Emerging Form Newsletter

Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist (Christie Aschwanden) and a poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine. Each episode concludes with a game of two questions in which a guest joins in to help answer questions about the week's topic. Season one guests include poets, novelists, journalists, a song writer, a circus performer, a sketch artist and a winemaker.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -30:38 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. “There are enough talented people out there,” says Julia Belluz, “but only collaborate with people you really like.” This was the advice the writer followed when deciding to work with scientist Kevin Hall on their new book, Food Intelligence. The resulting book weaves his narrative and evolution as a scientist with her narrative as a patient and journalist.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -29:52 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. When Starre Varten sat down to write her book The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us about the Power of the Female Body, she came to the project with two things: an intellectual thesis and a very personal bodily story. In this episode, we talk with Starre about how both mind and body fueled her creative practice.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -28:40 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. “Doing this book took me out of my comfort zone, into new fields I wasn’t comfortable with,” says Alex Hutchinson, speaking of his newest book The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map. And so it is we speak with the expert on exploration about his own experiences of exploring in creative practice. Why are we drawn to what we don’t know?

“I do love a good rewrite.” —Nicola Twilley, author of Frostbite “I had read lots of nonfiction books,” says journalist and podcaster Nicola Twilley, “but I didn’t recognize my own idea as having that potential.” In fact, it took other people telling her, “This is a book,” before she realized the true scope of her project.

It’s a big bouquet of epiphanies! We hear from Cameron Walker, Melissa Sevigny, Susan Tweit, Walt Hickey, Brad Aaron Modlin and Emily Scott Robinson–all sharing what they learned about creative practice in 2023. What they share ranges from practical to, um, yuck(!), to super sweet. Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to Emerging Form to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Appears in this episode Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist (Christie Aschwanden) and a poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine. Each episode concludes with a game of two questions in which a guest joins in to help answer questions about the week's topic. Season one guests include poets, novelists, journalists, a song writer, a circus performer, a sketch artist and a winemaker.

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Appears in this episode Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist (Christie Aschwanden) and a poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine. Each episode concludes with a game of two questions in which a guest joins in to help answer questions about the week's topic.

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Appears in this episode Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist (Christie Aschwanden) and a poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine. Each episode concludes with a game of two questions in which a guest joins in to help answer questions about the week's topic.

In this bonus episode, Walt Hickey talks about some of the things he’s learned from covering the entertainment industry. For instance: A movie is never done, it just needs to get released. He also shares why it’s ok to sometimes get stuck and how structure and format can make writing easier.