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PODCAST

Emerging Form

Christie Aschwanden

Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist (Christie Aschwanden) and a poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine. Each episode concludes with a game of two questions in which a guest joins in to help answer questions about the week"s topic. Season one guests include poets, novelists, journalists, a song writer, a circus performer, a sketch artist and a winemaker. emergingform.substack.com

arts books

All Episodes

32:17

Episode 153: Todd Mitchell on How a Breakdown Led to...

Emerging Form ·

2025/12/11

“I had to reassess how I approached creativity and life in general,” says author Todd Mitchell. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with the award-winning author about how to re-envision our creative practice, how to re-think our definition of success and what makes a creative practice sustainable. We also talk about why jelly beans might be an essential item in any creative’s toolbox, habits that help us return to the page another day, and practices that help us identify where our ego is

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30:39

Episode 152: Julia Belluz on How to Have A Happy...

Emerging Form ·

2025/11/27

“There are enough talented people out there,” says Julia Belluz, “but only collaborate with people you really like.” This was the advice the writer followed when deciding to work with scientist Kevin Hall on their new book, Food Intelligence. The resulting book weaves his narrative and evolution as a scientist with her narrative as a patient and journalist. In this episode, we explore what makes a successful collaboration, how to define roles—and why to do this right up front, the importance of

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31:01

Episode 151: Alison Luterman on Striving

Emerging Form ·

2025/11/13

“I’m a striver,” poet Alison Luterman, “still striving to grow.” In this interview with the beloved poet, we follow up on our conversation from episode 64 “It’s Okay to Not Feel Talented, Keep Going Anyway,Alison tells us about her ongoing singing lessons and how they have changed the way she listens, not only to music but to conversations and the rest of the world. This practice is at the heart of her new collection, Hard Listening. Not only does she read from the book, but she shares about what

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56:36

Episode 150 Bonus: The Medicine of Surrender, Poetry,...

Emerging Form ·

2025/11/06

Can poetry be a form of medicine? In this week’s bonus episode, we share a guest podcast, the Wise Effort Show, hosted by our recent guest Dr. Diana Hill. In the bonus episode she did with Emerging Form, Diana shared a poem that was inspired by this interview with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. They discuss the role of poetry in emotional processing, grief, love, and connection. Diana shares how Rosemerry’s poetry has personally influenced her life and work. Rosemerry reads some of her poems, discusses

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31:34

Updated Episode 150: Filling the Well

Emerging Form ·

2025/10/30

How do we take care of our creative selves? How do we step off the wheel of production and find ourselves in the wide-open moment with room to wonder and wander? In this episode, hosts Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Christie Aschwanden have a conversation about where they are at now in their well-filling cycle, the importance of creative self-care and the consequences of not doing so. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

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31:53

Episode 149: Diana Hill on Genius Energy

Emerging Form ·

2025/10/16

Everyone has creative genius, says Diana Hill, PhD, and in her new book, Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most, she explores how to best explore and nurture that genius. We speak about how she battled some of her own demons while writing the book–the committee arguing in her head. We talk about wise effort–not trying too hard, and the three main practices that fuel wise effort–getting curious, opening and focusing. It’s a practical, vulnerable, lighthearted episode.Diana

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29:59

Episode 148: David Baron on Torturous First Drafts...

Emerging Form ·

2025/10/02

“The first draft is absolute torture,” says historical nonfiction writer David Baron. And yet, he persists and his newest book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and more. The Christian Science Monitor says, “The Martians is a fascinating tale that’s beautifully told.” We speak with Baron about the joys of research, the agony of writing, the delight in

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29:58

Episode 147: Michael Kleber-Diggs on the Role of the...

Emerging Form ·

2025/09/18

In this episode, we talk with Michael about the importance of mentors and how sometimes they transition to colleagues as we find our own footing in our creative work, stepping into our own creative identity. He reads “What Name for This,” from his book Worldly Things, and we use the poem as a launching pad to talk about creative relationships, why we write and how attentiveness to the specific can lead us to questions about the universal, and making art out of the ordinary. And, in thinking about

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31:50

Episode 146: Maria Kelson on Switching Genres

Emerging Form ·

2025/09/04

One day, nationally acclaimed poet Maria Kelson hit “a poetry wall” for no identifiable reason. “It was frustrating,” she says, “because I had devoted myself to poetry. For 15 years, it was my primary focus.” What happened next–she followed an emerging passion, crime fiction. ‘As i was casting about I thought, I want to explore the dark side.” In this episode we talk with Maria about shedding layers of creative identity, finding new community, art as a way to explore and expose issues of social

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29:52

Episode 145: Starre Vartan on What it Really Means to...

Emerging Form ·

2025/08/21

When Starre Varten sat down to write her book The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us about the Power of the Female Body, she came to the project with two things: an intellectual thesis and a very personal bodily story. In this episode, we talk with Starre about how both mind and body fueled her creative practice. We also talk about how what began as an article became a book, how to turn toward the part of the book you might rather turn away from, how an outsider’s perspective can help us see our

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31:06

Episode 144: Making Peace with Promoting Your...

Emerging Form ·

2025/08/07

Making something is fun. Promoting it? Not so much… On this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie discuss the what happens when you put something you’ve created out into the world. How do you get it to your intended audience? How do encourage people to find it without feeling like an icky self-promotional nag? We also discuss the pain of realizing that your friends didn’t and won’t read or watch or listen to your new thing, the importance of remembering why you’re doing this, and the 100

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32:43

Episode 143: Shelley Read on Becoming a Novelist in...

Emerging Form ·

2025/07/24

“I am just discovering myself as a novelist,” says international bestselling novelist Shelley Read, author of Go as a River. In this conversation, Shelley shares with us how her journey from poet and non-fiction writer shifted into fiction with a single moment of observation and wonder. She shares with us how she crafts scenes, her penchant for playing with language, why she didn’t share with anyone about what she was doing for many years, how a love affair with her main character drove the whole

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28:26

Episode 142: Bonnie Tsui on Finding the Right...

Emerging Form ·

2025/07/10

“I try to be really open to anything that comes my way,” says bestselling author Bonnie Tsui. Her newest book, On Muscle, isn’t a memoir, but it begins with her recounting her father encouraging her and her brother to “make a muscle.” Tsui appears in many sections of the book interacting with the various characters she introduces. Yet it’s not a book explicitly about her, and if there’s a main character it’s probably human muscle. In this episode we speak with Tsui to find the right balance of

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17:42

Episode 141 Bonus: Jennie Erin Smith on Patience and...

Emerging Form ·

2025/07/03

“You have to have a lot of patience,” says science writer Jennie Erin Smith about working on a long-term creative project. She adds, “You have to have a lot of patience with eccentric people.” In this bonus episode, we talk about patience, plus about sharing work with creative heroes, the importance of taking a good long break, the art of pushing through, what to do when the words aren’t coming, and why having a “breakthrough” isn’t a necessary part of the process.Jennie Erin Smith is the author of

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32:12

Episode 141: Jennie Erin Smith on Exploring the...

Emerging Form ·

2025/06/26

When a creative project lasts for many years, how do you create a cohesive story? How do you gather and organize that much research? At what point do you begin writing? How do you handle the changing of an editor? What happens when you don’t know the ending? And what if you hoped for a different ending? We cover all these questions with Jennie Erin Smith, author of Valley of Forgetting, a book ten years in the making, about a vast Columbian family and the Alzheimer’s researchers who studied

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30:56

Episode 140: Lisa S. Gardiner on Learning From the Past

Emerging Form ·

2025/06/12

How can looking at the past help us understand what to do about a current crisis? “I’m a firm believer that history can help give us perspective here,” says science writer Lisa S. Gardiner. She’s speaking about her research with coral reefs, but it’s an apropos metaphor for how our past experiences with creative endeavors can help inform our current struggles. In this episode, we talk about the importance of the book proposal (and tips for getting one done), the art of weaving the self into a story

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31:58

Episode 139: Adam Becker on Why Doubt is a Strength

Emerging Form ·

2025/05/29

What happens when the subject of your creative practice scares you? Not only that, but what if you’re scared, too, of what might happen when you put your work into the world? We speak with physicist and author Adam Becker about his new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, in which he writes about the terrible plans tech billionaires have for the future and why they won’t work. Our conversation includes why doubt is

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12:36

Episode 138 Bonus: Bil Lepp on Repsonding to an...

Emerging Form ·

2025/05/22

Knowing your audience is everything for a storyteller, and sometimes that information comes in real time. “Within three minutes I am going to know if this is going to be terrible for all of us or great,” says storyteller Bil Lepp. In this bonus episode, we talk about how to respond on stage to an audience’s laughter, what to do if you find yourself with an audience of middle schoolers, how to handle a show that doesn’t go so well, and how he got started in storytelling.Bil Lepp is an award-winning

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27:24

Episode 138: Bil Lepp on Humor and Storytelling

Emerging Form ·

2025/05/15

Humor for the joy of it is reason enough, but in this episode we speak with storyteller Bil Lepp about how humor might also be a way to earn trust with an audience so that we might bring in difficult conversations. He offers techniques for how to craft toward a punchline and how to use a “Lego” approach to crafting multiple stories. We also touch on how storytelling builds community.Bil Lepp is an award-winning storyteller, author, and recording artist. He’s the host of the History Channel’s Man Vs

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31:58

Episode 137: Andrea Barrett on Accepting the Process

Emerging Form ·

2025/05/01

“Practice teaches us to have faith in the process,” says Andrea Barrett, National Book Award winning author. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with her about her newest book, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction. It’s one of the most metaphor-rich, process-curious shows we’ve had yet. We explore the joys of rabbit holes, the importance of not knowing what we are looking for, the inevitability of false starts (and how to let go of the work we’ve done), why we shouldn’t worry about

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