PODCAST · arts
GrottoPod
by The Writers Grotto
Conversations with working writers on the craft of writing, the writer’s life, and the broader writing community, recorded at the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, California.
Episodes
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How do you make historical horror fiction relatable?
Crossover Episode! The I Have Questions hosted by Brandy Collins and The Grotto Pod have crossed over this interview with author of Blood Slaves and Blood Rising, Markus Redmond. His books reimagine vampire by adding an origin story set during the early days of American slavery blending the story...
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Transitions, tips and techniques with Brandy Collins and Doug Henderson
Welcome back! Its a new season of Grotto Pod as Doug Henderson and Brandy Collins talk transitions. Brandy Collins is a journalist who has written for SF Gate, Oaklandside, and Non-Profit Quarterly to name a few. She's host of "I Have Questions podcast hosted by Brandy Collins" and creator of...
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"You're going to the bookstore, aren't you?" with Lewis Buzbee
Lewis Buzbee, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss the craft of books, and why we still love bookstores, even after (especially after) working at them. Lewis Buzbee’s most recent novel is Diver. He is also the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, After the Gold Rush, Fliegelman’s...
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Don't Go Alone: Creating Space with Shingai Njeri Kagunda
Shingai Njeri Kagunda, T. K. Rex and Doug Henderson discuss editing fiction publications, the triumphant return of Fantasy Magazine, and creating space for underrepresented writers. Shingai Njeri Kagunda (they/she) is an Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya with a Literary Arts…
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Despair is a Luxury with Nina Schuyler and Susan Kaye Quinn
Nina Schuyler, Susan Kaye Quinn, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss writing climate fiction and one central theme: hope. How to have it, how to write it, and why it’s more important than ever. Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the…
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Monsters, Middles and Counternarratives with M. M. Olivas and Cynthia Gómez
Cynthia Gomez, M. M. Olivas, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss monsters, middles, invented towns, whose fear gets centered in horror, and counternarratives. Stuff we talked about in the episode: Sundown in San Ojuela by M. M. Olivas (Mara) The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez...
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Putting Yourself In The Story with Margaret Juhae Lee
Margaret Juhae Lee, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss the differences between history and memoir, memoir and autobiography, research and worldbuilding, fiction and memory, plus generative writing, being a Taurus, internal reward systems, and putting yourself in the story. Stuff we talked about...
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Rooted and Written with Roberto Lovato and Doug Henderson
Roberto Lovato, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss scarlet macaws, breaking down structural inequality in publishing, and Rooted & Written—the first tuition-free professional conference for Writers of Color in the United States. Stuff we talked about in the episode: Applying to Rooted & Written...
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Needing the Fear with Jonathan Escoffery & Celeste Chan
Jonathan Escoffery, Celeste Chan, and T. K. Rex discuss education without a safety net, the intersection of racism, capitalism and belonging, ticking clocks and how to break them, finding Jamaican patties in the Bay Area, the intimacy of the second person, and needing the fear. Stuff we talked...
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The Punkest Thing Ever with Hugh Ryan and Mark Wallace
Hugh Ryan, Mark Wallace and T. K. Rex discuss MFAs, finding out what kind of writer you are, queer history, pitching niche topics, tarantulas, finding the right peers and instructors for your writing, and the punkest thing ever. Stuff we talked about in the episode: The Women's House of…
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Pantser, Plotter, Poet with Lori Ostlund & Doug Henderson
Lori Ostlund, Doug Henderson, and T. K. Rex discuss hopeful fiction, metaphor, the Midwest, balancing humor and darkness, crafting characters who feel like real people, the Flannery O’Connor award, and a third addition to the pantser/plotter dichotomy: poet. Stuff we mentioned in the episode:...
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Write the gayest sh*t imaginable with Sam J. Miller & Doug Henderson
Sam J. Miller, Doug Henderson and T. K. Rex discuss tapping into who you really are, going too far first, the Clarion writers workshop, writing stories with a structural conceit, filing off the serial numbers, writing from a marginalized point of view, loneliness, climate anxiety, hope, inhale…
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Writing Weird with T. K. Rex and Doug Henderson: Kicking off the new 2024 season!
The GrottoPod is back! In this kickoff episode for the new season, writers T. K. Rex and Doug Henderson discuss upcoming guests, their favorite writing craft tips, the importance of finding local writing community, and writing weird. Stuff we mentioned in the episode: Classes and Events at the...
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Episode 142: Dallas Woodburn’s ‘Best Week’
Novelist Dallas Woodburn joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read from her recent book, The Best Week that Never Happened, described as a “captivating, poignant story is perfect for teens on the brink of discovering who they are and what really matters.” Woodburn is a former Steinbeck fellow…
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We’re Taking a Break
We hope that this message finds you as well as can be. 2020 has contained a great deal of change for the GrottoPod, and for our production team. To fill you in: the Writers Grotto recently moved out of its physical offices in San Francisco, and we at GrottoPod consequently moved out of the…
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Episode 141: Preeti Vangani On Writing From Bitterness
Preeti Vangani joins the GrottoPod this week to talk with producer Brad Balukjian about her evocative essay, “A Meditation on Bitterness,” published in Bending Genres. Vangani is a brand manager turned poet and personal essayist who authored Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), and won the…
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Episode 140: Tess Taylor’s Poetry of Place
Poet Tess Taylor, who published two collections this year, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange and Rift Zone, joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read some of her poetry. Taylor is the author of three other books of poetry, including The Misremembered World, selected by Eavan Boland for…
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Episode 139: Roberto Lovato Reads from “Unforgetting”
Journalist and author Roberto Lovato returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from his debut book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on war, violence, terrorism in...
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Episode 138: Maw Shein Win Reads New Poems
Maw Shein Win returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from her new book of poetry, Storage Unit for the Spirit House. Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks include Ruins of a Glittering Palace and Score and Bone. Invisible Gifts: Poems...
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Episode 137: Roberto Lovato on ‘Unforgetting’
Roberto Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto and the author of “Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas” (Harper Collins). He joins fellow writer Jesus Sierra in this week’s episode to talk about the book. Lovato is…
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Episode 137: Brad Balukjian’s baseball odyssey
Author and scientist Brad Balukjian joins the GrottoPod’s summer reading series this week to share an excerpt from his new book, The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife. The Wax Pack. Out now, Wax Pack is the true story of tracking down all the players in a single pack of...
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Episode 136: Bonnie Tsui and ‘Why We Swim’
Bonnie Tsui joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read an excerpt from her latest book, “Why We Swim.” The book, published in April, offers cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water and swimming. Tsui is a journalist, a longtime contributor to the New York Times…
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Episode 135: Adam Smyer’s Anti-Racist Translation Guide
Adam Smyer joins us on the GrottoPod this week to talk about his new book, You Can Keep That To Yourself: A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor. It’s a pocket-sized translation guide designed to keep white folks out of trouble, and it...
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Episode 134: Vanessa Hua, “VIP Tutoring”
Award-winning writer Vanessa Hua joins the GrottoPod summer reading series today to share a taste of her short story "VIP Tutoring" from her newly reissued collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities. Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of A River of Stars. A National...
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Episode 133: Raina León, “Solstice in Solidified Sugar”
Writer Raina León joins the GrottoPod this week as part of our summer reading series to share her piece "Solstice in Solidified Sugar." León is a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that…
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Episode 132: Rachel Levin Wants You To Eat Something!
Food writer Rachel Levin continues our GrottoPod reading series in a special Shabbat episode. Listen in as she reads from EAT SOMETHING: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews, co-written with Evan Bloom, co-founder of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen in San...
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Episode 131: A.H. Kim’s ‘A Good Family’
Today on the GrottoPod we're kicking off our summer reading series, bringing you readings from Writers Grotto members. Today we're featuring Ann Kim, who reads from her brand-new novel, A Good Family, available now. Ann Kim (writing as A.H. Kim) was born in South Korea and immigrated to Ohio as a...
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Episode 130: Kevin Smokler’s ‘Vinyl Nation’
Kevin Smokler is an author, documentary filmmaker and event host based in San Francisco. Today on the GrottoPod, he discusses his documentary, Vinyl Nation: A Deep Dig into the Record Resurgence, which debuted digitally on what would have been Record Store Day 2020 (April 19) in partnership with...
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Episode 129: Taneum Bambrick’s Bold Poetry
Taneum Bambrick's book, Vantage, is a fictionalized account of the poet's time spent working as the only woman on a garbage crew. Using unforgettable images, Bambrick tackles issues such as class, gender, and environmental degradation without sentimentality. Sharon Olds called the book "a work of...
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Episode 128: Historian Yan Slobodkin on the Current Moment
Yan Slobodkin is a historian of modern Europe, with a focus on French colonial and transnational history. He stops by the GrottoPod this week to discuss his current book project—a history of famine in 19th- and 20th-century North Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, and its relationship to...
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Episode 127: Beth Lisick and ‘Edie on the Green Screen’
Beth Lisick's debut novel, Edie on the Green Screen, is about a Bay Area Gen-X rebel, an "It Girl" in the late '90s who faces her own obsolescence in 2010s San Francisco. It is fundamentally about how we manage change, and the change our world has experienced since this story's inception only…
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Episode 126: International Literature
What can international literature teach us about our collective past, present and future in these chaotic times? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, producer and Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to Jesus Francisco Sierra, Mathangi Subramanian and Olga Zilberbourg about the appeal of…
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Episode 125: Telling the Stories of Stuff
For the better part of a decade, Lisa Hix, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, and GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks have been writing about antiques, vintage items, and collectibles at CollectorsWeekly.com. As a rule, these writers have tended to shy away from articles about the prices of objects or the…
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Episode 124: Bonnie Tsui and ‘Why We Swim’
Take the plunge into an episode on all things aquatic with Bonnie Tsui, whose new book, Why We Swim, dives into swimming history while offering poetic contemplation on the nature of this physical pursuit. The incredible characters in this book—including an Icelandic fisherman who defied death in...
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Episode 123: Roberto Lovato on Dignidad Literaria
Dignidad Literaria is a grassroots campaign for greater Latinx inclusion in the United States publishing industry that has grabbed the attention of activists and publishing executives alike. In this episode, Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to author and activist Roberto Lovato, one of the...
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Episode 122: Writing Memoir, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Want to learn how to shape experience—or explore whole new worlds? Fact and fiction commingle and collide in today’s episode, the third of our special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice their...
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Episode 121: Dystopian Visions
Gender wars, pandemics, and, of course, workaday clones: is it the daily news, or our shared future? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, co-producers Susan Gerhard, Daniel Pearce and Beth Winegarner plus special guest Andrew Braithwaite take on dark visions, with four of our favorite dystopian…
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Episode 120: Cornelius Eady On Poetry and Jazz
Cornelius Eady has published seven books of poetry, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, which won the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and Brutal Imagination, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in poetry. Running Man, a music-theatre piece Eady coauthored…
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Episode 119: The Making of ‘Rooted & Written’
This week we go inside Rooted & Written, a new Writers Grotto initiative by and for writers of color. Featured in this one-hour show: live poetry and prose readings from the first Rooted & Written workshop series in September, 2019, as well as discussions and reactions from the event. Rooted and...
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Episode 118: Our Favorite Books of 2019
As the year races to a close, we revisit the adrenaline rush of five key books: one inspired in part by SCUM Manifesto scribe Valerie Solanas; another powered by a Great Dane; a play-by-play plus backstory on the epic James Baldwin-William F. Buckley debate of yore; a biographer attempting to...
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Episode 117: Michael Frank in conversation with Lindsey Crittenden
Michael Frank is the author of the memoir The Mighty Franks, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection that was named one of the best books of 2017 by The Telegraph and The New Statesman and won the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize. In October, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published What Is…
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Episode 116: The Delights of Writing Historical Fiction
Writer Lucy Jane Bledsoe, whose new novel is Running Wild, interviews fellow authors Pam Berkman and Dorothy Hearst. Berkman and Hearst's new children's book is Filigree's Midnight Ride, the first entry in a series about, as Berkman says, "turning points in history, particularly American history,...
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Episode 115: Mary Ladd’s “disrespectful cancer book”
In this special episode of the GrottoPod, author and former GrottoPod co-host Bridget Quinn interviews writer Mary Ladd and San Francisco Chronicle “Bad Reporter” cartoonist Don Asmussen for the Betabrand podcast theater, recorded with a live studio audience at the apparel company's San Francisco...
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Episode 114: Spooky Reads for Halloween
What’s scarier: an abusive father imposing the re-enactment of an iron-age human-sacrifice ritual on his teenage daughter, an idealistic young man imprisoned and brutalized for a crime he clearly did not commit, a cast of characters adrift in a genuinely haunted house, or the political history of...
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Episode 113: You and AI—David Ewing Duncan and our Robotic Futures
The future is already here—but there's another one, two, or three futures right around the corner. David Ewing Duncan's new book, Talking to Robots: Tales from our Human Robot Futures, speculates on the possibilities of what comes next in the AI-human interface, with help from theoretical…
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Episode 112: Talking Books with The Stacks host Traci Thomas
Rummaging through piles of books has never been more fun than with books podcaster Traci Thomas, whose ebullient personality and searing smarts have grown her show, The Stacks, into a true indie media phenomenon. Whether she's in a page-by-page read of Toni Morrison's Beloved, revisiting Kazuo...
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Episode 111: Writing Humor and Action
Write funnier -- and livelier! Today’s episode is the second of two special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts, which are available on September 10, 2019. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice the craft of writing character…
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Episode 110: Writing Dialogue and Character
Want to take your writing to the next level? Today’s episode is the first of two special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts, available starting September 10, 2019. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice the craft of writing character,...
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Episode 109: Joshua Furst on Writing the Counterculture
Joshua Furst is an aficionado of American counterculture. His 2008 novel, The Sabotage Cafe, was a story of then-and-now punks defining themselves in opposition to the mainstream: dumpster-divers living in the shadow of American consumerism. His new novel, Revolutionaries, out now from Knopf,...
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Episode 108: Sara Schneider on the Language of Wine
Sara Schneider has been a wine, food, and general lifestyle editor and writer for 25 years, most recently as Consulting Wine and Spirits Editor for Robb Report. Before that, Schneider was Sunset magazine’s Wine Editor, which is where she met GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks of CollectorsWeekly.com…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does GrottoPod have?
GrottoPod currently has 154 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is GrottoPod about?
Conversations with working writers on the craft of writing, the writer’s life, and the broader writing community, recorded at the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, California.
How often does GrottoPod release new episodes?
GrottoPod publishes regularly with 154 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to GrottoPod?
You can listen to GrottoPod on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts GrottoPod?
GrottoPod is created and hosted by The Writers Grotto.
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