Podcast
Rewrite Radio
Hosted by Rewrite Radio · EN
Rewrite Radio is the podcast of the Festival of Faith & Writing, a biennial celebration of literature and belief in Grand Rapids, MI.
Festival is the flagship initiative of the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing (CCFW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fostering scholarship & community around the literary arts.
16episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode #82: Anne Bogel, Byron Borger, and Karen Swallow Prior
Feb 1700:42:02Tap to summarizeOn this episode of Rewrite Radio, Anne Bogel, Byron Borger, and Karen Swallow Prior join Jennifer Holberg to explore how reading shapes empathy, humility, and imagination. Drawing from bookselling, teaching, and curation, this lively conversation considers why stories matter in distracted, polarized times—and how reading in community can transform how we understand others.Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.
Transcribe →Episode #81: Suzanne Stabile
Feb 300:41:55Tap to summarize“Enneagram godmother” Suzanne Stabile joins poet and pastor Sam Gutierrez at the 2024 Festival of Faith & Writing for a wide-ranging conversation on wisdom, creativity, and compassion. Stabile reflects on writing, faith, and the Enneagram as a spiritual tool for deeper self-understanding, healthier relationships, and a kinder world.
Transcribe →Episode #80: S.J. Dahlman
Jan 2000:43:01Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Rewrite Radio, journalist and author Jim Dahlman reflects on the perceived tension between faith and journalism. Drawing on stories from his reporting and writing, Dahlman explores objectivity, curiosity, and the moral responsibilities of storytelling—inviting listeners to see journalism as a practice that can honor truth, humility, and the sacred in everyday lives.
Transcribe →Episode #79: Matthew Dickerson
Jan 600:42:50Tap to summarizeWhat is the source of power in fantasy literature? Listen along as author Matthew Dickerson investigates the magical universes of C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and J.R.R. Tolkien, discussing how each author portrays magic as power, with inevitably severe implications regarding good and evil. In an uncanny reflection of the state of modern humanity, Dickerson unveils how he finds and holds onto hope in this amusing yet pointed lecture.
Transcribe →Episode #78: Laleh Khadivi
Dec 900:42:51Tap to summarizeCan AI create art? And is that the question we ought to be asking? On this episode of Rewrite Radio, author and filmmaker Laleh Khadivi urges listeners to remember, in an age of increasing artistic blurriness, the necessity of the individual human being’s creativity. She links the creative process to prayer and asks, if AI is already creating and praying, must the human still too? Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.
Transcribe →Episode #77: Peter Ho Davies
Nov 2500:16:20Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Dr. Sabrina Lee sits down with acclaimed novelist Peter Ho Davies for a wide-ranging conversation about craft, identity, and the stories that shape us. Together they explore several of his books, diving into themes of shame, race, joke-telling, and what it means to write from the in-between spaces of a biracial identity. With characteristic insight and generosity, Davies reflects on how revision deepens his work and how he’s learned to inhabit the “hyphen” in his own life and fiction.
Transcribe →Episode #76: Christian Wiman
Nov 1100:46:31Tap to summarizeThis week on Rewrite Radio, poet and essayist Christian Wiman explores what it means to stay spiritually alert in a world shadowed by loneliness and lit by sudden joy. Drawing on poems by Wallace Stevens, Anne Carson, and his own collections—including Zero at the Bone—Wiman reflects on beauty as a form of justice, on grief as grace, and on the mysterious ways poetry calls us to pay attention.Christian Wiman was raised in West Texas and earned a BA at Washington and Lee University. A former Guggenheim fellow, Wiman served as the editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. He received an honorary doctorate from North Central College. Making use of—and at times gently disassembling—musical and metrical structures, Wiman often explores themes of spiritual faith and doubt in his spare, precise poems. Wiman is the author of numerous books of poetry, prose, and poetry in translation. Survival Is a Style (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020) is Wiman's most recent collection; the collection Every Riven Thing (2010) won the Commonwealth Prize from the English Speaking Union, was a finalist for the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award, and was named one of the New Yorker’s top 11 poetry books of 2010. His collection, Once in the West (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. His debut collection, The Long Home (1998), won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Stolen Air (2012) contains Wiman’s translations of Osip Mandelstam’s poetry. With Don Share, Wiman coedited The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine (2012). Wiman’s essay collections include He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art (2018), My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013) and Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet (2007).
Transcribe →Episode #75: Sonya Bilocerkowycz
Oct 2900:44:30Tap to summarizeSituating herself in the contexts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Ukrainian diaspora, Sonya Bilocerkowycz presents the roles and responsibilities of the reader, writer and artist in wartime. Bilocerkowycz emphasises the power writers have in influencing memory and narrative through their work in such times, and calls for the writer not only to prepare, learn, and inform, but to also use art to defend and save lives when the moment comes. Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a Ukrainian-American writer and artist from the Black Hills of South Dakota. She is the author of On Our Way Home from the Revolution (Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books, 2019), selected by David Lazar and Patrick Madden as winner of the Gournay Prize for a debut essay collection. Sonya's work has appeared in Guernica, Ninth Letter, New York Review of Books, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Colorado Review, The Normal School, and in the anthology Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears, edited by Brandon Stosuy (Simon & Schuster, 2023). Before completing her MFA at Ohio State, she served as a Fulbright Fellow in Belarus, an educational recruiter in the Republic of Georgia, and an instructor at Ukrainian Catholic University in L'viv. Currently, Sonya is the Director of Creative Writing at SUNY Geneseo in western New York. She has been named a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and is at work on a second book.
Transcribe →Episode #74: Amy Julia Becker and Hilary Yancey
Oct 1400:43:02Tap to summarizeBoth mothers of disabled children, authors Amy Julia Becker and Hilary Yancey discuss their experiences raising kids while navigating questions of identity and community.Amy Julia Becker helps people reimagine the good life through her writing and speaking on disability, faith, and culture. She is the author of To Be Made Well, White Picket Fences, Small Talk, and A Good and Perfect Gift and the creator of the Reimagining Family Life with Disability workshop. She is a guest opinion writer for national publications and hosts two podcasts: Reimagining the Good Life and Take the Next Step. Becker is a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv). She lives with her husband and their three children in western Connecticut.Hilary Yancey is a philosopher and writer living in Central Texas, parenting three young kids. She's fascinated by all kinds of questions, but especially those about disability, justice, and God. Her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith (FaithWords, 2018) touched on all these things through the story of her son’s birth and their first year of life together.
Transcribe →#73: Jemar Tisby
Sep 3000:34:40Tap to summarizeWhat's next in our fight for racial justice? Interviewed by Craig Mattson, author and scholar Jemar Tisby (@jemartisby) discusses his helpful framework for justice efforts—the lenses of awareness, relationship, and commitment. He tackles how to apply these concepts to our day-to-day life with examples, humor, and most of all authenticity. A devout Christian, Tisby offers a valuable perspective on how the church is involved in these issues.Jemar Tisby, PhD is the author of the bestselling book The Color of Compromise and founder of the The Witness, a Black Christian Collective. He is a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky and writes frequently on Substack (Footnotes by Jemar Tisby). His newest book, The Spirit of Justice, was released in September 2024.
Transcribe →