The Passage

The Passage is a literary podcast where authors read a passage from their own work and break down exactly how they wrote it, from the first spark of inspiration and the early drafts to the sentence-level decisions and the moment they knew it was finished. Guests span fiction, nonfiction, essays, and more, from novelists to memoirists to food and travel writers. Your hosts are Jon and Cory, two former book editors who love getting into the weeds of how writing actually gets made.

The Passage is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 15 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts The Passage, a arts show with 15 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  The Passage

  Dan Fesperman | Pariah | Spy Fiction | Ep. 15

  Aug 11, 202647 min

  Bestselling spy novelist Dan Fesperman joins Cory and Jon to discuss Pariah , a satirical thriller about a disgraced comedian recruited by the CIA to spy on an authoritarian Eastern European regime. The passage he reads is a masterclass in building suspense through, let's say... unconventional narrative choices, balancing tension with humor, and crafting dialogue that feels anything but crafted. We also discuss journalism as preparation for fiction, the beauty of the spy novel, the tradeoffs between creating fictional worlds and deeply researched real ones, and the disciplined writing routine that has produced more than a dozen novels over the past two decades. Dan’s passage, from Pariah : The Passage: Pavel excused himself into the hallway, where he ducked into the door for the washroom. He was halfway to the urinals when he heard the door open behind him, followed by footsteps. A sidelong glance showed that it was Sarić, who stooped to pick up one of those rubber wedges that janitors use to hold open the door during cleaning. But Sarić jammed it beneath the door to hold it shut. They were locked in. Pavel, who felt as if he didn’t dare move, much less unzip his trousers, watched as Sarić quickly checked all three stalls to make sure they were empty. Then, still without a word, Sarić stepped over to a sink, where he unscrewed the cap of his orange water bottle, pulled out some sort of filter attachment with a plunger, and refilled the bottle. Pavel, who needed badly to pee, fidgeted as he watched this odd ritual. After filling the bottle, Sarić reinserted the filter plunger and pushed it to the bottom, the same way you made coffee with a French press. Sarić screwed the top back on and eyed Pavel carefully. “I suppose you think this is a foolish indulgence. I know that’s what others say.” “No. Not at all.” “They have the same attitude toward a lot of security precautions. ‘Oh, that’s harmless, why bother.’ Of course, they said that about Kelenić as well.” Sarić set the bottle onto the rim of the sink and faced Pavel from ten feet away, like a sheriff in an American western. Pavel crossed his feet and tried to hold it in, his bladder feeling like a water balloon that might burst at any moment. “So, what do you think?” Sarić asked. Pavel cleared his throat. “About what?” “The evening. And our American guest. The way he comported himself.” “I think it went as well as could be expected. The president seemed to enjoy his company.” “Yes, I think that is correct. In that sense, it was a success.” “I’m glad to know that.” “I don’t like him.” “Mr. Knight?” “He’s an actor. They’re paid to fool us.” “He’s really more of a comedian.” “Even worse. Watch. By the end of the week, he’ll have us laughing at ourselves. When people start doing that, they miss things. Important things.” “Yes, well… maybe we could use a few laughs.” “Fine, then. Laugh your way through the entire week. But don’t lose your focus, because you have a role to play, a job to do. For me.” Sarić closed the distance between them and clamped a hand on Pavel’s shoulder, the grip uncomfortably firm. Pavel had to shift his feet to hold his balance, even as he continued to concentrate on not peeing in his pants....

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  The Passage

  Oana Aristide | Astronaut! | Fiction | Ep. 14

  Aug 1, 202645 min

  Oana Aristide reads the opening pages of Astronaut! , her recently-released novel set in late-80s communist Romania. Astronaut! follows two main characters: an eight-year-old girl caught up in a rigged school contest and a detective ordered to pin a string of murders on a man-eating bear. Oana talks to Jon and Cory about: Why the opening was the last chapter she wrote, and also the most difficult Deliberating over the pros and cons of opening the book with humor The challenges of writing from the perspective of a child The trickiest aspects of writing in a fourth language Thinking and drafting in scenes rather than pages or word counts Her love of Chekov’s short stories Getting feedback from her two long-running writing groups Oana's passage: Sighișoara, March Lia is being walked home by Comrade Blaga, the shopkeeper, who is holding her hand. A couple of times she tries to get out of this embarrassing situation, makes her hand go limp, or folds it together in the shape of a small bird wriggling out of a nest. But Comrade Blaga does not let small birds go. They are walking by the road along the river embankment. It’s Mother’s birthday and also Friday afternoon, and the buses are bringing people home from the factories. From the corner of her eye Lia catches a glimpse of one, so full it’s almost dragging its belly along the tarmac. It’s an accordion bus – it has that creaky, bendy rubber bit in the middle – and there are people clinging to the steps and to its three wide-open doors, a bit like bees swarming to a hive. Everyone on the passing buses can see her and Comrade Blaga walking home hand in hand. The river is far below. Murky as always, barely moving along. Mother explained that it used to be higher up and wild, liked to burst its banks whenever there was heavy rain, flooding houses, shops and roads, and so the people made it live in this river-gutter instead. If the shopkeeper were not still holding her hand, Lia would be leaning over the railing, throwing pebbles into the trapped river. It’s Mother’s birthday today and she has no present. Lia couldn’t believe her luck when she first spotted the vase with a big yellow sunflower painted on it, couldn’t believe that it was something people could buy. And so today, Lia had pointed at it in the homeware shop, and Comrade Blaga took the banknote from her. He looked her up and down – it was then that the bad-belly feeling started – then he locked the door of his shop. There was no one else inside. And now – no money, no vase, no hand.

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  The Passage

  Sonya Walger | Wifehouse | Fiction | Ep. 12

  Jul 5, 202645 min

  Award-winning author and actor Sonya Walger ( Lost , For All Mankind ) joins us to discuss her latest novel, Wifehouse —the story of a woman who has always defined herself as a wife and mother, and who, in trying to put her own happiness first, pursues an affair with a much younger French tutor. As Sonya puts it, it's ultimately a novel about "a mother who leaves,” and the questions such a story raises: Why would a woman make that decision? And what happens after? The passage Sonya reads centers on a real-life story that inspired one of the book's most pivotal scenes—and one of the hardest for her to get right. It’s a great conversation about concision, pacing, metaphor, and how an ordinary podcast anecdote can find it’s way to unlocking the emotional heart of a novel. Sonya also talks to Cory and Jon about her process of “writing into a question,” how the experience of interrogating a script as an actor lends itself to novel-writing, why more actors should write novels, the art of turning life’s observations into fiction, and what makes airplanes great places to get some work done (hint: it’s the fact that you’re trapped). Sonya’s passage, from Wifehouse : She gropes for her phone in the dark, finds a podcast to drown out her thoughts. The host of a news review show tells a story about a group of tourists on a guided tour bus in Iceland who got off at a rest stop to stretch their legs and take in the scenery. One female traveler decided to change her clothes before getting back on the bus. When it was time to leave, the passengers boarded the bus, and one of them alerted the driver that they were missing a passenger—a woman in black who had been sitting by the window. The driver agreed to wait, and they all sat on the bus, patiently awaiting this woman’s return. Eventually, when she did not appear, they decided to get out and search for her. The female traveler joined in the search. Local police were summoned, the fire department deployed, all beginning an increasingly frantic search for a missing woman in a black jacket. It was many, many hours before the female traveler realized that she was, in fact, the person for whom they were searching. She informed the authorities, and the search was called off. The host laughs as he tells the story. Annie is wide awake now. She pictures this woman, trudging through the tundra, searching for the missing tourist. She wonders how long it took her to realize her mistake. She wonders how long it took her to admit to it. Did she hesitate, Annie wonders, did she for one wild moment wonder what would happen if she never owned her mistake but allowed that other self to vanish into that treeless horizon? Did she, for a moment, hover on the threshold of becoming someone new, someone naked, reborn, free? Annie stares at the darkness. She, too, is walking in the wrong direction, knowing full well that she is the one who is missing.

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  The Passage

  John Keene - "Gloss" (Counternarratives) | Fiction | Ep. 11

  Jun 24, 202642 min

  John Keene reads from "Gloss on a History of Roman Catholics in the Early American Republic, 1790–1825; or The Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows," a novella at the heart of his 2015 collection Counternarratives . It’s an experimental piece of fiction imagined as a footnote to an obscure history text, centered on an enslaved woman named Carmel and expanding across the early 19th century Americas, starting from the Haitian Revolution and evolving into a gothic, possibly supernatural tale in a Kentucky convent. John talks to Jon and Cory about: How the novella's structural framework, a historical footnote that “swallows” the text it annotates, came out of his early graduate work with E.L. Doctorow linking experimental fiction with history His initial worry that the asterisk/footnote idea for the story was nothing but "postmodern hijinks" Losing an early version of this story and several others from Counternarratives to a computer crash and spending years away from it, then returning to discover the rewrite was more ambitious than anything he'd lost How Carmel's arc emerged late in the process, as he realized her growing power meant she could eventually claim her own voice and narrate her own ending His habit, when stuck, of opening any nearby book, and the belief that another writer will always show you the way forward The Latin American experimentalists, including Reinaldo Arenas, Severo Sarduy, José Lezama Lima, who showed him that fiction could be formally radical and historically engaged at once The opening of John’s passage, from “Gloss”: GLOSS ON A HISTORY OF ROMAN CATHOLICS IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1825; OR THE STRANGE HISTORY OF OUR LADY OF THE SORROWS A History of Roman Catholics in the Early American Republic: 1790–1825, Jos. N. O. de L'Écart-Francis and Ambrose Carroll Meyer (Boston: Flaherty & Smith, 1895) The status of the ancient Faith differed on the eastern shores of the Mississippi and its southerly tributaries. A convent and school, established at the turn of the nineteenth century, are referred to indirectly in the records of His Holiness Bishop John Carroll of the Diocese of Baltimore, whose curacy extended at that time to the far western frontiers of the virgin Republic's lands. A specific reference may be found, however, in the personal papers of Fr. Auguste-Marie Malesvaux, a native of Saint-Domingue, whose evangelistic labors encompassed the Spanish and later French territories from Louisiana as far north as the Great Lakes. Malesvaux offers brief notations on the convent and school, which he asserts were the first in this region. Flemish Nuns of the Order of the Most Precious Charity of Our Lady of the Sorrows established both near the village of New Hurttstown, in this frontier region of western Kentucky, in 1800. Because the convent and school suddenly vanished without a trace, and within several years the order itself disappeared as well, and as the nearby non-Catholic settlement suffered through a series of calamities before dwindling to near-extinction until its reestablishment in 1812, no other definitive records of this foundation remain.* It was not until the Reverend Father Charles Nerinckx, the native of Herfe- *Carmel was the lone child among the handful of bondspeople remaining at Valdoré, the coffee plantation to which Olivier de L'Écart returned in late July 1803. The estate, over which his elder brother Nicolas had presided for more than two decades, clung like a forget-me-not to the cliffs high above the coastal city of Jérémie, west of the Rivière Grand'Anse, in the southern district of the colony of Saint-Domingue.

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  The Passage

  John Keene - "Gloss" (Counternarratives) | Fiction | Ep. 11

  Jun 24, 202642 minS0

  <p>John Keene reads from "Gloss on a History of Roman Catholics in the Early American Republic, 1790–1825; or The Strange History of Our Lady of the Sorrows," a novella at the heart of his 2015 collection Counternarratives. It’s an experimental piece of fiction imagined as a footnote to an obscure history text, centered on an enslaved woman named Carmel and expanding across the early 19th century Americas, starting from the Haitian Revolution and evolving into a gothic, possibly supernatural tale in a Kentucky convent.<br /><br />John talks to Jon and Cory about:</p>How the novella's structural framework, a hist...

  ListenShow Notes

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