The Good Life Review Podcast

In this week's episode we interview Karen Gettert Shoemaker.  Karen writes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, book reviews, journal entries, and endless lists. Her most recent work, a reflection on the role of ordinary people during a pandemic, was published in the New York Times in 2020. Her novel, The Meaning of Names, was selected for the One Book One Nebraska statewide reading program in 2016 and the Omaha Reads community reading program in 2014. It was republished in China in 2020. Her award-winning short story collection, Night Sounds and Other Stories, was published in the US in 2002, and republished in the United Kingdom in 2006. Her work has been published in the London Times, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, and included in a variety of anthologies of poetry and fiction.

She is the founder and director of Larksong Writers’ Place, a nonprofit organization offering independent writing workshops, manuscript consulting, and community-building for aspiring writers.  She is also a writing mentor with the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s MFA in Writing Program.

In this week's GLR Podcast, we interviewed Katie Kalahan! Katie has an interesting writing style that fuses their love for art and words.  We talk about some amazing book suggestions, menstruation, and the love-hate relationship of finishing up a thesis.  Their work, "May There Always Be," along with their featured art is in Issue 3 of the Good Life Review.

https://thegoodlifereview.com/issue-three/3-flash-nonfiction/may-there-always-be-by-katie-kalahan/

Katie Kalahan says that they live and work in Seattle, but right now, they actually live in Olympia. They are pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and hold a BFA in Printmaking/Drawing and English Literature from Washington University in Saint Louis. Their work is published in The Ear, Thin Air Magazine, and Witness Magazine.

In this week's episode of the GLR podcast, editor Shyla Shehan chats with Adrienne Pine author of "Mother."  They explore conversational topics about the death of family, their love of the alphabet, and provide a plethora of reading suggestions. Adrienne Pine’s essays have appeared in Feminine Collective, The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, Carte Blanche, bioStories, Linden Avenue, Soft Cartel, Gravel, The Write Place at the Write Time and others.

We hope you enjoy.

Contributions:

Podcast Interviewer: Shyla Shehan

Podcast Editor: Trelana Daniel

In this week’s episode GLR, our podcast producer and fiction editor, Trelana Daniel, interviews the queen of flash fiction, Autumn Bettinger.  Autumn talks about the life of a busy mom, the 1001 book shelves she has on her to-read list, and her love of the outdoors.

Look for more of her work being published this month in the Journal of Compressed Arts.

Autumn is a stay at home mom who lives in Portland Oregon with her husband and two young children. She graduated from Portland State after moving to Oregon from Seattle. Her parents are both from the midwest, and growing up she spent many summers at Lake Otsego in Michigan. When not parenting, Autumn is squeaking out a little writing here and there amid the laundry and the diaper changes.

Read more at thegoodlifereview.com

Interview Contributor: Trelana Daniel

Podcast Editor: Trelana Daniel

This episode we are highlighting a poetry segment by Andrew Geoffrey Kwabena Moss.  You can read his work at the following link:

https://thegoodlifereview.com/issue-three/3-poetry/twi-phone-ology-by-andrew-geoffrey-kwabena-moss/

Andrew Geoffrey Kwabena Moss is a writer and teacher who has lived in the UK, Japan and currently Australia. Of Anglo-Ghanaian heritage, his work seeks to explore and challenge liminal landscapes, complex identities and the social constructs of race. Andrew is a member of the ACT Writers’ Centre. His work has previously appeared in Afropean, People in Harmony, Fly on the Wall Press, Fair Acre Press, Golden Walkman Magazine, Beliveau Books, GMGA Publishing and Poor Yorick Literary Journal.

Contributers:

Podcast editor- Trelana Daniel

Podcast interviewer- Shyla Shehan

In this episode, I interview Tyler Jacobs about his piece, "Standing Water in Central Nebraska."  Tyler is finishing up his degree from the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he studies English and Creative Writing.  He recommends taking classes with Brad Modlin and Jessica Hollander at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but really any class with the English department there is bound to be enjoyable.  You can read his full piece here:

https://thegoodlifereview.com/issue-two/2-poetry/standing-water-in-central-nebraska-by-tyler-jacobs/

Full Bio: Tyler Michael Jacobs currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Carillon. He is the recipient of the Wagner Family Writing Award Endowment. His poetry has appeared, or is slated to appear, in The Carillon, Poached Hare, The Hole in the Head Review, Runestone, The Magazine, Rumble Fish Quarterly, The Whorticulturalist, East by Northeast Literary Magazine, White Wall Review, HASH Journal, Funicular Magazine, and Aurora: The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology.

Join us as we talk with Brett Biebel about processes of institutions and the irony of being midwestern nice. In this episode, we will read one of the stories in his new book, "48 Blitz," which is being published by Split Lip Press.  We hope you will pick up a copy today:

https://www.splitlippress.com/48-blitz

Join flash fiction writer Najla Brown and one of thegoodlifereview.com's fiction editors, Trelana Daniel, as they talk about body hair, chick lit, and alpha females.  Najla Brown traded in the oil pumpjacks of West Texas for the oil skyscrapers of Houston. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Texas A&M in English and Political Science. She spends her days writing tag lines and her nights writing everything else. You can find her work in Houstonia Magazine, Molotov Cocktail, Coffin Bell Journal, and elsewhere.

Read more about this author and others at thegoodlifereview.com.

Join fiction editor for the Good Life Review, Trelana Daniel, as she interviews a magical realist poet named Clif.  Clif Mason lives in Bellevue, Nebraska, with his wife, a visual artist. He is the author of one collection, Knocking the Stars Senseless (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), and three chapbooks: The Book of Night & Waking (won the Cathexis Northwest Press Chapbook Prize), Self-portraits in Which I Do Not Appear (Finishing Line Press), and From the Dead Before(Lone Willow Press). His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Rwanda, Africa. He also writes magical realist and fantasy fiction. Twitter: @mason_clif

Read more at thegoodlifereview.com

This episode is an interview with one of our poetry submissions at thegoodlifereview.com.  Kim McNealy Sosin is an Emerita Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her post-retirement interests include writing and photography. Her poems and photographs have appeared in Fine Lines, Failed Haiku, Daily Haiga, Voices from the Plains, Landscape Magazine, The Heron’s Nest, Wanderlust Journal, Raw Art Review, and Sandcutters.

Take a moment to look at her beautiful photography and the inspired poem she created from it at the following link:

https://thegoodlifereview.com/issue1-poetry/blue-heron-at-the-lake/

Matt Mason, Nebraska's State Poet, joins fiction editor Trelana Daniel as they talk about two of his poems "In the Packed Auditorium" and "Flash." Both of these can be found in our online addition of thegoodlifereview.com.  We look forward to reading more of Matt with his newest publication "I Have a Poem the Size of the Moon," coming out later this month from Stephen F Austin University Press.