Episodes

For thousands of years, desperate writers have struggled with the condition known as writer's block. In this episode, Jacke talks to novelist Kate Feiffer about her book Morning Pages , in which a playwright on a tight deadli...

Is it really true? Did the Elizabethan poet Emilia Bassano (sometimes known as Aemelia Lanyer) actually write Shakespeare's works? A bestselling novelist thinks so - and she's turned her research-based theories into an entert...

It's one of the most famous and admired short stories that Ernest Hemingway ever wrote - and also one of the most controversial. In this episode, Hemingway expert Mark Cirino (host of the One True Podcast ) joins Jacke for …

As fans of literature, we all know how powerful and effective storytelling can be. But can we harness that power to help us communicate in our daily lives? In this episode, Jacke talks to Matt Abrahams ( Think Faster, Talk …

Since the publication of Little Women in 1868, millions of readers have gotten to know (and love) Louisa May Alcott through her fiction. But in her own day, Alcott was well known as an essayist who wrote on a wide …

Theater is by nature ephemeral: even the greatest of performances are fleeting, thrilling a single audience before disappearing into history. But what if you could travel through time and space to be present at any production...

The Hakkenden, or Eight Dogs is one of the classics of Japanese literature. In this episode, Jacke talks to translator Glynne Walley about this massive - and massively popular and influential - nineteenth-century novel about ...

Lesbians have been around for thousands of years (at least!), but their voices have often fallen victim to censorship, oppression, and ostracization. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Amelia Possanza, whose new book Lesb...

For Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy was "the greatest of all novelists," and her argument was simple: "[W]hat else can we call the author of War and Peace ?" In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Tolstoy's original plans for …

What was the deal with the Victorians and their obsession with reanimating corpses? How did writers like Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, and others breathe life into the undead - and w...

Novelist Fred Waitzkin ( Searching for Bobby Fischer ) stops by to discuss Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and his new novel Anything Is Good , which tells the story of a childhood friend who was a genius - and who …

Women haven't always been given an equal chance to contribute to literature - but they were writing nevertheless, sometimes just for themselves. In this episode, Jacke talks to Sarah Gristwood ( Secret Voices: A Year of Women...

Early modern poets - John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Aemilia Lanyer, Abraham Cowley - lived in a world where theological questions were as hotly contested as political struggles over issues like empire, gender, civil war, and po...

The relationship between literature and "madwomen" has deep roots. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Suzanne Scanlon ( Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen ) about her efforts to reclaim the idea of the madwoman as a templ...

What a treat! First, Jacke talks to Nicholson Baker, an author he's been reading for the past three decades, about Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art , Baker's deeply personal account of his journey learning...

Families can provide wonderful material for a writer, but they can also be tricky to navigate. How do you make your stories of home interesting to other people? What's too personal? What's not personal enough? In this episode...

Books are beloved objects, earning lots of praise as amazing pieces of technology and essential contributors to a civilized society. And yet, we often take these cultural miracles for granted. Who's been making these things f...

Fearless and fiercely intelligent, the nineteenth-century American feminist Margaret Fuller was "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, the group of New Englanders who helped launch a fledgling nation ...

Scottish writer John Buchan is perhaps best known for his pioneering thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps , the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock's first great films. But as his biographer (and granddaughter) Ursula Bucha...

Why do we read John Keats and not one of his well-regarded peers? Why do some authors disappear into the sands of time - while others, virtually unknown in their day, become posthumous household names? In this episode, Jacke ...

Dear listeners: What kind of life are you living? What's your relationship between your body, mind, and soul? And what can you learn about your deepest self as you get older? In this episode, Jacke talks to award-winning Fren...

First published in 1980, Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the twentieth century. But the book, with its dazzling wordplay, shifting-sand narration, and other literary pyrote...

Can novelists make a difference in the world? Of course we know they can - we've seen plenty of examples. But how does it happen? And what are the challenges a twenty-first century novelist might face when hoping to bring …

Why do we fall in love? Why do we fall out of love? And how can literature shape the way we travel these emotional and romantic landscapes? In this episode, Jacke talks to University of Oxford professor Sophie Ratcliffe about...