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.