Latest Additions from the Archive

Michigan’s own Bonnie Jo Campbell reads from her latest novel  The Waters (W.W. Norton & Company 2024). We talk about a place and its people, the swamp, and three generations of rural women… Read more: Bonnie Jo Campbell

*Annual Fundraiser Episode: This year with Ruth Behar!* Ruth Behar reads from Across So Many Seas (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin 2024). We talk about writing across generations of characters–across time and countries, as… Read more: Ruth Behar

Michigan’s Poet Laureate Nandi Comer read from Tapping Out (Triquarterly Books 2020). We talk about lucha libre, masks, Detroit, travel, and home. We also talk about being the Michigan… Read more: Nandi Comer

Halle Butler reads from her latest novel  The New Me (Penguin Books 2019). We talk about first person narrators, pacing, rage, humor, and temp jobs. We also talk about her… Read more: Halle Butler

Michigan’s own poet Keith Taylor read from  All the All the Time You Want (Dzanc Books 2024). We talk about selecting poems, Isle Royale National Park, and being outdoors, no… Read more: Keith Taylor

Ross Gay reads from The Book of (More) Delights (Algonquin Press 2023). We talk about life projects, joy, poems, and getting lost. http://beanball.wcbn.org/rss/Living_Writers/wcbn-living_writers-2023-12-06-170001-EST.mp3 Download Audio *many thanks to Jason Voss… Read more: Ross Gay

Eleni Sikelianos read from Your Kingdom (Coffee House Press 2023). We talk about song poems, family, ecopoetics, and using the space of the page with words, images, drawings. We also… Read more: Eleni Sikelianos

Paul Tran reads from their debut collection All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin Books 2022). We talk about history, family, trauma and resilience.  We also talk about story-telling, play, and… Read more: Paul Tran

Jim “Tex” Manheim talk about his years with the Ann Arbor Observer, his popular Twitter/X/Threads feed E/I (English Idioms), and his incomparable work with sound design and DJing WCBN FM’s Down Home… Read more: Jim “Tex” Manheim

John Fulton reads from The Flounder and Other Stories (Blackwater Press 2023).  We talk about writing about place, the role of first sentences and first paragraphs in short stories, and listening to… Read more: John Fulton

Airea D. Matthews read from Bread and Circus (Scribner 2023). D came through town this June. We talk about hybrid memoir, economics, family, capitalism, and resistance. We also talk about… Read more: Airea D. Matthews

David Lawrence Morse reads from The Book of Disbelieving (Sarabande Books 2023). We talk about the spark of a story.   We also talk about utopia and dystopia, fables and… Read more: David Lawrence Morse

Frank Uhle reads from Cinema Ann Arbor: How Campus Rebels Forged A Singular Film Culture (University of Michigan Press 2023). We talk about the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Cinema Guild, revolutionaries, censorship, and cultural history. We also talk… Read more: Frank Uhle

From the 2013 Living Writers Archives: Dedicated to the Memory of Larry Goldstein Today on LivingWriters we return to October 2013 to hear poet and scholar Laurence Goldstein talk about the life and work of Robert Hayden,… Read more: Laurence Goldstein – In Memory

Tune in today to hear David Maraniss talk about his latest Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe (Simon & Schuster 2022), the third biography in his… Read more: David Maraniss

Jack Driscoll reads from Twenty Stories: New and Selected (Pushcart Press 2022). We talk about the music in language, place as character, hard work and tenderness. http://beanball.wcbn.org/rss/Living_Writers/wcbn-living_writers-2023-05-03-170001-EDT.mp3 Download Audio *Thanks to Sheryl Johnston for… Read more: Jack Driscoll

We talk about muscles and Jack LaLane, paratextual boxes, the drafting process, the great outdoors and yoga. http://beanball.wcbn.org/rss/Living_Writers/wcbn-living_writers-2023-04-26-170001-EDT.mp3 Download Audio *thanks to Rev Andrew for engineering! *thanks… Read more: Alison Bechdel

John Sayles reads from his latest novel Jamie MacGillivray: the renegade’s journey (Melville House). We talk about storytelling, historical research, screenwriting, creating characters and his approach to the novel.… Read more: John Sayles

Tune in today to hear poet Katie Hartsock read from Wolf Trees (Able Muse Press) and poet Jennifer Metsker read from Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise (New Issues). We… Read more: Katie Hartsock and Jennifer Metsker

Wendy S. Walters read from her books Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal (Sarabande) and Troy, Michigan (Futurepoem).  We talk about the blurring of genre in creative nonfiction, about long poems,… Read more: Wendy S Walters

Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah talks about growing up in the Middle East and returning to the States for undergrad and med school. We talk about translation and… Read more: Fady Joudah

A special Fundraiser 2023 edition of Living Writers: a conversation with the incomparable arwulf arwulf about community, WCBN history, composing Face the Music, and the role of writing in his own life. http://beanball.wcbn.org/rss/Living_Writers/wcbn-living_writers-2023-02-15-170001-EST.mp3 Download Audio

Lydia Conklin reads from their book of stories Rainbow Rainbow (Catapult 2022). We talk about interiority, gender, identity, queer joy, and love stories. We also talk about the intensity… Read more: Lydia Conklin

Fred Moten reads from All That Beauty (Letter Machine Editions 2019), Field Trio(2014)and B Jenkins(Duke University Press 2010).  We talk about the radical commitment to feeling, the small press poetry world,… Read more: Fred Moten

Eduardo C. Corral reads from Guillotine (Graywolf Press 2020). We talk about attentiveness, structuring books, audience and interiority. We also talk about expanding possibilities and French pop… Read more: Eduardo C. Corral