In this weekly series, we air previously recorded conversations with leading authors, poets, graphic novelists, playwrights, songwriters, historians and more about craft, processes, influences, inspirations, and what it's like to live as a writer. These episodes are edited and condensed versions of our programs and they are a great way to discover new writers, listen to a program you missed, or relive a program that you loved!
AWM Author Talks
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234 episodes
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Podcast Overview
In this weekly series, we air previously recorded conversations with leading authors, poets, graphic novelists, playwrights, songwriters, historians and more about craft, processes, influences, inspirations, and what it's like to live as a writer. These episodes are edited and condensed versions of our programs and they are a great way to discover new writers, listen to a program you missed, or relive a program that you loved!
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Publishing Since
6/1/2020
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Recent Episodes
May 18, 2026
Episode 233: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong – “Parks and Rec”
This week, pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong stops by to discuss her latest book Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America. Armstrong tells the definitive story of the creation and legacy of the beloved television show Parks and Recreation, with exclusive interview content from its cast, crew, and creators, as well as an introduction by Nick Offerman. Armstrong is interviewed by AWM Director of Programs Allison Sansone. The two are joined by special guest Ric Offerman, the mayor of Minooka, IL (and Nick Offerman's dad!) This conversation originally took place April 22, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB More about Parks and Rec: More than fifteen years after Parks and Recreation premiered, it has become a streaming and pop culture staple. It's beloved for its jokes, characters, and expressions—the show even created a now widely observed holiday, Galentine's Day. How did it all happen and how did the show transform from a ratings disappointment into a cult classic? Pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong reveals all this and more in the definitive history of the show, which is as full of humor, optimism, and heart as Parks and Recreation itself. Through new and exclusive interviews, as well as deep insight and smart and entertaining pop culture analysis, Armstrong tells the story of how Parks and Recreation came to be: how it grew from The Office's success and Obama-inspired optimism, how producers assembled one of TV's most lovable casts but barely survived a mediocre first season, how the show found its voice by getting more political and more romantic, and how it became a cultural force despite middling ratings during its network run, going on to become a television savior of the Trump era and a modern classic. For fans of the show, readers who enjoy behind-the-scenes stories, and everyone who loves a nostalgic deep-dive, Parks and Rec is an exploration of its legacy as an enduringly lovable modern comedy classic full of optimism and heart. Lovingly told and deeply researched, Parks and Rec is the ultimate history of the show that taught us what's important in life: friends, waffles, and work. New York Times bestselling author JENNIFER KEISHIN ARMSTRONG has written nine books, including Seinfeldia, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Sex and the City and Us, When Women Invented Television, and So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls. She is the cofounder of the "Ministry of Pop Culture" Substack and a former local newspaper reporter. She lives in New Paltz, New York. She is also the co-host of the American Writers Museum podcast Dead Writer Drama.
May 11, 2026
Episode 232: Naoko Fujimoto
This week, we chat with poet Naoko Fujimoto, a senior editor at RHINO Poetry. She stopped by the AWM the other week to discuss the work of translation, her poetry process, and her forthcoming book titled: of Women: 20 Japanese Female Poets / 20 Waka Poems, a collection of translated Japanese waka-poems, including text collage and haibun-style discourses on translation. This conversation originally took place April 28, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB More about of Women: of Women is a collection of translations of Japanese waka-poems from the seventh century to the twelfth century, featuring twenty female poets from this period, when Japanese women's literature flourished. This book includes poems by famous writers from the era, such as Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book) and Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji), and introduces some lesser-known female poets as well. Waka compacts much information in a short form: words with double meanings, unfamiliar phrases, habits foreign to non-Japanese speakers, and hidden historical backgrounds. Direct translations would fail to capture the author's full intent, so of Women takes several approaches to capture the original sensory images, including text collage and haibun, short essays that provide historical context and introduce the author before each waka. NAOKO FUJIMOTO was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan, and studied at Nanzan Junior College. She was an exchange student and received a BA and MA from Indiana University. She is the author of the poetry collections We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan, Where I Was Born, and Glyph:Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory, as well as four chapbooks. She is associate and translation editor of RHINO and translation editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She organizes an online community at Working On Gallery and is a Bread Loaf Translation full scholarship recipient and the 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation.
May 4, 2026
Episode 231: Marilyn Hacker & Deema K. Shehabi
This week, poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema K. Shehabi discuss their powerful new book Water to Water: Gaza Renga, a poetry collaboration in the call-and-response form of renga written during the conflict in Gaza. This conversation originally took place April 20, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open. Praise for Water to Water: "[A] stunning sequence of renga… We celebrate these two voices, bleeding in and out of each other, quicksilver, mercurial, eloquent in song and silence, even as they celebrate the human spirit in a ruptured world." —Mimi Khalvati "This book's revolutionary form is most revolutionary of all in making serious political engagement and sophisticated poetic pleasure inseparable. —Fiona Sampson, Professor of Poetry, University of Roehampton About the authors: MARILYN HACKER is the author of twenty-one books of poems, including three collaborative books, and twenty-two collections of translations from the French. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous honors, including the National Book Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Argana International Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, editor of the Kenyon Review, and editor of the French literary journal Siècle 21. She lives between Paris and New York. DEEMA K. SHEHABI is a Palestinian American poet and editor. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and the co-editor (with Beau Beausoleil) of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received NCBR's recognition award. She is also the winner of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize in 2018 and a recipient of Best of the Net nomination in 2021 as well as several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and her work has been translated into Arabic, French, and Farsi.
234 total episodes available
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