Show Notes
Bestselling author Laura Munson talks with Tess Callahan about her new book, THE WILD WHY: STORIES AND TEACHINGS TO UNCOVER YOUR WONDER, which she describes as a "teaching memoir" designed for people who think they are not creative. She discusses the value of intuition and wonder both in the writing life and everyday living. She offers tips for managing empathy and cultivating a firm but friendly relationship with one's inner critic. Laura shows us how wonder and awe are the wellsprings of cr...
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Thirty years after it first appeared in The New Yorker, Alice Elliott Dark's story "In the Gloaming" has been published as a standalone book. In this conversation, Alice takes us back to the strange visitational experience of writing it. She talks about “the internal other,” where stories come from, and how she listens for them. She shares her 7-minute writing practice, her sunrise ritual, and her unusual perspective on grief. We also get a preview of Wherever You Are, her forthcoming novel w...
Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and novelist, author of American Dervish and Homeland Elegies, joins host Tess Callahan to talk about his new novel, The Radiance. The book follows a writer (also named Ayad) who wakes from a hit-and-run accident into an unbidden state of heightened perception that unfolds over eight months as he navigates an academic scandal in a politically divided town. Ayad talks about writing as “melding” with a register of experience rather than execu...
Novelist Tess Callahan interviews screenwriter, actress, and producer Hallie Shepherd about her debut novel Call Off the Dark, just out from HarperCollins. Shepherd’s dramatic and cinematic instincts are evident in this genre-bending gothic thriller/love story about a grieving young widow who reinvents herself as a tradwife in the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest. The novel is being adapted for TV by Warner Bros. and Berlanti Productions. Shepherd is co-owner of Fireshoe Productions...
Dr. Andrew Holecek discusses Dark Retreat—a Buddhist practice of spending extended periods in complete darkness—and its transformative effects on creativity, healing, and spiritual insight. Dark Retreat is “big medicine” not to be undertaken lightly. Like any retreat, its power relies on its integration. His new book is: Total Eclipse of the Mind: Unleashing the Power of Darkness for Creativity, Healing, and Transformation Dr. Holecek is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner in Tibe...
Novelist Tess Callahan sits down with George Saunders to discuss his new novel Vigil. Saunders reflects on writing morally complex characters, the balance between empathy and fierceness, and the challenges of inhabiting the consciousness of a character who is in his words "a real stinker." He discusses how revision, attention, and trust in the reader shape his work. George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize,...