The Write Question

Lauren Korn

378 - ‘Make Believe’: Mac Barnett writes first book for adults, widens the aperture of what children’s books can be

The Write Question is a weekly literary program hosted by Lauren Korn that features authors from the American West—and beyond—including James Lee Burke, Kate Lebo, Anne Helen Petersen, Robert Wrigley, Jess Walter, Stephen Graham Jones, Hoa Nguyen, Maggie Shipstead, Elissa Washuta, and others.

378 - ‘Make Believe’: Mac Barnett writes first book for adults, widens the aperture of what children’s books can be

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The Write Question

Episodes

‘Make Believe’: Mac Barnett writes first book for adults, widens the aperture of what children’s books can be

“Art witch and pragmatist” Courtney Maum publishes anti-capitalist romp, ‘Alan Opts Out’

‘A Truce That Is Not Peace’: Miriam Toews on language, silence, and pop-up wind museums

A “Climate Solutions Week” encore: Mark Easter serves up ‘The Blue Plate’

Don’t fence me in: Hillary Rosner explores global wildlife connectivity and movement in ‘Roam’

Preeti Vangani returns to the body in her sophomore collection, ‘Fifty Mothers’

Uncanny valley: Kim Fu’s venue of post-COVID horror, ‘The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts’

Sally Thompson’s ‘Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World,’ Part Two: Chief Charlo’s speech

Sally Thompson’s ‘Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World,’ Part One: Father Pierre-Jean De Smet

On civics and memory: Jule Banville and Jad Abumrad reimagine the obituary with ‘The Obit Project’ (Extended)

Nina McConigley’s ‘How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder’: Exploring race and eighties girlhood in the American West

Live! Pledge week episode: Allison De Jong is the voice behind many of your favorite ‘Field Notes’

Fred Haefele returns to “vehicular memoir” with ‘The Essential Book of Pickup Trucks’

Growing up with Andrew Martin: In ‘Down Time,’ the author creates avatars of mourning, quest for happiness

Maya Jewell Zeller publishes unfurling, rhizomatic memoir-in-essays, ‘Raised by Ferns’

“We’re all susceptible to cult ways of thinking”: Leah Sottile’s ‘Blazing Eye Sees All’ (Part Two)

“Far left meets far right, finds common cause”: Leah Sottile’s ‘Blazing Eye Sees All’ (Part One)

On blood and belonging: Morgan Talty’s ‘Fire Exit,’ now available in paperback!

“One trip was about fleeing; the other about pilgrimage ‘toward the self’”: Joanna Pocock’s ‘Greyhound’

TWQ Mini: Crystal Koosman becomes an “amateur archivist,” opens Last Best Books

Acclaimed novelist David Guterson on the “lineages of lamas” (and more) in ‘Evelyn in Transit’

Cable guy Colum McCann on connectivity, brokenness, and things left unsaid in ‘Twist’

Tami Haaland investigates ancestry and inheritance in ‘If I Had Said Beauty’

Beyond words: Brian Buckbee writes, dictates ‘We Should All Be Birds’ (with Carol Ann Fitzgerald)

Interrogating systems of power with raft guide Bridget Crocker, author of ‘The River’s Daughter’

Alice Bolin’s ‘Culture Creep,’ a “gut-churning ride” into Millennial girl- and boyhood (Part Two)

Seductive narratives and Alice Bolin’s ‘Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse’ (Part One)

TWQ Mini: Juicy stories, beautiful sentences, and NPR’s 2025 ‘Books We Love’

Where science meets storytelling: Traveling to ‘To the Moon and Back’ with novelist Eliana Ramage

Encore: Christine Wu on a shared language of food and her debut collection, ‘Familial Hungers’

“The only way you can know a person’s gender is [to] ask them”: Abi Maxwell, author of ‘One Day I’ll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman’

On rivers, mouths, and memory: Shobha Rao discusses ‘Indian Country’ in advance of Montana tour

Live from the Ravalli County Museum: Chris Whitaker, “‘Sliding Doors’ moments,” and ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ (Part Two)

Live! Pledge week episode: Chapter One Bookstore’s Marisa Neyenhuis

TWQ Mini with Lorissa Rinehart: Jeannette Rankin, “a North star,” and ‘Winning the Earthquake’

Live from the Ravalli County Museum: Chris Whitaker has learned to paint with ‘All the Colors of the Dark’ (Part One)

River River poets Corrie Williamson and Joe Wilkins discuss landscape, safety, form, and history

“I’ve always loved a love story”: Sally Blakely on her debut romance, ‘Friends to Lovers’

Kevin Barry on his novel, ‘The Heart in Winter,’ “a western with County Cork accents”

Encore: Amy Gamerman’s ‘The Crazies’ (Part Two)

Daniel Tam-Claiborne, author of ‘Transplants,’ finds comfort in advocacy and community

Encore: Keetje Kuipers on her poetics of humility, the danger in love poems about marriage, and bumping around in the dark

Encore: Amy Gamerman’s ‘The Crazies’ (Part One)

Encore: Laura Marris on absence and archive

Encore: Sarah Capdeville on her debut, ‘Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost: Essays on Solitude and Landscape’

Encore: Wildlife biologist Diane K. Boyd is ‘A Woman Among Wolves’ (Part Two)

Encore: Wildlife biologist Diane K. Boyd is ‘A Woman Among Wolves’ (Part One)

Encore: Julia Phillips discusses womanhood, trust, and miraculous animals in her sophomore novel, ‘Bear’

Encore: Chris La Tray on ‘Becoming Little Shell’ (Part Two)

Encore: Chris La Tray on ‘Becoming Little Shell’ (Part One)

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