This episode was recorded on March 13, 2026

Co-hosts: Nate Otjen, Mildred Kiconco Barya

FEATURED GUESTS/WORKS:

John Yunker and Midge Raymond, Animal Writes: Prompts and Practices to Guide the Animal Writer’s Journey

Writing for animals is a unique endeavor; writers have to think not only about the animals they’re portraying in their work but about audiences who may not be familiar with certain species or the topics of animal rights. In Animal Writes, you’ll learn tips for how to portray animals empathically and authentically, as well as how to approach publishing and your readers. From language to craft to exploring your individual writer’s journey, this book will provide the inspiration and tools you need to portray animals genuinely and compassionately in your work.

John Yunker and Midge Raymond are co-authors of the work and co-founders of Ashland Creek Press, a vegan-owned small press devoted to environmental and animal literature.

Boria Sax, The Butterfly Who Dreamt He Was a Man: Metamorphoses, Entomological and Human

From ancient fables to modern science, insects and their metamorphoses have inspired human understanding of life’s transitions such as birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. This book begins with Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream, moves on to tales of shape-shifting, and discusses Dürer, Merian, Swammerdam, Kafka, Dickinson, and many others.

See this UC Press flyer for a 30% discount

Boria Sax teaches at Sing Sing and the graduate English program of Mercy University. He is author of 20 books, which have been widely translated.

Lesley Wheeler, Mycocosmic

In Mycocosmic, Lesley Wheeler’s latest poetry collection, incantatory poems summon transformation after the losses of midlife, including her mother’s death. Beneath them runs a book-length essay in verse inspired by mycelia, the fungal networks thriving beneath us, exploring how the processes of grief nourish new life. Wheeler invents a fungal poetics to metabolize secrets, grief, and anger so that life can begin anew.

Lesley Wheeler’s sixth poetry collection is Mycocosmic. Her work appears in Orion, Poetry, Poets & Writers, and Ecotone, and she is Poetry Editor of Shenandoah.

Lay Sion Ng, Hemingway, Ecology and Culture: Re-reading Hemingway in the Anthropocene

Ng’s research uncovers the ecological dimensions hidden within seemingly human-focused American literature. Take Hemingway—not exactly who you’d expect to teach interspecies relationships or environmental crisis, right? Yet Hemingway, Ecology and Culture reveals how his anthropocentric narratives pulse with “ecological forces”—human and more-than-human connections previous scholarship overlooked.

See this Bloomsbury Academic flyer for a 35% discount.

Lay Sion Ng is an Assistant Professor of American Literature at the English Literature Department at Sophia University, Japan. She has a website named Issues Under Tissues.