Aimee Nezhukumatathil joins me to talk about writing that is guided by love, staying true to ourselves on the page, and creating work we’d want to be remembered by. We discuss the role of the senses, the joy of concrete poetry, and how to write in a way that gently taps readers on the shoulder.

Aimee is the author of seven books books of poetry and essays, including her latest book of poems Night Owl and the bestselling illustrated essay collection World of Wonders.

January Gill O’Neil joins me to talk about community as a sustaining force, the ways place and history might shape a body of work, and how poetry can acknowledge pain to make room for joy.

January is the author of four poetry collections, including Glitter Road. A Cave Canem Fellow, she has also served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, chair of AWP, and teaches at Salem State University.

Megan Marshall joins me to talk about writing from fragments—letters, objects, and the traces people leave behind—and how those pieces become a life in narrative form. We discuss the intimacy and responsibility of writing about others, and how that work turns us back toward our own lives.

Megan is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and the author of five books, including Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, and After Lives, out now--a collection of essays that moves between history, memoir, and the enduring question of how we make meaning from the lives around us.