"... the sentences and executing scenes... they take their time. I rewrite them over and over, shifting words around, rearranging structure, listening for rhythm, waiting for the right tone to emerge."

"More than the topics, I concern the form of the writing: how the language can say something about itself."

"I write to depict the reality in my country. My philosophy as a writer is that I write to liberate and enlighten my people."

"As macabre as it may sound, I spent countless days listening to them discuss true crime, the criminal justice system—and the riot in particular: who they knew, what had happened, theories about why."

"The novel covers the brief and tragic episode of their relationship, their hardscrabble existence and their attempt to start a family."

"I found myself reflecting on the dilemma that artists who pen memoirs must face when writing explicitly about actual people whom they had sexual relations with."

"I’ve been teaching a course called the Award-Winning Short Story, which is a workshop where we’ve been studying some of the guidelines of what might make a story stand out..."

This is a SPECIAL EPISODE of Sad Me of the Past, where we invite young writers from the Iowa Youth Writing Project (IYWP) to talk about a ghost story they created for the Ghosts on the Radio haunted audio anthology.

On this episode, author Madeline McDonnell shares all sorts of secrets with us from being admonished in Middle English, reading in trees, dramatic countdowns to playing an evil Jack-o-lantern in a 3rd grade play with Mindy Kaling, starting three books at the same time, and the importance of friends.

"And then I wake up, open the windows, make my coffee, think about places I’ve been and people I’ve loved. I send good morning messages, sometimes I teach Spanish classes, sometimes I go to the store to buy food for the week."

On this episode, we have bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld in the studio! Curtis talks with us about the perils of boarding school, getting good juju from a used car, how her family really feels about her writing, and her new short story collection Show Don’t Tell.