Shows / Literary Nomads
Literary Nomads
Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. For teachers, students, and lovers of reading, we will discover new paths to understanding!
Episodes
- Literary Nomads
Waypoint: Montgomery’s “Min”
A rarely met short story by Montgomery, and a bit darker than her Anne books. Resources: Montgomery, L. M.“Min,” 1903. Waypoint – Reading of…
- Literary Nomads
Spectre-Grey – Dark Montgomery Pt. 2
What is the real story behind the creator of Anne of Green Gables? In the close of this two-part examination of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life, we examine…
- Literary Nomads
Ghost in the Garden – Dark Montgomery Pt. 1
What if Anne of Green Gables wasn’t just an escapist daydream, but a calculated strategy that saved its author’s life? Today we find the divide…
- Literary Nomads
Temporary Delay Announcement
Hey, everyone! Thanks for your patience during this unexpected episode delay! A few tech challenges while I upgraded my studio this summer put me a few weeks…
- Literary Nomads
Building Fantasies
How does the map overwrite the physical territory it claims to represent? Today we look at literary simulations, from the bedroom of Victor Hugo to the Orlando…
- Literary Nomads
Mapping Dreams
How do we navigate the space between the curated tourism experience and the raw concrete of the world beneath it? We investigate the “imaginative…
- Literary Nomads
Author Footprints Pt. 2 – The Aracataca Paradox
What happens to a real, working community when a fictional landscape is physically constructed on top of it? We discover the socio-economic friction behind…
- Literary Nomads
Author Footprints Pt. 1 – Aura & Reliquary
Why do we drive thousands of miles just to touch the wooden beams of an author’s birthplace? From Poe’s Baltimore to PEI and Waywords’s own…
- Literary Nomads
Packing Lists Pt. 2 – Stalwart Women
Who carries the weight of our leisure? Some readings from the past by thoughtful and resilient women! Take in some early writing of place and circumstance…
- Literary Nomads
Packing Lists Pt. 1: Dreams and Dirt
Did your horse throw ya, buddy? We investigate what we hope to achieve by literary travel . . . and why our packing cannot prepare us for it! While the global…
- Literary Nomads
Grand Tours Pt 2: Bat on the Narrow Road
What’s the difference between being a passive tourist and a wayfarer? Follow the 17th-century footsteps of Matsuo Basho to interrogate the gap between…
- Literary Nomads
Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion
Are we consuming an authentic place, or are we willingly participating in a beautifully staged performance designed around our own expectations? In this…
- Literary Nomads
Literary Tourism Trailer
Welcome to the summer trailhead! Join Journey 7 of Literary Nomads as we explore the secrets of literary tourism and travel writing. Discover how authors like…
- Literary Nomads
Nomadic Departures
We are left on the precipice of a severe, unavoidable aporia: when the Empire can absorb and commercialize our very language of protest, the only true ethical…
- Literary Nomads
What I Get Wrong: Intimidation & Interpretation
Is our intellectual exercise just an expensive lifestyle brand that keeps our hands clean? In this raw, self-interrogating mailbag episode, we turn the lens…
- Literary Nomads
Writing Back: Guerilla Texts, BTS, and Gaye
Is that blank page paralyzing your activism? Is your irony a mask for your complicity? We’re using William James and David Foster Wallace to interrogate the…
- Literary Nomads
The Ethics of Reading: Frictional Thoughts
Is your reading just an “escape”?? Your favorite “escape” read might be a gated community for your conscience. Today, we interrogate…
- Literary Nomads
Roman Plow, Sovereign Tree: Seneca and Zhuangzi
Can Stoicism answer our dilemma? Is the suffering child a product of a world that demands every second and every soul be “useful” to the state? By…
- Literary Nomads
The Original Omelas: The Case of the Animals vs. Man
And when the child cannot speak for itself? Humanity’s first global lawsuit! In this 10th-century Islamic fable, animals put mankind on trial for the…
- Literary Nomads
The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain
We’ve turned the basement into a casino! A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through a…
- Literary Nomads
Waypoint – “The Fortune Teller”
  10 April 2026 Waypoint - “The Fortune Teller” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is perhaps the greatest…
- Literary Nomads
Failures of Imagination: We and Flatland
The “Hideous Bargain” is no longer just about one child’s pain . . . We investigate the “Euclidean Mind” that seeks to flatten our…
- Literary Nomads
Utopia’s Spare Parts: Star Trek & Ishiguro
The “Hideous Bargain” moves from metaphor to the operating table. In this episode, we let loose the bonds of metaphor in Le Guin’s…
- Literary Nomads
The Architecture of the Dungeon: Toni Morrison and the 13th Amendment
The Omelas basement has a physical address in America: the prison-industrial complex. This week, we use the lens of Toni Morrison’s literary criticism to…
- Literary Nomads
Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange and the Sovereign Center
What happens to the story when the ‘object’ of our sympathy looks back and refuses the role we’ve written for them? The allegory of the…
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The Bureaucracy of Erasure: Erdrich’s The Night Watchman
Your Interpretation is Colonial. When we turn Zen into a pop-culture vibe or a totem pole into a corporate metaphor, we aren't learning; we're committing…
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Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth
Akwaeke Emezi demonstrates how Nigeria’s contemporary writers turn our conceptual realities around. They offer a YA novel that doesn’t condescend…
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Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero
Why have so few read Soyinka? And can we find hope through his cynical dramas? I admit I am a victim of the myth-making around me which has made Soyinka and…
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Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto
  What sort of literature is this, anyway? Today we introduce some approaches to Nigerian literature, offer a bevy of African writers, and explore how one…
- Literary Nomads
Cassandra: Uncertain Steps
  And what if nobody listens? Yes, entering our calls for justice into public space carries no small amount of anxiety. And the poster-child for being…
- Literary Nomads
Writing Back: Letters to Humanity
  26 Dec 2025 Episode 6.21 – Writing Back: Letters to Humanity A different sort of New Year Resolution, moving us from personal improvement to…
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The Great Societies: Lowry’s “The Giver”
  19 Dec 2025 Episode 6.20 – The Great Societies: Lowry’s The Giver Another thorny utopia, Lowry’s Community practices a different kind…
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The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning
  12 Dec 2025 Episode 6.19 – The Great Societies, Pt 2: Metropolis & The Ways of Meaning We finish our discussion of the silent film Metropolis…
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Is All Art Political? The Great Societies, Pt. 1: Metropolis
It seems everything is politics these days. But at least can't we keep art pure? You know, art for art's sake? I offer my thoughts on the topic while we…
- Literary Nomads
True Horror: Le Guin, Poe, Cavarero, Bataille, and Arendt
We finish our side trail on the implications of Poe's horror by stepping more deeply into our own capacity to violence, reaching finally to Le Guin's own…
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Poe: Horror, Pathology, and the Necessity of Care
We say Poe has influence the genre of horror, but have we really considered what that influence has revealed to us across the generations? What happens when we…
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The Hideous Heart – Poe’s Aesthetic of Accountability
There really isn't that much to say about Poe, is there? He's just creepy. But wait. What if we could explain the supposed madness in all these stories?
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Waypoint – “The Imp of Perversity”
Another Halloween treat from Poe, a reading of this lesser-known tale. And follow the podcast for some ways to think about it and "The Tell-Tale Heart"!
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Waypoint – “The Tell-Tale Heart”
This story, a quintessential Poe classic, is perfect not only for its conception of the psychology of horror, but for our larger discussion in Le Guin's…
- Literary Nomads
Literary Nomads for Teachers
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
- Literary Nomads
Literary Nomads for Students
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
- Literary Nomads
Literary Nomads for Readers
What is this podcast? I recommend you start here, with this introduction to Literary Nomads and get a taste of what the larger series offers!
- Literary Nomads
Le Guin – What I Carry With Me
Now that we've wrestled in and with Omelas for a bit, what questions remain for us to take forward on our journey? We're walking away from Omelas, but let's…
- Literary Nomads
Le Guin Part 5: Q&A
Listeners offer their questions from narrator trust to activism to teaching controversy. I rant--or respond--back.
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Le Guin Part 4: The Ones Who Stay – N. K. Jemisin
Can we pull this utopia dilemma together? Or will we add even more levels of complication?
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Le Guin Part 3: The Reader’s Labyrinth
Sure, the Omelas dilemma is tough, but at least we have our narrator as ally, right? Right? Perhaps the real horror in Omelas has less to do with the child at…
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Le Guin 2: Architectures of Happiness
Is this story really about that suffering child? Or is it more about how we wall its suffering out, then invite it back in?
- Literary Nomads
Le Guin 1: The Hideous Bargain
At last we settle in to think about Le Guin's Omelas story and set aside some common approaches to it. The first of several parts.
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Gardens of Imagination – Narrative Utopias
Let's niche down into a small sub-genre of fantasy and explore our desire for it, the classic utopia!
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In Defense of Fantasy
Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows!
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Stephen King Meets Shel Silverstein: Formalism and Trope in Story
What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.
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Negotiating for Space: Compromise and Flag-Planting
This is getting challenging. What are we to do with the Suffering Child question? And on which form of suffering do I plant my flag of resistance? Dostoevsky…
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Reading: “Rebellion” from Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’
Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia's most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.
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Otium and The Moral Philosopher – William James
Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It's about our blind spots and our privilege.
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Marvell’s Garden and Ours – Otium
Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell's poetry--weren't we?--we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell's…
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Vaster Than Empires – Le Guin
What does it mean to embrace "Other"? And how might we understand carpe diem if we truly had "world enough and time?" Le Guin shows us in her famous science…
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Signpost – Pretty Gardens in Paint
Where we've been and where we're going, and we take a pause in a museum gallery, too!
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Trailer: Journey 6
Looking ahead at Season 6: Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and all the wrestling we do with dilemmas of ethics.
- Literary Nomads
What I Get Wrong
We finish a carpe diem journey and I reflect back on what I've learned, what I believe, and where we are going next.
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Writing Back 2: Getting Over Our Essay Anxiety
It's time for the end of our carpe diem journey, and we celebrate with a congratulatory essay! Hey, why so glum?