Today on our show we’re talking about compassion, families, and the legacy they leave. We’re also talking about how to write about those people in our lives who have fucked us up. And who hasn’t been fucked up by a parent? However, nobody wants to hear a rant. We must get to know the characters from all sides, which means, all the good things and all the ugly things. Nobody is all good or all bad. Liz Marquardt is a student in our class who has told stories on the podcast before. She does a grea...
Sep 04, 2018•24 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we examine the popular writing tenet, show DON’T tell. We believe just showing is not only impossible, but detrimental to your story. Telling gives insight into what the narrator is thinking and feeling. To test this theory, we asked our students to just SHOW. We gave the prompt: A Fight and instructed them to go directly to scene without explaining. After ten minutes, the students were asked to continue where they left off but to move from the scene into exposition, to just TEL...
Aug 01, 2018•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today on our show, we're talking about objects. Things like a pen, trash cans, reading glasses, and a scale. We can build stories around these things because these objects affect our lives. They can stand in for an emotion. The phrase for this is object correlative. T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.” We asked students in our class to write about an object. You will hear prompt responses...
Jul 04, 2018•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today we are talking about identity; how sometimes what we show on the outside is not what we feel on the inside. As a storyteller, you have to know who you are. Or try to figure out who you are through the writing. Three of our students address identity. First Aaron Curtis, who is a blogger and bookseller writes about being mistaken for a Republican. Second, Tobi Ash, who is a philanthropist and grant writer writes about hiding beneath a veneer. And last, Yaddyra Peralta, who is a poet, teacher...
Jun 06, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The way a story is told out loud adds another layer to a story. On this episode, we’re talking about how our physical voices can carry a story with inflection, pace, volume, tone, and pitch. Voice can even make us love a story we might otherwise not like, or understand. Meet Asia Sampson renown poet and founder of The Asia Project (spoken word, poetry and storytelling)as he performs his new poem Desks Are Not Bulletproof and takes you through his creative process. If you love the way Asia descri...
May 01, 2018•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writing is a gift of yourself. It should give the reader or listener a glimpse inside. It should be something true and new and vulnerable. In a story, we reveal ourselves through voice. What we mean by voice in a story is the tone, the mood, and the personality of the narrator. Voice can be created by word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation. The way someone tells a story out loud plays a big role in how we receive the story, but in today’s episode, we are talking about voice as it ...
Apr 03, 2018•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, we’re talking about secret pleasures, with a twist. We’re bringing you the winner of our writing contest. We gave the prompt: Secret Pleasure and we got some good ones. Our winner, Erika Flynn from New York City is a professional mistress. She tells us how SHE is the secret pleasure. Lia Seirotti, a student in our class, tells a story called Ball and Chain, about her own secret pleasure. Both stories bring up the issue of fidelity. In writing class, we do our best to talk about ...
Mar 07, 2018•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re in season 5! We decided, after 40 episodes, to follow a schedule. So please look out for us on the first Wednesday of every month. On this episode, we’re talking about moments. Going to a moment is a storytelling technique that requires the narrator to first remember something dramatic or important and then paint a scene. This technique works in memoir writing, fiction writing, in college essays and in your business marketing materials. If you remember a moment from childhood or last week,...
Feb 06, 2018•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, we’re talking about creating a likable narrator. The narrator is the I in the story. It’s YOU. We see this a lot with beginner writers and we probably did this too, and that is tell a story about a time we were the hero. Sad truth: no one wants to hear how great you are. This is true in life too. What people connect to in stories and in life are times when you’re vulnerable. This is counterintuitive because everyone wants to show a good face, but we connect to a narrator who’s w...
Jan 09, 2018•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s episode we’re talking about getting out of our own way when writing a story. The writing process starts with getting the truth on paper. We write about situations or problems we’re dealing with or have dealt with, things we’re still trying to understand or resolve. The goal is getting to the reason we’re writing the story and what the story is really about. Andrea is a huge believer in writing and rewriting. That’s her process. A first draft is usually shit. Then the second draft all ...
Dec 11, 2017•20 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s episode we’re talking about mimicking the masters the way you’d imagine a painting class in Paris that goes to the Louvre to practice painting like Leonardo de Vinci. We think it’s worth copying a method that works because we know it worked in the past. Learn the rules before breaking the rules. In this episode, you'll hear stories that mimic the style of Boys, a story by Rick Moody. Andrea took a class at the Miami Writers Institute with Brian Turner, author of the memoir, My Life as...
Nov 21, 2017•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast November is # NaNoWriMo (https://nanowrimo.org/), and we have executive director, Grant Faulkner (http://www.grantfaulkner.com/), on our show. Today we’re talking about novels because we go both ways. And also because storytelling principles are the same when writing fiction or nonfiction. Get inspired and join millions of people around the world who are racing to finish a book this month. Allison’s in the race. Grant is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the author of “P...
Nov 01, 2017•33 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of Writing Class Radio we ask for your support, because producing ain’t free. Please go to writingclassradio.com and hit the donate button. This podcast is equal parts heart (the truth) and art (the craft). This episode was conceived after Hurricane Irma blew through South Florida. The entire state seemed to be preoccupied if not scared to death, leading up to the moment Irma made landfall on September 10, 2017. Afterward, Andrea couldn’t wait to get back to class to write and sh...
Oct 17, 2017•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of Writing Class Radio is dedicated to everyone who’s dealing with some kind of natural disaster. For us in Florida, the last two weeks have been all consuming and also terrifying. Our hearts go out to those who got hit a lot harder than we did. We love that we have this podcast to come back to and we feel so much love and appreciation for you, our listeners. Thank you for listening. Today’s episode is about character, the things that make you you. We have a special guest, the autho...
Sep 19, 2017•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we go off the rails...a little. We invited our class into Allison’s living room where in addition to writing advice, we gave life advice. Allison believes that the better we know ourselves, the better our writing will be. Andrea was scared shitless. She thought the class would be more like a therapy session. Andrea likes the boundary set up in class. She thinks not being allowed to talk about someone’s life allows everyone to write more freely. She doesn’t want to be judged on h...
Aug 19, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, you will meet the winner of Writing Class Radio’s spring writing contest. The prompt: Write about something you don’t understand. Andrea suggests that great writing starts with a question. Writing is about figuring out what you don’t understand. It’s a discovery process. Contest winner, Jeana Fleming’s reads her story. After, Andrea and Allison weigh in on why they chose her story and what makes the writing so great. Allison talks about Exchange for Change, an organization based...
Aug 01, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Allison and Andrea are talking about endings. How to end an essay when often the issues we write about are ongoing. Should we know the ending when we begin? Does the end of the essay have to show a change in the narrator? Can we show change or find meaning without distance? Can we leave the reader to interpret the ending or must we bang them over the head with the change? Listen as we answer these questions. We bring you examples of great endings from students Lis Mesa and Aaron...
Jul 11, 2017•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Allison and Andrea are talking about worlds again because Andrea got so excited by Nilsa’s story in the episode Can You Hear Me if I Can't Hear You? where she brought us into the world of the hearing impaired. In class Andrea had us make a list of the worlds we live in. Then she said, “Pick one and take us into that world.” Allison wrote: single mom, tennis player, online dater, windsurfer, gym rat, health nut, tighty-whitey. Andrea wrote: mom, daughter, younger sibling, gemini,...
Jun 19, 2017•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The format for this episode is a little different. Today we’re bringing you a guest teacher, because we think it’s smart to get different perspectives. Joyce Maynard is one of Andrea’s favorite teachers in the world. Joyce has 17 books and has been writing for 50 years. She started when since she was 13. Andrea asked Joyce to read and deconstruct her essay, Letting it Fly which was originally published in 1997 in the New York Times Lives Column. In the interview, Joyce explains what goes into wr...
May 19, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is about connecting through writing. It’s also about the job of storytellers to bring us into their world. New student, Nilsa Rivera, tells a story about her fear of isolation, which stems from a very unique set of circumstances--she’s hard of hearing. She uses writing to fight that fear. Andrea relates to Nilsa in a very small way and emails her after class, which she immediately regrets doing. In class, students (and teacher) are only allowed to give feedback on the writing, not s...
Apr 21, 2017•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Get ready folks, Allison and Andrea are hosting this episode together: an episode about time. Student Allison Langer is obsessed with the lack of time she has lately. So, in class teacher, Andrea Askowitz, gave this prompt: I wish I had more time to_______. Andrea reads her story from class about wanting more time to work. Allison reads a story she brought into class about wanting more time PERIOD. You will also hear responses from students Diego Saldana-Rojas, Lis Mesa, Claudia Franklin and Vic...
Mar 23, 2017•29 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Lies seem to be the new norm in our world. There’s probably a bumper sticker that says Lies Are the New Truth. Great bumper sticker, but it has Andrea Askowitz totally freaked out. Andrea is the teacher of the class and the host for this episode, which is about lies in stories and lies in the world. We start with a story by a new student, Claudia Franklin, that got us thinking about truth and lies in memoir and when, if ever, is lying fair game. Claudia’s story takes a surprising turn as she ima...
Mar 03, 2017•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode looks at writing as therapy. We look at writing as a way to understand these things we carry: secrets, pain, and shame. Allison Langer, a student in the class, is the host of this episode. Three new students share their stories. Michelle Massanet tells about a rape that she hid for 22 years and how much lighter she feels since writing about it. Lis Mesa explores getting to the real story she’s been trying to tell all semester and Jennifer Dertouzos finally talks about her brother’s ...
Feb 15, 2017•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast We picked two winners of our first annual writing contest. Listeners responded to the prompt: A Time I Fucked Up. We got tons of submissions revealing your major fuck ups and tons revealing your little mess ups. One woman’s vacation slideshow accidentally included a naked selfie. Another woman almost killed a sheep. One did kill a chicken. And here’s what gringa Hope Torrents said to her Spanish mother-in-law on Thanksgiving. “Hoy es el dia del polvo,” which means, “Today is the the day of the f...
Feb 01, 2017•11 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast This is the prompt we threw out to listeners for our first annual writing contest. Listeners wrote in with lots of crazy and sad and funny stories. One of our winners was Melissa Vincel, who wrote an essay that stood out for its simplicity, clarity, and subject matter. Instead of the all-too-common story about the jilted lover, Melissa was the jilter. Plus, she answered our teacher, Andrea Askowitz’s, three most important questions. What has the author come to say? Why is she writing this now? A...
Jan 11, 2017•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Allison Langer is a student in the class and the host on this episode of Writing Class Radio. She shares all the reasons why writing class is so much fun. FUN-- a theme chosen because life has gotten too busy, too scheduled and way too serious. In writing class, we laugh. We disconnect from social media and from judgement. We share our most intimate and peculiar “things” and then cry or crack up, whatever the context requires. Instead of judgement, there’s compassion, requests for more details, ...
Dec 14, 2016•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrea Askowitz is the host of this episode. She talks about how writing a good story and understanding the results of this presidential election require a mammoth effort in understanding someone else’s point of view, an effort she is failing at right now. She interviews Stephen Elliott, who is the author of seven books and two movies and the founder and senior editor at The Rumpus, about the job of a memoir writer. Stephen says that in literature, memoir and in life there are no bad guys. “Ever...
Nov 23, 2016•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writing Class Radio goes live to the stage. This episode is part live show, part interview with star of our show, the award-winning, solo-performer, Ann Randolph . Allison Langer is our host. This episode is about the importance of telling stories--not fairy tales, but the real scary, true stories we like to hide. Allison got into writing after the death of her young daughter. Writing about the situation helped her deal with the pain and get back to the job of mothering her other children. Telli...
Oct 28, 2016•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is about those moments in life when you have no idea how you got here, whether to stay or go, or where to go next. Allison Langer, student in the class and host for this episode, asks the questions most of us struggle with. Did you land that dream job that turned out to be not so dreamy? Do you wish you lived somewhere else but can’t afford to move? Do you wonder what life would be like if you could just finish school already? Have you ever reached that point when you’re not sure yo...
Sep 09, 2016•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is about obsessions . Andrea Askowitz, the teacher of the class speaks to Allison Langer, co-producer and student in the class. They discuss what she learned from the Tim Ferriss podcast when he interviewed Tony Robbins. Allison heard Robbins say, “Rejection breeds obsession.” And, ”The parent whose attention you were trying to get is the person who shaped you.” Andrea talks about how at the dinner table growing up, her dad would tell her to cut to the chase. That led to her obsessi...
Aug 24, 2016•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
