In this week’s podcast, Angie and Elizabeth reconnect with Micah Perks and discuss her new book of linked stories. Micah has always been a fan of episodic work, and after working with a longer forms of writing, she decided to turn to a short story collection. She took short, stand-alone stories she had written in between projects and morphed them into something new and connected, realizing that working with completed drafts made for a faster process than she was used to. Micah admits that she can often be guilty of over-revising, wondering at what point the work is just different instead of better. Is she just wasting time? There are so many worries about what we “should” be doing. In the end, do what makes you feel the fullest.

True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape by Micah Perks

The Weird Sisters: William Shakespeare

Kelly Link – MacArthur Fellow

Tana French: The Witch Elm

Micah Perks

Micah Perks is the author of a new book of linked short stories, True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape (Outpost19) and the novel What Becomes Us (Outpost19; 9/16), winner of an Independent Publishers Book Award and named one of the Top Ten Books about the Apocalypse by The Guardian. Her memoir, Pagan Time, tells the story of her childhood in a log cabin on a commune in the Adirondack wilderness. She is also the author of We Are Gathered Here, a novel, and Alone in the Woods, a long personal essay. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, The Toast, OZY and The Rumpus, amongst many journals and anthologies. She has won an NEA, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and the New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University and now lives with her family in Santa Cruz where she co-directs the creative writing program at UCSC. More info and work at micahperks.com

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.