The Process with Jude Brewer

Ruth Wariner reads an excerpt from "The Sound of Gravel," backed by an original Storybound remix with Shook Twins, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Ruth Wariner is an internationally renowned speaker and author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, "The Sound of Gravel". At the age of fifteen, Ruth escaped Colonia LeBaron, the polygamist Mormon colony where she grew up, and moved to California. She raised her three youngest sisters in California and Oregon. After earning her GED, she put herself through college and graduate school, eventually becoming a high school Spanish teacher. She remains close to her siblings and is happily married. "The Sound of Gravel" is her first book.

Shook Twins is a Portland-based folk group featuring twins Katelyn and Laurie Shook. Mixing traditional folk instruments like mandolin and banjo with looping machines and beatboxing, Shook Twins pays homage to folk's roots, while creating an entirely new sound.

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Scott Nadelson reads his short story "Liberté," backed by an original Storybound remix with Mount Comfort, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently "Aftermath," a memoir, "The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress," and a novel, "Between You and Me." His stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and have been cited as notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Winner of the Oregon Book Award, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, he teaches at Willamette University and lives in Salem, Oregon.

Mount Comfort is a Fayetteville, Arkansas based indie band. Melding relaxed beats, guitars, and synths, Mount Comfort serves up chilled slow-burners that will keep you daydreaming. Their latest release, Anymore, came out in 2021.

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Joseph Fink and Meg Bashwiner read excerpts from "The First Ten Years," backed by an original Storybound remix with Fake Shark, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Joseph Fink is the Creator of the "Welcome to Night Vale" and "Alice Isn't Dead" podcasts, and the New York Times bestselling author of "Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours!" and "The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home" (all written with Jeffrey Cranor), as well as "Alice Isn't Dead." He is also the author of the middle-grade novel, "The Halloween Moon."

Meg Bashwiner is a writer, performer, emcee, and producer who plays the roles of "Deb" and "Proverb Lady" on the hit podcast, "Welcome to Night Vale." She is the emcee of the touring show, "Welcome to Night Vale Live," as well as a member of the New York Neo-Futurists, and has toured productions of their shows, "The Infinite Wrench" and "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is currently the tour manager for the "Welcome to Night Vale" and "Criminal" podcasts, and she co-hosts and produces the podcast "Good Morning Night Vale."

Fake Shark is the only indie rock band with a hype man. Their music has been featured in "Tiny Pretty Things," "The Order," "MTV Catfish," "Degrassi," and the major motion picture "Rabid."

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Tamara Winfrey-Harris reads an excerpt from "Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power," backed by an original Storybound remix with Au Revoir Simone, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Tamara Winfrey-Harris is a writer who specializes in the ever-evolving space where current events, politics, and pop culture intersect with race and gender. She has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on NPR's "Weekend Edition" and Janet Mock's "So Popular" on MSNBC.com. Tamara's first book, "The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America," was published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers in 2015 and called "a myth-busting portrait of Black women in America" by The Washington Post. The book won the Phillis Wheatley Award, IndieFab Award, Independent Publishers Living Now Award, and the IPPY Award. Her sophomore effort, "Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters On Stepping Into Your Power," was released in March 2021.

Au Revoir Simone is a Brooklyn-based, Casio-centric indie pop outfit that puts the keyboard front and center. They have released four albums, and have been featured in Grey's Anatomy, Vampire Academy, and David Lynch's Twin Peaks

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Omar El Akkad reads excerpts from "American War" and "What Strange Paradise," backed by an original Storybound remix, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.

His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world.

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Nichole Perkins reads an excerpt from "Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be," backed by an original Storybound remix with Dustin O'Halloran, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Nichole Perkins is a writer from Nashville, Tennessee, currently based in Brooklyn. Nichole is a 2017 Audre Lorde Fellow at the inaugural Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat and a 2017 BuzzFeed Emerging Writers Fellow. She is also a 2016 Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow for poetry. She has participated in the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Her memoir "Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be" will be coming soon from Grand Central Publishing. It will cover black womanhood and sexuality, online messageboard communities, and the effects of pop culture on female desire. She currently hosts "This Is Good For You," a podcast about finding pleasure in life.

Dustin O'Halloran is a pianist and composer, as well as a member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen with Adam Wiltzie. O'Halloran has scored films for Sofia Coppola and Drake Doremus. He won an Emmy in 2015 for his work on Amazon's "Transparent" and was nominated for an Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Critics Choice Award for his score to "Lion," written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka)

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Matt Haig reads an excerpt from "The Midnight Library," backed by an original Storybound remix with Robert Wynia, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Matt Haig is an author for children and adults. His memoir "Reasons to Stay Alive" was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children’s book "A Boy Called Christmas" was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It is being made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. His novels for adults include "How To Stop Time," "The Radleys," "The Humans," and the New York Times bestseller "The Midnight Library." He has sold over three million books worldwide.

Robert Wynia is a founding member of the Portland band Floater. Known for their progressive concept albums, Floater is famous for incorporating stylized storytelling into their work. Wynia also releases music under his own name, and released his book "Night Walks" with its own accompanying soundtrack in 2020.

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Morgan Jerkins reads an excerpt from her book "Caul Baby," backed by an original Storybound remix with French Cassettes, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Born and raised in Southern New Jersey, and now residing in Harlem, New York, Morgan Jerkins is the New York Times Bestselling author of "This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America" and "Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots." She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches regularly at Columbia University. Her third book "Caul Baby" was one of 2021's most anticipated books by TIME, Buzzfeed, and Oprah Magazine.

French Cassettes is a harmony-driven power-pop group from San Francisco. The quartet's new LP, Rolodex, is hook-filled and rooted in pop, layered with intricate vocal harmonies and counter-harmonies, inventive percussion, and every shade of clean and fuzzy guitars stacked up like an orchestra. These uncommonly majestic, esoteric pop forms serve as the perfect delivery service for their playful and verbose lyrics.

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Chuck Klosterman reads an excerpt from "Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction," backed by an original Storybound remix with Portico Quartet, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

Chuck Klosterman is an author and essayist. He's written eight books of nonfiction, including "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," and two novels ("Downtown Owl" and "The Invisible Man"). He has written for publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, was the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. "Raised in Captivity" is his newest work of "Fictional Nonfiction."

Portico Quartet has created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of six studio albums since 2007. Their debut album "Knee-Deep in the North Sea" was nominated for a Mercury Prize and was Time Out's Jazz, Folk, and World album of the year 2007. Their newest album "Terrain" is out now.

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A brand new season, bigger than ever.

Storybound is a radio theater program designed for the podcast age. Hosted by Jude Brewer and with original music composed for each episode, the podcast features the voices of today’s top literary icons reading their essays, poems, and fiction.

Season 4 begins publishing next Tuesday, June 8th.

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