Writing Beyond Limits with Naben Ruthnum
OnWriters are often under pressure to follow rules, to write to the market, to carefully fit themselves into a safe cultural and commercial niche.
Internet Fiction
OnCartoonist RE Parrish joins us to talk about the uneasy marriage of writing and the internet—incorporating the internet into fiction, using the internet as a medium for fiction, and why it’s so hard to write a good social media epistolary novel.
Tales From the Slush Pile
OnWhen you send a short story to a magazine, it probably doesn’t go directly to the editor. Instead, it ends up in what’s called the slush pile–the pool of unsolicited work waiting for review. Who reviews it? Weirdos like us.
Never Bring a Pen to a Sword Fight
OnThey say the pen is mightier than the sword, but it is way easier to kill a guy with a sword than with a pen.
Three 1990s Pink Dots Compilations
OnEdward Ka-Spel’s brilliance with The Legendary Pink Dots is to introduce us to isolated characters and then immerse us in their world-view through expansive and mysterious soundscapes. He begins with the most restricted, infinitesimal point of consciousness and then slowly expands it…
A Rite Gud Minifesto
OnThe changing of the guard in the early 2000s and the euthanization of the reactionary Sad Puppy movement in the early 2010s should have ushered in a new era of speculative fiction, an era of creative freedom and experimentation.
A Tribute to Garth Marenghi, World’s Greatest Author/Visionary/Dreamweaver
OnIn this very serious episode, we honor the most important writer of the 20th century, a man forty years ahead of his time: author, visionary, dreamweaver plus actor, Garth Marenghi.
More than the Sum of its Parts: Writing Beyond Tropes and Easter Eggs
On“Here’s my new novel, A Groan of Stone and Bone. It has enemies to lovers, a chaotic bisexual, BIPOC representation, elemental magic, and tons of ‘Buffy’ references!”
Rite Gud: The Squeequel
OnBecause ‘squeecore’ got so big, we decided to revisit it to address some of the discourse it generated—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Rite Gud: A Bear-y Special Episode
OnIt is time to talk about Bear, Marian Engel’s 1976 Canadian novel about a mousy librarian who falls in love with a bear.