Here it is! The final episode of CraftTalks season three –featuring our 2024 St. Louis Literary Award recipient Jamaica Kincaid.

Anthony Arnove is the editor of several books, including Voices of a People’s History of the United States, which he co-edited with historian Howard Zinn, and Voices of a People's History of the United States in the 21st Century, which he co-edited with Haley Pessin. Arnove also was a founder of Haymarket Books - which publishes work from writers like Angela Davis, Rebecca Solnit, and 2022 St. Louis Literary Award Recipient Arundathi Roy. In this CraftTalk, hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig talked with Arnove about the art of publishing, his work with Howard Zinn, and how to write fearlessly against injustice by finding your collective.

Donna Murch is an associate professor at Rutgers University and the author of “Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives." Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jacobin – among others. In this Craft Talk, Murch spoke with hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig about writing from oral history and the archive, how she writes about the past in order to understand the present, how listening to music helps her hear history in a new way, and how her book “Assata Taught Me” came to be.

Amitava Kumar is the author of several books of nonfiction and four novels, and his work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, Harper’s and many other publications. He’s been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and his novel Immigrant, Montana was named as one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2018. In this CraftTalk, hosts Kate Essig & Ted Ibur talk to Kumar about what it looks like to write with intention – and we caught up with him about his new novel “My Beloved Life.”

Derrick Goold is the St. Louis Post Dispatch Cardinals beat writer, a two-time Missouri Sports Writer of the year, an MLB Network contributor, and the host of the best podcast in baseball called The Best Podcast in Baseball. Hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig caught up with Goold right after the 2023 Cardinals season ended, and he shared with Craft Talks his approach to writing as a creative endeavor and a deadline-driven job – and whether there really is something to the "Cardinal Way."

Mahogany L. Browne is a poet, a young adult novelist, a children's book writer, the founder and executive director of the media literacy organization JustMedia, and the first ever Poet Laureate of New York's Lincoln Center. In this CraftTalk, Browne joins hosts Ted Ibur & Kate Essig on the day of the release of her 2023 poetry collection, Chrome Valley, to talk collaboration, creating across genres, and writing with perfect imperfection.

This week Saint Louis University welcomes St. Louis Literary Award Recipient Jamaica Kincaid – and launches a new season of the CraftTalk podcast. Join hosts Ted Ibur and Kate Essig as they preview what's in store this season on CraftTalk.

Ron Austin is one of those rare writers that you know is going to be a powerhouse in the publishing industry one day, and that day may be very soon. His exceptional debut is a collection of short stories called Avery Colt is a Snake, A Thief, A Liar.  I could not help comparing it to one of my favorite creative nonfiction memoirs, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. McCourt's autobiography that captures the Depression and World War II eras from a poor Irish child’s perspective in a way that keeps flipping the emotional switches between pathos, horror, and laugh-out-loud humor. I had the same reaction to the stories in Avery Colt is a Snake, A Thief, A Liar. Just as McCourt so successfully captured the unique voice and the internal feelings of the narrator and the way he observed the children and adult characters that cycled in and out of his life, Avery Colt’s narrative voice does the same thing, but this time from a poor Black kid’s experiences in North St. Louis. Ron Austin takes us in a deep dive into the stories and its incredibly vivid characters along with his fascinating perspectives on writing and teaching.

-Ted Ibur
Executive Director, St. Louis Literary Award Programs at Saint Louis University