Good Writing Podcast
The Good Writing Podcast is a show for creative writers who want to nerd out on craft. Two friends, Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns, read their favorite sentences, paragraphs, and other short excerpts and present craft lessons and writing exercises for fellow writers.
Listen on:
Episodes
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Point-of-view characters. You love them. You understand them. They still do mean things. How can you keep your reader empathizing with your point-of-view character even if they do something villainous?
Also: Ben (a philosophy major) and Emily (an outdoor enthusiast) interpret the climax pretty differently.
Read this short story before listening to the episode: "Algal Bloom" by Kathryn Harlan in Michigan Quarterly Review
Buy the whole collection Fruiting Bodies (Emily's short story collection of the year!) here
A poem that rocks: "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins" by Paula Gunn Allen
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Do you have to write about a topic in the chronological order that it happened in to understand it better? No, definitely not. In fact - maybe you shouldn't?
This episode, we discuss Enjoy Me Among My Ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald (2022). It's a memoir that uses 3 forms (diary entry, flash about an influential woman in her life, and essays) to explore sex work, academic theory, and how having a daughter changed her.
Order this book from The Feminist Press here
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Monday Sep 11, 2023
Monday Sep 11, 2023
In this episode we consider what it takes to write young people in a way that feels both honest and honoring with a difficult piece of fiction by B.R. Yeager from his newest collection, Burn You the Fuck Alive.
Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Carmen from Julia Armfield's debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea isn't necessary for the plot, but Emily got obsessed anyway (of course). In this episode, we discuss bringing side characters to life and using them to establish themes that your point-of-view character is too clueless to pick up on.
Other links:
B.R. Yeager (friend of the pod)'s new story collection Burn You the Fuck Alive
Here's a ContraPoints video about incels that we reference
Great news for the timing of this episode! Our Wives Under the Sea is now out in paperback
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Today we discuss "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" with poet David van den Berg.
David's magazine - Prometheus Dreaming
His new book - Love Letters from an Arsonist
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Monday Mar 13, 2023
Monday Mar 13, 2023
Emily has Ben read sections from Eula Biss's Having and Being Had this week because she knows he loves to think about capitalism.
How can you come up with rules to how you write about a topic? Eula Biss sets out with constraints that make her essays both dreamlike and punchy.
Good Writing is a podcast where two MFA friends read like writers and lay out craft ideas for fellow writers to steal. Co-hosted by Emily Donovan and Benjamin Kerns.
Twitter: @goodwritingpod
Email: goodwritingpodcast@gmail.com
Benjamin Kerns
Ben (co-host) is a writer living in Florida with his wife and their cat. He writes fiction with a penchant for the weird and unexpected.
Emily Donovan
Emily (co-host) is writer living in Colorado with several struggling houseplants. She writes jokes disguised as literary fiction.