Backspace: Essays on Everything with Michelle Kennedy

Michelle Kennedy
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Hi! I am Michelle Kennedy and I am an author, a mom of many, a lover of knits and a devoted reader and writer of the essay. Backspace features essays on life, love, parenting and more - a literary experience in the time it takes to wade through the pick up line at school - or get to the store. Join us every week for new essays and new discussions on great writing - and not so great writing. Read the essays at my website: mishkennedy.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

  1. Ernest Hemingway: The Art of the Short Story

    07/28/2025

    Ernest Hemingway: The Art of the Short Story

    In this episode of Backspace: Essays on Everything, host Michelle Kennedy dives into Ernest Hemingway’s timeless essay The Art of the Short Story—a behind-the-scenes look at how Papa approached storytelling, discipline, and emotional restraint on the page. What can modern writers learn from his brutal clarity and iceberg theory?  Why does so much of what he doesn’t say still cut to the bone? Tune in as Michelle unpacks Hemingway’s six rules for writing, reflects on their relevance today, and explores how the short story remains a radical form of art in an attention-deficit world. Whether you're a writer, a lit nerd, or just Hemingway-curious, this episode is a love letter to craft, clarity, and the quiet revolution of the short form.  📚 Mentioned in the episode:The Art of the Short Story by Ernest HemingwayThe iceberg theoryHemingway’s writing habits and disciplineMichelle’s favorite short stories (and why they still work)🔗 Subscribe for more literary deep dives, personal essays, and reflections on writing and life.  #Hemingway #ShortStories #WritingTips #Podcast #Literature #BackspacePodcast #MichelleKennedy Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    40 min
  2. Reading Joan Didion’s Holy Water – Stillness, Beauty, and the Art of Noticing

    07/02/2025

    Reading Joan Didion’s Holy Water – Stillness, Beauty, and the Art of Noticing

    In this episode of Backspace: Essays on Everything, writer and narrator Michelle Kennedy reads Joan Didion’s luminous essay Holy Water, a meditation on infrastructure, awe, and the strange poetry of control. Michelle also shares her personal reflections on Didion’s work, the beauty of paying attention, and what it means to slow down in a world that rarely allows it. If you love literary essays, quiet revelations, or simply the power of a well-read voice, this episode is for you. 🔸 Holy Water originally appeared in Didion’s 1992 essay collection, After Henry 🔸 Narrated and discussed by Michelle Kennedy, author of Without a Net 🔸 Subscribe for more literary readings, personal essays, and conversations about writing, voice, and meaning 💻 Learn more at https://mishkennedy.com 🎧 Subscribe & share wherever you listen to podcasts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    27 min

  3. 04/21/2025

    Slow. The. F**k. Down.

    Slow the f**k down. This is my movement. Slow the f**k down. I have to tell myself this now. Mostly because I just don’t have the physical energy to keep up with my brain now, in my 50’s. But I used to. And I exhausted myself more than once doing it. Slow the f**k down. The only thing I can still do as fast as my brain wants it to is type. I can get frantic. I have been frantic. Many times. Or I’ve felt it but you didn’t see it because I am so good at hiding my freneticism. Sometimes I feel it. Like my body wants to be frantic - and I have no reason to be. For many years, my life was frantic whether I wanted it to be that way or not. With eight kids total and usually 4 or 5 or 6 underfoot at any given time, I am used to being busy. Read the rest here! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    14 min
  4. Against Nature by Joyce Carol Oates

    03/05/2025

    Against Nature by Joyce Carol Oates

    This is a delightful essay in that the author is not at all delighted by nature - at least not here. This essay wholly embraces not nature writing. And it is a study of nature and how we think of it. Humanly. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    28 min
  5. Mark Twain: Taming the Bicycle

    01/18/2025

    Mark Twain: Taming the Bicycle

    In this conversation, Michelle Kennedy explores Mark Twain's essay 'Taming the Bicycle,' reflecting on the humorous yet profound journey of learning to ride a bicycle. She discusses the anxieties and challenges faced during the learning process, the importance of guidance, and the broader implications of learning and personal growth. The conversation intertwines themes of writing, authenticity, and the evolution of machines in our lives, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of mastery and experience. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    25 min

  6. 12/18/2024

    George Orwell's Why I Write

    Definitely tune into this one - have 20 minutes to kill waiting for a kid to come back from practice? Sitting in traffic? Driving to the store? This one is a bit longer - 20 minutes - but it's good. And the stories are fantastic - and hopefully I read it well enough for you to enjoy it. From the essay: George Orwell's Why I Write: "The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money." Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    22 min
  7. The Nature of the Fun by David Foster Wallace

    12/09/2024

    The Nature of the Fun by David Foster Wallace

    David Foster Wallace is one of those writers for me. He’s one I wanted to be like. There are others. But I have identified over the years with Wallace because he always seemed so sad. When I read that he had hung himself almost 20 years ago now, I remember feeling like I was sad, but not surprised.  Having struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts myself over the years, it doesn’t feel strange to me when someone does it. Sometimes, I’m jealous. Not often anymore, as I feel like I’ve gotten past that particular hump. The desire to be gone is more rare for me now - maybe with the knowledge that it’s coming closer to the time when it will end anyway. How many years might I have left? 20? 30? Do I want 40? Do I want to be 92?  That’s for another essay. David Foster Wallace was one of the more versatile writers and yet, I always feel like I’m on a front porch or cozy in a living room when I read his words. I feel like I’m being bestowed information I did not previously have.  After he died, D.T. Max wrote this about him in The New Yorker.  The Unfinished He was only forty-six when he killed himself, which helped explain the sense of loss readers and critics felt. There was also Wallace’s outsized passion for the printed word at a time when it looked like it needed champions. His novels were overstuffed with facts, humor, digressions, silence, and sadness. He conjured the world in two-hundred-word sentences that mixed formal diction and street slang, technicalese and plain speech; his prose slid forward with a controlled lack of control that mimed thought itself. “What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant,” he wrote in “Good Old Neon,” a story from 2001. Riffs that did not fit into his narrative he sent to footnotes and endnotes, which he liked, he once said, because they were “almost like having a second voice in your head.” The sadness over Wallace’s death was also connected to a feeling that, for all his outpouring of words, he died with his work incomplete. Wallace, at least, never felt that he had hit his target. His goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. “Fiction’s about what it is to be a f*****g human being,” he once said. Good writing should help readers to “become less alone inside.”  I felt a lot less alone as a writer - as a person - and really, I laughed a lot because being the mother of eight children and the mother - I guess - of 17 books, I feel this essay so acutely.Please remember DFW with me and listen to The Nature of the Fun.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    17 min

  8. 10/18/2024

    On Keeping a Notebook, an essay by Joan Didion

    In this essay, Michelle reads Joan Didion's reflections on the nature of keeping a notebook, exploring the compulsive urge to document thoughts and experiences. She delves into the complexities of memory, the subjective nature of reality, and the personal significance of her notes.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

    25 min
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Hi! I am Michelle Kennedy and I am an author, a mom of many, a lover of knits and a devoted reader and writer of the essay. Backspace features essays on life, love, parenting and more - a literary experience in the time it takes to wade through the pick up line at school - or get to the store. Join us every week for new essays and new discussions on great writing - and not so great writing. Read the essays at my website: mishkennedy.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/backspace-essays-on-everything-with-michelle-kennedy--6186916/support.

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