To close out Season 5 (that's five, Murph!) The Crü each returned to a different story or poem they wrote throughout the season. We talk about the revision process (and how it changes for prose vs poetry); what we've learned over the course of the season and our different experiments (WebEater's outlining, PC and Murph's long-form pieces broken up by prompts); and, of course, where we're going next.

And, as always, we share and discuss our own work.

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This week, Spud leads The Crü down the winding rabbit hole of Roland Barthes' famous essay, The Death of the Author. We delve into a healthy debate over whether or not authorial intent actually matters, and how that answer changes if it's a reader asking it vs. a literary critic. Who decides what a story means, and can that meaning change over time?

Then, of course, we share our own stories based around the week's prompt, and promptly (no pun intended) discuss the author's intent, leading to a weird Hegelian dialectic on the topic. From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Spondulicks. A slang term for money, dating from the mid-19th century. Its origins are uncertain: one suggestion is Greek spondulikos, the name of a type of shell used as an early form of money.

Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do.

Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.

What makes Anthony Bourdain's writing style so magnetic? That's what the Crü aims to discover this week by shamelessly adopting his style as our own. Our author spotlight covers everything from Kitchen Confidential to gonzo journalism. Along the way we discuss how to take nonfiction memoirs and write them to be immersive narratives by figuring out your own, authentic writing voice.

And of course, we share our own works focused around a prompt that definitely has so much to do with Anthony Bourdain, and nothing to do with an strange strange piece of history. From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Jenkins's Ear. The name given to an incident that helped largely to bring about the war between England and Spain in 1739 that eventually developed into the War of the Austrian Succession. Captain Robert Jenkins, skipper of the brig Rebecca, was homeward bound from the West Indies when he was attacked by a Spanish guarda costa off Havana on 9th April, 1731. The Spaniards plundered his ship and ended by cutting off one of Jenkins's ears. On reaching London Jenkins carried his complaint (and his severed ear in a leather case!!! [emphasis added]) to the king and demanded reparation. At the time little notice was taken of the incident, but some years later, in 1738, the matter was brought up again, Jenkins and his ear were examined by a committee of the House of Commons and his case became an added grievance to the many others that culminated in war.

Like this weeks episode and wish you could read as well as listen? Subscribe to our Substack for a summary of our opening discussion, a story from the episode, and a writing prompt!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do.

Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.