Commonplace Podcast

Jan 21 2025 131 ep. 120 mins 28

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Intimate and compelling interviews by Rachel Zucker with poets and other artists. Become a Patron & support our growing podcast! www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast

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Episode 131: Reading Sabrina Orah Mark’s Happily

Jan 21 2025 129 mins

Rachel speaks with Sabrina Orah Mark about Happily, her collection of essays on fairytales and motherhood which began as a monthly column in The Paris Review. Rachel and Sabrina speak one-on-one over Zoom and then, a few weeks later, at the live-virtual Reading with Rachel salon. Sabrina talks about the fire in her home, writing in the dark, writing in real time, writing about sacr

Episode 130: Lois Conner

Oct 18 2024 121 mins

Rachel talks to photographer and (her former) photography teacher Lois Conner about Conner’s path to becoming a photographer, working at the UN, her yearly trips to China, teaching, the challenges and delights of a two-decade-long project of photographing pregnant women and the work of organizing the vertical and horizontal large format (nude) portraits into a book—To Be—publ

Episode 129: Reading Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca

Oct 11 2024 71 mins

Eugenia Leigh joins the Reading with Rachel live-virtual salon to discuss her newest book, Bianca. Leigh tells the story of writing Bianca and talks about the role of therapy in the writing process, why she enjoys revision and prefers it to writing, strategies for avoiding burnout, complex PTSD, Bipolar II Disorder, Christianity, trying to write without re-traumatizing the self or

KTCO Feed Drop: Hey, it’s Me

Jul 18 2024 60 mins

Welcome to a new podcast by Mike Sakasegawa and Rachel Zucker: Hey, It’s Me. In this feed drop from Keep the Channel Open, Mike asks Rachel: “What are we going to talk about? And are we really doing this?” We hope you enjoy this strange, relatable, meta meta meta conversation on friendship, social media, relationships, and beyond. See Hey, It's Me online to learn more.

Episode 127: Hanif Abdurraqib with Stuti Sharma

Jul 08 2024 88 mins

Hanif Abdurraqib is interviewed by guest host Stuti Sharma. Hanif and Stuti discuss writing communities, traveling to US cities, and music as a vessel for connection. They also talk about cultivating literary friendships, vulnerability, and memory both in the context of loss and in the context of loving someone throughout many stages of life. The second part of this episode is an e

Episode 126: D. A. Powell

May 28 2024 105 mins

While on a trip to San Francisco, Rachel checks in with her longtime friend, poet D. A. Powell. The two discuss what D. A. is working on and what has changed for him since the two recorded episode 13 of Commonplace back in 2016. This episode contains excerpts from a listening party that Rachel and Doug attended the night before curated by Gabrielle Civil and featuring a recording o

Episode 125: The Poetics of Motherhood

May 11 2024 71 mins

The third of five episodes featuring the lectures that became Rachel Zucker’s newest book, The Poetics of Wrongness. After an introduction from Rachel this episode contains archival audio of “Why She Could Not Write A Lecture on the Poetics of Motherhood” presented at the UC Berkeley English Department on November 15, 2016 and the introduction to the event given by poet Rober

Episode 124: Reading Hafizah Augustus Geter’s The Black Period

Apr 12 2024 105 mins

Rachel speaks with poet, memoirist and literary agent Hafizah Geter about her recently published memoir The Black Period: On Personhood, Race and Origin. They speak one-on-one over zoom and then, a few weeks later, at the live-virtual Reading with Rachel salon. They speak about being poets writing prose, about writing to think and talking to think, MFA programs, writing classes, be

Episode 123: Mary Ruefle

Mar 18 2024 129 mins

Rachel speaks with poet and erasure artist Mary Ruefle about menopause, thresholds, death, reading, museums, schools, podcasting, trees, wind, created violence, real violence, haiku, love, the erotics of reading, Yom Kippur, erasure, how to walk around the world two babysteps at a time, and more.

Episode 122: Reading Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: an erasure

Feb 22 2024 101 mins

Rachel speaks with poet and Commonplace producer Christine Larusso and then, a few weeks later, with Nicole Sealey at the live-virtual “Reading with Rachel” salon about Sealey’s recently published book-length erasure, The Ferguson Report: poems. Sealey describes why, how and when she erased this document and how the erasure and lifted poems became a book.