This week we visit with Amy Le Ann Richardson in Carter County, Kentucky.

Amy Le Ann Richardson earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University (‘09) and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Make Believe Worlds We Built Together (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Who You Grow Into (Finishing Line Press, 2024), as well as a full collection, Out of Places (Pine Row Press, 2025). Her work has been featured in journals such as Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Kentucky Monthly, Untelling, and Still: The Journal. She currently lives and works on her family farm in Carter County, Kentucky, where she writes, grows food, and engages with her community through art and environmental advocacy.

You can find her artwork at www.chickenhousestudio.com and her farm at www.forgottenfoods.com. Also, see her Etsy store here: https://kymtnwriter.etsy.com

Amy's Books on the Bed:

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Where You Come from Is Gone by Annie Woodford

Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown

Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

Matt's Gifts for Amy:

Glass Jaw by Raisa Tolchinsky

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

This week we visit with Kristen Renee Miller in Louisville, Kentucky.

KRISTEN RENEE MILLER is the director and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She is the recipient of honors from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work can be found widely, including in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Best New Poets. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

For more about Kristen: kristenreneemiller.com

Read Sarabande Books! sarabandebooks.org

Kristen's Books on the Bed:

Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The d'Antin Manuscript by Luis d'Antin van Rooten

Busman's honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

Adverbs by Daniel Handler

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Matt's Gifts for Kristen:

The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father by Kao Kalia Yang

Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes

Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing by James Rumford

This week we visit with Isa Arsén in San Antonio, Texas.

Isa Arsén is a certified bleeding heart based in South Texas, where she lives with her spouse and a comically small dog.

Her work has been featured in Stone of Madness Press, The McNeese Review, and several independent anthologies and audiovisual projects. Her novels include SHOOT THE MOON (Putnam, 2023), and THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF (Putnam, 2025). When not wrangling prose, Isa is a dialogue engineer & writer for interactive media.

For more on Isa: inarsen.com

Isa's Books on the Bed:

H of H Playbook by Anne Carson

The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

The Study of Counterpoint: from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (translated and edited) by Alfred Mann

The Art of Writing Nonfiction by Andre Fontaine and William A. Glavin, Jr.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

Matt's Gifts for Isa:

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Lolly Willowes : or the loving huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Moon Child (album) by Kelley Smith