Team Plume is reanimating, dusting off the last year, and sharing our first podcast in a while. In today’s episode, we bring you a ghosty story circle with writing that taps into the otherworldly… just in time for Halloween and the Samhain season!

Featuring writing from (in order of appearance):

Danielle Hanson – “Ghosts and Mirrors,” poetry
Melanie Unruh – “Altar Me,” poetry
Dawn Sperber – “Ghost Sisters,” story, with music by Hedia
Sarah Mina Osman – “The Djinn,” story excerpt, originally published in Lunaris, issue 17, 2023
Elsa Valmidiano – “Marmarna,” story, originally published in Mythos, Issue #7: Something Spooky, 2022
Lisa Chavéz – “The Customary Kiss,” story

Author Bios (in order of appearance):

Danielle Hanson strives to create and facilitate wonder. She is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky and Ambushing Water. Her poetry was the basis for a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. She is Marketing Director for Sundress Publications, and serves on their Editorial Board & as Managing Editor for their imprint Doubleback Books. Previously, she has been Artist-in-Residence at Arts Beacon, Writer-in-Residence for Georgia Writers, and Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books. She teaches poetry at UC Irvine. You can read more about her at daniellejhanson.com.

Melanie Unruh has an MFA in fiction from UNM. Her writing has appeared in The Meadow, The Boiler, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Philadelphia Stories, Cutthroat, and elsewhere. She’s working on a YA novel, a short story collection, and more weird poems about bones. https://melanieunruhwriter.wordpress.com/

Dawn Sperber is the author of two new books: a poetry collection, My Bones Are Love Gifts (Shanti Arts, 2022), and a flash fiction chapbook, Now, That’s a Trick (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in PANK, Daily Science Fiction, Bourbon Penn, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. You can follow her at dawnsperber.com.
Music included in “Ghost Sisters” is by Hedia (Bryce Hample). https://hedia.bandcamp.com/

Sarah Mina Osman's work has appeared in the Lunaris Review, Punt Volat, The Huffington Post, and SheKnows among several other publications. She likes sloths and tacos. sarahminaosmanwrites.wordpress.com

Elsa Valmidiano, an Ilocana-American essayist and poet, is the author of We Are No Longer Babaylan, her award-winning debut essay collection from New Rivers Press, which was an Editors’ Choice selection from their Many Voices Project competition in Prose. Her second essay collection, The Beginning of Leaving, is from Querencia Press. Through the examination of folklore and ritual, she blends memoir and myth, & dreams and reality, where folkloric beings reflect our defiant ancestors and ourselves. For more information, please visit her website slicingtomatoes.com.

Lisa D. Chavéz has published two books of poetry, Destruction Bay and In An Angry Season, and her poems have also appeared in Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing and other anthologies. Her essays have appeared in Arts and Letters, The Fourth Genre & other magazines, and she has had essays included in several anthologies, including The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity and An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots.