Ursa Short Fiction Ursa Story Company

In our Season Two premiere, co-hosts Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton talk with the beloved ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, a collection first published in 2003 that went on to inspire countless writers. Packer talks about how she found her voice, style, and authenticity as a young, Black, female writer who hadn’t even planned on becoming a writer. She addresses ideas of navigating both physical and figurative spaces and learning how to find a place in the literary world.

Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned


Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer)

Zora Neale Hurston

Toni Morrison

Flannery O’Connor

James Alan McPherson (Elbow Room and Hue and Cry)

Lorrie Moore

Stuart Dybek

Percival Everett

James Baldwin

Anton Chekhov

Edward P. Jones (Lost in the City and The Known World)


Alice Munro

Imani Perry

Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)


Edwidge Danticat


Read more from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: 


The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)


Ursa Short Fiction is 100% independent and supported by our listeners. Become a Member today to help us keep going: ursastory.com/join 

Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

In this Member Bonus, ZZ Packer reflects on her experiences with the late Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Alan McPherson during her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the ways he inspired, supported, and connected with those he mentored, as well as those in the community he belonged to outside of academia.

Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned

-James Alan McPherson
-Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer)
-Catullus
-Miguel de Unamuno
-Toni Morrison

Read more from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
-The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
-The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

Ursa Short Fiction is 100% independent and supported by our listeners. Become a Member today to help us keep going: ursastory.com/join

Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong

Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton introduce their first story pick for Season Two, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s “Virginia Is Not Your Home,” from her debut collection, My Monticello, published in 2021 by Henry Holt and Co.
“Virginia Is Not Your Home” follows the life of a woman who is attempting to outrun her namesake, and the story conjures questions of origin, of becoming, and of freedom. There is emphasis on movement and escape, on our names as our homes, and on understanding what it is we leave behind when we go. It interrogates the ways we forget and the ways we remember.
The story is performed by January LaVoy, and it's excerpted from the My Monticello audiobook, produced by our friends at Macmillan Audio. Our thanks to them for sharing this story with Ursa listeners.
Listen, then come back next week for our conversation with Jocelyn Nicole Johnson.
Reading List:


My Monticello (Jocelyn Nicole Johnson)


My Monticello Audiobook (Audible)

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's website


About the Author
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is the author of My Monticello, a fiction debut that was called "a masterly feat" by the New York Times, and winner of the Library of Virginia Fiction Award, the Weatherford Award, the Balcones Fiction Prize, and the Lillian Smith Award, as well as a finalist for the Kirkus Fiction Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Award, the LA Times Debut Seidenbaum Prize, and long-listed for a Pen/Faulkner Fiction Award and the Story Prize. Johnson has been a fellow at TinHouse, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Kweli Journal, Joyland, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, guest edited by Roxane Gay and read live by LeVar Burton. A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Read more from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: 


The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)


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Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode producer: Mark Armstrong
Audio story produced by Macmillan Audio and performed by January LaVoy.
Ursa Short Fiction is supported by our listeners. Share this podcast with a friend—or become a Member to help fund production: https://ursastory.com/join/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton sit down with Jocelyn Nicole Johnson—author of Ursa's Season Two, Episode 3 story, "Virginia Is Not Your Home"—to discuss her acclaimed debut collection, My Monticello, and the journey of its making. Johnson talks about her writing as a direct response to historical events as they occur, much of her work centering Virginia as home, and grappling with complicated histories, experiences, and ideas around identity.
Johnson addresses the themes that occur throughout her collection, such as that of loneliness, belonging, resistance, violence, and salvation. Deesha and Dawnie dive into questions about perspective, voice, character- and world-building, the writing and revision process, and perseverance as a writer:
“Control what you can control, which is the writing. Enjoy the writing. Do your best with the writing. What matters is the writing. I just think you want to be thoughtful, but put that thought and care into that part of it, because that's the part that you have the most control.”Reading List:


"Virginia Is Not Your Home" (Ursa Short Fiction)


My Monticello (Jocelyn Nicole Johnson)


My Monticello audiobook (Audible)


Corregidora (Gayl Jones)

Octavia Butler

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Charles Yu


Beloved (Toni Morrison)

Danielle Evans

Jamel Brinkley


The World Doesn't Require You (Rion Amilcar Scott)

About the AuthorJocelyn Nicole Johnson is the author of My Monticello, a fiction debut that was called "a masterly feat" by the New York Times, and winner of the Library of Virginia Fiction Award, the Weatherford Award, the Balcones Fiction Prize, and the Lillian Smith Award, as well as a finalist for the Kirkus Fiction Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Award, the LA Times Debut Seidenbaum Prize, and long-listed for a Pen/Faulkner Fiction Award and the Story Prize. Johnson has been a fellow at TinHouse, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Kweli Journal, Joyland, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, guest edited by Roxane Gay and read live by LeVar Burton. A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Read more from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)


***
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
Ursa Short Fiction is supported by our listeners. Share this podcast with a friend—or become a Member to help fund production: https://ursastory.com/join
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

We’re thrilled to present a new audio story, “Rioja,” written by Shannon Sanders and performed by Khaya Fraites. It was originally published in the literary magazine SLICE, and it’s forthcoming in Sanders’s debut collection COMPANY, to be published by Graywolf Press in October 2023. 
In this story we meet Cole, who is taking his girlfriend Cecilia to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his Aunt Peach. It’s Cecilia’s first introduction to the family, and though the encounters seem pleasant on the surface, secrets, family history, and resentment run deep beneath them. 
Listen to "Rioja," then stick around at the end for Sanders, in her own words, on the origins of the story:
“This story really deals with the idea of cultural inheritance. So I'm really interested in how each generation has the potential to build on what the previous generation did. And there's always the chance that we'll do it way better than the previous generation did, learning from their mistakes. But there's also kind of this compulsion to repeat the mistakes of the previous generation, and there's just some legacies that are really, really hard to shake.”

Reading List: Books, Stories, and Authors Mentioned


COMPANY, by Shannon Sanders (Graywolf Press, October 2023)


More stories by Shannon Sanders (website) 


Danielle Evans 


ZZ Packer 

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Deesha Philyaw

Lisa Taddeo


About the Author
Shannon Sanders’s debut short story collection, COMPANY, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in October 2023; her short fiction has won the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and can be found in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Find her at ShannonSandersWrites.com or on Twitter at @ShandersWrites.

About the Narrator
Khaya Fraites is a voice and film actor/writer based in New York City. Her recent credits include "Rainbow High," the animated series, and "RIP, LOL," the short film she wrote based on her upcoming novel of the same name. For more about Khaya, visit her website at www.khayafraites.com or keep up with her on Instagram and TikTok @khayafraites.

Read More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: 


The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)


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Story Credits
‘Rioja,’ written by Shannon Sanders
Performed by Khaya Fraites 
Directed by Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Executive producers: Dawnie Walton & Mark Armstrong
Additional production support by Ashawnta Jackson
Music: “The Doubt,” by Francesco D'Andrea
Author photo by David F. Choy.
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Help Us Keep Going!
Ursa Short Fiction is supported by our listeners. Share this podcast with a friend—or become a Member to help fund production: https://ursastory.com/join
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

It’s a very special “Three Ds from Duval” episode of Ursa Short Fiction! Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton welcome fellow Jacksonville native Dantiel W. Moniz, author of the acclaimed 2021 short story collection MILK BLOOD HEAT. 
Moniz talks about how growing up in Jacksonville informed the stories in MILK BLOOD HEAT, and how real-life experiences serve as a jumping-off point for the stories we tell. 
“It’s always as a seed or a starting off point because the story is a thing that allows me to get past what actually happened or what I think actually happened, and then explore what could have happened.”

Reading List: Books, Stories, and Authors Mentioned


MILK BLOOD HEAT, by Dantiel W. Moniz (Grove Press)


“An Almanac of Bones,” by Dantiel W. Moniz (Apogee Journal)


“Eula,” by Deesha Philyaw (Apogee Journal)


The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans


The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, by Mariana Enríquez


Manywhere, by Morgan Thomas


The Getaway Car, by Ann Patchett 

Dantiel W. Moniz’s website


About the Author
Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Award, a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship, and the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction. Her debut collection, Milk Blood Heat, is the winner of a Florida Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Tin House, and elsewhere. Moniz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches fiction.

Read More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: 


The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)


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Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
***
Help us fund future episodes: https://ursastory.com/join/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join