How do authors create their masterpieces? What inspires their stories? Join Davin Malasarn, co-founder of the Granum Foundation, as he interviews writers about craft and the writing life.
Jonathan Gleason joins us to talk about his debut essay collection Field Guide to Falling Ill. Drawing from personal experience, history, and medical science, Gleason’s moving book explores “the human lives behind the corporate, legal, and cultural practices that shape disease.” During our conversation, we discuss what inspired this book and the techniques Gleason used to create it. He reads from the essays “Inheritance,” about the origins of Taye-Sachs disease, and “Blood in the Water,” which illuminates the life of Gaëtan Dugas, a gay flight attendant who became known as “patient zero” in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
Gleason is the winner of the inaugural Yale Nonfiction Book Prize and was described by contest judge Meghan O'Rourke as a "layered, reflective, and unusually poised debut." He was a recipient of a 2023 Elizabeth George Grant and a finalist for our very own 2024 Granum Foundation Prize. His work has appeared in the Best American Essays, The Sun Magazine, New England Review, and Kenyon Review. He teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.
Host: Davin Malasarn
The Artist's Statement is brought to you by The Granum Foundation (https://www.granumfoundation.org/).
22 Jul 2025
Nicky Gonzalez: Toes Lifting Off
Nicky Gonzalez joins us to discuss her Gothic debut novel, Mayra (2025, Random House), a story about two friends who reunite in a mysterious house in the Florida Everglades and uncover a hidden history. It’s a book that Karen Thompson Walker describes as "part coming-of-age story, part Twilight Zone episode, part thoughtful meditation on all of the ways that memory is itself a haunted house."
Gonzalez hails from Hialeah, Florida. She earned her MFA from the University of Oregon, where she also taught fiction and composition. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, BOMB Magazine, Kenyon Review Online, and Taco Bell Quarterly, among other publications. In 2021 she was a finalist for the Granum Foundation Prize.
Host: Davin Malasarn
The Artist's Statement is brought to you by The Granum Foundation (https://www.granumfoundation.org).
11 Jun 2024
Puloma Ghosh: It's No Longer Apple
Puloma Ghosh joins us to discuss her debut short story collection Mouth (2024, Astra House). We discuss her vision for the genre-crossing book, her creative process, and how she got interested in writing, including her love of fan fiction. She reads from her stories “In The Winter” and “Persimmons.”
Ghosh was born in Kolkata, India and raised outside Boston, Massachusetts. She earned her undergraduate degree from Tufts University and her MFA from Bennington College. She currently lives in Chicago.
Ghosh’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Craft, Cutleaf, The Cantabrigian, and Another Chicago Magazine. She was the winner of the 2020 Craft Literary Flash Fiction Contest and the Morse Hamilton Fiction Prize. She was a Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar and a Bennington College Alumni Fellow.
Host: Davin Malasarn
The Artist's Statement is brought to you by The Granum Foundation (https://www.granumfoundation.org/).
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