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 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
Monday Jan 23, 2023
Monday Jan 23, 2023
Happy (belated) Halloween, Good Writing subscribers! In today's episode, we discuss Shirley Jackson's 1959 gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House.
What makes this "psychological ghost story" work so well? Subjectivity. The characters tell us their subjection version of the events, which leaves the reader to fill in the gaps with maximum spookiness.
Plus, we discuss a sentence that Ben called "a literary kickflip" and a terrifying walk that Emily is nominating for most romantic moment of 1959.
Emily recommends Abandon Me
Ben recommends (with caveats) the 2022 movie The Whale
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 Jul 11, 2022
Monday Jul 11, 2022
Dune is a weird book. Some might even say, a bad book. Emily does on this episode, and so does Ben (sort of). Herbert’s prose style is definitely stilted, but what Ben and Emily get into on this episode is the absolutely strange choice he’s made to write the entire thing in third person omniscient, and they try to figure out how thinking works in fiction.
Ben recommends Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
Emily recommends One Hundred Years of Solitude
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 13, 2022
Monday Jun 13, 2022
We love insights and character motivation on this podcast! 😤 But we also like scenes that move the story forward.
This week, we discuss the hilarious Milk Fed by Melissa Broder (2021) and how she introduces a therapist character who feels realistic while still creating all of the insights that we expect when a character goes to therapy.
A link we promised to include in the show notes: Listen to Danez Smith read their poem “Dear White America”
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 edits the Magazine1 literary magazine. 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.