Hello, and welcome to *Season 3* of The Host Dispatch! What an honor it is to share the first episode of Season 3 of The Host Dispatch with you, in conversation with poet, educator, community organizer and founder of TORCH Literary Arts, Amanda Johnston. Amanda has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. She has received fellowships, grants, and...

This year, the Host team is celebrating the holidays with the Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflöd, which translates to ”great book flood,” in which loved ones exchange books on Christmas Eve, curl up by the fireplace and sip on hot cocoa while reading their new books each year.

n this episode, Claire and Annar interview Cecily Sailer, a freelance writer writing coach, and the founder of Typewriter Tarot. Growing up an only child in a quiet home, she fell in love at an early age with ghost stories, hidden realities, and anything mysterious and inexplicable. In 2017, she finally picked up a Tarot deck and quickly discovered the power of Tarot as a tool for self-examination, guidance, and connection. She created Typewriter Tarot to offer guidance and inspiration for...

Happy Spooky Season! In this episode, The Host Team dives into a spooky short story anthology titled The Women of Weird Tales, the second book in the series ”Monster, She Wrote” by Valancourt Books, which resurrects fiction written by women who were pioneers in the speculative and horror genres. The Women of Weird Tales includes thirteen fantastic tales originally published between 1925 and 1949, written by four of Weird Tales magazine‘s most prolific female contributors: Everil Worrell, Eli...

We are beyond excited to share this incredible conversation with the Fall 2021 Host Publications Chapbook Prize Winner, Sequoia Maner! Sequoia is an Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Spelman College. She is a co-editor of the critical-creative book Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020) and at work on a forthcoming book regarding Kendrick Lamar‘s album To Pimp a Butterfly for the 33 1/3 series (Bloomsbury). Her writing has been published in...

This year, we've put together a massive reading list for Women in Translation Month, which you'll find on our blog. This is the first official Host Publications Women In Translation Month Reading List, and it includes many of our all-time favorite WIT titles, some new faves, a few books that are on our "to-read" lists, and even some books translated by women.  In this episode, we discuss our incredible WIT reading list, before diving into three amazing books we wanted to highlight from that...

The Austin Youth Poet Laureate program has landed in Austin! We here at Host Publciations are thrilled to partner with the Library Foundation and the National Youth Poet Laureate Program led by Urban Word, with additional support from the Austin Public Library, Creative Learning Initiative, and Learn All The Time.  In this episode, we discuss the details of this exciting new program for young writers in Austin, and all of the benefits that it offers them, for their writing, their confidence,...

In this episode, the Host team explores and redefines the idea of a "Beach Read," offering three unlikely candidates for this year's summer reading list that don't quite fit in with the mass-marketing schemes of the "Beach Read" convention:  Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark The Hour of The Star by Clarice Lispector and The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

In this episode, Claire and Annar chat with poet and writer extraordinaire, Julie Poole. This episode airs on June 1st, 2021, which is the publication date for Julie's first full-length collection of poetry, Bright Specimen, published by fellow small Texas press, Deep Vellum.

Welcome to the 1 Year Anniversary Episode of the Host Dispatch! In this episode, we are celebrating the 1 year anniversary of The Host Dispatch with so much joy in our hearts! We are grateful for the opportunity to connect more deeply with each other, with poetry, great literature, and with you, our dear listeners. 3 In this episode, we reflect upon our very first episode, Poetry for Quarantimes, which aired on May 26th, 2020 We discuss the ways in which the world has changed since then,...

In this episode, we had the pleasure of talking again with poet, Julie Howd.  Julie defines her term "Eco-Surrealism" in this episode, and we discuss the intersection of avant-garde poetry and the ever-pressing fight for the health of our planet.  In this context, we discuss the work of Argentinian poet, Silvina Ocampo, specifically her selected poems published by NYRB.

In this episode, Host editors Claire and Annar, and publisher Joe celebrate National Poetry Month by reading a few poems and discussing how they serve as examples of how each of us as individuals find access, or entry points into poems, and why we love poetry.  The poems we discussed in this episode are: “Diving Into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich from Diving Into the Wreck  “Poem for an Antique Korean Fishing Bobber” by Dobby Gibson from Little Glass Planet (Graywolf Press) “Girls Respond...

Just a quick PSA announcing that the submissions window for the Host Publications Chapbook Prize will be closing at 11:59pm CST on Monday, March 15th!  Submissions guidelines and more information about the prize can be found on our website, at www.hostpublications.com We can't wait to read your work!

Welcome to Congress of the Spirits: a poetry ritual and performance. We wanted to create a sacred space in the airwaves for us to commune in, focusing on nourishing our depleted spirits with poetry that stimulates the imagination and crosses over into the dreamworld in which we can imagine a better future.  Before this magical reading, Claire and Annar offer a short meditative ritual to enter the virtual and imaginative space of the performance, where we can all share in the experience of...

In this episode, we celebrate Black History Month with a reading and discussion of the anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song edited by Kevin Young, Poetry Editor of The New Yorker.This incredible anthology is described as "A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present," and in it we found familiar voices that we know and love, as well as new poets, and some...

We're so thrilled to kick off Season 2 conversing with the warm and magical poet, lily someson. lily is the Spring 2021 Host Publications Chapbook Prize winner for her chapbook called mistaken for loud comets, forthcoming in February 2021.

We are delighted to announce that the Host Publications Chapbook Prize will be open for submissions from January 20th-March 15th. Two selected manuscripts will be published, one in the Fall of 2021 and one in the Spring 2022. Prize winners will be announced May 15th.

In this episode, we discuss the age-old tradition of reading ghost stories on Christmas! Here are the books we discuss in this episode:The Green Room by Walter de la MareChristmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk by Frank CowperThe Diary of Mr. Poynter by M. R. JamesThe Night Before Christmas by Nikolai GogolThis is the last episode of Season 1, and we want to thank you for listening from the bottom of our hearts.

In this minisode, Host editors Annar and Claire offer ways in which to pay respect to native people during the ever-problematic Thanksgiving holiday and its frightening capitalist cousin, Black Friday, which has been deemed Native American Heritage Day. This is a time to honor indigenous cultures, and to educate ourselves about the history of this land, and the challenges Native people have faced both historically and in the present, and the ways in which we can be of service to their...

In this episode, Host editors Claire and Annar converse with the delightful poet, Julie Howd.Julie is a poet and educator from Massachusetts. She is the author of Threshold winner of the Spring 2020 Host Publications Chapbook prize.

In this episode, the Host Publications team chats about the scary novels they've been reading get into the spirit of Halloween from home this year. They discuss the new HBO Series Lovecraft Country, the Horror genre and subgenres, & what makes a book scary.

In this episode, Host Editors Annar Veröld and Claire Bowman chat with Claudia Delfina Cardona, winner of the Fall 2020 Host Publications Chapbook Prize.Claudia is a talented poet born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Claudia is the co-founder of Chifladazine, a zine that highlights creative work by Latinas and Latinxs, and co-founder of Infrarrealista Review, a literary journal for Texan writers. You can find out more about Claudia and her work on her website,...

In this episode, Host editors Annar and Claire are joined by friend of the podcast, Kate Kelly. Kate is an incredible poet, editor and educator, and currently serves as the Programs Manager for The Library Foundation in Austin, Texas. In this episode, she introduces the lineup for this year’s Mayor’s Book Club Read Local campaign, featuring a list of over fifty books written by Austin authors this year.

In this very special episode, we were honored to interview the charming and inimitable poet, Taisia Kitayskaia.Taisia Kitaiskaia is a Russian-American poet and writer, and a dear friend of the podcast. In this interview, we discuss her forthcoming book of poems THE NIGHTGOWN AND OTHER POEMS (Deep Vellum, 2020), among other things, including: toads, luxury quarantine snacks, munchkin icon Danny DeVito, and ham sandwiches.

In this episode, we're excited to share our Women in Translation roundtable discussion with the founder of Host Publications, Joe Bratcher!Women in Translation Month was launched in 2014, a creation of literary blogger Meytal Radzinski as a response to her observation that only around 30% of books published in translation were by women. At Host Publications, we celebrate women in translation all year round, but August is a special time of year to elevate those writers and share some of our...