Episodes

  • Episode 21: Baseball Writing

    Episode 21: Baseball Writing
    Oct 19 2020
    This week, get your peanuts and Cracker Jack ready because we’re chatting with essayist Joe Bonomo and sportswriter Rick Telander about their favorite baseball writing. This program took place and was recorded in June when Major League Baseball was still on hiatus. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS "Baseball especially encourages that, that feeling of connection to other games you’ve been to. And I think that engages imagination and engages memory and it maybe engages, for certain writers, a literary impulse to explore the game in its slowness, its kind of slow-baked quality. Which is what we love about the game.” “What I like most in baseball writing is a skepticism, a resistance to writing about baseball as this maudlin, sort of grand ole game that is America’s pastime. It is, of course, but it’s also full of scoundrels and fascinating people and a lot of coarse humor.” “As a sportswriter you have fandom kind of beaten out of you on
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    49 mins
  • Episode 20: Frank Waln & Tanaya Winder

    Episode 20: Frank Waln & Tanaya Winder
    Oct 12 2020
    Today, in recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day, we talk with Native poets and performing artists Frank Waln and Tanaya Winder, who will also play some of their powerful music. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I really believe in helping people heal through the power of love and I try to infuse anything I write -- whether it’s poetry, nonfiction, music -- into that.” “We started writing poetry to process the world, and kind of as an act of survival. When our backs were against the wall and we were growing up in the aftermath of genocide and facing things like depression and historical trauma and PTSD and suicide, poetry and expressing ourselves through those words helped us get through that.” “I play a few instruments. Music was always an escape for me, a safe space for me, as was reading and writing. But music was my language.” “I was taught as a Lakota person, time is fluid for my people and when yo
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    1 hr
  • Episode 19: Juan Felipe Herrera

    Episode 19: Juan Felipe Herrera
    Oct 5 2020
    This week, AWM Facilities Supervisor, Cristina Carrera, chats with former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera about his new collection Every Day We Get More Illegal. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more podcast episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Instead of more openness, the doors seem to be bigger and tighter and more locked up, in more ways than one. So I wanted to think about that and I want to have the readers and everyone reflect on those things. What kind of nation are we? What is America? Who are we?” “I write everyday...and scribble. Don’t think I write these big papers everyday. I just scribble, put a few words on paper and just follow those words.” “Actions can be illegal, perhaps. But how can people be illegal? That’s reducing. When we call someone illegal we’re reducing that human being into a phrase on a piece of paper. And a human being is not a phrase on a piece of paper. A human being is a beautiful being, with many dimensions.”
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    32 mins
  • Episode 18: Adrianna Cuevas

    Episode 18: Adrianna Cuevas
    Sep 28 2020
    This week, AWM Assistant Director of Programming and Education, Sonal Shukla, chats with Adrianna Cuevas, debut author of the middle grade fantasy novel The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I pretty much live in my own head most of the time, so surrounding myself with my imagination and writing helps me get it all out.” “It was my way to honor my family and my history, especially as someone who’s first-generation. When my family left Cuba they couldn’t bring anything with them. So the things that we have preserving our history are our language, which I shoved in the book; food, recipes, which I shoved in the book; and then the stories we’ve told each other.” “It makes a big difference that we do have such a wide variety in kid lit of identities shown and expressed because I think it helps kids realize that reading and stories can be for everybody. And then it helps them feel lik
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    38 mins
  • Episode 17: Louie Pérez

    Episode 17: Louie Pérez
    Sep 21 2020
    We continue celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month this week with singer-songwriter Louie Pérez, lead singer of Los Lobos, who chats with radio broadcaster Catalina Maria Johnson about his work and writing. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Everything I’ve written has always come from the experiences I had growing up. You know, I couldn’t write about Brentwood. Or Beverly Hills. All I can write about is East LA and the experiences I had growing up there.” “There’s something about how your direct experience and your personal emotions can actually translate into other people’s lives. And that’s what I took on as a job as a songwriter.” “If I knew I was gonna live this long I would’ve bought more socks.” “There isn’t anything really specific about anything, it’s all subjective in a way. The things that make us happy are usually kind of relative to what’s going on in our lives.” “I wrote in a universal way so that if I’m talki
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    38 mins
  • Episode 16: Julissa Arce

    Episode 16: Julissa Arce
    Sep 14 2020
    This week, AWM President Carey Cranston sits down with bestselling author and immigrant rights advocate Julissa Arce to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “I’ve been very motivated and very inspired by young undocumented people now who are out fighting for their rights and are chanting, ‘Undocumented! Unafraid!’... When I was a teenager I did not have that power to say those things. I was very much afraid.” “I had always wanted to write and I had a really important story to tell, which is my story, my truth...I really needed to share my story. I can’t keep holding on to this.” “I did it all. Learned English, got a college degree, got a great job, paid taxes -- because undocumented people pay taxes. I mean I did everything and still it wasn’t enough. It just felt like the goal line was always moving, constantly moving.” “When I was growing up I never read a book
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    40 mins
  • Episode 15: Michelle Duster

    Episode 15: Michelle Duster
    Sep 7 2020
    This week, AWM President Carey Cranston sits down with author and historian Michelle Duster who discusses the indelible impact and lasting legacy of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “[Wells] felt the need to write her own autobiography because she was concerned that the work that she did would sort of be marginalized. So I really appreciate the fact that she decided to take control over her own story and her own narrative and chronicle it herself.” “Until we have a situation where there is truth and reality is represented in a way that is representative of the whole story of African-Americans, then we’re going to continue having these problems that we have in our country.” “For the writing that [Wells] did to be relevant today, in a way shows how things haven’t changed as much as we would hope. But it also ties the past to the present and I think that’s important for p
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    42 mins
  • Episode 14: Isabel Ibañez

    Episode 14: Isabel Ibañez
    Aug 31 2020
    This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone sits down with Isabel Ibañez to chat about her Bolivian heritage, writing process, and her debut Young Adult Fantasy novel Woven in Moonlight. We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Listen to more episodes here. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS “Home sort of felt like two places and I had to balance both of them. Those two identities, Isabel in Bolivia and then Isabel in the States, didn’t really converge until much later. Until I accepted both halves and accepted I am the daughter of immigrants and I am American but I am also Bolivian.” “Every story matters and there’s room for all of them.” “I’ve had family members who have gone onto the streets in Bolivia protesting and wanting a better future. And so, being here and not being able to be there, I wanted to write my own kind of protest, my own kind of rebellion.” “I got reacquainted with the process and joy of writing a story, the love-hate relationship.” “I think eve
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    24 mins