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Episodes from Talking Writing
Lisa Borders on the Sustenance of Art in Dark Times
Lisa Borders, author of three novels, talks with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her newest book. Last Night at the Disco (Regal House Publishing, 2025) is a fictitious memoir framed as a letter to the former editor of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner. That context gives the audience their first clue about the book’s narrator, Lynda Boyle.The introduction to the letter also gives us a few other vague references to crimes, the loss of a teaching position, and a “coke-fueled disco queen” that help fill in a few blanks while raising many more questions.A...
Michael Jamin and the Importance of Small Moments
For this episode TW creative director John Vogel sat down with television writer and showrunner Michael Jamin about his collection of personal essays, A Paper Orchestra.Michael’s television career started in the mid-90’s with an episode of Lois and Clark, followed by more involved work on Just Shoot Me! and King of the Hill. Other writing and production credits include Beavis and Butthead, Rules of Engagement, Maron, and Wilfred.He self-published A Paper Orchestra through his company 3 Girls Jumping, and the book was named one of the best comedy books of 2024 by Vulture. Part...
Antonio Michael Downing on Inner and Outer Colonialism
Author and musician Antonio Michael Downing sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Antonio Michael's books Black Cherokee and Saga Boy, music audience expectation regarding race and incorporating varied genres, and the disregard of the tech industry when it comes to profiting off of the work of artists without compensation.If his memoir Saga Boy is a personal story grappling with the effects of colonialism on his psychology, his first full-length novel, Black Cherokee, is a story constructed to show the ways that everyone is living underneath unseen layers of history that they...
Joanna Walsh on Collective Internet Aesthetics
Multidisciplinary writer Joanna Walsh sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters. When Joanna first started writing, lacking IRL community and instruction, she turned early Twitter to find likeminded others to share work with. It wasn’t until after she’d been working as an artist that the schooling aspect came into play, getting her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship at Maynooth University.Joanna also founded and ran two activist campaigns on Twit...
Pia Leichter's Pivot to the Creative Club
Pia Leichter, founder of Kollektiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club, talks with TW creative director John Vogel about her experience transitioning from the advertising world to the artistic path. A big shift happened in her life about ten years ago, and Pia delves into some very personal details about the events that brought about that shift. As she said in our conversation: “I wasn’t expecting to share such vulnerable stories at all. I mean, I shared stuff some of my closest friends didn’t even know about me.”The two discuss Pia’s experien...
Molly Gaudry Experiments With Personal Storytelling
In today’s episode author Molly Gaudry sits down with TW founder and publisher Martha Nichols. Molly holds degrees in fiction, poetry, and experimental prose, and her new book that just came out last week is aptly titled Fit Into Me: A Novel, A Memoir. The book weaves a fictional narrative into Molly’s own story along with fragments from a wide range of other authors in an effort to create a sense of self via the combination of different elements. With this format Molly explores her experience as a Korean adoptee raised in the US, meeting her birth fami...
Nic Brown: Making Peace with his Musical Past
In this week's episode, TW Creative Director John Vogel sits down with drummer and author Nic Brown to talk about his memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023).Despite being accepted to Ivy League colleges, Nic opted to pursue his band Athenaeum straight out of high school. They signed to Atlantic Records, landed a few hits, and played extensively before Nic decided to leave to group in 2001 to pursue different styles of music and reclaim his opportunity to go to college.While attending Columbia University, he joined up with the band Skeleton Key, headed by bass player...
Victor Manibo on Touching the Work Regularly
Victor Manibo, a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, sits down with TW Community Manager Neva Talladen to discuss the drafting process for his 2022 science fiction novel, The Sleepless. Manibo and Talladen connect over their shared Filipino heritage and roots in New York, as they explore the rise of “hustle culture.” The Sleepless portrays a society where sleep is no longer necessary or even desired. Instead, young professionals like Jamie, the story’s main character and an aspiring journalist, spend endless hours working, driven by an insatiable pursuit of career advancement.
Tom McAllister on Writing Education and Community
TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Tom McAllister about his new essay collection It All Felt Impossible (Rose Metal Press, 2025). For the book, Tom challenged himself to write an essay a day that corresponded to each year of his life, keeping within a 1500 word limit. The result is a kind of mosaic memoir through snapshots across time with some tangential thoughts instigated by the memories.This is Tom’s fourth published book, his first being the 2010 memoir Bury Me in My Jersey about his late father and their shared love of the Philadelphia Eagles. His other tw...
Andrew Boryga on Identity Politics in Publishing
TW Creative Director John Vogel talks with Andrew Boryga, author of the satirical novel Victim. The two talk about the autobiographic backdrop to the novel, balancing creative time with parenthood, and the addictive and distancing natures of social media.
Sasha Wizansky's Juggling Act
TW Community Manager Neva Talladen talks with visual artist and graphic designer Sasha Wizansky about her experience starting Pencil Magazine. The magazine, created entirely out of work made with pencil and paper, brings attention to the physicality of writing and drawing with pencil, as well as the slowing down that writing and reading handwriting can cause.
Athena Dixon's Highs and Lows of Writing
In our last episode of the season, TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Athena Dixon, our first repeat guest for the podcast. A year and a half ago we released Neva’s interview with Athena, which focused on her book The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023). This time around, in January 2025, John asked her questions from his Perfect Recognition project focusing on intense aesthetic experiences and people’s life paths towards creativity. Fellow artists might find some resonance and solace in their open discussion about their own disillusionment surrounding artistic pursuit and how their lived experiences deviate from the more...