Write, Publish, and Shine

All craft is political. It’s how we, as writers, resist injustices and dream up better worlds. So, listen to this conversation with the brilliant Kavita Das, and then take up your pen.

Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work. She challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention.

Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das, was published by Beacon Press in 2022.

You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/78

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During the Lit Mag Love course, writers can join Q&A calls with editors. In this replay episode, you will hear one such call with Mark Drew of the Gettysburg Review.

Note that this call happened in the first year of the pandemic, so you’ll get an editor’s perspective on the kind of reflection missing from most writing during an intense moment—at least for this journal. You’ll also hear about the kinds of work Gettysburg accepts, the qualities of the work they look for, and the editorial experience you’ll get, should you place work with them.

The Lit Mag Love course will help you get a big YES for your writing from a lit mag you love.

Learn more and sign up here >>

Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/59

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In this episode, it’s my pleasure to welcome Christina Brobby, a wonderful lyric writer and instructor, to the podcast. We start by getting into what exactly lyric writing is, if you’re wondering, so that will be cleared up right away. Christina also delves into how the “filter is the form” as she wonderfully sums it up.

Listen for more of our exploration of empathy for writers. And Christina also kindly and insightfully brings in the necessity of practising empathy with yourself as a writer. And listen for ways she’s used the form to explore the impact our surroundings have on us, to see working in fragments as a feature and not a bug in our memories as creative nonfiction essay writers and to generally get excited about the variety of brilliant voices using lyric essay forms to tell their stories.

• Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters—they are filled with support for your writing practice and sent every other week. rachelthompson.co/letters

Links and show notes are up at rachelthompson.co/67

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Memoirist Yolande House sits down with me for a book club conversation about Kae Tempest’s On Connection. It was a real pleasure to read this book alongside her and compare notes. And I hope those of you reading alongside us in our book club enjoy it.

About On Connection: This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other.

After we discuss the book, stick around as Yolande House also shares highlights from her disability reading list.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/88

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OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE!

Get a big “YES” for your writing from literary journals you love in this five-week guided course. rachelthompson.co/litmaglove

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This is the final episode in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine that take a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue.

Today it’s my delight to speak to another artist whose work we accepted for inside the issue.

Sarah Esmi (she/her) is an Iranian-American mother, writer, collage artist, producer, director and lawyer. She told me about her collage practice and how the artistic interpretation of her visual work differs from her poetry.

I loved her art so much, and to learn more about what went into the piece we published called “Insides” plus collage as an art practice.

All the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/87

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OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE! Get a big “YES” for your writing from literary journals you love in this five-week guided course. rachelthompson.co/litmaglove

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This is the seventh, wow!, in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with our cover artist, Amy Friend, who was also the cover artist for the very first issue I edited for Room, called Mythologies of Loss.

Amy Friend’s art truly resonates on a deep level of nostalgia and grief with me, and also because of the incredible artistry she does with photographs, turning those difficult experiences into beauty.

Clearly, we’re vibing even over a decade of editing for Room, in those themes of loss and longing. I spoke with Amy Friend about how she makes her photographs, what draws to these themes, and how photography as a medium inherently communicates memory, loss, and absence.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/86

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WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters

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This is the sixth in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with another incredible writer we published in the issue, ViNa Nguyễn.

Our conversation went in many beautiful directions, including their choice to deliberately write about joy as a writer who writes about grief and nostalgia.

We talked about ViNa Nguyễn’s experimental writing and, in particular, the brilliant piece, A Nesting of Bracketed Bodies, that we published in the issue, which includes, as advertised, nesting brackets as an element in the work—plus their inspiration on this experiment. And, I’m delighted that they also read from the work for us, so prepare your earbuds for some delightful fiction writing.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/85

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WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the fifth in my series of special episodes as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this episode, a luminous conversation with Room’s Book Reviews editor, Micah Killjoy.

We delve into reviewing as a practice for writers to understand craft, what Micah did differently with the reviews for this haunting issue, and how reviewing has changed in the age of BookTok and user-generated reviews.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/84

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WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this replay episode, Ellen Chang-Richardson and I both speak as editorial collective members at Room, and as editors of the (then) upcoming issue of Room’s Ghosts issue.

Ellen and I get a little into how things work behind the scenes at Room, and how we (the collective) are many people, all rolling up our sleeves to create space in literature, art, and feminism.

This episode was recorded live on Zoom in front of writers from my writing community, called Writerly Love. So you will hear us answer their questions toward the end of our discussion, too.

Get the episode show notes and a full transcript at: https://rachelthompson.co/63-replay.

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GET MY WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fourth in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, to my delight, I sat down with Room’s publisher, Nara Monteiro. We delve into the role of Publisher and what they do day-to-day at the magazine and get into some Ghosts-issue specifics and a slightly unusual story of reaching out to one potential contributor to the issue, so listen for that story.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/83

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WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.