Hello, Barn Burners! I met acclaimed writer Thomas H. McNeely at Inprint in Houston to record him reading his story, Tickle Torture. The story is from his collection, Pictures of the Shark, which I read and recommend for its powerful and relatable depictions of a tumultuous childhood. In a starred review, Kirkus has called Thomas H. McNeely's book, Pictures of the Shark: Stories "an emotionally taut and often haunting  collection."  An East End Houston native, McNeely has published short  stories and non-fiction in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly,  Ploughshares, and many other magazines and anthologies. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,  the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, and the MacDowell  Colony.  His stories have been short-listed for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Award  anthologies.  He currently teaches in the Stanford Online Writing Studio and at Emerson College, Boston. His website is www.thomashmcneelywriter.com and he can be found on Twitter @thmcneely.  Are you a writer and want to have your short story on the podcast? You can reach me at [email protected]!

Welcome back to Barn Burning! After an extended hiatus, the Barn Burning short story podcast is back with a killer episode about hamsters, motherhood, and grief. I was honored to have on writer-poet @LannieStabile to read and discuss her story "Muriel vs. the Hunger," which was published in Sledgehammer Lit in November 2021. Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for  the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is out  now with ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile and her website, www.lanniestabile.com. Are you a writer and want to have your short story on the podcast? You can reach me at [email protected]!

Welcome back to Barn Burning, a short story podcast! I had the great pleasure of speaking with writer Wendy J. Fox about her story Tornado Watch, from her forthcoming collection of interconnected stories, What If We Were Somewhere Else? The book comes out in November 2021 and you can pre-order a copy here: https://bookshop.org/a/1986/9781951631055. You can also find Wendy at her website: https://www.wendyjfox.com/ Are you a writer and want to have your story on the podcast? You can reach me at [email protected]!  

I was honored to have British writer Kieran Wyatt share three short stories on the Barn Burning Podcast, 'Seagull' 'Leviathan' & 'Spaniel', which first appeared in The Art of Everyone. We talked on UK Mother's Day about liminal places, magical realism, and the Camel Derby.  Kieran Wyatt lives on the Fylde Coast.  He is co-chair of GenSex (@GenSexResearch), an interdisciplinary  research group, asking probing questions about gender and sexuality. His  work has been published by Eunoia Review, The Art of Everyone, Small  Leaf Press, Fevers of the Mind, and others. He graduated from Edge Hill University in 2018 with honours in Creative Writing. You can find him on Twitter at @Kinz_Wyatt.   

Today I had the pleasure of reading J. Edward Kruft's story "The Big Balloon," followed by a wide-ranging conversation with Joe about MFA programs, character motivation, and the #FlashFiction format.  "The Big Balloon" appeared in the June 2020 issue of Door is a Jar Magazine and you can find it on his website. J. Edward  Kruft received his MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College, and has  been a Best Small Fictions nominee. His stories have appeared in Jellyfish Review, MoonPark Review and Typehouse Literary Magazine, among others. He is a Virgo, and as such, while working at a storied  fast food chain, he made an impassioned but reasoned argument against  polyester uniforms given their proximity to the fry machine. He was  fired. Originally from the very west of Washington  state, he now lives in the very west of Queens, NY and Sullivan County,  NY with his husband, Mike, and their adopted Siberian Husky, Sasha. If you're a writer and would like to have your story read on Barn Burning, please email me at [email protected], or find me on  Twitter at @barnburnpodcast. Read on, fellows barn-burners!

In this special episode, I sat down with writer Elizabeth Gonzalez James to read and discuss her story "What Kind of Love Is That?" which appeared in The Rumpus in September 2018. We discussed empathy, grace, and birthing cows. It was a great pleasure to have her on the show to discuss her fiction.  Elizabeth Gonzalez James' stories and essays have  appeared in The Idaho Review, PANK, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere and have  received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. In  2021 she will be a regular contributor to the Ploughshares Blog. Her  debut novel MONA AT SEA was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards  judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming in July 2021. You can  find more information at www.elizabethgonzalezjames.com. If you're a writer and would like to have your story read on Barn Burning, please email me at [email protected], or find us on Twitter at @barnburnpodcast.

Ask not for whom the Red Death comes, it comes for... everyone! You may remember this story as a nice little piece of gothiness, but I guarantee you it will shock you how eerily reminiscent of our modern moments it is. 

Over a hundred years before George Romero, Mark Twain wrote a cutting satire of politics and politicians which is still delicious in its mordant humor.

Today we talk about James Joyce’s classic short story, Araby, and the quest of a besotted young man. Sorry, no Irish accents.

What happens to the unemployed & dispossessed when a country is blighted by natural disasters & plague?