While we put the final touches on Season Three, we wanted to share an episode from another podcast that we think you’ll love: Black & Published, hosted by Nikesha Elise Williams. 

On today’s episode, Nikesha’s guest is Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the historical fiction novel TAKE MY HAND. It's a story based on the real-life Relf sisters of Montgomery, Alabama, who were forcibly sterilized by the workers of a federal family planning clinic in 1973.

Subscribe to listen to more episodes from the latest season of Black & Published: 

https://blackpublished.buzzsprout.com/

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Thanks to our guests, contributors, and listeners for a wonderful second season!

Help us fund Season Three of Ursa Short Fiction by becoming an Ursa Member: 

https://ursastory.com/join/

You can also make a one-time contribution to help fund future episodes. 

We’ll be back very soon — get email updates by signing up for our newsletter: https://ursastory.com/newsletter/

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Deesha and Dawnie chat with Denne Michele Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature and author of the forthcoming debut novel, When The Harvest Comes (Random House). She is also the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication.

Norris discusses her approaches to both writing and editing, sharing insights for writers on working with editors. She also talks about the ways different genres — from fiction to essay to memoir — all require their own approaches. Norris asks questions of herself and of the work, aiming to edit “ethically and responsibly and [tell] a beautiful story.”

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Reading List: Stories and Writers Mentioned

• Denne Michele Norris
• McSweeney's 62: The Queer Fiction Issue
• Food 4 Thot Podcast
• "An Almanac of Bones" (Dantiel W. Moniz)
• The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
• Everyday People: The Color of Life Anthology (edited by Jennifer Baker) 
• "Daddy's Boy" (Denne Michele Norris)
• Jade Jones
• Going To Meet The Man (James Baldwin)
• Friday Black (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah)
• Milk Blood Heat (Dantiel W. Moniz)
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky (Lesley Nneka Arimah)
• Difficult Women (Roxane Gay)

About the Author 

Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Digital Literary Magazine Prize, where she is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, VCCA, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. She co-hosts the critically acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot, and mentors emerging writers of color with The Periplus Collective. Her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, is forthcoming from Random House. 

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

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Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Executive producers: Dawnie Walton & Mark Armstrong

Author photo: Hilary Leichter

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This week we’re excited to share a very special episode of Ursa Short Fiction — a Member Exclusive where Dawnie Walton chats with Deesha Philyaw about this week’s big news: Deesha has just signed a seven-figure book deal with Mariner Books for a new novel, THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF FIRST LADY FREEMAN, and short story collection, GIRL, LOOK. The novel is due out in 2025. 

Enjoy this free teaser from our Member Exclusive episode. To access the full episode, become an Ursa Member: ursastory.com/join.  

Links

• Author Deesha Philyaw has a 7-figure deal for her next two books (Associated Press) 
• “Back Then” (Mike Jones)
• Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women (anthology edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley)
• Mariner Books
• Rakia Clark
• Punch Me Up to the Gods (Brian Broome) 

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

Produced & edited by Mark Armstrong

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

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Deesha and Dawnie introduce “What Got Into Us,” a short story by Jacob Guajardo, performed by Vicki Valdeon.

The story is a candid look into queer adolescence, first loves, recklessness, and unbridled vulnerability. It was originally published in Passages North, and featured in The Best American Short Stories 2018.

Listen to the story, then stay tuned at the end for Guajardo in his own words, sharing how the story came together, and how he approaches the writing process.

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• The Best American Short Stories 2018 (edited by Roxane Gay)
• “I Only Did What Anyone Would Have Done” (Jacob Guajardo)
• “Moonmilk” (Jacob Guajardo)
• “Widowers” (Jacob Guajardo)
• “Good News Is Coming” (Jacob Guajardo)
• “The Seminar” (Jacob Guajardo)
• “Two Queens Walk Out Of A Bar” (Jacob Guajardo)
• Amy Hempel
• Ocean Vuong
• Garth Greenwell

Jacob Guajardo lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories 2018 and Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2020 Robert Maxwell Fellowship from MacDowell. He works from home as a Narrative Designer.

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

***

Performed by Vicki Valdeon

Associate producers: Marina Leigh, Ashawnta Jackson

Executive producers: Dawnie Walton & Mark Armstrong

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Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton go in-depth with Rubén Degollado, author of the novel The Family Izquierdo, which started out as a short story collection about a single family.

Degollado's story “The Seven Songs” was featured on last week’s episode, and he discusses his journey to writing and publishing the book, as well as how he navigated his writing journey alongside his career as an educator. He first started writing the Izquierdo family stories in the late '90s, eventually developing the family curse and tensions, and playing with point of view to inhabit the lives of the many family members.

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Degollado aims to represent his own family, experiences, and community through The Family Izquierdo, and he quotes Toni Morrison, who said “if there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

If you haven't already, be sure to listen to last week's episode featuring Degollado's story, “The Seven Songs.”

• "The Seven Songs" by Rubén Degollado (Ursa Short Fiction, Season Two, Episode 15)
• The Family Izquierdo (W. W. Norton)
• The Family Izquierdo audiobook (Blackstone Publishing / Downpour.com)
• The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
• Throw (Rubén Degollado)
• "A Temporary Matter" (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer)
• Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• Sabrina & Corina: Stories (Kali Fajardo-Anstine)
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The World Doesn't Require You (Rion Amilcar Scott)
• Brownsville (Oscar Casares)
• Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Rubén Degollado’s work has recently appeared in Literary Hub, CRAFT, The Common, and elsewhere. His novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Young Adult book for 2020. His debut literary novel The Family Izquierdo is a long list title for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Rubén lives and writes along the southern border, in the Río Grande Valley of Texas.

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

***

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Producer: Mark Armstrong

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This week we're thrilled to feature “The Seven Songs,” by Rubén Degollado, from his novel, The Family Izquierdo.

The story is performed by Carolina Hoyos and is excerpted from The Family Izquierdo audiobook, produced by Blackstone Publishing. Our thanks to them for sharing this story with Ursa listeners.

In “The Seven Songs,” Dina, the daughter of Izquierdo family patriarch Octavio, tells her daughters about her encounter with a neighbor, Contreras, who put a curse on the Izquierdo family. 

Dina notes the strength, not just of God, but of all the women in the family, in myths, and in music that guide and encourage her to face the enemy. The Family Izquierdo follows what binds the generations together in the family — the love as well as the curse — and in “The Seven Songs” Dina seeks out Contreras to free her family and herself from the family curse.

Listen to the story, then come back next week for Deesha and Dawnie's conversation with Rubén Degollado.

Support our work by becoming an Ursa Member: https://ursastory.com/join/

• The Family Izquierdo (Rubén Degollado)
• The Family Izquierdo audiobook (Downpour.com)
• Throw (Rubén Degollado)
• More Rubén Degollado short stories

Rubén Degollado’s work has recently appeared in Literary Hub, CRAFT, The Common, and elsewhere. His novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Young Adult book for 2020. His debut literary novel The Family Izquierdo is a long list title for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Rubén lives and writes along the southern border, in the Río Grande Valley of Texas.

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

***

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Audio excerpted courtesy Blackstone Publishing from THE FAMILY IZQUIERDO by Rubén Degollado, excerpt read by Carolina Hoyos.

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Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton go deep with Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of the beloved 2018 collection Heads of the Colored People, to discuss Heads’ origin, the texts and other media that influenced Thompson-Spires, inspirations for her stories and characters in the collection, and their shared love for the Notes app.

Thompson-Spires is candid about her upbringing in California and her own family, and how those experiences have shaped her work in terms of characters, autobiographical-leaning-but-fictionalized events, and even her ideas of place and the ways that racism persists in different ways in different parts of the country.

Support this show by becoming an Ursa Member: https://ursastory.com/join/

Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned

• Heads of the Colored People (Nafissa Thompson-Spires)
• Mat Johnson
• The Guardian Interview with Nafissa Thompson-Spires
• Mark Anthony Neal
• Victor LaValle
• Paul Beatty
• Shirley Jackson
• Flannery O'Connor
• George Schuyler
• Ishmael Reed
• James McCune Smith
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
• Solmaz Sharif
• Sandeep Parmar
• Charles Dickens
• Hacks
• Reservation Dogs
• Lot (Bryan Washington)
• Milk Blood Heat (Dantiel W. Moniz)
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• Seeking Fortune Elsewhere (Sindya Bhanoo)
• Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song
• 'Alright' (Kendrick Lamar)
• Denne Michele Norris

About the Author 

Nafissa Thompson-Spires wrote Heads of the Colored People, which won the PEN Open Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Siedenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her collection was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Award, and several other prizes. She also won a 2019 Whiting Award.

She earned a PhD in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and an MFA in Creative Writing from ­­­­­­the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Root, Ploughshares, 400 Souls, and The 1619 Project, among other publications. New writing is forthcoming in Fourteen Days, edited by Margaret Atwood.

She’s currently the Richards Family Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Cornell University.

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

***

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Producer: Mark Armstrong

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

Deesha and Dawnie chat with Jonathan Escoffery, author of last week's audio story, "Under the Ackee Tree," from his acclaimed collection and audiobook, If I Survive You. The linked stories follow Trelawny, a second generation Jamaican American, as he struggles through family tensions, cultural and historical loss and reclamation, and exploration of identity. 

Escoffery talks about his collection and how it came to be—the process of developing characters, tensions, and narrative threads, as well as constructing a complicated family with conflicting generational perspectives on agency, culture, and legacy. 

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Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned

• "Under the Ackee Tree" (Ursa Short Fiction, Season Two, Episode 12)
• If I Survive You (Jonathan Escoffery)
• If I Survive You audiobook (Audible)
• Jesus' Son (Denis Johnson)
• We the Animals (Justin Torres)

About the Author 

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, a New York Times  and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and a National Bestseller. If I Survive You was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize For Debut Short Story Collection, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. It was named a ‘best’ book by The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, GQ, and elsewhere. In 2020, Jonathan received the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He was a 2021-2023 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

***

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Producer: Mark Armstrong

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Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton introduce “Under the Ackee Tree,” a story by Jonathan Escoffery from his acclaimed 2022 collection, If I Survive You.

The story is performed by Torian Brackett, and it comes from the collection's audiobook, produced by Macmillan Audio. Our thanks to Macmillan for sharing the story with Ursa's listeners.

This story follows Topper, a Jamaican immigrant who has fled the political violence in Kingston and moved his family to Miami to raise his two sons. “Under the Ackee Tree” is a narrative of leaving and of loss, of destruction and rebuilding, and of the ways we disappoint as partners, as parents, and as children. 

Support our show by becoming an Ursa Member: https://ursastory.com/join/

Reading List

• If I Survive You, by Jonathan Escoffery (MCD)
• If I Survive You audiobook (Audible)
• Jonathan Escoffery Publications
• Jonathan Escoffery Interviews

About the Author 

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and a National Bestseller. If I Survive You was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize For Debut Short Story Collection, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. It was named a ‘best’ book by The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, GQ, and elsewhere. In 2020, Jonathan received the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He was a 2021-2023 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

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Performed by Torian Brackett

Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Music: “Biosphere” by Yotam Agam

Audio excerpt courtesy Macmillan Audio, from IF I SURVIVE YOU by Jonathan Escoffery, read by Torian Brackett.

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Deesha and Dawnie sit down with Jamil Jan Kochai, whose short story “Enough!” from his collection The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories (Viking / Penguin Random House Audio), was featured in our previous episode.

Kochai discusses how he fell in love with storytelling and short stories as a form—reflecting on his family, his childhood, and how his stories, characters, and themes come naturally because they’re rooted in his upbringing. 

Kochai also talks about the challenge of writing as a public experience as he becomes more well-known in the literary world, and how he approaches writing personally, where he consistently returns to the idea of writing as writing — separating writing from “the noise.”

“In storytelling, sometimes you have to build walls in order to dance within them.”

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Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned

• The Haunting of Hajji Hotak (Jamil Jan Kochai)
• The Haunting of Hajji Hotak audiobook
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
• “Sonny’s Blues” (James Baldwin)
• Sandra Cisneros
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin)
• “Train to Harbin” (Asako Serizawa)
• Inheritors (Asako Serizawa)
• Toni Morrison

About the Author 

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, winner of the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize and a finalist for 2022 National Book Award. His debut novel 99 Nights in Logar was a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. His essays have been published at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Kochai was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Currently, he is a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. 

More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:

• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)

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Episode editor: Kelly Araja

Associate producer: Marina Leigh

Producer: Mark Armstrong

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join