Cara Benson: Losing a Loved One - Part 1

For the first part of two episodes dealing with the loss of someone close, we have author Cara Benson in conversation with TW Creative Director John Vogel.In An Armfull of Birds, Cara takes us through her adult life by alternating between two time periods: her “drinking days” and her recovery period. The first chapter starts in 2006, meeting her future partner Jon in recovery. In the next chapter she takes us back to 1993, a quick downfall from performing and various arts-related jobs into addiction and unemployment that hits rock bottom facing death at the hands of an abusive partner.Some of the regulars at Friendly’s were a group of folks in recovery. Through talking with them during her shifts, she ended up eventually going to meetings and taking the long road towards sobriety.With all the excess energy from not going out drinking every night, Cara began taking on the intense hobby of mountain climbing. As it escalated, she started booking trips with groups and guides taking on higher peaks and more intense climbs than the Adirondacks she had access to at home.In recovery she met Jon, her partner for the next 12 years, an avid birder and self-taught architect. During a stressful period in his career, depression mounted, leading Jon to take his own life, and leaving Cara to figure out how to get through hers without him.Initially put off by the idea of writing about the incident, Cara eventually felt compelled to create a resource to help others in similar circumstances. Using themes of environmentalism and spirituality, Cara created An Armsfull of Birds with the intention of being a guide, using her own story to illustrate a way through difficult times. It’s also about seeking help when you feel like you’re drowning. In this conversation, John and Cara talk about her artistic journey, the secrecy of suicidal ideation, and intense experiences that can create meaning in one’s life.

This week’s episode features author and screenwriter Meryl Branch-McTiernan talking with TW Creative Director John Vogel about her recent novel What You Should Worry About. The book takes us back to before the COVID lockdown, the old normal. And it brings back all the anxiety, isolation, fear, and judgment that was rampant in the first year of shelter-in-place.As protagonist Layla Moody hops around Sundance in February 2020, she connects with Diana Winn, a director who offers a meeting in New York for Layla to pitch a script. After the festival, she flies from her adopted home of L.A. to her childhood home of NYC and stays at her mother’s apartment. Unexpectedly, COVID shuts everything down, and she becomes stranded in New York.As her married friends all refuse to hang out — even outside — isolation increases and she makes the unpopular decision to stay at a house share on Fire Island, one of her old happy places. Despite her worries, it turns out to be the right move and finally provides some human connection that had been absent since the onset of the pandemic.Meryl also co-wrote the 2023 movie Katie’s Mom, which plays with the idea of The Graduate by putting the focus on the older woman instead of the younger male. Beverly Hills, 90210 fans might recognize two of the films starts, Dina Meyer and Jason Wiles, from their roles as Lucinda Nicholson and Colin Robbins.During the interview, Meryl talks to John about how What You Should Worry About converges to and diverges from her real life during the era of social distance, how she’s been able to balance making art with needing to pay rent, and answers the Perfect Recognition questions.

For today's episode, YA author Erik J. Brown sits down with TW Creative Director John Vogel for Banned Books Week. Erik’s books have been banned in many school libraries around the US for LGBTQ+ themes, and just this past year the Malaysian government banned two of his books for the entire country.The action and settings of Erik J. Brown’s books are all very different, but they all have one aspect in common: teenagers learning how to navigate romantic feelings towards a member of the same gender.His bestseller All That’s Left in the World and its sequel The Only Light Left Burning take place in a post-apocalyptic world that’s been decimated by a Superflu, Lose You to Find Me is more of a basic rom-com, and Better the Devil is a thriller where the main characters are trying to solve the 10-year-old case of a missing child.These books are all geared towards a young adult audience, a time period that can be very confusing for relationships in general. Finding affirmation — even within a book — surrounding feelings that might be guarded for social self-preservation could be a lifeline for kids that age.Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.

For this episode best-selling author K'wan Foye sits down with TW Creative Director John Vogel to talk about his new book, House of the Rising Sun (Akashic Books, 2026). K’wan Foye gained major publishing attention after the success of his first novel, Gangsta (Triple Crown Publications, 2002), led to the beginning of a run with St. Martin’s Press, releasing over a dozen books. He has since authored over two dozen bestsellers, including the Animal series from Iceberg Slim’s Simon and Schuster imprint, Cash Money Content, and the Black Lotus series from Akashic Books.While Gangsta was a gritty and somewhat realistic novel, K’wan started out writing stories with more of a supernatural bent. Being adopted by mainstream publishing, he was originally pigeonholed into thriller and crime drama. When he took a detour with Black Lotus, incorporating horror and the supernatural, his publishers weren’t having it.Luckily, K’wan linked up with Akashic Books, who were excited to give his Black Lotus books a publishing home, leading to a very successful two-book release.House of the Rising Sun also veers into the domain of horror and a hinted-at backstory that would be at home in old kung-fu movies. It represents the first book of K’wan’s Brotherhood of Blood series. One month after its release, K'wan put out Troubleman with Auwa Books, Questlove’s imprint under Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

For this episode we have a recording from the author reading with Juliet Diaz, Athena Dixon, and Tom McAllister that we held last November at Big Blue Marble bookstore in Philadelphia.In order, Tom McAllister read from his collection of essays It All Felt Impossible, Juliet Diaz read from her revised second edition of The Altar Within, and Athena Dixon read an essay from a forthcoming collection. After the readings there was a Q&A with the authors where we discussed healthy anger, humor in writing, and the authors’ experiences with various levels of publishing and agents.A huge thank you to all the authors for joining us, for everyone who came out for the event, and to Big Blue Marble for hosting us.

Author Ramona Ausubel sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her new craft book and write's guide. In Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page, Ramona lays out exercises and strategies to maintain momentum throughout a writing project. Much of the advice centers around a few different themes, such as forging a relationship with the ever-present self-doubt, deeper exploration of the internal world of the artwork, and keeping the fun alive during the writing process.Ramona has written three novels and two short story collections while maintaining an active teaching schedule, with a faculty position at Colorado State University and teaching summer workshops for several organizations including Writing by Writers and the Breadloaf Environmental Conference.Unstuck is published by the Tin House imprint, which was recently acquired by independent publisher Zando. Ramona also attended the Tin House Writing Workshop at Reed College shortly after finishing graduate school, and taught there during the online era of COVID.During the interview we talk about more about Tin House, how her short story writing both fueled and provided respite from her novel-writing, and other personal experiences behind the strategies.

For this week's episode, author Brian Trapp sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Brian's 2025 novel Range of Motion (Acre Books). The book is semi-autobiographical fiction about twin brothers, one of whom was born with cerebral palsy and severe intellectual disabilities, an experience paralleling Brian's own with his twin brother Danny.The novel is written with tenderness, humor, and celebration centering twin brothers Michael and Sal, their parents Hannah and Gabe, and the whole family’s experience balancing care, work, school, and social lives.In 2009, while enrolled in a master’s program for creative writing at the University of Cincinnati (UC), Brian started to write a fictional story based on a week that he and Danny spent at Camp Cheerful in Ohio. He wrote about a hundred pages for his thesis before losing steam. To regain momentum, he backtracked to the twins’ childhood, starting when they were five and going forward from there to catch up to the scenes at the camp when they were 18.Brian earned his PhD in creative writing and disability studies from UC, and has accumulated a list of grants, fellowships, and residencies, including a Tin House Residency, Borchardt Scholarship, and Steinbeck Fellowship. In 2017, Brian moved with his partner—novelist Marjorie Celona—to Eugene, where the University of Oregon was just starting up a disability studies program. A product of good timing, he “lucked into” a position as director of the program, while teaching fiction and nonfiction and editing the Northwest Review.

For this episode musician and filmmaker Michael Sanchez sits down with TW creative director John Vogel.Michael grew up in Newcastle, Delaware, where he started playing and recording music. One of his bands from that time, the New Death Show, eventually pared from four-piece to duo and migrated to Seattle. Later Michael would move to Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago, and then Philly, settling into different artistic projects along the way, including his band The Way It Is and a solo project, Electric Dylan. In San Francisco he started trying out comedy, which started to become more serious during his time in Chicago. There, he and four other comedians started a showcase called Comedians You Should Know, which ran at a local pub every Wednesday starting in 2010. In 2015 and 2016 the showcase expanded to LA and New York.Throughout this time period, Michael was also creating videos both for himself and as a contractor for different artists and corporate institutions. Early on he and his friends filmed a no-budget superhero movie called The Return of Great Guy, which stalled due to hard drive issues.For this interview, Michael fields questions from John's Perfect Recognition project.

Lisa Borders, author of three novels, talks with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her newest book. Last Night at the Disco (Regal House Publishing, 2025) is a fictitious memoir framed as a letter to the former editor of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner. That context gives the audience their first clue about the book’s narrator, Lynda Boyle.The introduction to the letter also gives us a few other vague references to crimes, the loss of a teaching position, and a “coke-fueled disco queen” that help fill in a few blanks while raising many more questions.Although humor had always been a part of Lisa’s personality and writing, for a time she leaned away from it. Her first two books, Cloud Cuckoo Land and The Fifty-First State, reflected this shift, but starting around 2016—as she developed the tone for what would become Last Night at the Disco—she started focusing on humor, including writing a submission for McSweeney's Internet Tendency over the course of a year. That piece was accepted and published as “Signs That You Are a Gen-Xer Going Through Menopause,” which went viral.In this interview the two discuss narrator Lynda Boyle, satirizing avant-garde poets, and her need to make art as the world falls apart.

For this episode TW creative director John Vogel sat down with television writer and showrunner Michael Jamin about his collection of personal essays, A Paper Orchestra.Michael’s television career started in the mid-90’s with an episode of Lois and Clark, followed by more involved work on Just Shoot Me! and King of the Hill. Other writing and production credits include Beavis and Butthead, Rules of Engagement, Maron, and Wilfred.He self-published A Paper Orchestra through his company 3 Girls Jumping, and the book was named one of the best comedy books of 2024 by Vulture. Partially inspired by David Sedaris, Michael has also developed a stage show of the essays that has evolved from readings to reenacted performances of the scenes. In this conversation Michael and John talk about different themes throughout the essays, his transition to the stage, and balancing family life with work.