Monthly Archives: October 2026

Podcast

Ray Nayler on Palaces of the Crow

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What survives when a community is destroyed?

We talk with Ray Nayler about his new novel, Palaces of the Crow, in which four young people survive World War II in a Lithuanian forest with help from extraordinarily intelligent crows.

We explore how his years in Central Asia and the Balkans shaped the book, and why he turned to the Eastern Front to examine questions that still confront us.

What happens when trauma becomes revenge? How do we preserve a community’s memory? And what kinds of intelligence do we miss in other animals?

“I was trying to capture this memory of care…and also how much memory is under threat.” – Ray Nayler

Nayler describes care as something passed between generations, across communities, and even across species. Our conversation explores how relationships, stories, and the examples of others can help us interrupt cycles of harm.

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Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: Jacob Mikanowski, GOODBYE EASTERN EUROPE, Ray Nayler, THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SEA

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Podcast

Against Tech Oligarchy: Clarissa Redwine, JS Tan & Noam Scheiber on Worker Power

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What happens when tech workers challenge the companies they once believed in?

This week Writer’s Voice talks with Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan about Against Tech Oligarchy. They helped build the tech worker movement, and they’re candid about both its victories and the limits of its organizing strategies. We talk about Google’s Project Maven, the Kickstarter union drive, and why winning union recognition doesn’t automatically give workers the leverage they need.

“The only way to hold our bosses and our companies and institutions accountable is by having pressure from below.” — Clarissa Redwine

Then I revisit my conversation with Noam Scheiber about Hollywood writers, AI and the growing solidarity among college-educated workers. He also recommends Redwine and Tan’s book.

“Their book is called Against Tech Oligarchy, Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry. And I learned a lot from reading a galley of that book and I’ve learned a lot from the work over the years.” — Noam Scheiber

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: Noam Scheiber on the Mutiny of the New Working Class, Maria Adelmann on Adjunct Labor

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Podcast

Tom Lin, Babylon, South Dakota + Omar El Akkad on Gaza

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What do we learn to live with, and when do we decide we can’t accept it anymore?

This week, we talk with Tom Lin about his novel, Babylon, South Dakota. It follows a Chinese immigrant family whose new home shares its landscape with a nuclear missile silo. We talk about magical realism, family stories, belonging, dementia, and the relationship between science fiction and the weapons people build.

I think the power of magical realism is to introduce amazing things which are treated as totally ordinary, which I hope encourages people to think, ‘what about my life that I actually do live is amazing and magical and lucky that I’ve gotten used to?’ — Tom Lin

Then, on the third anniversary of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s genocide of Gaza, we revisit our March 2025 conversation with Omar El Akkad about One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. In this selected excerpt, we discuss the genocide in Gaza, Western complicity, and his argument that people will eventually claim they always opposed an atrocity they tolerated while it was happening.

Our conversation explores language that sanitizes violence, restrictions on dissent, and the failures of mainstream liberalism. El Akkad also explains why genocide became an absolute moral boundary for him.

It just seemed to me a particularly self-evident thing that when it’s too late to do anything about any of this, it’ll just be acceptable…to talk about how you’ve always been against it. — Omar El Akkad

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: U.S. Media’s Gaza Failure with Robin Andersen, Daniel Ellsberg, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE

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Podcast

Malavika Kannan on Unprecedented Times and Lauren Acampora on The Animal Room

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What happens when the old rules stop working?

This week, two works of fiction look at the relationships that shape us, and the systems of power we often carry within ourselves.

First, Malavika Kannan talks about Unprecedented Times, her coming-of-age novel about Rishi, a queer Indian American student whose arrival at Stanford coincides with a crisis of faith in activism, institutions and the American promise itself.

As 2020 transforms the world around her, Rishi wrestles with family expectations, friendship, sex, consent, political disillusionment and her desire to become a writer. Kannan talks about Gen Z’s growing refusal to follow rules that no longer seem to deliver what they promise.

“One of the main themes that I was trying to explore in this book and that I think about a lot as a person is the question of agency.” — Malavika Kannan

Then Lauren Acampora talks about The Animal Room, her connected collection of stories about the many ways human beings love, use, protect, fear and exploit animals.

But these stories are also mirrors. They ask us to look at ourselves, and at what care, empathy and responsibility mean in our relationships with other people.

“The dominance isn’t working out so well.” — Lauren Acampora

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: Short Stories by George Saunders & Jennifer Haigh, Vauhini Vara, THIS IS SALVAGED

Tags: Malavika Kannan, Unprecedented Times, Lauren Acampora, The Animal Room, Writer’s Voice, Gen Z fiction, queer fiction, Indian American fiction, coming of age novel, human animal relationships, Francesca Rheannon

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