"...so far, I'm liking Iowa City a lot: I've been cycling all over it, and the amount of writers you find per square meter is exciting."

"At some point around 2018, I spontaneously started writing pieces that I trusted in a way I hadn't for a long time."

"Language acquisition is something I’ve thought about a great deal in my life—my parents learning English, my navigating English and Cantonese, and various language extinctions in my life."

"I generally write for about three hours and then panic about the things on my to-do list."

While contemporary attention often centers on urban life, I want to explore and illuminate the hidden narratives and solitary lives in rural settings.

Bret Anthony Johnston joins us to talk about his new book We Burn Daylight, his time as a graduate student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and what he’s working on now. For his piece from the past, Bret shares one of the many stories he published in Chicken Soup for the Soul years ago (they paid!).

"Right now, I'm still dreaming about that something, something that is neither a novel nor a poem."