Community of Writers Podcasts

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 ...

My guest is Vishwas Gaitonde, a much-published short story writer out with his debut fiction collection, stories which dramatize, explore, interrogate and celebrate human connection. His On Earth As It Is In Heaven won the 2023 Orison Prize for fiction. About it Margot Livesy wrote “Gaitonde captures the struggle to belong within a family and within a culture, and how language unites and divides us.” Vishwas Gaitonde’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online with short st...

My guest this week is the multi-form writer Daniel Olivas, author of 13 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama including the subject of today’s Bibliocracy Radio, a play titled Waiting for Godínez: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, from the University of New Mexico Press. Among other titles, he’s written Chicano Frankenstein: A Novel, and My Chicano Heart: New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions. He co-edited The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quake...

My guest this week is Nicholas Reiner, a poet and teacher and Associate Director of Media & Storytelling at the ACLU of Southern California. As part of Bibliocracy’s recent series of shows featuring scholars and activists confronting, explaining, and resisting Trumpism and the fascist GOP agenda, I’ve asked Reiner to catch me up on the work of the ACLU of Southern California, and also ask what he’s doing lately as an literary artist. He discusses why he writes, and reads a poem. Nicholas ...

My guest this week is Trevor Griffey. While Bibliocracy Radio is largely devoted to the celebration of book culture and reading, I’ve also frequently and increasingly devoted episodes featuring public policy and political experts, writers, and activists like scholar, teacher, and union advocate Trevor Griffey. How to respond to this news from the New York Times? “The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest U.S. teachers’ union, said on Tuesday that it would start an A.I. tra...

I’m pleased to host American Library Association President Sam Helmick on the work of that organization and the upcoming ALA Banned Books Week 2025, October 5 - October 11. This year’s theme: “Censorship is so 1984. Read for Your Rights.” 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.

My guest this week is poet, prose writer, nature writer and photographer Charles Hood. In his newest book he has written a nature guide, travel adventure and, most movingly, a memoir in scenes of confession and revelation, self-discovery and joy. Out now from Heyday, it’s a collection of 18 essays gathered, with photographs, as Double Hyenas and Lazarus Birds: A Sideways Look at the Pacific Ocean and Everything In It. Recently retired from teaching, his previous books include Nocturnalia, A C...

This week an edited version of readings by two contributors to the latest Santa Monica Review. Taped in front of a live audience at a spring issue launch celebration, writers Stephen D. Gutierrez and Sean Bernard share from their recent work. Gutierrez reads sections from his novella Captain Chicano Draws a Line in the American Sand and Bernard reads from his short story “Big Sur,” featured in the spring 2025 issue of the Santa Monica Review. Both writers have impressive publication histories...