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Episodes
A Literary Podcast.
Episodes
Saturday Sep 09, 2023
Saturday Sep 09, 2023
In this episode, we discuss John Le Carré, Japanese fiction, things we’re sending out to agents and publishers, being in the wilderness—all before we get to our discussion of an essay by Joseph Scapellato on Shape as a wrap-up to our discussion on Form and Function.
Sure, Plot is Good, But Have You Tried Talking About Story Shape? by Joseph Scapellato
https://lithub.com/sure-plot-is-good-but-have-you-tried-talking-about-story-shape/
You can read more from Jenn Zuko at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason Quinn Malott at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Monday Aug 14, 2023
We’re late. Sorry. It’s summer, and it’s been hot and sluggish. In August, we continue our conversation on Form and Function with a discussion of three essays by Jenn (links below).
Other topics include: perimenopause, Penis Appreciation Day, grooves in your brain, a hard turn to the left, No Rosé, being aged, Womb Wakes, reading Foucault, rejections, editors, boredom, haibun, and missing persons.
Essays
Popination (Part 1)
https://open.substack.com/pub/jenn5c3s4/p/popination-part-1?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Popination (Part 2)
https://open.substack.com/pub/jenn5c3s4/p/popination-part-2?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Popination Consternation
https://open.substack.com/pub/jenn5c3s4/p/popination-consternation?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
This month, Jenn and Jason kick off a series of discussions on craft: how their things are put together, why and to what ends certain decisions are made and so on. For July, we’re looking at some early chapters from Jason’s project “The Poisoned Moon” with a focus on Form and Function. Next month, we’ll take a look a some work of Jenn’s
To see Jason’s Sample go to https://jasonquinn-malott.squarespace.com/sample-draft
The page has a password to view page because we don’t want just anyone wandering through. password: Top_July_23
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
Tuesday Jun 06, 2023
In this month’s discussion, we chatter about AI and all the ways that the robots are coming for our artistic expression. Instead of the robots being tasked with the dirty jobs, they’ll make our art while we scoop poop and pray that the billionaires will think to include us on their spaceship to Mars where we’ll scoop poop on the red planet.
Unless we fight back.
Accept discomfort.
Here are the articles we reference.
From NPR: Sci-Fi magazine stops submissions after flood of AI generated stories
From the NY Times: The Upshot
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/26/upshot/gpt-from-scratch.html
From the NY Times: Bing’s AI Chatbot
The Ezra Klein Show
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_on_a_winter's_night_a_traveler
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Saturday May 06, 2023
Saturday May 06, 2023
In this episode, we discuss craft and crafty things, and what it all really means and how we think about it and, maybe, should think about it. We trot out a metaphor that writing is baking—and that some writers rely too much on premade cake and muffin mixes.
Writing as Baking
Elements (ingredients): scratch vs. mix
Craft: Technique vs. Method
Form: The container
Genre: Frosting, non-essential ingredients
Jenn’s References
My poem on the t’Art Spring Showcase
My Substack: Zuko’s Musings
Current Readings:
The Biology of Desire by Marc Lewis
(and many more)
Crafty books (in no order because I am too lazy to alphabetize them):
Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud
The Sense of Style - Steven Pinker
Writing to Learn - William Zinsser
On Writing Well - William Zinsser
On Directing Film - David Mamet
Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose*
To Show and to Tell - Philip Lopate*
The Poet’s Companion - Addonizio/Laux*
Narrative Design - Madison Smartt Bell*
Understanding Rhetoric - Losh/Alexander/Cannon/Cannon
Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway**
What If? - Bernays/Painter**
Writing as a Way of Healing - Louise deSalvo**
The Craft of Revision - Donald M. Murray
Backwards & Forwards - David Ball***
Steering the Craft - Ursula K. LeGuin
Zen in the Art of Writing - Ray Bradbury
Language of the Night—Ursula LeGuin
Dreyer’s English—Benjamin Dreyer
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire—Karen Elizabeth Gordon
*These are required textbooks for my current class, Writer’s Workshop (DU’s PWRI dept)
**These have been required textbooks for other crafty courses I’ve taught at DU
***Required text for my theatre courses that include lots of play reading
Jason’s References
Currently reading:
Notes from the Coming War by Gavin Pate
This Book Is Not For You by Daniel Hoyt.
You Are Not So Smart Episode 257
John Berger - Into Their labors Trilogy book two: Once in Europa
One Great Way to Write Short Stories by Ben Nyberg #
On Writing Well: The classic guide to writing non-fiction by William Zinsser*
Narrative Discourse and Narrative Discourse Revisited by Gerard Genette
The Last Draft: A Novelists guide to revision - Sandra Scofield*
The Hidden Machinery Essays on Writing by Margot Livesey*
The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter
The Art of Mystery by Maud Casey*
The Art of History by Christopher Bram*
The Art of Time in fiction by Joan Silber#
The Art of Perspective by Christopher Castellani*
The Art of Revision by Peter Ho Davies
The Scene Book by Sandra Scofield*
Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
The Blink of an Eye: A perspective in Film editing by Walter Murch
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film by Michale Ondaatje
The Way of the Writer by Charles Johnson*
How Fiction Works by James Wood
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne Booth#
The Art of Intimacy by Stacey D’Erasmo
The Theory of the Novel edited by Michael McKeon#
On Writing by Stephen King.
On Moral Fiction by John Gardner
On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
Six Memos for The Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Wednesday Apr 05, 2023
Wednesday Apr 05, 2023
In this episode we finish up our discussion of Chokepoint Capitalism and make the argument for mutual aid, small presses, and systemic change as a means of wrestling control of our creative lives back from the big tech and big content.
You should read Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
Here’s some reviews and articles:
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Monday Mar 06, 2023
Monday Mar 06, 2023
In this episode we discuss the illusion of TV as a substitute for socializing, finding comp titles, homogenization as a way to increase extraction. Award season for TV and movies and the awesomeness around Jamie Lee Curtis being a champion… and of course Chokepoint Capitalism and the threat to our non-existent livelihood.
You should read Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
Here’s some reviews and articles:
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Monday Feb 06, 2023
In our February episode we jump right in with Dick, Moby Dick then ranting about holiday stress and turning fifty. We then do a bit of an exercise based on a bestseller list Jenn sent to find out how much the Big Five Publishers dominate the publishing market. All of it. The answer is all of it, and we’re not at the popular kid’s table. And Jason probably talks too much.
Here is a link to the NY Times article we started with.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/books/review/2022-reading-picks-from-times-staff-critics.html
You may need to sign up for a free account.
You can read more from Jenn at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack
You can follow Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
Wednesday Jan 04, 2023
Wednesday Jan 04, 2023
This month we continue our topic on story basics, as well as what we’re working on, reading, and what is making us happy. Today we discuss Maria Tartar’s The Heroine with 1,001 Faces.
Jenn is still reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, but has added A Sentimental Education by Hannah McGregor
Jason is reading Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, How Minds Change by David McRaney, and The Inferno by Dante.
Other references we make:
Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Lee Berger, John Hawks Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story to read more about the Rising Star cave discovery.
For more on Jenn go to her social media
For more on Jason go to his social media
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Wednesday Dec 07, 2022
Welcome to episode 2 of The Outrider Podcast with Jenn Zuko and Jason Quinn Malott
Today, we talk about the core foundation of story and how genre, at least as we understand it in the age of book marketing and mega-publishers, is irrelevant to the quality of the story and is actually a means to ghettoize and segregate readers so that they can be more easily marketed to.
Some of our intake:
Our Idiot Brother and my essay on Medium
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garci Marquez
Glory Guitars: Memoir of a 90s Teenage Punk Rock Grrrl by Gogo Germaine
The Hellhound Heart, by Clive Barker
Philip Pullman’s Carnegie Medal speech - I cannot find a Pullman-approved version of this. Just an unlinked, unsourced version on blog. Search for it on your own. I don’t like linking to unverified sources.
Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record by Andy Saunders