Host Blaine Greteman talks with Bennett Sims about his new collection 'Other Minds and Other Stories', which was published in November 2023 by Two Dollar Radio. They also discuss his process, inspiration and writing life. Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape, which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the collection White Dialogues. He is a recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society Fellowship and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome.

Host Blaine Greteman talks with Tim Johnston, a graduate of the University of Iowa English Department, with an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He's the bestselling author of Descent, The Current, the O. Henry prize-winning story collection Irish Girl, and the Young Adult novel Never So Green. His latest book is Distant Sons.

Louisa Hall is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Iowa, and the author of four critically acclaimed novels, including her most recent, Reproduction, which was published by Ecco in 2023. Her previous novel, Trinity was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Award and the winner of the Langum Prize for historical fiction. Before that, her novel Speak was a Best Book of the Year in NPR, Slate, and the Washington Post. Reproduction is a work of autofiction, in which a character with some close parallels to Louisa attempts to write a book about Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein, while struggling with her own painful experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and the moral questions surrounding genetic modification. We talk about the genre of autofiction, being a secretive child writer, and what is means to feel like an animal.

Rachel Yoder is a graduate of the Iowa English Department’s Nonfiction Writing Program, and the author of Nightbitch, which was published by Doubleday in 2021 and has been adapted as a series for Hulu, to debut this year.

The book was named a best book of the year by Esquire and Vulture, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction.

We talk about the process of writing the book, and the education and winding path that prepared her for it, and we take a crack at solving the problems of finding community within a world of alienated, secular modernity.

Today's episode is a discussion with Lauren Haldeman about her new graphic novel, Team Photograph (Sarabande, 2022), and her evolution as a writer, student, mother, and artist through a career that includes two earlier books, Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014), and Instead of Dying (University Press of Colorado, 2017).

Haldeman is graduate of the University of Iowa's English Department and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and she's also a true Renaissance woman: a web developer and graphic designer, by day, for the University of Iowa’s Writing University, she also paints, makes music, and has received the Iowa Artist Fellowship, the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

We talk about the multi-decade gestation of a work like Team Photograph, and the losses, discoveries, serendipitous chances, and practical techniques and habits that brought it to print.