Cai Emmons on fear, drugs, and her fatal diagnosis
Date: September 14, 2022
It suddenly occurred to me: I had taken a risk, invited an experience I was scared of, and I’d survived it. I could—and would—take such a risk again. And it […]
Date: September 14, 2022
It suddenly occurred to me: I had taken a risk, invited an experience I was scared of, and I’d survived it. I could—and would—take such a risk again. And it […]
Date: September 14, 2022
I imagine most people, like me, receive a fatal diagnosis with surprise. We all know intellectually that we will die, but no one really feels death as a certainty. We […]
Date: September 12, 2022
First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, […]
Date: September 12, 2022
“The question looms large: How does one assert oneself as a person, a woman, without a speaking voice, without sound waves commandeering attention?”
Date: September 12, 2022
Steamboat Bill, Jr.,aka Buster Keaton, 1928 It’s good to see him young again,back from the booze, divorces, talkies,bit parts, and that sponging relative,age. He’s home again, in the cyclonescene, headed into […]
Date: September 12, 2022
My Instagram feed is currently riddled with mushroom advertisements. A mushroom beverage exceeds coffee for focus and health benefits! Mushroom face serums provide youthful, plump-celled, and small-pored complexions! Another mushroom […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Marybeth Holleman’s first book of poetry, “tender gravity,” came out this month, and we’re excited to host an in person reading on Sept. 8 so she can share it with you. We […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Marybeth Holleman didn’t start out to be a poet, but she found her voice through the medium and is now celebrating her first collection of works called “tender gravity.” I […]
Date: September 8, 2022
Charles Harper Webb is a Professor of English at California State University, former psychotherapist, poet, and author. His recent book, Ursula Lake, is a dark and thrilling story about a […]
Date: September 7, 2022
At eight years old I began writing poetry. I loved the sounds of words, and I loved stringing them together, often nonsensically. I liked the solitude of writing, the secrecy, […]
Date: June 22, 2023
A man revisits his unconventional relationship with his father. This book begins in the wake of loss as narrator Hector Peterson points out that he and his father, Winston Telemacque, […]
Date: June 12, 2023
Many of the poems in Bell’s second full-length book explore suffering and sadness through a very personal lens: terrifying moments of objectification and sexual violation; the desolation and isolation that […]
Date: June 6, 2023
In this work of poetry, Vuong unbinds what gets lost while carrying the aftermath from Vietnamese voices that have been longing to breathe after the disruption from wars, migration, and […]
Date: June 6, 2023
A strong poetic sensibility is combined with a successful conversational style in several insightful accounts of familiar situations, like seeing people in airports that one thinks one knows (‘Long Haul’), […]
Date: June 6, 2023
As we enter another Pride month, it feels as though 2023 has been one of the toughest legislative years for LGBTQ+ folks in a long time. As we witness and […]
Date: June 6, 2023
I’ve always found poetry a bit intimidating. Sometimes I think I know where one is going, then out of nowhere I’m thrown for a loop and left puzzled with a […]
Date: June 5, 2023
The illegitimate daughter of a white mother and a Jordanian father, Halaby, author of two novels and two collections of poetry, felt that she was a “fiction…squished between other people’s […]
Date: June 1, 2023
Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by Katharine Coles – who might be a witch (IMHO) given the ready way she connects with animals (including her parrot Henri, pronounced […]
Date: June 1, 2023
I review Phuong T. Vuong’s A Plucked Zither, from Red Hen Press (June 6, 2023). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/versecurious/donations
Date: May 23, 2023
Francesca Bell (Bright Stain) writes poems that chime like the bell of her own name: bright but resonant, sharp but still familiar, lush and likely to echo long after its […]