Episodes
Saturday May 06, 2023
Crafty, Crafty or You Ain’t Betty Crocker, Quit Baking Her Cakes.
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
SOLIDARITY NOW!.
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
The Outrider Podcast: A Face-to-Face with Mimosas
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
We are not the popular kids.
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
The Outrider Podcast: 1-23:The Heroine with 1,001Faces
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
The Outrider Podcast: There’s genre and then there’s (marketing) Genre
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
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
The Outrider Podcast Episode 168: The Carrier Bag
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
Wednesday Nov 02, 2022
Welcome back to the Outrider Podcast.
After a long hiatus, I’m back with a new full-time co-host, Jenn Zuko. Jenn was the very first guest on The Outrider Podcast way back in 2013. Since then she’s been on several special episodes as well as our seven part series on Bad Ass Female Tropes and our seven parter on Toxic Masculinity Tropes. We’ll be releasing one regular episode a month where we discuss what we’re working on, what we’re reading, what has made us happy, and finally a craft or business topic that might, sometimes, include a special guest.
For episode one, it’s just the two of us. Once we get past the writing, reading, and happiness, we’ll be discussing Ursula K. LeGuin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. There’s a link below to her essay as well as most of the things we reference in the show.
Follow Jenn at Daily Cross Swords
Keep up with Jason at https://www.jquinnmalott.com
An Incomplete List of Things We Talked About
Ursula K. LeGuin: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Jenn Zuko: Three Rules: The Monomyth Revisited The Aged Hero’s Journey, Hero’s Journey / Villain’s Journey
Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Maria Tatar: The Heroine with 1001 Faces
Star Trek: TNG episodes S5:E2 Darmok, & S5:E25 The Inner Light
The Love Boat S5:E15 I Don’t Play Anymore / Gopher’s Roommate / Crazy for You
Douglas Rushkoff Survival of Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash.
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Saturday Jan 16, 2021
Ep 4: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Saturday Jan 16, 2021
Saturday Jan 16, 2021
In this mini-series I’m joined by my long-time friend, the poet Delia Tramontina for a lively discussion of Djuna Barnes seminal novel Nightwood.
In Episode 4, since Delia and I struggled to get a handle on Nightwood, we’ve invited Stacey Kohut, a fan of the novel and friend of Delia’s to help us get a better understanding of its charms.
Stacey Kohut is a higher education administrator, received her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, and is currently a doctoral student at USF's School of Education. In addition to her utter failure to maintain work/school/life balance, she is managing her addiction to the printed word. Stacey has contributed to Backwords Blog and has served as a guest curator for Bay Area Generations.
Delia Tramontina is from Flushing, NY. She earned her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Her work has appeared in Newtown Literary, Forum, and 1111. Her chapbook CONSTRAINT is available from Dancing Girl Press. For 3.5 years she co-hosted the online show, Poet as Radio, on San Francisco Community Radio. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Saturday Jan 09, 2021
Ep 3: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Saturday Jan 09, 2021
Saturday Jan 09, 2021
In this mini-series I’m joined by my long-time friend, the poet Delia Tramontina for a lively discussion of Djuna Barnes seminal novel Nightwood.
In Episode 3, we’ll discuss the chapters Watchman, What of the Night, Where the Tree Falls, Go Down, Matthew, and The Possessed.
Delia Tramontina is from Flushing, NY. She earned her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Her work has appeared in Newtown Literary, Forum, and 1111. Her chapbook CONSTRAINT is available from Dancing Girl Press. For 3.5 years she co-hosted the online show, Poet as Radio, on San Francisco Community Radio. She lives and works in San Francisco.