This week, professor and author Richard Bradford discusses his book Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer, the first biography to examine Mailer's life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama. Bradford is interviewed by AWM Program Director Allison Sansone. The following conversation originally took place January 20, 2023 and was recorded live via Zoom. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME More about Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive. The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction—Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters—to lovers and editors—which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels. Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible - but justified - criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer's ferocious personality and writings.

This week, professor and historian Brooks E. Hefner discusses his book Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow, a deep dive into mid-century African American newspapers, exploring how Black pulp fiction reassembled genre formulas in the service of racial justice. Hefner is interviewed by journalist Evan F. Moore. The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME About Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow In recent years, Jordan Peele's Get Out, Marvel's Black Panther, and HBO's Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new. As Brooks E. Hefner's Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy. These popular stories differ significantly from contemporaneous, now-canonized African American protest novels that tend to represent Jim Crow America as a deterministic machine and its Black inhabitants as doomed victims. Widely consumed but since forgotten, these genre stories—and Hefner's incisive analysis of them—offer a more vibrant understanding of African American literary history.

This week, author and professor Leonard Moore discusses his book Teaching Black History to White People. Moore is joined in conversation by Laura McEnaney, Vice President for Research and Education at the Newberry Library. The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME More about Teaching Black History to White People: Leonard Moore has been teaching Black history for twenty-five years, mostly to white people. Drawing on decades of experience in the classroom and on college campuses throughout the South, as well as on his own personal history, Moore illustrates how an understanding of Black history is necessary for everyone. With Teaching Black History to White People, which is "part memoir, part Black history, part pedagogy, and part how-to guide," Moore delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. He poses provocative questions, such as "Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?" and "What came first: slavery or racism?" These questions don't have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race. Moore includes a syllabus and other tools for actionable steps that white people can take to move beyond performative justice and toward racial reparations, healing, and reconciliation.

We thought we’d kick off 2023 with an episode full of laughs! In this episode, comedy writers Cristela Alonzo, Karen Chee, Peter Gwinn, Alexandra Petri and Peter Sagal discuss their crafts and the role of comedy writing in American culture. The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME

This week we take a look back at some of our favorite moments from the top episodes we released in 2022. From Poet Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners to screenwriters, novelists and more, we hope you enjoy entering the minds of these writers. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME

This week, celebrate the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem The Waste Land with scholar and professor Jed Rasula, author of What the Thunder Said: How The Waste Land Made Poetry Modern. Rasula discusses his book and the enduring impact of The Waste Land with poet and scholar Reginald Gibbons. The following conversation originally took place December 6th, 2022 and was recorded live via Zoom.

This week, we discuss The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 anthology with guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, series editor John Joseph Adams, and bestselling author Veronica Roth. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. This conversation originally took place November 13, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME About the speakers: REBECCA ROANHORSE is a New York Times bestselling and Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Astounding (Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. Rebecca has published multiple award-winning short stories and five novels, including two in The Sixth World Series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun for the Rick Riordan imprint, and her latest novel, the epic fantasy Black Sun. She has also written for Marvel Comics and for television, and had projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and Paramount TV. Find her Fiction & Non-Fiction HERE. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the editor of more than thirty anthologies, such as Wastelands and The Living Dead. He is also editor (and publisher) of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed, and for five years he was the editor of the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lately, he’s been working as an editor on TTRPG projects for Kobold Press and Monte Cook Games and as a contributing game designer on books such as Tome of Heroes. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com. VERONICA ROTH is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Poster Girl and Chosen Ones, the short story collection The End and Other Beginnings, the Divergent series, and the Carve the Mark duology. She was also the guest editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Learn more at veronicarothbooks.com

This week, writers from Central and Eastern Europe stop by the AWM on the Ukrainian and Dissident Writers Tour, presented by The Continental Literary Magazine. Sándor Jászberényi, editor-in-chief of The Continental Literary Magazine, moderates a panel of writers aimed at promoting cultural exchange between Central Europe and the writers of the United States. In tumultuous and dangerous times like the ones we currently face, literature becomes even more important, as these writers demonstrate. Máté Makai, author of the 4th NOIR issue, and Dániel Levente Pál, executive director of The Continental Literary Magazine, join Jászberényi in conversation on this important topic. The following conversation originally took place November 8th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME The Continental Literary Magazine is a thematic quarterly English-language literary and public affairs journal. It is a shared platform providing a space for Central and Eastern European literature to gather ground abroad, and to form a partnership with English literature. This is Central European literature, culture, and traditions as they are — edgy and classy.

This week, Stuart N. Brotman and John Palfrey discuss Brotman’s new book The First Amendment Lives On, a collection of conversations with free speech scholars and advocates. This conversation originally took place November 7th, 2022 at the American Writers Museum and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME More about The First Amendment Lives On: Hugh M. Hefner’s legacy of enduring free speech and free press values is embodied in the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards, established in 1979, which honor leading First Amendment scholars and advocates. Hefner also had a lifelong interest in film censorship issues and supported teaching about them at the University of Southern California for 20 years. His deep commitment to these values was confirmed when the author was granted unrestricted access to over 3,000 personal scrapbooks, which Hefner had kept in order to track free speech and press issues during his lifetime. The format of the book is an homage to the in-depth conversational interviews Hefner pioneered as the editor and publisher of Playboy magazine. Stuart Brotman conducted in-person conversations with eight persons who in their lifetimes have come to represent a "greatest generation" of free speech and free press scholars and advocates. Notably, these conversations include Geoffrey R. Stone, Floyd Abrams, Nadine Strossen, Burt Neuborne, David D. Cole, Lucy A. Dalglish, Bob Corn-Revere, and Rick Jewell. STUART N. BROTMAN is an American government policymaker; tenured university professor; management consultant; lawyer; author and editorial adviser; and non-profit organization executive. He has served in four Presidential Administrations on a bipartisan basis and has taught students from 42 countries in six separate disciplines--Communications, Journalism, Business, Law, International Relations, and Public Policy. JOHN PALFREY is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies with assets of approximately $7 billion, and offices in Chicago, New Delhi, and Abuja, Nigeria. Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new media is changing learning, education, and other institutions. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a commitment to rigorous thinking, disruption, and creative solutions often made possible by technology, accessibility of information, and diversity and inclusion. Palfrey has extensive experience in social change spanning the education, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. A revised and expanded version of his book Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, which he co-authored with Urs Gasser, was issued in 2016. Palfrey serves on the board of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Palfrey holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Harvard College.

This week, Imani Perry, recent recipient of the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction, discusses her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. Perry is joined by Dawn Turner. This episode is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice, in which Perry and her work is featured. Explore Dark Testament today at the American Writers Museum. The following conversation originally took place May 15th, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Jazz Studies. She is the author of 6 books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which received the Pen Bograd-Weld Award for Biography, The Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction and the Shilts-Grahn Award for nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Looking for Lorraine was also named a 2018 notable book by the New York Times, and a honor book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was a finalist for the African American Intellectual History Society Pauli Murray Book Prize. Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, winner of the 2019 American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Book Award for the best book in American Studies, the Hurston Wright Award for Nonfiction, and finalist for an NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction. Her most recent book is: Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019) which was a finalist for the 2020 Chautauqua Prize and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Dawn Turner is an award-winning author and journalist. Her most recent book, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, was named a Notable book of 2021 by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. A former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, Turner spent a decade and a half writing about race, politics and people whose stories are often dismissed and ignored. Turner, who served as a 2017 and 2018 juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, has written commentary for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning News show, NPR’s Morning Edition show, the Chicago Tonight show, and elsewhere. She has covered national presidential conventions, as well as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election and inauguration. Turner has been a regular commentator for several national and international news programs, and has reported from around the world in countries such as Australia, China, France, and Ghana. She spent the 2014–2015 school year as a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, she served as a fellow and journalist-in-residence at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Turner is the author of two novels, Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven (Crown, Random House) and An Eighth of August (Crown, Random House). In 2018, she established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.