Talking Writing

Martha Nichols, John Vogel, and Neva Talladen
  • 5.0 (4)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED DAILY

A Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Creative Lifers We keep creating against the odds, because we long for purpose and meaning in a chaotic world. Join the staff of Talking Writing magazine as we talk to artists of all mediums about their personal and creative lives – and the intersections between the two.

  1. FEB 4

    Joanna Walsh on Collective Internet Aesthetics

    Multidisciplinary writer Joanna Walsh sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters. When Joanna first started writing, lacking IRL community and instruction, she turned early Twitter to find likeminded others to share work with. It wasn’t until after she’d been working as an artist that the schooling aspect came into play, getting her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship at Maynooth University. Joanna also founded and ran two activist campaigns on Twitter—@read_women, a movement dedicated to equal treatment for women writers, and @no_entryarts to reshape ideas about age in the arts—and wrote twelve fiction and nonfiction books, including two co-written with self-coded AI. In this conversation, the two discuss aesthetics through history, funding structures for the arts, and how policy affects access to who’s able to practice art.

    56 min

  2. JAN 15

    Pia Leichter's Pivot to the Creative Club

    Pia Leichter, founder of Kollektiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club, talks with TW creative director John Vogel about her experience transitioning from the advertising world to the artistic path. A big shift happened in her life about ten years ago, and Pia delves into some very personal details about the events that brought about that shift. As she said in our conversation: “I wasn’t expecting to share such vulnerable stories at all. I mean, I shared stuff some of my closest friends didn’t even know about me.” The two discuss Pia’s experience with self-promoting her book, the role of the brain’s default mode network in the creative act, and the presence of the cosmos in all people. Also included in the episode are three tracks from her collaborative spoken word album Famished with electronic composer Tyler Bodkins. All the music in the episode came from that album.

    59 min

  3. 12/17/2025

    Molly Gaudry Experiments With Personal Storytelling

    In today’s episode author Molly Gaudry sits down with TW founder and publisher Martha Nichols. Molly holds degrees in fiction, poetry, and experimental prose, and her new book that just came out last week is aptly titled Fit Into Me: A Novel, A Memoir. The book weaves a fictional narrative into Molly’s own story along with fragments from a wide range of other authors in an effort to create a sense of self via the combination of different elements. With this format Molly explores her experience as a Korean adoptee raised in the US, meeting her birth family as a teenager, and recovering from a brain injury as an adult. In this TW conversation, Fit Into Me provides a jumping-off point for big questions about self-creation and the holes in memory that writers inevitably confront when telling their own stories. Martha and Molly discuss how she blended its nonfiction sections with the fictional story of a character (the “tea-house woman”) taken from her two previous works, We Take Me Apart (Ampersand, 2009), which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award; and Desire: A Haunting (Ampersand, 2018).

    47 min

  4. 12/03/2025

    Nic Brown: Making Peace with his Musical Past

    In this week's episode, TW Creative Director John Vogel sits down with drummer and author Nic Brown to talk about his memoir Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023). Despite being accepted to Ivy League colleges, Nic opted to pursue his band Athenaeum straight out of high school. They signed to Atlantic Records, landed a few hits, and played extensively before Nic decided to leave to group in 2001 to pursue different styles of music and reclaim his opportunity to go to college. While attending Columbia University, he joined up with the band Skeleton Key, headed by bass player Erik Sanko, who played in John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. Nic also played in several other bands, including Falcon! and Longwave. This episode is scored with that first Falcon! album, The Early Year. Nic then left NYC for the Iowa's Writer's Workshop, sending him down the writing and teaching path that he's followed over the last almost 20 years.

    50 min

  5. 11/17/2025

    Victor Manibo on Touching the Work Regularly

    Victor Manibo, a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, sits down with TW Community Manager Neva Talladen to discuss the drafting process for his 2022 science fiction novel, The Sleepless. Manibo and Talladen connect over their shared Filipino heritage and roots in New York, as they explore the rise of “hustle culture.” The Sleepless portrays a society where sleep is no longer necessary or even desired. Instead, young professionals like Jamie, the story’s main character and an aspiring journalist, spend endless hours working, driven by an insatiable pursuit of career advancement.

    1h 4m

  6. 10/29/2025

    Tom McAllister on Writing Education and Community

    TW Creative Director John Vogel interviews author Tom McAllister about his new essay collection It All Felt Impossible (Rose Metal Press, 2025). For the book, Tom challenged himself to write an essay a day that corresponded to each year of his life, keeping within a 1500 word limit. The result is a kind of mosaic memoir through snapshots across time with some tangential thoughts instigated by the memories. This is Tom’s fourth published book, his first being the 2010 memoir Bury Me in My Jersey about his late father and their shared love of the Philadelphia Eagles. His other two books are the acclaimed novels How to Be Safe and The Young Widower’s Handbook, which have both been noted for their mix of darkness and humor. In their conversation, Tom talks about the experiences of teaching and being a student, expectations along the artistic path, and the community that art can create.

    56 min

  7. 10/15/2025

    Andrew Boryga on Identity Politics in Publishing

    TW Creative Director John Vogel talks with Andrew Boryga, author of the satirical novel Victim. The two talk about the autobiographic backdrop to the novel, balancing creative time with parenthood, and the addictive and distancing natures of social media.

    47 min

  8. 10/01/2025

    Sasha Wizansky's Juggling Act

    TW Community Manager Neva Talladen talks with visual artist and graphic designer Sasha Wizansky about her experience starting Pencil Magazine. The magazine, created entirely out of work made with pencil and paper, brings attention to the physicality of writing and drawing with pencil, as well as the slowing down that writing and reading handwriting can cause.

    43 min
See All (60)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

A Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Creative Lifers We keep creating against the odds, because we long for purpose and meaning in a chaotic world. Join the staff of Talking Writing magazine as we talk to artists of all mediums about their personal and creative lives – and the intersections between the two.

Information

  • Creator
    Martha Nichols, John Vogel, and Neva Talladen
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    60
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Talking Writing 2022
  • Show Website
    Talking Writing