The Process with Jude Brewer

Shayla Lawson reads "Black Lives Matter, Yard Signs Matter," which is an excerpt from her book This Is Major, with an original Storybound remix featuring Maita.

Shayla Lawson is the author of This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls & Being Dope, and three poetry collections. She has written for ESPN, Salon, Guernica, Vulture, and The Cut. She's a MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, and is a 2020 National Book Critics Circle Finalist.

MAITA is a Portland, OR based musician who's music has been described by Consequence of Sound as "anxious heartbreak that rips somewhere between Mitski and Summer Cannibals.

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Soraya Nadia McDonald reads her essay "Wandering In Search of Wakanda", with an original Storybound remix featuring Marco Pavé.

Soraya Nadia McDonald is the culture critic for The Undefeated. She writes about pop culture, fashion, the arts, and literature. She is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on black life.

Marco Pavé has forged a twin identity as a champion of indie Southern rap and as an educator working to stimulate community activism and entrepreneurship through the lens of hip hop music and culture. Pavé has opened for Mobb Deep, Waka Flocka Flame, and Young Dolph and worked with GRAMMY Award-winning producers like Carlos Broady. Pavé's work has been written up in outlets like The Source, The Root, and MTV News. In 2017, he released his debut album Welcome to Grc Lnd, which cast a documentarian lens on Memphis’s grassroots activists who were raising their voices in protest of the city’s endemic racism and poverty. In 2018, he was commissioned to turn the album into Memphis’s first-ever rap opera. 

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Jason Diamond reads an excerpt from "The Sprawl", with an original Storybound remix featuring Xander Marsden.

Jason Diamond is the founder of the website Vol. 1 Brooklyn and has worked as Editor and Writer at outlets such as Flavorwire, Men's Journal, Rolling Stone, and Insidehook.com. He's written for the New York Times, Outside, The Paris Review, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street journal, New Republic, Vice, Tablet, The Awl, Pitchfork, McSweeney's, NPR, and more. His memoir Searching for John Hughes was published in 2016. The Sprawl is his second book.

Xander Marsden is a singer and songwriter living in LA. He is 15 years old.

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Noé Álvarez reads an excerpt from "Spirit Run", with an original Storybound remix featuring composition by Daniel Frankhuizen of Locator.

Noé Álvarez was born to Mexican immigrant parents and raised working-class in Yakima, Washington, which are both topics covered in detail in his book, which – btw – is a debut. And some debut it was, garnering a Starred Review in Publisher's Weekly and an Editor's Choice Selection from the New York Times. This is one of those rare stories that skirt the edge of travel, adventure, outdoors, family memoir, and spiritual. 

Locator is the solo project of cellist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Frankhuizen. By putting the cello in the driver seat melodically, texturally, and emotionally, Locator cuts out a unique path between contemporary classical and electronic minimalism.

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Paul Lisicky reads an excerpt from "Later: My Life at the Edge of the World", with an original Storybound remix featuring Jordan Warmack.

Paul is the author of five books. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, and he teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden. Paul's work has been praised everywhere from the New York Times and Slate to the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. 

Jordan Warmack is a member of Whiston and Warmack.

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Charlie Jane Anders reads an excerpt from "Victories Greater Than Death", with an original Storybound remix featuring Oginalii.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy coming in April 2021, along with the forthcoming short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places.

Oginalii is comprised of Emma Hoeflinger, Ryan Quarles, Simon Knudtson, and Emma Lambiase. Together, they create a sound that can’t be pinned down; sludgy-psyche-rock meets technical talent that surpasses initial expectations.

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Andy Greenberg reads an excerpt from his book "Sandworm", with an original Storybound remix featuring Locator.

Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for WIRED, covering security, privacy, and information freedom. He’s the author of the book Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers. The book and excerpts from it published in WIRED won a Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Cornelius Ryan Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club. 

Locator is the solo project of cellist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Frankhuizen. By putting the cello in the driver seat melodically, texturally, and emotionally, Locator cuts out a unique path between contemporary classical and electronic minimalism.

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Madhuri Vijay reads an excerpt from her novel "The Far Field", featuring French Cassettes.

Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine, and Elle India, among many other publications. The Far Field is her first book, and won the second JCB Prize for Literature, India’s most prestigious literary award. 

French Cassettes are a harmony driven power pop rock quartet out of the Bay Area. Their new album, Rolodex, is just out and can be found at fullfrenchy.com. This episode samples their song, Utah.

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Junot Díaz reads his short story "Aurora", featuring Y La Bamba.

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the cofounder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop.

Y La Bamba has been many things, but at the heart of it is singer-songwriter Luz Elena Mendoza’s inquisitive sense of self. Their fifth record, Mujeres, carries on the Portland-based band’s affinity for spiritual contemplation, but goes a step further in telling a story with a full emotional spectrum. Coming off Ojos Del Sol, one of NPR’s Top 50 Albums of 2016, Mujeres exhibits the scope of Mendoza’s artistic voice like never before. “Soy como soy,” Mendoza says, and that declaration is the bold— even political— statement that positions Mujeres to be Y La Bamba’s most unbridled offering yet.

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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 3 will begin publishing next Tuesday, December 8th.

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