PODCAST · education
Literary Nomads
by Steve Chisnell
Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!
Episodes
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Spectre-Grey – Dark Montgomery Pt. 2
What is the real story behind the creator of Anne of Green Gables? In the close of this two-part examination of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life, we examine how her idealized fiction was neither passive memory nor simple escapism, but a defiant “evensong,” an act of economic, spiritual, and even...
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Ghost in the Garden – Dark Montgomery Pt. 1
What if Anne of Green Gables wasn’t just an escapist daydream, but a calculated strategy that saved its author’s life? Today we find the divide between L.M. Montgomery’s sunlit public fiction and her claustrophobic domestic reality. From hidden kitchen-table writing under an autocratic…
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Temporary Delay Announcement
Hey, everyone! Thanks for your patience during this unexpected episode delay! A few tech challenges while I upgraded my studio this summer put me a few weeks behind. But this little announcement proves that I’m back up and running, so we’ll continue our Literary Tourism journey very soon, and…
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Building Fantasies
How does the map overwrite the physical territory it claims to represent? Today we look at literary simulations, from the bedroom of Victor Hugo to the Orlando welter of parks and rides. Guided by the semiotics of Umberto Eco, the simulation theory of Jean Baudrillard, and the urban critiques of...
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Mapping Dreams
How do we navigate the space between the curated tourism experience and the raw concrete of the world beneath it? We investigate the “imaginative geographies” we project onto other lands, examining how Italo Calvino’s semiotic cities, Arthur Conan Doyle’s romanticized London, and Mathieu...
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Author Footprints Pt. 2 – The Aracataca Paradox
What happens to a real, working community when a fictional landscape is physically constructed on top of it? We discover the socio-economic friction behind literary travel, contrasting the magical ideals of Gabriel García Márquez’s Macondo with the unpaved streets of Aracataca, Colombia. Behind…
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Author Footprints Pt. 1 – Aura & Reliquary
Why do we drive thousands of miles just to touch the wooden beams of an author’s birthplace? From Poe’s Baltimore to PEI and Waywords’s own Waterford, MI, we consider what it takes to build a literary destination and how this works to undermine the very real need for we travelers to cross the...
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Packing Lists Pt. 2 – Stalwart Women
Who carries the weight of our leisure? Some readings from the past by thoughtful and resilient women! Take in some early writing of place and circumstance, journals and reflections which reflect the jarring collisions between our travel expectations and the realities we meet. More, we learn that…
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Packing Lists Pt. 1: Dreams and Dirt
Did your horse throw ya, buddy? We investigate what we hope to achieve by literary travel . . . and why our packing cannot prepare us for it! While the global tourism industry spends billions to shape our eager expectations, what is it that we’re actually so anxious to see? And whatever it is, […]
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Grand Tours Pt 2: Bat on the Narrow Road
What’s the difference between being a passive tourist and a wayfarer? Follow the 17th-century footsteps of Matsuo Basho to interrogate the gap between curated tourist destinations and the open-ended, ego-stripping realities of true travel. By contrasting the lush, internal landscapes of L.M....
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Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion
Are we consuming an authentic place, or are we willingly participating in a beautifully staged performance designed around our own expectations? In this opening episode of Journey 7, we begin our exploration of literary tourism. When we travel to the places that inspired our favorite books, whose...
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Literary Tourism Trailer
Welcome to the summer trailhead! Join Journey 7 of Literary Nomads as we explore the secrets of literary tourism and travel writing. Discover how authors like L.M. Montgomery constructed the identity of Prince Edward Island, unpack the cultural legacy of Anne of Green Gables, and learn how to…
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Nomadic Departures
We are left on the precipice of a severe, unavoidable aporia: when the Empire can absorb and commercialize our very language of protest, the only true ethical act of agency is to stop performing the script, reject the easy answer, and step directly out into the unimaginable dark . We challenge…
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What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & Interpretation
Is our intellectual exercise just an expensive lifestyle brand that keeps our hands clean? In this raw, self-interrogating mailbag episode, we turn the lens inward for a vulnerability audit of our own political battles and pedagogical failures. Let’s try and bridge the gap between literary theory...
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Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and Gaye
Is that blank page paralyzing your activism? Is your irony a mask for your complicity? We’re using William James and David Foster Wallace to interrogate the “sneer trap” of modern irony. From Marvin Gaye’s soulful protests to BTS’s radical solidarity after the Sewol Ferry tragedy, we consider how...
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The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts
Is your reading just an “escape”?? Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate the “Catharsis Commodity” and ask if our reading habits are just another layer of the Hideous Bargain. Explore the ethics of reading and the “Empathy Trap” in this...
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Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi
Can Stoicism answer our dilemma? Is the suffering child a product of a world that demands every second and every soul be “useful” to the state? By comparing the “Roman Plow” of duty to the “Sovereign Tree” of uselessness, we ask if our participation in the “Achievement Society” is actually what...
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The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man
And when the child cannot speak for itself? Humanity’s first global lawsuit! In this 10th-century Islamic fable, animals put mankind on trial for the crimes of the extraction economy. We unsettle the habitus of human exceptionalism to ask: would we change the story’s ending because we couldn’t...
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The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain
We’ve turned the basement into a casino! A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through a lottery. Does “mathematical fairness” absolve the citizens of Omelas, or does it simply creates a more sophisticated illusion of justice? Today it’s...
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Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller”
10 April 2026 Waypoint - “The Fortune Teller” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is perhaps the greatest writer of Brazil. In “The Fortune-Teller,” a secret affair driven by anonymous threats pushes a committed skeptic toward a dingy attic and a deck of cards. It is…
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Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland
The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . . We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our messy humanity into a spreadsheet of “mathematically infallible happiness.” Unsettle the sterile peace of the OneState and the rigid hierarchy of Flatland to ask: Is...
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Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro
The “Hideous Bargain” moves from metaphor to the operating table. In this episode, we let loose the bonds of metaphor in Le Guin’s “Omelas” and meet the visceral reality of clinical labor. We examine how the “Sanitization of Language” allows societies—from the United Federation of Planets to…
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The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment
The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex. This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary criticism to interrogate the 13th Amendment and the ‘Hideous Bargain” of mass incarceration. If the basement is built into our laws, can we ever truly ‘walk...
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Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center
What happens to the story when the ‘object’ of our sympathy looks back and refuses the role we’ve written for them? The allegory of the ‘Suffering Child’ is a powerful challenge, but it creates its own blind spots: it can turn a living history into a static prop. This week, we use Tommy Orange’s...
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The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night Watchman
Your Interpretation is Colonial. When we turn Zen into a pop-culture vibe or a totem pole into a corporate metaphor, we aren't learning; we're committing interpretative violence.
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Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth
Akwaeke Emezi demonstrates how Nigeria’s contemporary writers turn our conceptual realities around. They offer a YA novel that doesn’t condescend, but more, one which shows that we should not “walk away” from Omelas, but perhaps “Stay and Hunt.” This is also the final of three episodes which…
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Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero
Why have so few read Soyinka? And can we find hope through his cynical dramas? I admit I am a victim of the myth-making around me which has made Soyinka and other African writers largely invisible. Let’s see why. Episode 6.24 – Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero African…
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Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto
What sort of literature is this, anyway? Today we introduce some approaches to Nigerian literature, offer a bevy of African writers, and explore how one of Nigeria’s most powerful authors can write her own modest letter to humanity. Also, we learn about hostile architecture from one of our...
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Cassandra: Uncertain Steps
And what if nobody listens? Yes, entering our calls for justice into public space carries no small amount of anxiety. And the poster-child for being unheard, the Trojan princess and priestess Cassandra, may–if we read our mythology carefully–provide us some clues to our purpose and goals in…
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Writing Back: Letters to Humanity
26 Dec 2025 Episode 6.21 – Writing Back: Letters to Humanity A different sort of New Year Resolution, moving us from personal improvement to public advocacy! Let’s write an essay of address, framing our passions into a perspective that would make Le Guin proud! Texts from this episode: Nazim...
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The Great Societies: Lowry’s “The Giver”
19 Dec 2025 Episode 6.20 – The Great Societies: Lowry’s The Giver Another thorny utopia, Lowry’s Community practices a different kind of strategy to the Hideous Bargain: ethical evasion, a too tempting strategy for all of us. Political? Yes. But also a YA fantasy vision of what some of the latest...
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The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning
12 Dec 2025 Episode 6.19 – The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning We finish our discussion of the silent film Metropolis and answer our question of art and politics by examining the text, context, and reader meaning-making. Discussed in the episode: A definition of Context:...
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Is All Art Political? The Great Societies, Pt. 1: Metropolis
It seems everything is politics these days. But at least can't we keep art pure? You know, art for art's sake? I offer my thoughts on the topic while we examine the classic silent film, Metropolis (1927).
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True Horror: Le Guin, Poe, Cavarero, Bataille, and Arendt
We finish our side trail on the implications of Poe's horror by stepping more deeply into our own capacity to violence, reaching finally to Le Guin's own direction: look to our modern political scene and the impulse to annihilation.
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Poe: Horror, Pathology, and the Necessity of Care
We say Poe has influence the genre of horror, but have we really considered what that influence has revealed to us across the generations? What happens when we tell stories of a culture that has abandoned its moral foundations?
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The Hideous Heart – Poe’s Aesthetic of Accountability
There really isn't that much to say about Poe, is there? He's just creepy. But wait. What if we could explain the supposed madness in all these stories?
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Waypoint – “The Imp of Perversity”
Another Halloween treat from Poe, a reading of this lesser-known tale. And follow the podcast for some ways to think about it and "The Tell-Tale Heart"!
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Waypoint – “The Tell-Tale Heart”
This story, a quintessential Poe classic, is perfect not only for its conception of the psychology of horror, but for our larger discussion in Le Guin's Journey 6.
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Literary Nomads for Teachers
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
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Literary Nomads for Students
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
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Literary Nomads for Readers
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
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Le Guin – What I Carry With Me
Now that we've wrestled in and with Omelas for a bit, what questions remain for us to take forward on our journey? We're walking away from Omelas, but let's have an idea where we're going.
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Le Guin Part 5: Q&A
Listeners offer their questions from narrator trust to activism to teaching controversy. I rant--or respond--back.
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Le Guin Part 4: The Ones Who Stay – N. K. Jemisin
Can we pull this utopia dilemma together? Or will we add even more levels of complication?
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Le Guin Part 3: The Reader’s Labyrinth
Sure, the Omelas dilemma is tough, but at least we have our narrator as ally, right? Right? Perhaps the real horror in Omelas has less to do with the child at its center.
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Le Guin 2: Architectures of Happiness
Is this story really about that suffering child? Or is it more about how we wall its suffering out, then invite it back in?
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Le Guin 1: The Hideous Bargain
At last we settle in to think about Le Guin's Omelas story and set aside some common approaches to it. The first of several parts.
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Gardens of Imagination – Narrative Utopias
Let's niche down into a small sub-genre of fantasy and explore our desire for it, the classic utopia!
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In Defense of Fantasy
Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows!
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Stephen King Meets Shel Silverstein: Formalism and Trope in Story
What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!
HOSTED BY
Steve Chisnell
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Literary Nomads have?
Literary Nomads currently has 93 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Literary Nomads about?
Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!
How often does Literary Nomads release new episodes?
Literary Nomads has 93 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Literary Nomads?
You can listen to Literary Nomads 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 Literary Nomads?
Literary Nomads is created and hosted by Steve Chisnell.
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