Blackbird Studio for Writers

Episodes

1. Lit. Lesson #62: For Those With Eyes to See. Wrapping the Finch and the Mockingbird

   🎧 Listen Here What Four Weeks of Close Reading Actually Does For the Writer: Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. We began with that quote and I want to come back to it one more time before we close because that quote is not just about Atticus Finch. It is about every one of us […] The post...

   Apr 28, 2026
2. Lit. Lesson #61: To Kill a Mockingbird — The Witness, the Bones, and the Question That Remains

   🎧 Listen Here Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. ~ Charles Lamb Harper Lee uses this quote at the front of this book for a reason. Not as decoration. Not as a charming literary gesture. But as a thesis. Because To Kill a Mockingbird is not about race in Alabama in the 1930s. That story […]...

   Apr 21, 2026
3. Lit Lesson #60: To Kill a Mockingbird — The World Through Innocent Eyes

   🎧 Click here Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather, the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; boney mules […] The…

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   Apr 14, 2026
4. Lit. Lesson #59: Go Set a Watchman — The Shattering and the Gift

   🎧 Listen Here “Respect for a person’s conscience does not mean accepting moral relativism.” ~ John Paul II, 1993, para. 32-34 Ask yourself a couple questions: Are moral standards culturally-defined making it impossible to determine what is truly right or wrong? Or, is it true that each person...

   Apr 8, 2026
5. Lit Lesson #58: Go Set a Watchman — The World That Made Her

   She heard her father’s voice, a tiny voice talking in a warm comfortable past. “Gentlemen, if there’s one slogan in this world, I believe, it is this: equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” ~ Go Set a Watchman 🎧 Listen Here There is a moment in Go Set a Watchman that most readers…

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   Apr 1, 2026
6. 🎧 Lit Lesson #57: Harper Lee’s Two Books—One Story, One Soul, One Question

   🎧 Listen Here “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…. For man has in his heart a […] The post 🎧 Lit Lesson...

   Mar 24, 2026
7. 🎧 Lit Lesson #56: Blackbird: Going the Distance or Not?

   🎧 Listen to Teaching Here A deep dive on the journey of analyzing a memoir: Value, Structure, Plot Prefaced by a medical report summarizing her mother’s various hospitalizations, this heartbreaking memoir reconstructs the sad and turbulent events of Lauck’s childhood, which was overshadowed by…

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   Jan 21, 2026
8. 🎧 Lit Lesson #55: Blackbird and the Timeless Power of Scene Writing

   🎧 Audio Teaching Here “Lauck has constructed a riveting narrative from the awful mess of her life.That she has managed to do so fills me with an admiration for which I cannot find words. The best I can do is to suggest that you read this book.” ~ The London Times The Creation of Blackbird: […]…

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   Jan 10, 2026
9. 🎧 Lit Lesson #54: A Guest Teaching by Becky Ellis – Which Plot Fits James by P. Everett?

   By Becky Ellis “As happens with the frightened and unprepared, we scattered. Some of us would be caught. Some of us would be killed. Probably some of us would go crawling back. Sadie, Lizzie and I made it north to a town we were told was in Iowa.” – Percival Everett, James 🎧 Click to […] The…

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   Dec 3, 2025
10. 🎧Lit. Lesson #53: A Guest Teaching by Becky Ellis – Creating Character Through Voice

    By Becky Ellis “The more I pretended, the more I understood that pretending was the most honest thing I could do.” ~ Percival Everett, James 🎧 Click here to listen Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn presents Jim through Huck’s perspective—filtered, limited, and often patronizing. Jim...

    Nov 19, 2025