READ TO ME with Becky Karush

Today, we read and love “River House” by Diana Whitney. This poem is from Diana's forthcoming October 2023 collection, DARK BEDS (June Road Press). 

Pre-order DARK BEDS here and anywhere you buy books: https://www.juneroadpress.com/bookstore

Leam more about the Read to Me podcast and your host, Becky Karush: www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

DARK BEDS, Diana's second collection, juxtaposes the conflicted emotions of motherhood and domesticity with the intoxicating promises of transgression. Fantasies fulfilled or imagined play out against the haunted backdrop of Vermont’s woods and fields, a landscape both harsh and magical, conjuring longing and grief, dissolution and repair. Here we see how time is reflected in our bodies, our children, our choices, and the natural world. Dark Beds is an anthem for the “sandwich generation”—tired adults caught between the demands of growing children and aging parents, yearning to reclaim desire and a sense of self. Sensual, elegant, and deeply resonant, these poems lay bare the dark beds of a marriage, a garden, a human life: the intimate places where truths are buried, exposed, and sown again in hope of renewal.

Diana Whitney writes across genres with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. She is the editor of the bestselling anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves (2021), winner of the Claudia Lewis Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, Glamour, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Her first book, Wanting It, won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. Diana has received numerous grants for her writing, including from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Vermont Arts Council, and is completing her MFA in poetry at New England College. A feminist activist in her hometown and beyond, she lives in Vermont with her family and works as an editor and writing coach.

https://www.diana-whitney.com/

https://www.juneroadpress.com/

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good

Today, we read from Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create A Life That Matters to You by Terri Trespicio. We trace a smart, beaming circle from the beginning of a wedding video, back to the beginning of a wedding video. Along the way, we get a completely new understanding of beginnings, endings, and the concept of forever.

Plus, the surprising appearance of Men in Black.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good

Today, we revisit a 2019 episode on the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World, also called, in Mohawk, Ohénten Kariwatékwen: Words Before All Else.

This Address’s legacy is much bigger than the United States Thanksgiving tradition. People of the Haudenosaunee nations recite it before ceremonial and governmental meetings. Their civic life grows again and again from acknowledgment of the natural world, relationship to it, and gratitude for it.

Is it ok for a white reader, which is me, to recite and explore the Address? Yes. There is ample documentation that the Haudenosaunee nations offer it broadly to the world.

Thank you to the bevy of voices who helped me recite the Address in 2019. You remain magical.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, sensuous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transfiguration, and be inside its world-making love.

Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.

www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transmogrification, and be inside its world-making love.

Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.

www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing: listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good. 

Today, we read from The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon. (And hear my son build with legos in the deep background.) We get to see how the author isolates two college-student characters (a senior from herself, a freshman from the world) with body detail, relationships to books, and physical space. But we also get to see how the writing turns that double isolation into an inevitable, luscious meet-cute.

The podcast comes from Read to Me Literary Arts. You have a gift for writing. Here is where you can open it — with writing groups, coaching, book programs, and more. www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read from Beneficence by Meredith Hall. We love its stunning hat trick: conveying devastating grief and deep family love, doing so through the embodied action of its characters, and carrying everything in sentences that are light and joyful on their feet. Plus, we explore why we never need credentials to love the written word.

The podcast is a branch of Read to Me Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a writing gift! Now's the time to open it.  readtomeliteraryarts.com.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read from The Book of Form and Emptiness, a stunning new novel from Ruth Ozeki. We love its radical premise, its clear-water sentences sparkling with gem-like words, and the voices of three distinct characters (not all entirely human). Plus, we explore how listening is like... magnificent fungus.

Join the Read to Me Podcast Club and get copies of all our Season 3 books! PLUS, online writing salons, monthly gift boxes, and a live podcast taping! Find the party at readtomeliteraryarts.com/podcastclub

On Read to Me, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good!

Today, we read from Megan Baxter's Farm Girl. Here, a body at work, precisely described in strong sentences, becomes the site of shimmering ideas about faith and hope. We get to see Megan's specific artistry with the luscious language of vegetables, too.

READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Join us at readtomeliteraryarts.com

On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what works on the page. And then understand why!

In this live episode, recorded in front of a Texas audience, I read from "The Wit and Wisdom of Ann Richards" by the incomparable Molly Ivins. It's an amazing piece about regionalism and racism and sexism and the power of the woman to prevail above what's expected of her. We listen for Ivins genius — to be funny, devastating, brilliant, and casual in every sentence.

READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Find the program that's right for you at readtomepod.com.

On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill for excellent writing — how to listen for what works on the page. (And then understand why.)

On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what works on the page. (And then understand why.)

We read a selection from one of Mary Ruefle's beguiling essays, "TK NAME." Then we love the craft of it using the principles of Gateless Writing.

Your host Becky Karush got to be in a writing salon with author Jodi Paloni the other day, and man, was it dizzyingly hot-damn amazing to hear her work. In this episode, we read from Jodi's short story collection, THEY COULD LIVE WITH THEMSELVES. We see how secondary characters mirror each other to show the inner life of the main character. We learn how the short story is like both a bar band at a distance and a whale call heard above the water.

Join us this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com

The episode was an experiment, too — the fifth-ever episode, the first with a live studio audience, the first reading lyrics. We didn't not know what we'd find on the road. (But now we know, and it was fun. No tragedies, just joy.)

Join us this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com

Today we get to talk to my friend Emily Bass, the debut author of the extraordinary book TO END A PLAGUE: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa. This book is…

• An essential history of a U.S. government program.

• A history of the evolution of AIDS activism, and human dignity activism, in the US and in several African nations, Uganda in particular.

• A history of some of people in whose bodies both the virus and the drug treatment lived.

• A history of the potential and the limits of foreign developmental aid. 

And the book is a love letter to “people without visible power having enormous power.” And also a legislative thriller and a medical thriller and a heartbreaker and a roadmap for dealing with pandemics!

Em and I talk about writing puzzles, the work of managing decades of reporting, why she shows up in the narrative, and what PEPFAR and AIDS can teach us about handling the next plague.

Enjoy!

I met author Emily Bass in 1996, right around the time she was meeting AIDS activists in New York City.

I met Em when we were summer camp counselors together.

Neither of us knew that we’d become longtime friends. Neither of us knew that she was right at the inception of a 20-plus year journey to research, report, and write her book, her first book, her book that’s out this week, the book called TO END A PLAGUE: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa.

Today, we get to celebrate Emily and her book — and read an excerpt from a stunning chapter called Small Heavens. Here we’re in Uganda in the early 2000s, just as PEPFAR, a massive American program to deliver AIDS drug treatment in Africa, is rolling through. From vivid sensory details to a global understanding of foreign aid to a reverence for the bodies that live these events, Emily gives us the world. Let’s go read with her.

Join READ TO ME this summer to write your book. Or blog post! Or journal! At READ TO ME Literary Arts salons, workshops, and coaching sessions, we know you can write amazing things — and so you do. www.readtomepod.com

Today we get to talk to the numinous and luminous Barbara Newman, author of the brand-new, to-be-published-on-July-27 young adult fantasy novel, THE DREAMCATCHER CODES. In this book, four girls, powered by the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, and secret messages from mystical dreamcatchers, join forces on a quest to recover a stolen piece of the coveted Crystal Horseshoe.

We had a rollicking time reading from the book in our last episode — and now we get to hear from Barbara! Catch our beautiful conversation about writing, dreams, the earth, intuition, and daughter.

Join us for our online Summer Writing Salons. We know you can write amazing things — and so you do! www.readtomepod.com

This week, we enter the realm of the mystical, the brave, and the female — and learn how to write a story as epic, as timeless, as magisterial and intimate from its very first words. And not just that. In the young adult fantasy novel THE DREAMCATCHER CODES by Barbara Newman, we get to hear a story written with LIFE as its enduring value, and magic as its flair. Plus, we get a semi-spiritual reckoning at an Indigo Girls concert.

Come write your stories! Join us at the READ TO ME summer writing salons at www.readtomepod.com.

Meet Sari Rosenblatt, extraordinary writer, teacher, observer, candy connoisseur, conversationalist, interviewee. Author of the acclaimed short story collection FATHER GUARDS THE SHEEP, Sari here talks about the family history inside the book, the life of work that came before book publication, and the many many many revisions that go into a single story. (80! Or more!)

Sari, I adore you to the moon. Thank you for this wild and beautiful talk.

Join the READ TO ME Salons — writing, reading aloud, and listening with generous, discerning attention that opens up your most brilliant work. www.readtomesalons.

Sari Rosenblatt is a consummate short story writer. Just look at Daughter of Retail, the lead story in her new collection, FATHER GUARDS THE SHEEP.

Place — she's got it. Pacing — she's got it. High and low stakes twisting around each other — she's got it. Character voice — she's got it. Pee-your-pants-funny — she's got it. That strange floating feeling like your scalp has detached from your skull that you get at the end of an exceptional short story — she's got it.

VERNA PIXLEY IN NEED OF A BRA — she's got it.

I really, really hope you treat yourself to this episode. Discovering Sari's work is like biting into great chocolate, or finding out that someone mailed you money.

Plus, you can hear why a beautiful young man and I didn't kiss in 1994.

But really, listen for this story that will knock your knickers off.

Join us for our Read to Me Summer Writing Salons! Come see for yourself what it's like to write knowing that your work will be loved for its incontrovertible strength.
www.readtomepod.com/gateless-writing-salons