Craft Talk Book Club
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
We’re Taking a Break!
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mary and Nicole are taking a break before season 2. Catch up on The Idiot by Elif Batuman before they return later this year. See you next season!
”Persephone’s Children”, part 4: Proximal vs emotional distance...
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A common challenge for writers of memoir is how to create emotional safety while bringing readers in close. One of the ways McCandless does this is by...
”Persephone’s Children”, part 3: What holds it all together?
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Persephone's Children doesn't follow a traditional narrative arc; it doesn't even have a consistent first-person narrator. And yet the story McCandles...
”Persephone’s Children”, part 2: Hermit Crab Essay 101...
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A contract, a word search, a play, a grimoire. How does a writer go about finding the right container to shape their story? Mary and Nicole discuss th...
”Persephone’s Children”, part 1: Mosaic memoir, deconstructed.
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is a mosaic memoir? And why go about writing one vs a traditional straightforward narrative? Nicole + Mary dig into the ways crafting a memoir-in...
”Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson: Symbols
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps the most significant and explicit symbol in this novel is black cake, and it's rich (pun intended) indeed. In this final episode discussing Bl...
”Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson: Character descriptions
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Writing character descriptions is the bane of Mary's existence...and Wilkerson does it so well in this book. In this episode, we analyze a couple of h...
”Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson: Point of view...many of them
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Black Cake is a story told from many points of view, and not in an omniscient way. Wilkerson skips POVs chapter to chapter, delineating the shifts in ...
”Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson: Linked narratives
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wilkerson structures her novel Black Cake in a series of short, linked chapters that jump from point of view to point of view. How does she do this so...
”Solito” by Javier Zamora, part 4: What about memory gaps?
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before he wrote Solito, Zamora wrote about his migration to La USA in poetry. For writers dealing with traumatic childhood memories, Nicole + Mary dis...
”Solito” by Javier Zamora, part 3: The perfect title...
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole and Mary unpack the possibilities of what "solito" means as a title that encapsulates this harrowing story about love and yearning, risk and da...
”Solito” by Javier Zamora, part 2: World building in memoir
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can "world building" apply to memoir if a story revisits a world the author no longer inhabits? Mary + Nicole discuss how Zamora creates a full immers...
”Solito” by Javier Zamora, part 1: Voice, tense and POV
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wondered how to re-capture the voice of childhood in your memoir? Nicole + Mary recount the ways Zamora invites us into the mind and heart of his...
”Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin, part 4: Working with motifs (and what’s a motif?)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From waves to Magic Eye, this novel is full of recurring images and metaphors. In this final episode discussing Zevin's novel, Mary and Nicole identif...
”Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin, part 3: Stories within a story (or, in this case, video games)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Writing a story within a story is tricky (Mary knows, she did it in her first novel When You Read This), but Gabrielle Zevin not only writes about gam...
”Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin, part 2: That incredible death scene
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Nicole and Mary met up to record this episode, they were both wiping away tears from having just re-read this one chapter. The death scene of Mar...
”Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin, part 1: The omniscient narrator and point of view
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Is this an omniscient point of view?" Nicole asks Mary at the top of this episode. What a journey in point of view this novel was! Mary and Nicole di...
”Lost & Found” craft talk, part 4: All about allusions
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who doesn't love a book that entertains AND makes you feel smarter? One of the things Mary and Nicole enjoyed most about Lost & Found is its glimpse i...
”Lost & Found” craft talk, part 3: When to hold back
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Think in order to write memoir you have to spill your secrets? Think again! Nicole and Mary identify the ways Schulz is in full control of her story, ...
”Lost & Found” craft talk, part 2: Let’s talk structure
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest challenges for memoir writers is figuring out what to cut and what to keep. In part 2 of our discussion of Lost & Found, Nicole and...
”Lost & Found” craft talk, part 1: Is it a memoir?
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole and Mary begin their four-part conversation about Kathryn Schulz's memoir, Lost & Found, by asking: What makes this book a memoir? And how migh...
”Vladimir” craft talk, part 4: Oh, that last line...
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Both Mary and Nicole were slapped by the last line of Jonas's novel. In this final discussion of Vladimir, they unpack the significance of that final ...
”Vladimir” craft talk, part 3: Let’s talk about ”Lolita”
03 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
CW: This episode discusses child abuse present in the book Lolita. If this is a subject you're sensitive to, you might consider skipping this episode....
”Vladimir” craft talk, part 2: Can she do that?
03 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not name the main character? Write philosophical debate inside a story? In part 2 of the Vladimir discussion, Mary and Nicole discuss the choices auth...
”Vladimir” craft talk, part 1: Subverting tropes
03 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the premier episode of the Craft Talk Book Club podcast, Mary & Nicole kick off our four-part discussion of Julia May Jonas's debut novel Vladimir,...
Trailer: Craft Talk Book Club!
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Craft Talk Book Club is a podcast for writers who want to improve their craft by reading great books. Each month, Nicole Breit (Spark Your Story Lab c...