A literary forum promoting established and emerging writers through curated live and digital performances celebrating the spoken word. It’s a high-quality platform for true personal stories—two pages and 650 words long, read aloud by the writer before an audience. Writers Read places a strong emphasis on the craft of writing—word choices, sentence structures, the arc of the narrative. Our submission-based events are developed around broad themes that invite a wide range of expression.
In Back to the Garden, Debra Fried recalls calling her mother from the grocery store for help with recipes and how those simple exchanges became part of a much larger ritual of connection. Blending humor, food, memory, and tenderness, Fried reflects on an evolving mother-daughter relationship and the ordinary moments that can come to mean everything.
6 Oct 2026
Navy Blues & Polished Shoes
Writer and professional production assistant Betsy Friedman takes listeners back to her first day working on a television set, where she encounters the strange rules, exhausting hours, colorful personalities, and unexpected moments that come with working behind the scenes. Recorded live at City Winery New York, “Navy Blues and Polished Shoes” is a humorous and reflective look at where a decades-long career in film and television began.
22 Sept 2026
The Forbidden Walk
In Forbidden Walk, Daphne Gregory-Thomas takes us back to a sun-fading afternoon on a tight-knit city block — immigrant families, clotheslines, penny candy, and a rule that said you never walk to the corner store alone. Warm, quietly romantic, and laced with the specific textures of a mid-century New York childhood, this essay is a love story told in two digits and a lifetime of steps. Daphne Gregory-Thomas is a retired educator and essayist based in Kennebunk, Maine, whose writing has appeared in the MSK Visible Ink Anthology and Zibby Media.
Who has been a guest on Writers Read 5 Minute Personal True Stories
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Rhonda Zangwill
Jai Chakrabarti
Isaiah Hunt
Lynn Lauber
Anthony Murphy
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
20 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
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