From 1932 until the end of World War II, Peter J. Ortiz was almost constantly involved in international warfare—13 years of it—either fighting or gathering intelligence about fighting. He started in the French Foreign Legion, moved to the U.S. Marines when the United States entered the war, and was one of the first people to serve in America’s fledgling spy network, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

He was invaluable. He had grown up spending a lot of time in Europe and spoke at least five languages; some reports put the number as high as 10. By the end of the war, he had been decorated with two dozen medals from three countries. The subtitle to the book offers some insight as to why he was so acclaimed: "The Allies’ Secret Weapon Against the Nazis in France."

Nicholas Reynolds graduated from Oxford University with a Ph.D. in modern history. Having grown up in the shadow of World War II and developing an interest in history and military history especially, he immediately joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as an infantry officer and then as an historian. He later served as a CIA officer, ending with a years-long stint as CIA Museum historian. He now teaches and writes.

His books include Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence, which was designated a best book of 2022 by The New Yorker. He also wrote Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy (2017), which looks at the life and work of Ernest Hemingway and, in a way, links back to this book about Ortiz. In it, Nick looks at the OSS and Hemingway’s involvement with it in the closing days of World War II in Europe.

Katie S. Sanders is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and an award-winning journalist who has written for National Geographic, The New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, New World, Time, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Insider, Glamour, and Marie Claire.

Her reporting brought her to the CIA and the White House, and into the homes of many World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors. Her late grandfather, a Jewish-American bomber pilot who was shot down over France while dropping supplies behind enemy lines, was among those rescued by Peter Ortiz and the resistance fighters he led.

It was this connection that brought her to team with Nick to write the story of Ortiz’s War.

Buy Ortiz’s War wherever books are sold, including Amazon.

Find out more about our guests on their websites:

Nicholas Reynolds

Katie S. Sanders

Follow and tag @ortizswarbook.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Peter J. Ortiz was an extraordinary World War II warrior who served in the French Foreign Legion, U.S. Marine Corps, OSS, and British Special Operations Executive.

• The OSS was essentially built from scratch during World War II, growing from virtually no organization into a major American intelligence operation.

• Ortiz operated far beyond the traditional role of an intelligence officer, gathering intelligence, working with the French Resistance, recruiting couriers, conducting raids, and even stealing Gestapo staff cars.

• His fluency in French, familiarity with France, and experience in the French Foreign Legion made him uniquely effective behind enemy lines.

• Ortiz's leadership was defined as much by restraint as by courage. His decision to surrender to a vastly larger German force in order to protect a French village and give his men a chance to escape became one of the defining moments of his story.

• Nick Reynolds and Katie Sanders explore what made extraordinary battlefield leaders like Ortiz and Wild Bill Donovan different, including their tolerance for risk, discomfort, and uncertainty.

• Katie Sanders' connection to Ortiz is deeply personal: Ortiz helped save the life of her grandfather, a U.S. Army Air Forces pilot whose B-24 was shot down over France.

• The authors combine military records, oral histories, contemporary accounts, and other archival material to separate the documented history of Ortiz from the many legendary stories that grew up around him.

• At its heart, Ortiz's War is a story about courage, sacrifice, duty, leadership, and the extraordinary individuals who operated outside conventional molds during World War II.

"There's something extra in their makeup that is a tolerance for risk that a lot of us don't have." - Nick Reynolds

"It's not only tolerance for risk, but it's tolerance for discomfort." - Katie Sanders

You can also watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.

Be sure to visit our website

Thank you for listening to the Upstart Crow Podcast, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

Produced by Upstart Crow Podcast

Recording and Audio Production by Jon D PodCom

Copyright © 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

#WorldWarII #MilitaryHistory #OSS

Marty Ross-Dolen’s memoir Always There, Always Gone, winner of the 2026 Ohio Book Awards Readers’ Choice Award, carries the subtitle “A daughter’s search for truth.” Marty Ross-Dolen is the daughter. What she searches for is a fuller knowing of her grandmother, her mother’s mother, about whom her mother will talk but can’t seem to do so without looking pained or breaking into tears. What Marty knows are the bare facts: Her grandmother and grandfather were killed in an airliner disaster over NYC in December, 1960, when a United flight from Chicago ran into a TWA flight from Columbus, Ohio. Everyone on both planes and six people on the ground were killed. Marty’s grandparents were executives in the family business, Highlights for Children. Marty’s mother was 14 at the time, and she and her four siblings were moved from Ohio to Texas to live with their uncle and aunt.

So Marty constructs a portrait of her grandmother—the warmth, the wit, the vitality and charm—a portrait she drew from poring over correspondence, photos, records, family memorabilia. Along the way, she asks, “When do humans stop defining ourselves by tragedies?” When will we stop using words like survivor, hero, warrior to describe ourselves? Her answer: Possibly never again.

What emerges is a memoir that bends the form memoirs usually take, that informs readers of the life of a woman who comes of age in the 1940s and becomes a mother working in a singular business during the 1950s, and then looks at the layering of lives and the impact of protracted mourning, and of healing through love.

Marty Ross-Dolen is a graduate of Wellesley College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is a retired child and adolescent psychiatrist. She also earned an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Earlier, she worked in graduate-level workshops at the Ohio State University.

Her essays have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Redivider, Lilith, Willow Review and the Brevity Blog, among others. Her essay “Diphtheria” was a notable essay in The Best American Essays series. She writes, teaches writing, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

In this episode of Upstart Crow, Marty Ross-Dolen discusses Always There, Always Gone, her memoir about family, grief, memory, tragedy and healing. She talks about her grandmother, the 1960 New York City plane crash that changed her family, her connection to Highlights for Children, and the process of reconstructing a life through photographs, letters, correspondence and family records.

• How Marty Ross-Dolen used hundreds of letters and thousands of pages of family correspondence to reconstruct the life and personality of a grandmother she never knew.
• Why her memoir focuses on her grandmother’s life rather than allowing the tragedy of her death to define her.
• How the sudden loss of her grandparents shaped three generations of women in her family and became an exploration of multigenerational trauma.
• Why absence can have just as profound an impact on a family as the people who are actually present.
• The surprising role that Highlights for Children played in Marty’s family history and how her grandparents helped build the iconic children’s magazine.
• How seemingly small decisions can affect generations of people in ways we could never predict.
• Why memoir doesn't always have to follow a traditional chronological structure.
• How Marty used creative techniques, including erasure poetry and a game-show-style section, to tell a deeply personal family story.
• Why writers need to learn how to use feedback without necessarily following every piece of advice they receive.
• How writing a memoir can change the way we understand our own family history, grief, identity, and the stories that have been passed down to us.

Hosted by William Miller

Find out more about Marty and the book, on her website.

Follow her on Facebook and Instagram

You can also watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.

Be sure to visit our website

Thank you for listening to the Upstart Crow Podcast, a part of Watershed Lit Radio

Produced by Upstart Crow Podcast

Recording and Audio Production by Jon D PodCom

Copyright © 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast - All Rights Reserved

Kathryn DeZur – Objects of Affection

The things Kathryn DeZur focuses on—a doll, a quilt, bookshelves, a gun, an ashtray, a table, a finial—in this book of 15 essays are things that connect her to and shape her memories, which is to say that inform her sense of self, her history, her culture, the people around her. Hence, objects of affection.

She is a daughter whose father was asked by her mother to leave the home before Kathryn was 1 and who did, leaving Kathryn to live in poverty with her alcoholic mother; and so, when Kathryn was 10, she had to pick out her mother’s burial clothes after the alcoholism took her mother’s life. She moved to live with her father, to a better life in some ways but he had two preoccupations, neither of which was Kathryn. Even in this carefully constructed sense of self, Kathryn shows, things and people can knock everything askew. Though even now she regards her father as that because he fulfilled the role, he wasn’t, it turns out, her biological dad.

Before this book of personal essays, Kathryn published a poetry chapbook, Blue Ghosts, and she maintains samples of her photography at KDZ Photography on her website at kathryndezur.com.

Individual essays by her have appeared in HerStry, Dorthy Parker’s Ashes, and The Nassau Review among other places. She lives and writes in the northern Catskill Mountains and she is a professor emerita in English at SUNY Delhi.

• The relationship between objects, memory, and personal meaning
• How memory shapes and reinforces our sense of identity
• The ways memory can be reconstructed, incomplete, or unreliable
• Growing up with an alcoholic parent
• Kathryn's childhood in Oakland and her move to suburban San Jose
• Childhood experiences of loneliness, belonging, and people-pleasing
• How art can provide distance and structure for processing difficult memories
• Kathryn's mother's artistic life and influence
• The story behind the Easy-Bake Oven
• Discovering that the man who raised Kathryn was not her biological father
• Using DNA testing to uncover family history
• Discovering six half-siblings later in life
• The ways genetics can manifest through mannerisms, speech, and behavior
• The significance of the essay "Nothing"
• The emotional meaning of home, safety, and permanence
• Being forced to leave a beloved home because of a threatening neighbor
• Kathryn's attempt to use minimalism and decluttering to regain a sense of control
• Why sentimental objects can carry profound emotional meaning
• The story of Tammy, Kathryn's childhood doll
• The connection between objects and feelings of belonging
• Letting go of possessions versus letting go of the past
• Finding a second "Tammy" later in life
• Self-forgiveness and the idea of self-abandonment
• How writing Objects of Affection became a form of reckoning with the past

• Memory is creative. We don't simply retrieve memories; we reconstruct them, fill in gaps, and sometimes reshape them over time.
• Objects can become repositories of memory. A seemingly ordinary possession can carry layers of personal history, emotion, and meaning.
• Art can help us approach difficult experiences. The structure and distance created through writing and photography can make painful memories easier to examine.
• Belonging matters. Homes, objects, and relationships can become tangible representations of safety and permanence.
• Decluttering doesn't necessarily erase emotional history. Getting rid of objects doesn't mean getting rid of the memories attached to them.
• Identity isn't determined solely by biology. Kathryn's discovery about her biological father did not fundamentally change her understanding of who she was.
• Loss and replacement aren't the same thing. The second Tammy couldn't replace the childhood doll, but it could take on a new meaning.
• Self-forgiveness can be part of healing. Sometimes an object or experience can help us recognize where we've abandoned our own needs and begin to forgive ourselves.

“Objects can serve as places of meaning and of memory and of experience and history.” - Kathryn DeZur

Find out more about Kathryn and purchase Objects of Affection on her website.

Follow Kathryn on Instagram.

This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

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#UpstartCrow #KathrynDeZur #ObjectsOfAffection #Memoir #PersonalEssays #Memory #Identity #MemoirWriting #CreativeWriting #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #DNA #Minimalism #LiteraryArts #WatershedLitRadio

Emil Wilson – The Nightingales.

Based in San Francisco, Emil Wilson is an advertising art director and illustrator as well as a comic artist. His work has appeared in magazines and newspapers, on websites, the Oscars, even the Super Bowl. You’ve probably seen his work and not known it. The Nightingales is his first book, a graphic novel. He sets it in Oregon and the story he tells is semi-autobiographical. It’s the story of a family, a sick man, a charitable act by one family member and the repercussions that act has for the other members of the family.

Set in 1985, the novel has strong relevance to today—the social phenomenon called othering, how people deal with issues, or don’t, the meaning of an offer of sanctuary.

Emil talks with host William Miller about the themes of the novel, the seeds of the story, how he shaped it and the why’s behind his choices, and his work to illustrate it—spreads rather than panels, for example—that together resulted in the created artifice this novel is.

• The true family story that inspired The Nightingales
• Why the novel is set during the AIDS epidemic of 1985
• Compassion versus fear during times of crisis
• Growing up in small-town Oregon
• Family dynamics under extraordinary circumstances
• The challenges faced by LGBTQ+ communities during the early AIDS crisis
• How volunteering with AIDS patients shaped Wilson's life
• Creating a graphic novel that feels like memory instead of a comic book
• Using sketchbooks and visual language to tell emotional stories
• The lasting impact of kindness and empathy

• Small acts of compassion can have life-changing consequences.
• Fear often grows from misunderstanding and lack of information.
• Kindness sometimes comes with personal sacrifice but can transform everyone involved.
• Graphic novels can tell emotionally rich literary stories equal to traditional novels.
• Memory is imperfect, and visual storytelling can capture its emotional truth.
• Understanding people unlike ourselves begins with empathy rather than judgment.
• Family relationships are rarely simple, but compassion can bridge difficult divides.

This episode is perfect for:

• Readers of literary fiction
• Graphic novel enthusiasts
• Fans of memoir and family stories
• Writers and illustrators
• History enthusiasts interested in the AIDS epidemic
• LGBTQ+ history readers
• Anyone interested in stories about compassion, resilience, and humanity

Find out more about Emil through his website.

Follow Emil on Instagram.

Purchase your own copy of The Nightingales here.

#TheNightingales #MLWilson #GraphicNovel #BookTube #AuthorInterview #LiteraryPodcast #UpstartCrow #WilliamMiller #BookDiscussion #HistoricalFiction #Memoir #VisualStorytelling #LGBTQHistory #AIDSCrisis #BookLovers

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This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Lina Patton – The Lake Club

A spirited read about the sort of people who spend summer days sitting poolside and playing golf, versus ambitious young adults starting their lives and wanting to right all the wrongs they know of even as they make their own mistakes. Competing goals among a troika of main characters, mysteries, wrongs to be set right—all within a tight-knit community in the land of 10,000 lakes.

Lina Patton is a writer, illustrator, and teacher. She is a native of Maine who spent her teen years in Minnesota. She earned her BA from Elon University and her MFA from George Mason University. Her writing has appeared in Elle, The Cut, Narrative, and Driftwood Press, among other publications. She and her husband lived abroad for seven years and currently live in Washington, DC. The Lake Club is her first novel.

Hosted by William Miller

• Lina Patton discusses how her debut novel The Lake Club evolved from a single character's perspective into a layered story about class, power, ambition, and belonging.
• The conversation explores the realities behind wealth and privilege in exclusive communities and how fiction can reveal hidden social dynamics.
• Patton explains how mystery, romance, and character-driven storytelling work together to create narrative tension.
• A fascinating discussion on writing craft, including lessons learned from acclaimed author and teacher Alan Cheuse at George Mason University.
• The episode examines how character motivation drives plot and why understanding what characters truly want is essential to compelling fiction.
• Patton shares how real-life experiences in Minnesota country clubs, advertising, and international living informed the novel's setting and characters.
• Insights into the difference between literary and commercial fiction—and why great storytelling can successfully blend both.

"Writing is an act of empathy. Reading is an act of empathy."

"When you're young, you think if you just put the puzzle pieces into place, you'll become the version of yourself you want to be." - Lina Patton

Find out more about Lina and purchase your own copy of The Lake Club on her website.

#LinaPatton

#TheLakeClub

#AuthorInterview

#BookPodcast

#LiteraryFiction

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This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Melody Lomboy-Lowe — Founder, Luna Peak Foundation

Melody Lomboy-Lowe was 6 years old when she planned her own funeral. She had been diagnosed with leukemia, and in 1983, treatment options were limited. But Lomboy-Lowe survived, and today her Los Angeles-based organization, the Luna Peak Foundation, publishes books on cancer and grief. Luna Peak has donated over 4,000 books to children, families, hospitals, palliative care and hospice centers, therapist offices, schools, and universities. This includes workbooks, children’s books, and an inspirational photography book, Beyond Remission. Upstart Crow host Ken Budd profiled Melody for his “Everyday Heroes” column in The Saturday Evening Post and he interviews her here about survival, hope, and helping others.

• Melody Lomboy-Lowe shares her remarkable journey from being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age six to becoming a long-term cancer survivor.
• Hear how she planned her own funeral as a child and why that experience gave her a sense of control during treatment.
• Learn how surviving cancer in the 1980s shaped her outlook on life, family, and purpose.
• Discover how the Luna Peak Foundation uses books, care packages, and creative resources to support cancer patients and their families.
• Melody discusses the inspiration behind her books Beyond Remission, Follow Me Cancer Free, Sean's Best Week at Camp Luna Peak, and more.
• An emotional story about a young cancer patient named Zoe illustrates the power of representation and hope.
• Why Melody believes cancer doesn't have to define a person—and can even become a source of strength and purpose.
• A candid conversation about grief, mortality, and why we need to talk more openly about death.

Key Takeaways

Children are often more resilient than adults realize when facing serious illness.

Honest communication can help young patients feel empowered rather than helpless.

Cancer affects entire families, not just the person receiving treatment.

Seeing yourself represented in stories can provide comfort, encouragement, and hope.

Community and connection are critical for cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, and siblings.

Surviving a life-threatening illness can profoundly change your perspective on everyday life.

Hope doesn't always come from grand gestures—it often comes from knowing you're not alone.

Discussion Topics

• Childhood leukemia and cancer treatment in the 1980s
• Growing up after a life-threatening diagnosis
• The role of honesty when talking to children about illness
• Cancer survivorship and long-term emotional impacts
• Creating books that inspire hope for patients and families
• Supporting siblings and caregivers during cancer treatment
• Grief, loss, and preparing for life's difficult conversations
• The mission of the Luna Peak Foundation

• Cancer patients and survivors
• Parents and caregivers
• Healthcare professionals
• Nonprofit leaders
• Anyone facing adversity or life challenges
• Readers interested in inspirational true stories
• People seeking hope, resilience, and perspective

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This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Caroline Bock – The Other Beautiful People

In the entertainment world, there are the on-stage, front-of-camera, beautiful people, and there are those who actually make things happen. The ones who work behind the scenes, who make the deals, sell the projects, ensure the funding, move things forward. It is their lives that are the focus of this taut and evocative novel. The story juxtaposes the shocks and aftereffects of 9/11 with the more routine shocks of normal everyday life when business-world reasoning comes to bear on entertainment-world decision-making, and catches the lead character, Amy Greene, in the vortex. She has a life and a love she understands, until she doesn’t, until she is sure of almost nothing, including herself.

Caroline Bock was a movie-loving executive of tv, working for 20 years in the cable television industry at AMC, Bravo, IFC and IFC Films, before stepping out of that world and writing. She is the author of the short story collection Carry Her Home, winner of the Fiction Award from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and also the young adult novels Before My Eyes and LIE. She graduated from the City College of New York and its MFA Fiction program, and she also attended Syracuse University. The Other Beautiful People is her first novel for adults.

"The other beautiful people are the people behind the scenes—the ones who make everything happen, but rarely get the credit."

"It doesn't matter if the world's ending. What matters is what you're going to do today."

-Caroline Bock

Hosted by William Miller

The novel shines a light on the overlooked professionals working behind the scenes in television, film, and media—the people who make success possible without ever appearing in the spotlight.

Bock discusses how experiences surrounding 9/11 shaped both her life and her fiction, demonstrating how major historical events are ultimately experienced through individual lives.

Amy Green's journey explores the tension between ambition, family, relationships, and personal fulfillment—questions many professionals continue to face today.

Whether it's technological disruption, corporate mergers, or shifts in personal identity, adapting to change becomes one of the novel's central themes.

Bock's path to publishing her first adult novel demonstrates that creative success can happen at any stage of life.

The conversation explores autofiction, memory, and how writers transform real-life experiences into compelling stories.

• Caroline Bock discusses the inspiration behind The Other Beautiful People.
• A behind-the-scenes look at cable television during the early 2000s.
• How the events of 9/11 influenced both her life and her fiction.
• The challenges of balancing career ambition, marriage, and family.
• Why the "other beautiful people" are often the most important people in the room.
• The role of autobiographical experiences in shaping fiction.
• Caroline's journey from YA fiction to publishing her first adult novel.
• The surprising story of how the book found its publisher.

Purchase a copy of The Other Beautiful People here at Regal House Publishing, or wherever books are sold.

#WritingCommunity #LiteraryFiction #AuthorInterview #UpstartCrow #TheOtherBeautifulPeople #CarolineBock #9/11 #BehindTheScenes

This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Zach Powers – The Migraine Diaries: A singular, first-person novel.

This story goes into the interior life of a thirty-something man who has just lost the best friend he ever had, a man he has known for ten years, a man he has seen most every day of those ten years as they pursued their separate creative projects and shared a social life, a man who knew to kick the narrator’s butt when it needed kicking and offer the right encouraging words when it was words and not a kick the narrator needed. All of that, suddenly gone. Told in the form of a headache journal, the novel renders the first year of loss starting with the beachside funeral/ash spreading of the friend’s remains, and captures the mix of headache hopelessness with the need to carry on, building to the final resolve. In this way, it is like life itself. Not all bleak. Filled with humor. Even offering moments of weirdness.

Zach Powers is the author of the short story collection Gravity Changes, winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize; and also a prior novel, First Cosmic Velocity, which combines history and fiction to look at the sham of the Soviet space program in 1964 and earlier. His writing also has appeared in American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and other publications. He is the executive and artistic director of The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and Poet Lore, the nation’s oldest poetry journal. He is originally from Savannah, Georgia, and now lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Hosted by William Miller

• Zach Powers discusses how The Migraine Diaries functions not just as a grief novel, but also as a chronic illness narrative and, most importantly, a story about friendship and surviving loss together.
• The conversation explores the ethics of writing chronic illness narratives, especially avoiding the traditional “everything gets resolved” story arc that doesn’t reflect real-life experiences with migraines or grief.
• Zach shares deeply personal inspirations behind the novel, including the deaths of close friends and his own struggles with chronic migraines, while emphasizing the book is fiction rather than autobiography.
• A major theme of the interview is how friendship can become the emotional anchor of a story, sometimes even more powerful than romance.
• Zach explains his fascination with experimental storytelling, layered narratives, fragmented structure, and allowing readers to interpret meaning rather than over-explaining themes.
• The discussion dives into the surreal “corgi” sequences in The Migraine Diaries, which blend grief, hallucination, memory, and imagination into symbolic emotional journeys.
• Zach reflects on his earlier novel First Cosmic Velocity and how his writing evolved from more traditional narrative structures into more expansive and unconventional literary forms.
• The episode also explores Zach’s acclaimed short story collection Gravity Changes, including his philosophy that fiction does not need to explain every surreal or impossible element to the reader.

“You don’t have to explain the sheep.” — Zach Powers on discovering the freedom of literary fiction and surreal storytelling.

“The friendship aspect is the actual thing driving everything in the background — how to be a good friend and maintain that in the face of adversity.”

Find out more about Zach Powers on his website.

This entire interview is also available to watch on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 - Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

#LiteraryFiction

#WritingCommunity

#BookPodcast

#AuthorInterview

Caroline Bicks – Monsters in the Archive: My Year of Fear with Stephen King

Monsters in the Archives – that’s the main title of Caroline Bicks’ latest book, which is based on her experience digging through the archives of manuscripts and margin notes, plus her own interviews and emails with him, to gather insights into the workings of the creative soul behind all those scary works. In the book, she paints a detailed portrait of Stephen King, how he has grown up as a person and as a writer, and how those two relate to each other; and how he sees not only his work but also himself. Here, she shares some of those insights in conversation with Upstart Crow host William Miller.

Caroline Bicks studied Renaissance poetry as an undergrad at Harvard and then at Stanford she earned her Ph.D. in English literature. She was a tenured professor at Boston College when the Harold Alfond Foundation created the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. King, an alum of UMaine, was not part of creating the chair or scoping its mission, except he agreed to lend his name to it and, by doing so, he signaled support for its mission. The occupant of the King Chair is to support the public humanities. After Caroline Bicks became the inaugural occupant of the King chair, she moved from Boston to Maine, and began to bring award-winning writers and journalists, educators, and activists to speak and work with Maine communities. She also began to support the work of students in internships and research projects, to give talks around the state, and, of course, in more recent years, to spend time in King’s private archives looking at early drafts of some of his most iconic works and distill her take-aways into Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King.

Her earlier books are Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. She co-authored Shakespeare Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas. She co-hosts the Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Her essays and humor have appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and the show Afterbirth.

She lives in Blue Hill, Maine, with her family.

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

— Macbeth, explored here as the key to understanding why Stephen King’s stories stay with us.

“It’s not really a vampire story. It’s about vulnerability.”

— Caroline Bicks on the deeper emotional truth inside horror fiction.

Stephen King calls Monsters in the Archive: My Year of Fear with Stephen King “the best book about my process that I have ever read.”

Hosted by William Miller

You can purchase a copy of Caroline's book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King and find out more information about her other writings at CarolineBicks.com

• Stephen King’s stories resonate because they tap into real human fears like grief, loss, and helplessness.
• Horror works best when it reveals emotional truth, not just monsters or gore.
• King is a meticulous reviser who carefully crafts language, sound, and pacing.
• Shakespeare and King both explore ambition, trauma, fear, and the darkness within people.
• Reading horror gives audiences a safer, more personal way to confront fear than film often can.
• Vulnerability is at the heart of all great literature.
• Caroline Bicks’ access to King’s archives reveals the serious craftsmanship behind his success.
• Stephen King and Tabitha King are known for generosity and philanthropy beyond their literary legacy.

#StephenKing #CarolineBicks #WritingCraft #LiteraryPodcast #UpstartCrow #WritersInterview

This entire episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water

In an immigration novel not like others, a Nigerian daughter wants to try life in America, and so once more she enters the visa sweepstakes. Her mother says nothing, though she has been forewarned by a conduit of the oracle, “this time, the order of things will be shaken. The souls will lose their own way.” These are the tensions within Olfunke Grace Bankole’s first novel, The Edge of Water.

There are matters here of faith in self and faith in matters larger than the self, as well as events that outstrip all planning and vision—including the failure to envision some real possibilities. What comes from this is a novel with a linear narrative constructed across an arc whose parts are anything but linear—where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The Edge of Water was a finalist for the New American Voices Award given by the Institute for Immigration Research, which is presented at the Fall for the Book festival.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Harvard-educated lawyer and recipient of the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, and her original writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review and Stand. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and she was a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She also has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about Grace on her website.

Connect with Grace on Instagram.

Purchase a copy of The Edge of Water on Bookshop.org.

• A powerful exploration of fate vs free will, and how belief systems shape the choices we make.
• Redefines “home” in immigrant stories—less about place, more about identity, community, and peace.
• Moves beyond the typical American Dream narrative, showing the emotional and psychological realities of immigration.
• Highlights women’s resilience and agency, especially within patriarchal and cultural expectations.
• Examines how generational trauma and relationships between mothers and daughters shape identity.
• Shows how small decisions during major life moments can completely alter someone’s path.
• Blends spirituality, Yoruba tradition, and modern life, creating a layered, immersive world.

“We like to think we’re in control—until life reminds us how much of it was never ours to decide.” - Olufunke Grace Bankole

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This episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

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