For the Quarantine Quill's thirtieth episode, we're thrilled to welcome Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate and scriptwriter Steph Karp from LA to talk about smells—arguably the most powerful of all the senses.

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org.

"I saw it with my own eyes." Our sight is our most trustworthy sense, and we tend to forget just how fallible it can be. With a look at the famous Invisible Gorilla Test, and Mark Doty's book The Art of Description, we explore how to bring visual descriptions to life by incorporating uncertainty.

Mentioned in this episode: Mark Doty, The Art of Description (2010), Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001).

Featured guest: Emily Monaco from Paris, France.

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org.

The English language has several hundred words to describe texture and the skin is the largest organ in the human body. Social distancing has, among other things, drastically curbed opportunities for touching—each other and the world outside our home. This episode, the third in a five-part series on the senses, looks at Italian Futurist poet F.T. Marinetti's brief tactile spell and how to educate our sense of touch.

Mentioned in this episode: F.T. Martinetti, "Tacitilism Manifesto" (1921).

Featured guest: Gauhar Mukaman from Almaty, Kazakhstan

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org.

A pair of gloves can sound like birds. A heavy-duty stapler like gunshots. An iced romaine lettuce like a skull breaking in. Discover the hidden world of Foley artists, why writing about music is notoriously difficult and how to hack the linear by drawing up your own sound map.

Mentioned in this episode: Jack Foley, quoted on Filmsound.org; E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910), Keri Smith, How to be an Explorer of the World (2008).

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org.

Have we lost touch with the physical in our daily lives? In the context of a virus that reputedly dampens our sense of taste and smell, and lockdown measures that have drastically reduced the scope of our activities, this is a crucial question, especially for writers. In this first episode in a four-part series on the senses, we hone in on our taste buds.

Mentioned in this episode: Lydia Davis, "Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits" in Essays: One (2019); Marcel Proust, tr. by Lydia Davis (I swear she's not paying me), Swann's Way (2002).

Featured guest: Ellen McQueen from Paris, France.

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.

How to take a snapshot, but in words? Guest host and PICT faculty member Stephanie Papa explores what it means to try and snatch a moment in a person's life and set it down on paper.

Mentioned in this episode: Stanley Kunitz, "The Portrait"; Joy Harjo, "The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor" (1983); Jack Gilbert, "Michiko Dead" (1994); John Betjeman, "Business Girls" from the album Betjemen's Banana Blush (1974).

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org

"Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles." We turn to Canadian artist and writer Keri Smith for her ideas on how to be a keen and curious explorer of the world. Especially the very restricted world of lockdown.

Mentioned in this episode: Keri Smith, How to Be an Explorer of the World (2008).

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org

The last in our three-part series on lists, this episode looks at a fictitious encyclopedia entry by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, classifying animals into impossible categories. Can you write a list that similarly defies logic?

Mentioned in this episode: Roberto Alifano, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges (1984); Jorge Luis Borges, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins", tr. by Ruth L.C. Simms, in Other Inquisitions 1937-1952(1993); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1989)

Music: Carole Cassier

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, please visit parisinstitute.org

Lists have rules of entry, and they also have a hidden order: playing with these is part of what makes them so effective in literature. In this episode of the Quarantine Quill, we look at Elizabeth Bishop's famous list-poem, "One Art", for how to build a list that will take you someplace unexpected and also inevitable.

Mentioned in this episode: Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art" (1976).

Music: Carole Cassier.

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org

Grocery lists, dictionaries, multiple-choice questionnaires, things to do, people to call, shows to watch...we love lists. Why? And how to harness the power of lists in our own writing? In today's episode, we turn to Margot Livesey's advice on turning to list-making whenever we're stuck, and Harper's Index as a model for drawing up numerical self-portraits.

Mentioned in this episode: William Gass, "I've Got a Little List," Salmagundi, v. 109-110 (1996).

Music: Carole Cassier.

The Quarantine Quill is a creative writing podcast hosted by Anna Polonyi with the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking. The podcast will be bringing you a daily writing tip and prompt for as long as PICT's creative writing events are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. For more details on the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, visit parisinstitute.org