This is Awakeners, a Lit Hub Radio podcast about mentorship in the literary arts. Robert Frost allegedly said he was not a teacher but an “awakener.” On every episode of this podcast, host Lena Crown speaks with writers, artists, critics, and scholars across generations who have awakened something for one another. We chat about how their relationship has evolved, examine the connections and divergences in their writing and thinking, and dig into the archives for traces of their mutual influence.
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On this episode, Lena gets temporarily inducted into a writing group called the Firefeet by writers Emily Alford, Charlie Beckerman, CJ Hauser and Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, who have been keeping their “feet to the fire”—in other words, keeping weekly goal-setting and accountability email threads—for the past ten years. The four connected through the MFA and Ph.D programs in creative writing at Florida State University, and they’ve supported one another through novel drafting, book publication, family struggles, job changes, and more over the course of a decade.
We discuss how the Firefeet came together, what makes them good readers of one another’s work, the “signature moves” that characterize each of their writing, and what they’ve learned about writing group best practices. In the second half of the episode, we define four key terms in Firefeet lingo, and we go around the circle and perform a live weekly check-in with Lena participating as an honorary Firefeet (as determined on the show, there is no singular Foot). We also celebrate Olivia, whose week is extra special: the publication of this podcast episode coincides with the pub date for Mutual Interest, her new queer historical novel about a love triangle in Gilded-Age New York.
Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com
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Emily Alford is a writer living in New Orleans. A former staff writer at Jezebel, her work has also appeared in Publishers Weekly, Iron Horse, Gawker, and elsewhere. She teaches at Tulane and is hard at work on a noir novel. You can find pictures of her 15-year-old cocker spaniel on Instagram (@emilyalicealford) and rants at the TV on Bluesky (@alfordalice).
Charlie Beckerman is a writer who claims both San Francisco and New York as his hometown. His fiction has appeared in Glassworks and The Quail Bell Review, and his memoir podcast, Serial Dater, is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. He has written other nonfiction for Greatist, Thrillist, and worked as a political writer for Bustle during the 2016 Presidential Election. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to the United Kingdom, and he is working on his PhD in Fiction at the University of Cincinnati. He is currently seeking representation for his queer historical fiction novel set in London during the Second World War. He is @chozzles everywhere on social media, and you can find more information at www.charliebeckerman.com.
CJ Hauser is a genderqueer and genrequeer writer who teaches at Colgate University. They are the author of The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays and Family of Origin: A Novel. You can find them trying to keep their chin up and disseminating dog pictures on substack @dopaminedog.
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith (@owolfgangsmith) is the author of Mutual Interest (out Feb 4, 2025 from Bloomsbury) and Glassworks, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with her partner.
