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 Apr 11, 2022
Monday Apr 11, 2022
Author and editor John Trefry joins us to discuss (among many other things) the ways in which language itself has aesthetic value, the unknowable contours of spacetime, why writing without emotion can lead you to interesting places, and death metal. Read John's writing on the Neutral Spaces blog. Visit Inside the Castle here.
The Amityville films on Tubi.
"Claustrophobic Dysentery" by Cabinet
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 04, 2022
Monday Apr 04, 2022
Today on the Good Writing Podcast we are joined by flash fiction author Brett Bieble. Topics discussed include the ways in which flash fiction approaches "perfection," the advantages of brevity, the ways that stories utilize objects, and comma patrol.
Josephine Rowe's "The Vending Machine at the End of the World"
Brett's Twitter
Brett's story "Big Red Nation"
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 28, 2022
Monday Mar 28, 2022
Texas poet Esteban Rodriguez joins us to discuss an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). We talk about writing about stuff you hate and combining long and short sentence lengths for realism and momentum.
Esteban recommends The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic (2015), An Explanation of the Birds by António Lobo Antunes (translated by Richard Zenith) (1981), and Rapture by Susan Mitchell (1992)
Follow Esteban Rodriguez on Twitter at @estebanjrod11
Emily recommends Melissa Febos’s new craft essay “A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing About Other People” in Kenyon Review
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 21, 2022
Monday Mar 21, 2022
John-Paul Hurley joins us to discuss an excerpt from Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth. How can writers make the readers feel lost in memories? We also discuss unlikeable protagonists.
Other links from this week:
Follow J.P. Hurley on Twitter here
Hear about how a fantasy writer raised $31M on Kickstarter to self-publish four books on the Print Run Podcast 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 Mar 14, 2022
Monday Mar 14, 2022
We always bring ourselves with us wherever we go, even into our writing. Even if we think that writing is about something completely other to ourselves, it is impossible for that wherever to escape whoever we are. Megan Boyle takes this to the farthest extent in her autofiction piece Liveblog in which she attempted to write down every single thing that happened to her over the course of a few months. The result is a deeply personal, funny, moving and intellectually fearsome book that is completely unlike anything else.
Buy Liveblog 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 Mar 07, 2022
Monday Mar 07, 2022
The co-editors in chief of Alien Literary Magazine join us to talk about two of their favorite pieces from a recent issue. We talk about the magazine’s reading process and two elements of craft that made these submissions stand out: momentum and juxtaposition.
“Pilgrimage” by Brett Biebel in Alien Literary Magazine
“Rave” by Esteban Rodriguez in Alien Literary Magazine
Other links from this week:
Read essays and short stories published from our guest Matthew Hawkins here
Read short stories published from our guest Claire Martin here
Read Alien Lit Mag’s submission guidelines or buy a sticker and follow them on Twitter
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 Feb 28, 2022
Monday Feb 28, 2022
Emily has Ben read an Anton Chekhov short story about a sad lady’s sad day and discuss occasion for story. Why is this the day that you tune into your character’s life? How can we as writers make a story feel complete?
On the way, Ben and Emily get derailed by a difference of opinion sparked by George Saunders’s analysis of the story. Should you consider the reader’s interpretation and anticipate the reader’s reaction to your story as you’re writing? Ben says no. Emily says absolutely yes. Tune in for the pros and cons!
Read a different translation of “In the Cart” by Anton Chekhov
Buy George Saunders’s writing craft book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (and his short story collection Tenth of December)
Catch up on the viral writer conversation of Parul Sehgal’s “The Case Against the Trauma Plot”
Other recommendations from this week:
Out to Lunch, a jazz album by Eric Dolphy
Owed, a poetry collection by Joshua Bennett
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 Feb 21, 2022
Monday Feb 21, 2022
We discuss Richard Brautigan’s novel Trout Fishing in America and the way he seems to have no interest in following any sort of rule when he’s writing. The phrase “Trout Fishing in America” can be anything; a character, a place, the phrase itself, or maybe even something more, something spiritual. Ben and Emily talk about why that’s cool and why it’s weird.
Trout Fishing in America (1967) - buy it here (or read a weird PDF of it here.)
Read Jenette Winter’s (as well as few others) ten rules for writing here.
You can rent Jaspar Mall on Amazon, but I don’t want to link that so here’s a link to the film’s official twitter
Here’s where you can buy John Darnielle’s new novel, Devil House.
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.
Follow him on Twitter @benjaminkerns22.
Emily Donovan
Emily (co-host) is writer living in Colorado with her girlfriend, their dog, and several struggling houseplants. She writes jokes disguised as fiction.
Find her recent publications online at emilydonovan.com.