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Welcome to the next episode in this run of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations. In this episode, a wonderful Writerly Love Community member, Olwen Wilson talks with me about following joy and writing with a chronic condition. We discuss labels and their conflicting appeal/repellent nature. And, what I suspect will be a through line of all these episodes: listening to our bodies and how we’re feeling. Olwen reads a slantly-written short piece then generously gifts us with details on a practice called Rainbow Walks. Listen in to hear from a writer who does things their way, someone I deeply admire for this spirit. Show notes: https://rachelthompson.co/92 -- Sign up for my Writerly Love Digest, filled with support for your writing practice, prompts, and lit mag publications sent every week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the first interview in my series of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations. I sit down with a wonderful Writerly Love membership community member, Shantell Powell, a two-spirit author, artist, and self-described swamp hag who grew up on the land and off the grid. Her publication credits include Augur, Solarpunk Magazine, MetaStellar, The Deadlands, and honestly keep racking up—we talk about how she does this in the episode, and she has an excellent hack for writers with ADHD to track submissions that I think is brilliant and would be helpful to many writers, myself included. We get into her often very visceral writing; she reads a piece that I would describe that way, visceral, and speculates a little about why that flavour comes out in her work. For this series and focus, we talk about how she works with her various limitations and disabilities, which include neurodivergence and now long COVID-19, among other conditions and limitations. Listen in to hear from a singular writer whose writing practice shows that there is not one way to be a writer. Show notes: https://rachelthompson.co/91 -- Sign up for my Writerly Love Digest filled with support for your writing practice, prompts, and lit mag publications sent every week.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive, which brings together my three courses: Write and Light, a course to get writers generating new, more profound work; Revision Love, my course on learning to self-edit your writing; and Lit Mag Love, my flagship course on getting published in literary journals. All of the resources mentioned in the episode are in the show notes at rachelthompson.co/podcast/79 Learn more and sign up for the Write, Publish, Shine Intensive at rachelthompson.co/intensive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I sit down with our Community Facilitator, Meli Walker, to discuss what we do to make our online course community more accessible to writers with disabilities and limitations. This episode marks the beginning of a run of episodes focusing on writing with limitations/disability. Coming up, you’ll hear me talk with writers with various challenges about what they need to write, how they get their needs met, and what it’s like to write when you have barriers in your own body’s ability and barriers that exist in our writing community. My hope is that this series helps writers find support and ideas to help them engage in writing in a way that works for them. And, for this episode in particular, I hope it gives writers who teach on or offline some ideas for how to make their communities more open to all writers. Because Meli and I are also just two people with our own limitations and neurodivergence, this is not an exhaustive list of what we’re doing and certainly not a complete list of what we COULD be doing. Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/90 -- Get my Writerly Love Letters sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Nothing has to happen in the story. There doesn't need to be explosions or big shocking twists. It's just enough to have well-developed characters and a beautiful world.” —Terese Mason Pierre, Augur Terese Mason Pierre is co-Editor-in-Chief of Augur, a Canadian speculative literature journal, and has published work in Hobart, The Puritan, Quill and Quire, and Strange Horizons. Her work has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and Best of the Net. She talks about how Canadian literature in general is just a little bit softer than other kinds of literature, and how she brings forward the care that she received from editors of her work to her editing role at Augur. You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/49 Get my Writerly Love Letters, sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lina Lau, writer, mother, and owner of too many notebooks, has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanch, and Little Fiction/Big Truths. We talk about how flash memoir writing captures a moment, how Lina reads a 100-word story and brings us into the experience of writing it, and also about the characteristics required of memoirists. Flash memoirA Five-Day Mini Course in Short Creative Nonfiction FREE this month! rachelthompson.co/flash Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/89 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All craft is political. It’s how we, as writers, resist injustices and dream up better worlds. So, listen to this conversation with the brilliant Kavita Das, and then take up your pen. Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work. She challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention. Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das, was published by Beacon Press in 2022. You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/78 Get my Writerly Love Letters, sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the Lit Mag Love course, writers can join Q&A calls with editors. In this replay episode, you will hear one such call with Mark Drew of the Gettysburg Review. Note that this call happened in the first year of the pandemic, so you’ll get an editor’s perspective on the kind of reflection missing from most writing during an intense moment—at least for this journal. You’ll also hear about the kinds of work Gettysburg accepts, the qualities of the work they look for, and the editorial experience you’ll get, should you place work with them. The Lit Mag Love course will help you get a big YES for your writing from a lit mag you love. Learn more and sign up here >> Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/59 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, it’s my pleasure to welcome Christina Brobby, a wonderful lyric writer and instructor, to the podcast. We start by getting into what exactly lyric writing is, if you’re wondering, so that will be cleared up right away. Christina also delves into how the “filter is the form” as she wonderfully sums it up. Listen for more of our exploration of empathy for writers. And Christina also kindly and insightfully brings in the necessity of practising empathy with yourself as a writer. And listen for ways she’s used the form to explore the impact our surroundings have on us, to see working in fragments as a feature and not a bug in our memories as creative nonfiction essay writers and to generally get excited about the variety of brilliant voices using lyric essay forms to tell their stories. Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters—they are filled with support for your writing practice and sent every other week. rachelthompson.co/letters Links and show notes are up at rachelthompson.co/67 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Memoirist Yolande House sits down with me for a book club conversation about Kae Tempest’s On Connection. It was a real pleasure to read this book alongside her and compare notes. And I hope those of you reading alongside us in our book club enjoy it. About On Connection: This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other. After we discuss the book, stick around as Yolande House also shares highlights from her disability reading list. All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/88 — OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE! Get a big “YES” for your writing from literary journals you love in this five-week guided course. rachelthompson.co/litmaglove Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the final episode in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine that take a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. Today it’s my delight to speak to another artist whose work we accepted for inside the issue. Sarah Esmi (she/her) is an Iranian-American mother, writer, collage artist, producer, director and lawyer. She told me about her collage practice and how the artistic interpretation of her visual work differs from her poetry. I loved her art so much, and to learn more about what went into the piece we published called “Insides” plus collage as an art practice. All the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/87 — OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE! Get a big “YES” for your writing from literary journals you love in this five-week guided course. rachelthompson.co/litmaglove Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the seventh, wow!, in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with our cover artist, Amy Friend, who was also the cover artist for the very first issue I edited for Room, called Mythologies of Loss. Amy Friend’s art truly resonates on a deep level of nostalgia and grief with me, and also because of the incredible artistry she does with photographs, turning those difficult experiences into beauty. Clearly, we’re vibing even over a decade of editing for Room, in those themes of loss and longing. I spoke with Amy Friend about how she makes her photographs, what draws to these themes, and how photography as a medium inherently communicates memory, loss, and absence. All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/86 — WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.