Write Now Podcast at the Writers' Colony

Lisa Braxton shares poignant moments behind writing her memoir, Dancing Between the Raindrops. She is author of The Talking Drum (set in 1971 Massachusetts), a novel that explores the profound impact gentrification has on community and cross-cultural tensions, as well as the modern immigrant experience.

The Talking Drum was awarded a gold medal in the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards, the overall winner of Shelf Unbound magazine's 2020 Indie Awards, an outstanding literary award from the National Association of Black Journalists in 2020, and a finalist for the International Book Awards in 2020.

Lisa is an Emmy-nominated former television journalist as well as an essayist and short story writer. She is on the executive board of the Writers Room of Boston, a writing instructor at Grub Street Boston, and president of the Greater Boston Section of the National Council of Negro Women. 

Celebrating Writers' Colony's 25th year at the 2025 Gala and fundraiser with Authors' Row, hosted by the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Retired Navy Officer David Newcomer goes behind the scenes of his debut memoir, MAIL CALL, a remembrance of his father's war experiences and the domestic front during the Pacific Theater during WWII.

Creative nonfiction writer and storyteller Phyllis Unterschuetz discusses co-authoring Longing: Stories of Racial Healing, a collection of true narratives about the journey of awakening to the effects of racism, as well as the challenges behind her second book, a memoir about finding the courage to tell her abortion story.

Phyllis was recently awarded the “Telling True Stories” Fellowship from the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, and her personal essays were long-listed for the 2023 Amy MacRae Award for Memoir. 

Dr. Cathie English, Professor of English at Missouri State University and formerly an English and language arts high school teacher, shares the inspiration and meaning behind penning her tribute memoir, Dear Ruth: A Book of Grief.

Dr. English's academic work has been published in Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, English Journal, The Rural Educator, The Journal of Literacy Innovation, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, Syracuse University Press, Routledge, and IGI Global.

WCDH interviews Tiffany Mi on site during her residency about her poetry as well as her interest in collective memory and the archive. Tiffany is currently completing her Masters at Brown University. Her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere.

At Writers' Colony, Tiffany worked on her debut collection of lyric essays that explore memory, language, and inheritance through the lens of translation.

A ’Ja Lyons—writer, historian, poet, actress, and currently a Creative Nonfiction PhD student at Oklahoma State University—discusses her second book (to be taken from her dissertation), working title “House: A Memoir of a Home Built by Fragments.”

"House" is a personal narrative about surviving incest and childhood sexual abuse that also includes the history of slave plantation homes as dens for raping enslaved Black women and how such dynamics persist for African-American women, particularly in the home.

Tulsa journalist and essayist Liz Blood talks about working as a writer’s assistant to director Sterlin Harjo's “Reservation Dogs,” as well as her first TV credit for co-writing the season finale of a new FX Network's series coming out this fall, "The Lowdown."

Liz recently completed the "My Time" writer’s residency at Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, where she worked on the third draft of her own feature screenplay. The fellowship was funded by author James Dean.

Write Now Podcast hosted by Julie Rogers