Writing in the Dark

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome novelist, professor, and 5am Writers Club stalwart Penny Zang for a heated discussion about Tobias Wolff’s rule-breaking short story, “Bullet in the Brain.”

Reading: Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

Their conversation explores the delicate art of an unlikable protagonist, the controversial choice to delay backstory till the end of a piece, and whether or not this MFA classic is really a story at all.

Guest Bio:

Penny Zang is from Maryland and graduated with an MFA in Fiction from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in the Potomac Review, Louisville Review, and South 85, among others. She is the 2024 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker fiction fellow via the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She lives in South Carolina, where she teaches English. She is the author of Doll Parts and Accidents Never Happen.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia and Ralph are joined by award-winning novelist and Army veteran Nancy Stroer to dissect a short story by Benjamin Inks in which Jack Fleming, a fictional character invented as a joke, becomes a larger than life hero who inspires both American soldiers and Afghan citizens.

Reading: “Jack Fleming Lives!” by Benjamin Inks

They explore how the story’s choices about pacing, world building, and humor create an engrossing narrative with an almost unbelievable and yet totally convincing ending. Their discussion also touches on Tim O’Brien (author of The Things They Carried) and how sometimes fiction is the only way to tell the truth.

Nancy’s first novel, Playing Army, shares some of these themes; in it Lieutenant Minerva Mills struggles with the constraints of military life as she tries to avoid deployment to Bosnia, hoping instead to reconnect with her father who disappeared in Vietnam.

Guest Bio

Nancy Stroer holds degrees from Cornell and Boston University and served as an Army maintenance officer in the beer-soaked trenches of post-Cold War Germany. Her work has appeared in Stars and Stripes, Soldiers magazine, Hallaren Lit Mag, the Wrath-Bearing Tree, Consequence Forum and Things We Carry Still, an anthology of military writing from Middle West Press.

In addition to writing, Nancy is a teacher and trainer, and an adjunct faculty member of the Ellyn Satter Institute, a 503(c) not-for-profit organization that helps individuals and families develop a more joyful relationship to food and their bodies. Her debut novel, Playing Army, was a 2025 Military Writers Society of America bronze medalist for literary fiction.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

Writing in the Dark is back!

To kick off Season 4, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome Betsy Ellor to discuss The Daughter Cells, a short story by Daniel M. Lavery from the collection Merry Spinster.

Reading: The Daughter Cells

They explore how the author turns Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale of self-sacrifice into one of agency, complete with body horror, funny and biting critique of human culture, and a reimagined plot with a triumphant, if dark finale.

They also discuss Betsy’s new book, Hera, Kingdom of Lies, and how she created a story that centers Hera’s experience, drawing parallels between the immortal goddess’s experience and today’s overwhelmed working moms, both of whom struggle to maintain order amid chaos and patriarchy.

This conversation highlights the staying power of our oldest stories, why we come back to them again and again, and inspiring new interpretations that make these stories more relevant than ever.

Guest Bio

Betsy Ellor lives near the beach in a house filled with color and chaos. When not at her desk, she’s usually hiking, hunting for shells, or annoying her teenage son. She’s the editor for the anthology Heroic Care: 35 Writers & Artists Show What It Means to Care, and author of Sara Crew and My Dog is NOT A Scientist.

Her latest novel, Hera: Kingdom of Lies, is a Circe meets Scandal reimagining in a way every working woman will relate to. Her writing has been published in Spine Magazine, 5 Minute Lit, and The Creative Collective.

Find her on Instagram, Substack, and Threads.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

Time is fake? Time is a fungus? Time is f——?

As the year draws to a close, Ralph and Julia debate the truth of time and its role in the creative process. They discuss how they evaluate progress beyond word count and reflect on what they learned from this season’s guests. They also explore what’s in store for next year and how to keep pursuing creative goals joyfully.

Thanks to all our guests and listeners for making this year’s trip around the sun an instructive and entertaining journey.

Until next time, keep writing in the dark—we’ll see you there.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

Greetings Space Travelers,

Ralph & Julia here from Writing In The Dark. We are thrilled to share a very special episode with you about our most recent Journey To Jupiter.

In this episode, we’ll take you on a ride in our spaceship and share some of the experiences of working with a variety of amazing writers as they each explore their own authentic storytelling. We’ll be sharing some of the sounds from the retreat, including Julia’s talk on The Player’s Box. These snippets are a small part of the overall writing retreat experience we offer each year.

We hope you enjoy our behind the scenes episode and encourage you to look for your own opportunities to blast off and elevate your writing through community, learning, and retreat.

Wanna know more about the Journey to Jupiter Writing retreat? It’s all here.

Until next time, keep writing in the dark—we’ll see you there.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome Heather Sweeney to discuss Casey Mulligan Walsh’s Still, a micro-nonfiction published in Split Lip Magazine.

Read: Still by Casey Mulligan Walsh (learn more about the author here)

Nearly all one sentence, this 500-word flash is a breathless rush that captures the unthinkable loss of a child and conveys staggering emotion through the clever use of the word still. This conversation explores how the smallest forms can be the most challenging, the author’s choices about what details to include and exclude, and the power of imagery and repetition.

Prompt: Write a 1,000 word flash piece, either fiction or nonfiction. Then rewrite the piece in 500 words. Rewrite it again at 250 words. Then 100 words.

Do you have feedback on this episode or thoughts on the show? We'd love to hear from you! Connect with us on social media or leave a comment.

Guest Bio:

Heather Sweeney is the author of the upcoming memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women’s health, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, TODAY.com, Newsweek, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, Healthline, and Military.com, among many others. She lives in Virginia with her boyfriend, two college-aged kids, and their geriatric Labrador retriever.

Her forthcoming memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage is about a woman’s journey from being overshadowed by her husband’s military career to rediscovering her identity as a single mother entering a new stage in life, when she learned that the hardships of military life—the forced independence, frequent loneliness, required adaptability, and fierce resilience—had trained her for life after divorce.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, Bluesky, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome Jennifer Savran Kelly to discuss Megan Mayhew Bergman’s short story Housewifely Arts, published in her collection Birds of a Lesser Paradise.

Read: Housewifely Arts

“I am my own housewife, my own breadwinner.”

In this heart-wrenching story, a woman goes on a road trip with her son to find the African gray parrot that can still mimic her dead mother’s voice. This conversation explores how the author deftly moves through the front and back story and uses specific detail to create a deeply emotional narrative. They discuss the themes of the story, including expectations of mothers, gendered roles around parenting, mother/child relationships, and parental loss, and the deep character and precision of literary fiction.

Prompts:

* Find a book of photography and flip through it till you find an image that makes you stop and linger. Take it in for another minute then go to your notebook and write.

* Pick one of Jenny Holzer’s Truisms and use it as a writing prompt.

Do you have feedback on this episode or thoughts on the show? We'd love to hear from you! Connect with us on social media or leave a comment.

Guest Bio:

Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/they) lives upstate New York, where they write, bind books, and work as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Their debut novel Endpapers was a finalist for a 2024 Lambda Literary Award and was a fall/winter 2023 Indies Introduce pick. Their short work has been published or is forthcoming in Short Story, Long; Potomac Review; Black Warrior Review; and elsewhere.

Read Jennifer’s latest story, Man Next Door.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, Bluesky, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome Steve Weddle to discuss Jordan Harper’s short story My Savage Year, published in the Southwest Review. Together they dig into a well-crafted tale that’s engaging in the most unsettling of ways.

Read: My Savage Year

In this story, the narrator revisits a crime that occurred when he was in high school and has haunted him for decades. He admits that his perspective is unreliable, leaving the reader to decipher what is fact and what is fiction and whether the narrator was more than just a witness. Julia, Ralph, and Steve explore the twists and turns of this unsettling story and the craft of compelling crime fiction.

Prompt: Take a narrator reflecting on an event from the past and experiment with deception and withholding in a way that prevents the reader from knowing for certain what is true and what is not.

Do you have feedback on this episode or thoughts on the show? We'd love to hear from you! Connect with us on social media or leave a comment.

Guest Bio:

Steve Weddle is the author of Country Hardball, which the New York Times called "downright dazzling”, and The County Line, a novel set in 1930s Arkansas. He is the co-founder of the crime fiction collective Do Some Damage and the co-creator of the noir magazine Needle.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, Bluesky, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker dissect the pilot episode of the television series The Bear, whose protagonist Carmy returns to Chicago to run a restaurant amid grief and strained relationships with family members and kitchen employees. Season 4 starts June 25.

Read: The script of Season 1, Episode 1Watch: On Hulu

They unpack the very specific world of this show, examining the characters, conflict, and setting and discussing techniques prose writers can borrow from the screen and use to enrich their own narratives.

Prompt:  Pick a setting and describe it in as much detail as possible, including the physical objects as well as the people in it.

Do you have feedback on this episode or thoughts on the show? We'd love to hear from you! Connect with us on social media or leave a comment.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, Bluesky, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.

In this episode, Julia F. Green and Ralph Walker welcome special guest E. J. Wenstrom to discuss Charles Yu’s short story “Open” from his 2012 story collection Sorry Please Thank You.

Reading: Open by Charles Yu

E. J., Julia, and Ralph explore this speculative short story and its portal—in this case a literal door that appears in a living room—which may or may not save the main characters’ relationship.

They discuss portals and their use in genre fiction, how Yu does so much in a small space, and his work on the TV show Westworld. This conversation examines how speculative tropes can deepen character development and storytelling and the complex interplay between reality and fantasy in science fiction.

Prompt:

Write a scene in which a portal appears to one or more characters. Do they step through it? What is on the other side? How does that challenge or enhance the character?

Do you have feedback on this episode or thoughts on the story? We'd love to hear from you! Connect with us on social media or leave a comment.

Guest Bio:

E. J. Wenstrom believes in complicated heroes, horrifying monsters, purple hair dye and standing to the right on escalators so the left side can walk. She writes dark speculative fiction for adults and teens, including the young adult dystopian novel Departures and the award-winning Chronicles of the Third Realm War series (start with Mud). When she isn’t writing fiction, she co-hosts the Troped Out and Fantasy+Girl podcasts.

Start the Chronicles of the Third Realm War series for free with the prequel novella when you join E.J.’s newsletter.

You can find Writing in the Dark on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribing is a great way to support this work. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Listen to previous episodes.

Writing in the Dark is co-hosted by Julia F. Green (Substack, Bluesky, website) and Ralph Walker (Twitter, website) and edited by Aaron Fyler, with cover art by Jarmusch.