This week I have a long overdue convo with the extraordinary poet Laurie Rachkus Uttich.

John speaks with his friend Jason about the creative joys of grieving and the power of earnestness and other matters of interest.

The poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick talks with me about the cleverness and heart of Dolly Parton, who can serve as more than a cultural icon as we try to discover how to make our unique ways in the world.

Rochelle Hurt interviews Julia Koets about romantic desire and loss, the villanelle form, the layouts of poetry volumes, growing up with the policing of restrictive gender norms, how research contributes to creativity, the linguistic surprises lurking in the mundane world.

On this week’s program, I talk to the poet and novelist Chrissy Kolaya about the creative process, psychology, and the multitudinous tensions of being an American.

This week, I speak with my occasional co-host, Rachel Tillman about Don Marquis's Archy & Mehitabel, a series of narrative poems written by a cockroach.

This week, I speak with literary biographer Miranda Seymour about the extraordinary career of Jean Rhys.

On #529, I speak with fiction writer Kathryn Harlan about her debut collection, Fruiting Bodies.

On #528, Rachel Tillman and I discuss Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney's debut novel.

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In this week’s episode, I talk to Aaron Angello about his new book, The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications, the creative benefits of daily ritual, writing (cough) early in the morning, David Lynch, the mysteries of the word and, and ditching academic rules for the Muses.

In this week’s show, I speak with Rachael Tillman about the poetry and practice of Anne Sexton.

In #513, I talk to Jane-Rebecca Cannarella about genre bending & blending, illustrating literature, and the dialectics of Disney's The Little Mermaid.

In this week’s show, I talk to Lan Samantha Chan about writing a novel over a long period of time, learning and teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, the value of writing communities, and balancing teaching, administrative work, and writing.

Sandra Lim talks about optimism, editing through the pile of a poem, letting oneself go in the current of the stream, and finding a grounding in the abstractions of mind and word.

On today’s show, I discuss the power of Stephen Crane with novelist Paul Auster.

Photo by by Spencer Ostrander.[/caption]