Community of Writers Podcasts

Community of Writers
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Stay abreast of our summer workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction and Memoir by following to hear panels, and craft talks from esteemed agents and editors. Later in the year we will be adding selected craft talks from previous summers. Year-round, we also host Bibliocracy Radio , a weekly half-hour books discussion and interview program hosted by Santa Monica Review editor Andrew Tonkovich featuring writers of literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, memoir and cultural criticism.

  1. Christopher Mathias on To Catch a Fascist

    4D AGO

    Christopher Mathias on To Catch a Fascist

    My guest this week in part two of a two-part show is Christopher Mathias, a journalist with a long career of covering the far right, including at HuffPost, The Guardian, MSNBC and Zeteo. His investigative reporting has charted the role of racist and often violent nativist groups like the Proud Boys in the politics and policies of the GOP. He’s out now with a remarkable book titled To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right which profiles the covert work of anti-fascist activists by way of a definitional history, case studies and a review of the tactics and traditions of the reactionary, racist, right from the Ku Klux Klan to the present, and perhaps most helpfully, their place in Trumpworld. In addition to charting the work of individual and organized anti-fascists, it presents a parallel narrative of the absurdly cartoonish if violent and dangerous work of multiple fascist groups in the context of the cartoonish, violent and dangerous ascendency of the Trumpist Republican Party.  To Catch a Fascist, out from Atria Books, is not just a sociological study, current affairs book, and a corrective to the mainstream narrative but an exciting, engaging and dramatically rendered adventure story too. In this half hour we talk about the ethical code of anti-fascist political work, about the successful outing of dozens of organized radical right members, and Mathias’s own personal bravery in documenting these struggles.  Music: Hot Summer Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    54 min
  2. Bibliocracy Radio: Terese Svoboda on Hitler & My Mother-in-Law

    MAR 18

    Bibliocracy Radio: Terese Svoboda on Hitler & My Mother-in-Law

    My guest this week is Terese Svoboda, author of two dozen books, in addition to short stories, poems, journalism, with work in The Atlantic, Slate, the New Yorker and the Santa Monica Review.  She has won multiple literary prizes, and is a three-time winner of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship.  Svoboda has written for and produced documentary film and wrote the libretto for the opera Wet, which premiered at LA’s Disney Hall. Svoboda’s engagement with so many stories, forms, and genres is both chronicled and exemplified in her latest, Hitler & My Mother-in-Law, gorgeously connected fragments, episodes, anecdotes, scenes and lots and lots of research, assembled ostensibly as an investigation into the life and career of Svoboda’s one-time mother in law,  the trailblazing journalist Patricia Lochridge, whose life is quite impressively unbelievable --- in so many ways --- but the book is also an examination of what and how we believe, and who tells stories anyway, not to mention a memoir of author Terese Svoboda herself. Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    50 min
  3. Bibliocracy Radio: Stephen Cooper on River of Angels

    MAR 18

    Bibliocracy Radio: Stephen Cooper on River of Angels

    My guest this week is Stephen Cooper, the leading biographer, scholar, and booster of the writer John Fante. He is winner of an NEA for his fiction, a filmmaker, and creative writing teacher at CSULB for many years.  He is the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and cowrote and produced the Netflix Original Documentary Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski.  Cooper writes remarkable short stories, fiction which has appeared widely, including in The ThreePenny Review, American Fiction and the Santa Monica Review. Now ten of his short stories are collected in a volume titled River of Angels, out from the literary collective What Books Press --- the river being both metaphorical and very real indeed and the angels being human or imagined or fallen if always redeemable. This is a gorgeous and defining collection with a cover by legendary artist Gronk. Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    58 min
  4. Bibliocracy Radio: Poet Gustavo Hernandez on Bachelor

    MAR 18

    Bibliocracy Radio: Poet Gustavo Hernandez on Bachelor

    My guest this week is poet Gustavo Hernandez, last on this show to discuss his breakout poetry collection Flower Grand First. He is out now with Bachelor, six dozen short poems, many of which appeared in leading journals, here assembled thanks to FlowerSong press. The poet Diane Seuss, a big fan, helpfully celebrates the conceit of these poems, in which “the speaker moves like a ghost, from affiliation to singularity and back again, from son, brother, uncle, lover, to a state of profound bachelorhood, a traveler moving through a house of mirrors who encounters and re-encounters himself.” Indeed, these poems, with a carefully insistent throughline and in conversation with themselves, are about person and place, both prismatic and somehow also panoramic. Born in Jalisco, Mexico, Gustavo Hernandez was raised in Santa Ana, where he still lives and has served as the poet laureate of Orange County, California. Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    29 min
  5. Bibliocracy Radio: Maria Dolores Aguila on A Sea of Lemon Trees

    MAR 18

    Bibliocracy Radio: Maria Dolores Aguila on A Sea of Lemon Trees

    My guest this week is María Dolores Águila, out now with A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez.  It’s a poetic work of YA historical fiction inspired by the defining early 1930s “Lemon Grove Incident,” a narrative which celebrates a victory over institutionalized racism in San Diego, the struggle for educational equity, and the power of community through a telling from the point of view of then-12 year old Roberto Alvarez, chosen as the plaintiff for the legal case which challenged the segregation of Mexican American public school students. Águila is the author of an acclaimed picture book, Barrio Rising: The Protest the Built Chicano Park. Her website, where you can learn more, helpfully defines her work and art: “Stories of Resistance and Resilience.” Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    29 min
  6. Bibliocracy Radio: Tracy Rosenthal at Hammer and Hope

    MAR 18

    Bibliocracy Radio: Tracy Rosenthal at Hammer and Hope

    My guest this week is journalist and activist Tracy Rosenthal, author of a terrific long piece at the new issue of a favorite online journal, Hammer & Hope, where they report on ICE raids in Los Angeles by way of the incredible Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU). Rosenthal is a frequent contributor to The New Republic, The Nation, the LA Times and is the author, with Leonardo Vilchis, of Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End The Housing Crisis, published by Haymarket. Rosenthal was a co-founder of the LA Tenants Union. Read the entire article, “Immigration Raids at This Home Depot Got More Aggressive but Less Effective. The LA Tenants Union Knows Why.” Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    28 min
  7. Bibliocracy Radio: Alvarez & Guzman-Lopez at Beyond Baroque

    JAN 14

    Bibliocracy Radio: Alvarez & Guzman-Lopez at Beyond Baroque

    I present a performance edition of the show, a recording made at a recent reading hosted by Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation.  Thanks to Jimmy Vega, director, and Eric Ahlberg for recording. Playwright Daniel Olivas, poet Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, and short story writer Lisa Alvarez shared their work on a recent Friday night at LA’s longest-running literary and cultural arts venue. Today you’ll hear Alvarez (introduced by Olivas, author of Waiting for Godinez) read from her collection Some Final Beauty and Other Stories and Guzman-Lopez (introduced by Alvarez) read from his California Southern: Writing from the Road, 1992-2025. (More from that evening on a later episode.)  Meanwhile, both Alvarez and Guzman-Lopez explore, celebrate, and dramatize life, politics, place, and people in Southern California over decades in two breakthrough collections that could have been written only by devoted longtime chroniclers of our region. Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    31 min
  8. Bibliocracy Radio: Tom Zoellner- The Road Was Full of Thorns

    JAN 5

    Bibliocracy Radio: Tom Zoellner- The Road Was Full of Thorns

    A welcome regular on Bibliocracy, my end-of-year 2025 Fund Drive guest is Tom Zoellner, celebrated in a three-part series starting today which features his latest, The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War.  This remarkable book researches, reconsiders, and revises the story of slavery’s inevitable end, focusing on a singularly remarkable and game-changing historical moment. Imagine enslaved people finding refuge in a Union fortress, and then being used politically as assets (“contraband”) in one of the most ironic strategies in the struggle toward win emancipation. About this book Keisha N. Blain of Four Hundred Souls writes, “A vital, illuminating, and beautifully written book that affirms that Black people freed themselves.” This book is offered as a thank-you gift courtesy of publisher sponsor The New Press. Music: Hot Nights by DreamAudio The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.

    58 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Stay abreast of our summer workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction and Memoir by following to hear panels, and craft talks from esteemed agents and editors. Later in the year we will be adding selected craft talks from previous summers. Year-round, we also host Bibliocracy Radio , a weekly half-hour books discussion and interview program hosted by Santa Monica Review editor Andrew Tonkovich featuring writers of literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, memoir and cultural criticism.

Information

  • Creator
    Community of Writers
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    97
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Community of Writers Podcasts
  • Show Website
    Community of Writers Podcasts

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