Episode 22: In which Jedediah Berry and John Crowley discuss John’s new edition of The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae. The book is illustrated throughout by carpentrix-artist Theo Fadel, and designed by Jacob McMurray. Subscribe to the Small Beer podcast using iTunes or the service of […

Being the internet age, I’ve learned as much about Mary Rickert from her Facebook feed as I have from the biography on her website. These are the facts I am confident are true: Mary Rickert dislikes the Distraction Culture of smartphones and loves flowers, she is open to new adventures and has spent many hours […] The post Small Beer Podcast 21: Ma…

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 33 is a strange and extremely personal cultivation. Guest edited by Michael J. Deluca, it themes and focuses and ponders on our ecological future in a way that doesn’t seem to limit the writing at all. LCRW No. 33 is about people and relationships. It is also about this new […] The post Small Beer Podcast 20: C…

Nathan Ballingrud is one of those authors who should be far better known. Hopefully, this collection will do something to bridge that particular gap. I don’t write fan letters and I don’t read stories that sometimes fall across the border into grotesque, but then Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters came along. Immediately after I […] T…

Old friends never go out of style. Yet, somehow, too often they manage to slip into the dusty corners of our lives. Each time one pops up and disrupts my helter skelter schedule, I feel a frisson of rediscovery. “Yes, this is why we remember each other. This really is how it used to be.” […] The post Small Beer Podcast 18: Kelly Link’s “Stone Anima…

I don’t always take authors very seriously, but when Angélica Gorodischer indicated in Trafalgar’s foreword that the stories should be read in order, something in her tone made me pay attention. And something in her writing. She amused me right from the beginning, and so I decided to take her at her word and allow the […] The post Small Beer Podcas…

Hallelujah! Another podcast is neigh. And to everyone’s delight here at the Small Beer Studios, it’s another piece of fiction. Kij Johnson’s debut collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, came out in mid-2012. And people were excited. Kij can rock climb. She can teach. She knows both Old Norse and Latin. But […] The post Small Beer Podcast 16…

These podcasts are special little moments that pop up in my life, but even when I’m not “on mic” I’m reading to an audience. Every day for almost a decade, I’ve sat with my children and read. Yes, we have a TV. Yes, we have broadband access. But every day we sit together and read […] The post Small Beer Podcast 15: Lydia Millet’s The Shimmers in th…

My podcastery life doesn’t get much better than this. Two of my favorites in one audio track: Benjamin Parzybok and Michael J. DeLuca. Benjamin Parzybok’s story “The Coder” was first published in Lady Churchhill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 21. We bring it to you in audio for the first time. Not only that. Michael J. DeLuca […] The post Small Beer Podcas…

Jennifer Stevenson is a fantasy author, a romance writer and a former roller derby queen, so it should be no surprise that our interview veered into a discussion of sex and sexual politics. When you add in the fact that we were discussing Jennifer’s book, Trash Sex Magic, the topic of sex became more than an […] The post Small Beer Podcast 13: Juli…

There are just so many lovely people in the world. That was my conclusion after talking with David Thompson, the co-editor and host of Podcastle. He just showed up one day and offered to read a story for our little podcast. Well, of course, we said yes. I couldn’t be more thrilled with the pairing […] The post Small Beer Podcast 12: Benjamin Rosenb…

I think the world should be filled with double features: double-dip ice cream cones, double copies of the books you’re likely to drop in the tub, bonus skirts given at the time of purchase. Sometimes more is better. Now that we’ve successfully pulled off our first double feature (the John Kesselmania that was Episode Nine […] The post Small Beer Po…

Here at the Small Beer Studios, it’s Kesselmania! Between the reading of “The Last American” in Episode Nine and this week’s interview of the man himself, right now it seems that we have Kessel and nothing but Kessel on our minds. And why not? He’s an interesting guy, an astute anthologist and a terrific writer. […] The post Small Beer Podcast 10: …

I don’t know how many different people mentioned John Kessel to me before I ever read his work. Well, actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly how many people mentioned John Kessel: four. One of them was Gavin Grant and another was James Patrick Kelly. Mariel Morales and Taylor Preston, school friends of mine from […] The post Small Beer Podcast 9: J…

I should be used to the Small Beer studios by now: the pictures on the walls of kimono-clad women selling insect repellent, the Studio Ghibli bag illustrated with a seaplane pirate from Porco Rosso, the awards tacked haphazardly just above the couch. The voices are even better. There are the books, of course, whispering from […] The post Small Beer…

Here at the Small Beer studios we find there’s nothing like a great book and some damn fine beers to really get the conversation flowing. We’d already read Maureen F. McHugh’s zombie story “The Naturalist” (read | listen) and with the help of Tru Beer in Easthampton, Massachusetts, we happened upon three beers that go […] The post Small Beer Podcas…

No, Robert Redford is not in this, neither are baseball games or family farms. This piece is not called The Natural. This story, “The Naturalist,” from Maureen’s collection, After the Apocalypse, is filled with zombies, post-apocalyptic Cleveland and meditations on good, evil, and our human impulse (or lack thereof) toward empathy. We here at Small…

It turns out the gestation period for this podcast is somewhere between that of a lion and a wolf. At the beginning of November, Michael J. DeLuca, Gavin and I recorded the first ever Small Beer beer tasting. Then we recorded two, yes two, stories from our latest anthology Three Messages and a Warning, a […] The post Small Beer Podcast 5: Three Mes…

Fiction. We love it. And this week’s Small Beer podcast is over thirty minutes of nothing but imagined words. Benjamin Parzybok’s Couch is damned funny. Well, his novel Couch is anyway. To celebrate the release of the audiobook version of Couch, we’re running an excerpt in this week’s podcast. Don’t worry. Though we hope you’ll […] The post Small B…

I’m thrilled to be back from wilds of Western Connecticut where I was billeted after the recent Nor’easter. Small Beer headquarters feels like a book-filled Shangri-La. I can’t believe I’ve returned. In Episode Three of our Small Beer podcast, Michael J. DeLuca and I talk about yarrow-infused beer, medieval brewing, his fiction and why Small […] Th…