Episodes

  • Episode 55: Gertrude Stein

    Episode 55: Gertrude Stein
    Oct 6 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of Gertrude Stein. A poet, novelist, and essayist, Stein was a towering literary figure in her time. She moved to Paris in 1902 with her partner Alice B. Toklas, where they would spend the remainder of their lives. Together they held regular salons in their apartment that became the stuff of legend, hosting the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and more. Stein’s fame as a mentor to other writers often obscures her own accomplishments. Her writing was experimental, both in language and in form. She [...]
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    49 mins
  • Episode 54: James Weldon Johnson

    Episode 54: James Weldon Johnson
    Aug 29 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of James Weldon Johnson. A leader of the Harlem Renaissance, he wrote fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He also wrote lyrics for many songs, including “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” popularly regarded as the Black National Anthem. Johnson raised public awareness of lynching and fought Jim Crow laws through his activist work with the NAACP, of which he was President during the 1920s. He was also a lawyer, diplomat, newspaperman, opera libretto translator, and creative literature professor at Fisk University. Johnson celebrated the artistry and diversity of African-American culture—most of it overlooked, [...]
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    41 mins
  • Episode 53: Nguyễn Quí Đức

    Episode 53: Nguyễn Quí Đức
    Jun 6 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of Nguyễn Quí Đức. Born in Da Lat, Vietnam in 1958, Đức arrived in the United States at 17 as a refugee of the Vietnam War. He would go on to become a journalist, translator, writer, and radio producer, working for the BBC in London, KALW-FM in San Francisco, and for NPR. He was the host of Pacific Time, KQED-FM Public Radio’s national program on Asian and Asian American life. In addition to his journalistic work, Đức also published the hugely influential family memoir Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of [...]
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    53 mins
  • Episode 52: F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Episode 52: F. Scott Fitzgerald
    May 16 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, when he was 23. He would go on to become a Jazz Age celebrity and his short stories and novels captured the exuberance, excess, and irony of the era. For all of its sparkle, Fitzgerald’s work is also thoughtful, yearning, and poignant. His classic novel, The Great Gatsby, is a rueful examination of the American Dream and, ultimately, its emptiness. Fitzgerald, too, experienced the elusiveness of this dream. After his initial [...]
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    44 mins
  • Episode 51: Flannery O'Connor

    Episode 51: Flannery O'Connor
    Apr 4 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and work of Flannery O’Connor. Born in Georgia in 1925, O’Connor wrote prolifically before her early death at age 39 due to lupus. She routinely wrote every morning until noon, and spent her afternoons and evenings tending to her domestic birds or entertaining visitors. Informed by the community surrounding her Georgia hometown and her Catholic faith, O’Connor’s short fiction is rich with complex antiheroes and ironic moral turns. “I write,” she said, “because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” O’Connor will be featured in the American Writers [...]
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    34 mins
  • Episode 50: Studs Terkel

    Episode 50: Studs Terkel
    Apr 1 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and work of Studs Terkel. A Chicago resident from age 10 until his death at age 96, Studs Terkel epitomized Chicago. A charismatic presence, Terkel began his career as a radio actor and on-air interviewer before becoming the star of an unscripted local TV show called Stud’s Place. He hosted his own interview radio show too, The Studs Terkel Program, that aired every weekday between 1952 and 1997. Terkel’s greatest legacy, perhaps, lies in his oral history collections. Books such as Working, Race, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Good War capture the voices, [...]
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    44 mins
  • Episode 49: Nathaniel Hawthorne

    Episode 49: Nathaniel Hawthorne
    Jan 17 2025
    In this episode, we discuss the life and work of novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne’s paternal ancestors were some of the first Puritans to arrive in America—one of his ancestors was even a judge who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. He was educated at Bowdoin College where he became friends with poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce, among others. His first novel, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828, followed by several collections of short stories, including Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. His later novels include The Scarlet [...]
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    46 mins
  • Episode 48: Rod Serling

    Episode 48: Rod Serling
    Dec 20 2024
    This episode lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call, The Twilight Zone… In this episode, we discuss the life and work of screenwriter Rod Serling. Quoting from the PBS American Masters episode about him, “Known primarily for his role as the creator and host of television’s The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling had one of the most exceptional and varied careers in television. As a writer, a producer, and for many years a teacher, Serling challenged the medium of television to reach [...]
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    55 mins