Little Oracles

It's a booktastic megasode! Nearly 20 minutes of big book energy, opening with books that made me go "mmm" in 2024, and closing with what I'm excited to read in 2025. (Could this be the soft relaunch of the Asynchronous Book Club? Yeah, why not!)

As ever, check content warnings before you pick up anything we discuss here on the podcast; reading should be a refuge, not a trigger. And remember: reading i...

Let's talk about mirror rot! And also how it inspired me to write this episode all about the agnosticism of inspiration, and how your idiosyncratic log of the year (whether it's in your phone's notes app, your watch history, your box of ticket stubs) can not only help you reflect on the year that's gone, but also take you into the new one with a cache of cool curios to fuel your creative practice.

Wishi...

Let's burn your vision board! Not really! (But kind of?) In this episode, we're talking about taking space, practicing grace, and reminding ourselves of why we make what we make ... and for whom, and why it's not the best move to let your calendar control your creative work.

Heavily inspired by a great Bluesky thread about making art for yourself by game designers Sean and Navi Drake of A Couple of Drakes. ...

Happy Booksgiving! We're inaugurating a new Jolabokaflod-inspired holiday, Little Oracles style ... because gifting a book is cool as hell. Featuring five books I won't flinch about giving to fabulous friends (and fellow weird-fiction freaks).

• If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
• Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
• Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
• Cursed Bread by Soph...

In this final installment of the season-opening three-parter, we look at personal obligation (in a good way) and how to say goodbye to creative stasis with a handful of stagnancy-busting strategies (and even some creative prompts!).

Until next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine! <3

Resources

• Episodes one and two of this three-parter: S04:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + ...

In this spontaneous emergency episode in response to the 2024 U.S. election, I'm calling out your creative spirit: in times like these, we need mourners, we need menders, we need makers. We need your creative revolution.

We'll resume our three-part series about coming back to creativity next week, but until then, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Episodes one and t...

In part two of the season-opening three-parter, we're talking about the power of prompts, ways to cross-pollinate your creativity, and how creative elasticity makes you an even mightier maker.

Until next time, take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Episode one of this three-parter: S01:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads
• Vide-Poche: Pockets and Their Cont...

We're back, baby ... back to basics, that is. In this first episode of a season-opening three-parter, we talk about rereading as inspiration mining; leaning into complementary crafts to prime the proverbial creative pump; and five of my fave creepy reads, just in time for Halloween week (plus two bonus boogedy-boos just for you): 

• Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (trans. Saskia Vogel)
• At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich
• ...

Welcome to Little Oracles Season Four: Remake. In this season, we’re returning to our roots, reminding ourselves of what kindles our creative fire, rebelling against inertia and insecurity, rediscovering how to make what we make, and rejoicing in why we make it.

It’s a season of introspection and reinvention; it's a season of elegy, of big book energy, and creative euphoria. It’s Little Oracles, revived, reframed, re...

Welcome back to our final episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone. I'm sharing my poem-in-progress, "Sortition," inspired by Sandy's poem from Episode 6, and by the Little Oracles poetic fragment "bone," part of the original Little Oracles multimedia digital installation at www.littleoracles.com/exhibit.

We talk about skeletal ...

Welcome back to our sixth (and penultimate!) episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, Sandy shares her poem-in-progress, "By Years the Obstacles, at Night the Scars," inspired by my "Articles of Incorporation" from Episode 5: Pockets, Tooth Fairies, & the Surreal Real, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragmen...

Welcome back to our fifth episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, I read my poem-in-progress, "Articles of Incorporation," inspired by Sandy's "Ecdysis Sonnet" from Episode 4: Shells, Learning to Listen, & the Lyric You, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragment "pocket," which you can view as...

Welcome back to our fourth episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, Sandy's shares her "Ecdysis Sonnet," inspired by my poem from Episode 3: Lakes, Cosmic Convergence, & the Scientific Sublime, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragment "shell," which you can view as part of the original Little Oracles mu...

Welcome back to our third (and numerically auspicious, so says Sandy) episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, I share my poem "Hereafter," after Ada Limón's "After the Fire," and inspired by Sandy's poem from Episode 2: Twine, Maps, & the Meta-Meta, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragment "...

In our second episode of the seven-part Divinations miniseries, poet Sandra Yannone and I dig into her work-in-progress poem, "The Stars on the Snake River," inspired by the Little Oracles lexical fractal "twine," part of the original Little Oracles multimedia digital installation, which is back on view at littleoracles.com/exhibit.

We talk about the liminality of travel and creative revision, map-maki...

Our first Divinations miniseries, featuring working poet Sandra Yannone, is here! I’m so thrilled to share the first episode of this seven-part miniseries, which chronicles our collaborative conversation in poems, in which Sandy and I debut work in progress, unpack poems, and dig into creative practice and process.

In this episode, Sandy and I preview what’s in store for this short (and oh-so-sweet) season, including disc...

Hard to believe we're closing out Season Two: Play as Practice, but here we are! This season has been such an amazing few months of imagination and experimentation and collaboration, and I'm so grateful to all of you who show up week after week to hang out in our little corner of curiosity and creativity here on the Internet.

Season Three heralds a new miniseries to round out the year (find out more in the episo...

It's our first-ever miniseries! Over seven episodes, Little Oracles: Divinations chronicles an ongoing conversation in poems between poet Sandra Yannone and yours truly. We'll debut poems in progress, discuss the creative process, and dig into what it means to collaborate with and draw inspiration from other thinkers, makers, and creators. 

I'm so excited to share this super-special series with all of you! <...

Remember back in S02:E18, how I said I was haunted by friendship? Well, this episode is the culmination of one of those friendly hauntings, featuring a new short fiction piece by yours truly, with an original soundscape by the unmatched, ultra-marvelous Kaitlin Bruder — performer, graphic artist, producer, and co-creator of the Thin Places Radio podcast. 

Collaborating with Kaitlin was a dream, and I can’t wait for you to hear how s...