The Inner Loop Radio: A Creative Writing Podcast Rachel Coonce and Courtney Sexton

Rachel catches up with writer, Anna Qu, and they talk about getting back to writing after the whirlwind of book publication, the brain teaser of switching from nonfiction to fiction, and tomatoes versus zucchini, all on this month’s episode of Just Checking In, a series of informal chats with some of our favorite writers.

Crossing genres can be fun, invigorating, and a new source of inspiration, so why does it sometimes feel like eating our vegetables? Poet, playwright, and ghost writer Alyson Gold Weinberg explains how all her outlets inform one another and reads from her latest collection of poetry, Bellow & Hiss from Finishing Line Press and The Inner Loop Author’s Corner September spotlight. Plus, Rachel, Courtney, and Alyson demonstrate just how fun it can be to switch genres!

Often stories come to us in fragments: as a vivid image or a perfect sentence, but how do we turn those fragments into stories? Fiction writer, Jung Yun, shows how to create linear stories from nonlinear fragments and what happens when patience runs thin in this Inspiration Takeover, a series of mini-episodes with different writers who offer us a little dose of inspiration.

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She studied at Vassar College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Tin House, the Massachusetts Review, the Indiana Review, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She is the recipient of individual artist’s grants in fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. She has also received residential fellowships from MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the National Humanities Center. Currently, Jung lives in Baltimore with her husband and is an associate professor of English at the George Washington University. She serves on the board of directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

It’s back to school season and it’s time to get back to work, writers! First released in October 2019, Emily Mitchell joins Rachel and Courtney to discuss how teaching can inspire our creative writing, and we get to hear Emily read from her short story collection, Viral: Stories. Plus, Rachel and Courtney demonstrate the power of writing prompts for upcoming Inktober!

Courtney catches up with writer and professor, Kyoko Mori, and they talk about their mutual love of animals, Jo Ann Beard’s Festival Days, and how writing is more like birds than cats, all on this month’s episode of Just Checking In, a series of informal chats with some of our favorite writers.

As writers, why do we publish at all? Is it for the accolades or for something more pure? If you write to publish, can it still be called art? Author and senior editor at HarperCollins Austin Ross joins us to discuss the balancing act between art and commerce, he tells us his agent horror story, and why he finally decided to publish with an independent press. Plus, we hear from his novel Gloria Patri from Malarkey Books and The Inner Loop Author’s Corner August spotlight. Then, Austin teaches us the importance of eating the frog.