Purchase: Utopians in Love (Game Over Books, 2025)

Read: "Self Portrait as Utopian" (IDK Magazine)

Bob Sykora is the author of the collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025) and the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Recommended Reading:

The Village by M. Night Shyamalan

Boston's Athenaeum

Thalia Field

Susan Howe

Iris Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection"

Lewis Hyde's The Gift

Lazy & Entitled podcast

The Line Break Podcast

The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov (and "The Untaught Teacher" essay)

Purchase: The Fall of Iris Henley (Wednesday Books, 2026)

Read/Listen: The Fall of Iris Henley (excerpt)

Jennifer Graham graduated from Reed College and received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Under the name Jennifer Donaldson, she is the author of Lies You Never Told Me and I Know You Remember. She also co-wrote the Veronica Mars duology with Rob Thomas. Jennifer currently lives in Austin with her family.

Recommended Reading:

Fanny Howe

Ann Leckie

Martha Wells

The Epiphany Machine by David Burr Gerrard

Writing for Stage and Screen by Sherry Kramer

The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Scythe by Elizabeth Sylvia

An Angel at My Table (1990 Jane Campion film)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

Purchase: Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026)

Read: "Gridlock" and a process note! (Periodicities)

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019), winner of the RLFPA Poetry Prize. Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among several other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize. Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission and YBCA through which she facilitates poetry workshops rooted in writing grief through joy. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco.

Recommended Reading:

Saeed Jones

Natalie Shapera

Agha Shahid Ali

Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar (Bombay poet discussed on episode)

K Ming Chang's "Auntland" (short story)

Ross Gay

Erika Meitner

Martha Silano's Terminal Surreal

John Donne's sonnet "I am a little world made cunningly"

D.A. (Doug) Powell

Sharon Olds

Rick Barot

top pens for arthritic hands (friends recommend Dr. Grip pens by Pilot!)