Wisconsin writers get the audio spotlight starting next week, as the new Writing Forward podcast debuts on May 6.
The podcast is a project of Milwaukee native Jeff Oloizia, who studied education at UW-Madison before forging a career as a writer and journalist in New York. He’s now back in Madison, writing for Madison Magazine while working in nonprofit communications.
Oloizia said he found himself at least as interested in what writers have to say as what they write.
“I love going to writing events, and I don’t love a reading, because increasingly, as I get older, I just want to hear people think out loud,” he said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast.
“I was looking for this myself,” he added, of the reason he decided to launch the podcast. “I spent a lot of time driving, and I spent a lot of time thinking about writing, and as someone who aspires to write books, it’s really powerful to hear people who are in the place that you want to be talking about it, and even more so when they come from the same place as you.”
Listen to the full interview:
That place, of course is Wisconsin, and through the first several conversations he’s identified a few themes in how this place shapes creative writers.
“A focus on subtext” is one common trait, he said. “The state’s drinking culture often comes up and how that finds its way into the writing life. What it’s like to, if you’re a personal essayist, write about yourself when so much of your life has been about not making a spectacle of yourself. You know the Midwestern idea of hammering down anything that sticks out. And maybe a focus on decency. That sounds so highfalutin, but you know, when I read a book by Maggie Ginsburg or Nicholas Butler, what comes across is interesting characters who also manage to be decent. And I just see so much of Wisconsin life and Midwestern life in those stories.”
Oloizia said he’s tapped into a lot of his personal network for the first 10-episode season, so much of the first season is “skewed a bit toward Madison.” But within those first episodes listeners will hear from essayist Barrett Swanson, novelists Maggie Ginsberg and Chloe Benjamin, short story writer Dantiel Moniz, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig, and several more.
Oloizia acknowledges that the lineup of guests skews a bit older, as well.
“It takes some life to have something to write about, and often, when we’re reading someone’s first book, we’re actually reading their fourth or fifth stab at it,” he said.
Asked about the future of the art form in the social media, artificial intelligence era, Oloizia isn’t worried.
“I think there might be some hubris in thinking that this thing that has existed for so long is suddenly going to go away on our watch,” he said. “Chat GPT doesn’t have perspective. And when I go to a book, I want to read someone’s perspective. I want to read their truth and their ideas.”
Oloizia’s plan is to release 10 episodes between now and late July, and then ramp up a second season in the autumn. And he wants to showcase what he views as some of the best writers in the country.
“When I say we have some of the best writers in the country that’s not just ad copy. That’s not marketing speak,” he said.
Writing Forward will be available on all major podcast platforms beginning Wednesday, May 6, with new episodes out every Wednesday.
