We’re joined by the short story writer Art Taylor—winner of multiple Agatha awards, and author of two collections—to discuss an unconventionally structured story by Joyce Carol Oates. Art also teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Virginia, and we spend some time talking about how we approach structure with our students.

We’re joined by author Tod Goldberg to talk about what Elmore Leonard taught him about crime fiction

We’re joined by V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness, the first of his novels to be translated into English, and which a friend of hers recommended, several years ago, when she was deep in the throes of her own novel, Brotherless Night.

We’re joined by writer and editor Aaron Burch, whose novel Year of the Buffalo came out in November. Aaron is also a long-time literary editor, having founded Hobart in the early 2000s and, more recently, HAD, which has made “skull collecting” the newest badge of literary coolness. We talk about what makes a work of fiction feel dated–which may go against conventional wisdom–as well as risk-taking and having fun as a writer.

We’re joined by several of the Barrelhouse editors for our annual holiday episode. This year we’re reading the David Baldacci novel The Christmas Train, which follows a salty, Mark Twain-loving writer on a cross-country train trip filled with heartwarming hijinks.

Find all our old episodes here, on our old site, archived forever