The future is already here—but there’s another one, two, or three futures right around the corner. David Ewing Duncan’s new book, Talking to Robots: Tales from our Human Robot Futures, speculates on the possibilities of what comes next in the AI-human interface, with help from theoretical physicist Brian Greene, futurist Kevin Kelly, and more. What could go right? What could go wrong? Duncan, whose previous books include Experimental Man and The Geneticist Who Played Hoops With my DNA, is interviewed by Writers Grotto print and radio journalist Julia Scott about his unique hybrid of storytelling and speculative nonfiction.

Rummaging through piles of books has never been more fun than with books podcaster Traci Thomas, whose ebullient personality and searing smarts have grown her show, The Stacks, into a true indie media phenomenon. Whether she’s in a page-by-page read of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, revisiting Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, or getting honest over Iain Reid, Thomas and guests dig up treasures, poring over the best nuggets and helping us understand why we need to discard the worst. Thomas stopped by the Writers Grotto for lunch and visited the GrottoPod for a chat with Susie Gerhard that (spoiler alert!) includes lists of Traci’s favorite fiction and nonfiction titles.

Write funnier — and livelier! Today’s episode is the second of two special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts, which are available on September 10, 2019. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice the craft of writing character, dialogue, action, and humor. Each book also features a foreword by a Grotto writer. Today’s podcast is devoted to a conversation between two of those writers, Bonnie Tsui, who wrote the foreword to Writing Action, and Chris Colin, who wrote the foreword to Writing Humor. Tsui is the author of American Chinatown, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Colin, whose most recent book is What to Talk About, is a contributing writer for California Sunday and Afar magazines.

Want to take your writing to the next level? Today’s episode is the first of two special podcasts about a new series of books from the Writers Grotto called Lit Starts, available starting September 10, 2019. Each book is filled with prompts to help writers practice the craft of writing character, dialogue, action, and humor. Each book also features a foreword by a Grotto writer. Today’s podcast is devoted to a conversation between two of those writers, Shanthi Sekaran, who wrote the foreword to Writing Dialogue, and Constance Hale, who wrote the foreword to Writing Character. Sekaran’s most recent novel, Lucky Boy, was named an IndieNext Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. Hale is the author of four cheeky writing manuals, a book for adults on hula, and a picture book for children set in Hawai’i.

Joshua Furst is an aficionado of American counterculture. His 2008 novel, The Sabotage Cafe, was a story of then-and-now punks defining themselves in opposition to the mainstream: dumpster-divers living in the shadow of American consumerism. His new novel, Revolutionaries, out now from Knopf, explores the life, legacy, and activism of an Abbie Hoffman-like figure, Lenny Snyder, as told by his disillusioned son, Freedom. Revolutionaries is populated with recognizable figures, both imagined and real. Lenny’s allies include folk singer and icon Phil Ochs and famed radical attorney William Kunstler. And yet at the core of Furst’s books is a fascination with family, dependency, and mental illness, subjects that he explores with great complexity and intimacy. Furst joined us in the GrottoPod on August 13 to discuss his new book, his teaching, and what messages the political upheavals of the sixties might have for us today.

Sara Schneider has been a wine, food, and general lifestyle editor and writer for 25 years, most recently as Consulting Wine and Spirits Editor for Robb Report. Before that, Schneider was Sunset magazine’s Wine Editor, which is where she met GrottoPod co-host Ben Marks of CollectorsWeekly.com back in the 1990s. In this conversation, recorded on June 14, 2019, Schneider and Marks discuss the sometimes peculiar jargon employed by wine writers, defining many colorful wine-writing terms along the way. It also sounds like they drank a fair amount of wine.

What does the publishing industry still have to offer writers who are breaking in? In this episode, George Higgins and Susie Gerhard take to the field to check out the Litquake panel “Tried and True: What’s so great about traditional publishing?” On a windy Sunday morning in front of Z Below in San Francisco’s Mission District, they speculate about what the title means before heading inside to interview audience members and hear from moderator Natalie Baszile, author of the novel Queen Sugar, and her publishing pro panelists Trisha Low of Small Press Distribution, indie-publishing consultant Pamela Feinsilber, and literary agents Anna Ghosh and Ted Weinstein. Tune in to get their takes on publishing in multiple genres.

New York Times best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler takes us deep into the story of the women who fought slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown with her new book, The White Devil’s Daughters. The Writers Grotto’s Bonnie Tsui, author of the award-winning American Chinatown, talks to her about the meticulous research and care required to pull together revelations about the trafficking of young Asian girls that flourished in San Francisco during the first hundred years of Chinese immigration (1848-1943), and the “safe house” that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom.

Journalist Diana Kapp is published widely, from San Francisco magazine to the New York Times, ESPN, and O, the Oprah Magazine. She’s taken a circuitous path to many of her stories, which have included an investigation of teen suicide clusters in Palo Alto and an exploration into the education of girls in Afghanistan. But the trail she took to her latest story—an NYT essay on her 84-year-old father’s new crush—was direct; as in, straight from the heart. It brought about a reckoning of sorts, however, when she shared it pre-publication with her subjects. She chats with Grottopod’s Susie Gerhard about the process and the poetry of newspaper and magazine writing. Kapp’s new book, Girls Who Run The World: 31 CEOs Who Mean Business, comes out in October.

Senior editor/reporter at Public Radio International’s “The World,” Monica Campbell focuses on immigration and immigrant life in the United States. She’s reported internationally for years, including from Afghanistan and, most extensively, from Mexico and Latin America. In Mexico,she was the Committee to Protect Journalists representative (2006-2009). In this week’s episode, she talks with Laura Fraser about immigration politics in the Trump era, the bravery of local journalists in the face of drug cartels, and what she misses most about her reporting time south of the border: the rhythm of life, the storied sobremesa hours, or the time spent with friends at the table after a meal is over. “Those are the best moments, when you’re having conversation with your best friends and no one is looking at their watch.”

We revisit our July 2018 interview with influential author and body-image activist Virgie Tovar, who was recently interviewed for the Pacific Standard by Writers Grotto member Beth Winegarner. Tovar is hosting a new summer camp, Camp Thunder Thighs, at the end of June in Northern California. When we spoke to her last summer, she dropped truth bombs about writing honestly and writing to empower, fat discrimination and celebration, and how to leverage social media for good. Tovar started the viral hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight, pens the weekly column Take the Cake, and authored You Have the Right to Remain Fat.

Award-winning author Jamie Ford joins co-hosts emeritus Larry and BQ for the second of two live podcasts recorded at the 2019 Storyfort Festival in Boise, Idaho. Their conversation with the Montana writer touches on the Ford family’s experiences in the American West, Ford’s journey from comic book-reading “artsy kid” to best-selling author, the value of an MFA versus life experience, and the extensive research and writing that produced his recent novel, Love and Other Consolation Prizes, as well as his award-winning debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

New York Times best-selling author Tara Conklin is our guest this week as she joins co-hosts emeritus Larry and BQ onstage at the Storyfort Festival in Boise, Idaho. Conklin talks craft, vision and work habits and shares tales of her mid-career switch from law to fiction writing. Her first novel, The House Girl, grew out of a short story, and her latest book, The Last Romantics, zoomed to the top of the Amazon.com fiction rankings when it was chosen by Jenna Bush Hager as her pick to kick off the TODAY Show Book Club.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Markoff joins co-host Ben Marks of CollectorsWeekly.com on the GrottoPod this week to talk about his forthcoming biography of Stewart Brand. Markoff, who spent 28 years at the New York Times, is the author of one of Marks’ favorite books, What the Dormouse Said. Markoff says his Brand biography could be considered a sequel of sorts to Dormouse, but its larger mission is to capture what Markoff believes is a particularly northern California sensibility, embodied by Brand and his life’s work as the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, co-founder of The WELL, and president of the Long Now Foundation.

“Where were you when you heard John Lennon was killed?” It’s a familiar question to people of a certain age, but Gen-Xers will not be the only ones fascinated by Tom Barbash’s early-’80s New York City flashback, The Dakota Winters. With veteran journalist and memoirist Laura Fraser as guest host, GrottoPod Episode 99 finds Barbash talking about his childhood in NYC’s Upper West Side and the process behind turning the biggest names of the late 19th century into his novel’s central players. “I wanted to say something new and true about John,” says Barbash. “I had to not just look at the glamour but look at … strengths and failings.” Note: Mature content.

This week marks the final studio appearance for hosts Larry Rosen and Bridget Quinn, who usher in a new era of the GrottoPod by completing the cycle they began 98 episodes ago. In this hour, BQ interviews Larry about the ups and downs of his 27-year (and counting) writing career. They also chat about 2019 finances vs. 1990s finances, the secret code for freelancing and “finding out what you’re good at.” Say goodbye (for now) to your OG hosts, and check this space for some big news about what’s in store for the GrottoPod.“You can’t wait for your ship to come in; you’ve got to swim out to it.”

Rachel Howard was a Clovis High School flag-team member when an essay contest changed her life, putting her on a path whose latest milepost is the publication of her first novel, The Risk of Us, which will be available everywhere April 9. This week, Rachel joins The GrottoPod to talk about the inspiration for her new book, her unlikely path into the arts, how she’s helped create a writing community in the Sierra foothills and why you’re likely to hear torch songs at her book-launch party.“I still feel that devastation is always just around the corner for writers.”

For Celeste Chan — a writer, filmmaker, teacher, artist and activist — the medium is whatever fits the message. Raised by a pair of Berkeley-educated “halfway hippies” and home-schooled, Chan found her footing in a post-Riot Grrl Olympia, Washington, then shifted into high gear when she arrived in San Francisco in 2004. This week, the founder of Queer Rebels and teaching artist for the Queer Ancestors Project brings her story (and some pretty cool eyeglasses) to the GrottoPod to offer her thoughts on shining light on under-recognized artists and their work.“It’s about amplifying marginalized and unheard voices, carving out space, and carving out space for my own voice within that.”

Writer Cheryl A. Ossola waited a long time to realize her dream. It finally came true in 2018, when the one-time theater electrician, photographer, neonatal nurse and dance-magazine editor landed in Italy to put the finishing touches on her first novel, The Wild Impossibility, out May 9. This week, the GrottoPod is lucky enough to corral Ossola during a visit to the U.S. to discuss how a lifetime of experience can produce a lush, heart-breaking novel that author Katie Crouch calls “a breathtaking novel about what it means to be a mother.”“I would just like somebody to say this book mattered.”

Maw Shein Win is the place where punk and poetry meet. Win is a prolific poet — and the poet laureate for the Bay Area city of El Cerrito. She’s also the former percussionist, along with Mark Dutcher, for Los Angeles post-punk band Pearls Before Swine. She joins us on the GrottoPod this week for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on the many shades of her colorful life, including her long career as an educator, her ongoing collaborations with artists and musicians, her new collection of poems and her experiments with New Wave hairdos during the 1980s. Check out her most recent chapbook, Score and Bone, on Nomadic Press, and her upcoming full-length collection, Invisible Gifts: Poems, on Manic D Press in April. Her launch will be at City Lights Books April 10.

Humor writer Irving Ruan joins us on the GrottoPod this week after Larry and BQ’s holiday sabbatical. Ruan explains how Conan O’Brien inspired a piano-playing only child and “enthusiastic engineer” to become an equally enthusiastic humorist and comedian … who landed two pieces in the New Yorker in 2018.“I don’t care if I get published or whatever. I want to do this because it makes me feel happy and makes me feel alive.”

Thaisa Frank, author of the novel Heidegger’s Glasses, four books of short stories and Finding Your Writer’s Voice, joins the GrottoPod this week for a delightful trip through the life of a “writer’s writer,” former therapist, Zen practitioner, women’s rights activist and teacher of writing (who doesn’t believe writing can be taught). Join Thaisa, BQ and Larry for a topsy-turvy journey that eventually lands at the Grotto and in the GrottoPod, where the winner of two PEN awards completely charms your hosts. This is a can’t-miss episode. After this, we’re taking a holiday break — we’ll be back Jan. 8.“You know what I teach? That (writing) can’t be taught. And how to deconstruct all of those rules, and how to find a way to talk to yourself in writing.”

What’s your dream library? San Francisco Public Library Community Engagement Manager Alejandro Gallegos joins us in the studio this week to regale BQ and Larry with tales of scolding signage, boffo library programs, community engagement ambitions and visions of his “dream library,” plus a tale of synchronicity that finally names the “unnamed family” shown in library archive photos.“Information can be threatening to many people. Here in the U.S., the library is a place where information is available to everyone.”11:48: What libraries can mean to communities20:00: SFPL’s “One City, One Book” — a citywide book club24:12: How a librarian was made30:03: How libraries have changed in the past 25 years43:50: How SFPL has met issues of budgeting challenges and recent growth50:35: What is the perfect library?

Journalist Ethan Watters spent the past two years working on a single magazine article. This week, in what he calls “a high point for feeling completion,” he joins BQ and Larry in the GrottoPod to discuss the challenges, triumphs and eye-opening discoveries he experienced while working on “The Love Story that Upended the Texas Prison System” for Texas Monthly.“I have 3,500 pages of material, and it’s good, but it’s like pulling down a puzzle from your grandmother’s attic and trying to decide what fits.”09:14: How a magazine article became a two-year journey17:33: Finding a life/work balance in the midst of a consuming project35:18: Facing challenges and working through a low point45:09: How a project of this size impacts and changes its writer, and opens up new areas of career interest53:12: How to determine when major project is “complete.”

Jaya Padmanabhan entered boarding school when she was four, and has been a sales rep, a software engineer and now a fiction writer, journalist and editor. This week the Examiner columnist and author of the short-story collection Transactions of Belonging joins Larry and guest co-host Laurie Ann Doyle to trace her path, talk about how readers respond to “ambiguous” endings, a lifelong interest in displacement and belonging, her novel-in-progress … and toddy tappers.“Writing is a reflex action that comes out of reading, at least for me.”7:12: Writing across a “broad spectrum”13:12: “The epiphany,” and learning to write short stories20:55: Her favorite stories, and how readers responded to “His Curls”29:48: The roots of a lifelong interest in displacement and belonging41:30: Entering the world of journalism49:48: New projects, toddy tappers