Novelist Dallas Woodburn joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read from her recent book, The Best Week that Never Happened, described as a "captivating, poignant story is perfect for teens on the brink of discovering who they are and what really matters." Woodburn is a former Steinbeck fellow in creative writing and the author of two earlier books of short fiction, Woman, Running Late, in a Dress and 3 a.m. She is also the host of the popular book-lovers podcast “Overflowing Bookshelves,”...

We hope that this message finds you as well as can be. 2020 has contained a great deal of change for the GrottoPod, and for our production team. To fill you in: the Writers Grotto recently moved out of its physical offices in San Francisco, and we at GrottoPod consequently moved out of the podcast studio where we recorded so many of the interviews that we've broadcast on this show. Given these changes, we've decided to take an indefinite break from our regular release schedule; however, we...

Preeti Vangani joins the GrottoPod this week to talk with producer Brad Balukjian about her evocative essay, "A Meditation on Bitterness," published in Bending Genres. Vangani is a brand manager turned poet and personal essayist who authored Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), and won the RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in  BOAAT, Juked, Gulf Coast and Threepenny Review, among other journals. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass Journal.

Poet Tess Taylor, who published two collections this year, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange and Rift Zone, joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read some of her poetry. Taylor is the author of three other books of poetry, including The Misremembered World, selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship, and The Forage House, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of...

Journalist and author Roberto Lovato returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from his debut book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on war, violence, terrorism in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Paris and the United States. Until 2015, Lovato was a fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center and recently finished a teaching stint at...

Maw Shein Win returns to the GrottoPod this week to read from her new book of poetry, Storage Unit for the Spirit House. Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks include Ruins of a Glittering Palace and Score and Bone. Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016-2018). She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. 

Roberto Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto and the author of "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas" (Harper Collins). He joins fellow writer Jesus Sierra in this week's episode to talk about the book. Lovato is also a co-founder of #DignidadLiteraria, the movement advocating for equity and literary justice for the more than 60 million Latinx persons left off of bookshelves of the United States and out of the...

Author and scientist Brad Balukjian joins the GrottoPod's summer reading series this week to share an excerpt from his new book, The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife. The Wax Pack. Out now, Wax Pack is the true story of tracking down all the players in a single pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards on a 11,341-mile road trip across the U.S. Balukjian is also a professor of biology at Merritt College in Oakland, California, where he teaches about the amazing plants,...

Bonnie Tsui joins us on the GrottoPod this week to read an excerpt from her latest book, "Why We Swim." The book, published in April, offers cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water and swimming. Tsui is a journalist, a longtime contributor to the New York Times, and the author of "American Chinatown," the winner of the Asia/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She lives, swims, and surfs in the San Francisco Bay Area....

Adam Smyer joins us on the GrottoPod this week to talk about his new book, You Can Keep That To Yourself: A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor. It's a pocket-sized translation guide designed to keep white folks out of trouble, and it couldn't be more timely. Smyer is also the author of the novel Knucklehead, which was the sole title shortlisted for the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He's an attorney, martial...

Award-winning writer Vanessa Hua joins the GrottoPod summer reading series today to share a taste of her short story "VIP Tutoring" from her newly reissued collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities. Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of A River of Stars. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative...

Writer Raina León joins the GrottoPod this week as part of our summer reading series to share her piece "Solstice in Solidified Sugar." León is a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman...

Food writer Rachel Levin continues our GrottoPod reading series in a special Shabbat episode. Listen in as she reads from EAT SOMETHING: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews, co-written with Evan Bloom, co-founder of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen in San Francisco. Levin, a Writers Grotto member, is also the author of Look Big: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds, and is a contributor to the New York Times, the San Francisco...

Today on the GrottoPod we're kicking off our summer reading series, bringing you readings from Writers Grotto members. Today we're featuring Ann Kim, who reads from her brand-new novel, A Good Family, available now. Ann Kim (writing as A.H. Kim) was born in South Korea and immigrated to Ohio as a toddler. She went to Harvard College and Berkeley Law School and is a practicing attorney. She is the proud mother of two sons, cancer survivor, community volunteer, and member of the Writers Grotto....

Kevin Smokler is an author, documentary filmmaker and event host based in San Francisco. Today on the GrottoPod, he discusses his documentary, Vinyl Nation: A Deep Dig into the Record Resurgence, which debuted digitally on what would have been Record Store Day 2020 (April 19) in partnership with 200 independent record stores across the United States. Smokler is also the author of Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School and Brat Pack America: A...

Taneum Bambrick's book, Vantage, is a fictionalized account of the poet's time spent working as the only woman on a garbage crew. Using unforgettable images, Bambrick tackles issues such as class, gender, and environmental degradation without sentimentality. Sharon Olds called the book "a work of art which also functions as a call, as if from under the ground, a cry from water and air." Join a chat with Bambrick about the complexities of writing about gender and class and the craft of...

Yan Slobodkin is a historian of modern Europe, with a focus on French colonial and transnational history. He stops by the GrottoPod this week to discuss his current book project—a history of famine in 19th- and 20th-century North Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, and its relationship to changing ideas of scientific control, political obligation, and humanitarian ethics—and its relevance to the current coronavirus pandemic. (You can find his recent Slate op-ed, "Famine Is a...

Beth Lisick's debut novel, Edie on the Green Screen, is about a Bay Area Gen-X rebel, an "It Girl" in the late '90s who faces her own obsolescence in 2010s San Francisco. It is fundamentally about how we manage change, and the change our world has experienced since this story's inception only makes Edie and her travails more relevant to the moment. Join a chat about Lisick's self-described "crabby bartender," her myopia and troubled awakening, and the challenges of maintaining sanity as the...

What can international literature teach us about our collective past, present and future in these chaotic times? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, producer and Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to Jesus Francisco Sierra, Mathangi Subramanian and Olga Zilberbourg about the appeal of international literature, its necessity in our increasingly connected world, and our favorite authors and books, including Akram Aylisli's Farewell, Aylis! (translated by Katherine E. Young), Perumal...

For the better part of a decade, Lisa Hix, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, and GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks have been writing about antiques, vintage items, and collectibles at CollectorsWeekly.com. As a rule, these writers have tended to shy away from articles about the prices of objects or the celebrities who collect them, tried-and-true angles for journalists working the collecting beat. Instead, they’ve used antiques and collectibles as windows into our culture, each with its own surprising story...

Take the plunge into an episode on all things aquatic with Bonnie Tsui, whose new book, Why We Swim, dives into swimming history while offering poetic contemplation on the nature of this physical pursuit. The incredible characters in this book—including an Icelandic fisherman who defied death in the ice-cold sea, a Bay Area-based open water marathoner Kim Chambers, Olympic sprinting phenom Dara Torres, and practitioners of the Japanese nihon eiho tradition—provide the jumping off points for...

Dignidad Literaria is a grassroots campaign for greater Latinx inclusion in the United States publishing industry that has grabbed the attention of activists and publishing executives alike. In this episode, Grotto fellow Rita Chang-Eppig talks to author and activist Roberto Lovato, one of the founders and driving forces behind Dignidad Literaria, about the spirit of the campaign, its goals, and its future. Lovato's new book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Revolution and Redemption, comes out this...

Want to learn how to shape experience—or explore whole new worlds? Fact and fiction commingle and collide in today’s episode, the third of our special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice their craft. The first four covered character, dialogue, action, and humor; the two newest take on memoir and science fiction/fantasy. Each book also features a foreword by a Grotto writer. Today’s podcast is...

Gender wars, pandemics, and, of course, workaday clones: is it the daily news, or our shared future? In the latest GrottoPod Gabfest, co-producers Susan Gerhard, Daniel Pearce and Beth Winegarner plus special guest Andrew Braithwaite take on dark visions, with four of our favorite dystopian novels under discussion: Meg Elison's The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Naomi Alderman's The Power, and Ling Ma's Severance.