of getting a piece published in a major literary publication from the slush pile is less than 1%. So how do you beat the literary odds? Denne Michele Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature and author of the forthcoming novel, When The Harvest Comes, gives us a peek behind the publishing curtain and tells us her journey to a major book deal with Random House. Plus, some pretty shocking numbers are revealed in a round of publishing trivia!

Rachel catches up with poet and literary activist, E. Ethelbert Miller, and they talk about going to the Grammys, collaborations, life after COVID, and the depressing uniformity of critically-acclaimed literature, all on this month’s episode of Just Checking In, a series of informal chats with some of our favorite writers.

Rachel and Courtney explore the lure and inspiration of mythology and surrealism with Poet Lora Robinson through her poetry collection, An Essential Melancholy, from Akinoga Press and The Inner Loop Author’s Corner May spotlight. Then, Rachel puts Lora and Courtney’s art education to the test with a surrealism matching game!

What if the best poems come when you’re not looking for them? What can a writer do when it’s time to get to work? Poet David Keplinger offers a writing prompt that will trick your mind into that generative kind of spontaneity. We also hear an intimate moment with his mother and a forbidden chair in this Inspiration Takeover, a series of mini-episodes with different writers who offer us a little dose of inspiration.

David Keplinger is the author of Ice (forthcoming, Milkweed Editions, 2023) and seven other collections of poetry, including The Most Natural Thing, The Prayers of Others, The Clearing, The Rose Inside and Another City, winner of the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry magazine, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and American Poetry Review, and has been translated into several languages and included in anthologies in several countries. He has translated Jan Wagner’s The Art of Topiary and Carsten René Nielsen’s World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors and House Inspections. Keplinger has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as support from the Soros Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the D.C. Council on Arts and Humanities, and the Danish Council on the Arts. He has also received the T.S. Eliot Award, the Colorado Book Award, the Cavafy Prize from Poetry International and the Erksine Poetry Prize from Smartish Place. Keplinger teaches in American University's MFA program in Washington, DC.

Rachel and Courtney are back with a new season and a new lease on life… or writing… or whatever… Courtney dishes about her dissertation. Rachel talks about her voracious writing fit at VCCA. We hear a poem from Chet’la Sebree, and some inspiration insight from Lucian Mattison, Cija Jefferson, Melissa Scholes Young, and E. Ethelbert Miller. Plus, Rachel quizzes Courtney on just how well she knows her own nonprofit and the lit scene in DC. Hint: she may have gotten her PhD, but she still sucks at trivia!