
Ursa Short Fiction
Ursa Story Company

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Top 10 Ursa Short Fiction Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Ursa Short Fiction episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Ursa Short Fiction for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Ursa Short Fiction episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

The Life and Short Stories of Diane Oliver (Part One)
Ursa Short Fiction
08/09/22 • 65 min
Content advisory: This episode contains a mention of a racist slur.
Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton's two-part book club discussion on the life and work of Diane Oliver, who published six short stories before her life was tragically cut short in May 1966 at the age of 22.
Oliver was just a month away from graduating from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when she was killed in a motorcycle accident in Iowa City, Iowa.
Philyaw and Walton first discovered Oliver’s stories from writer Michael A. Gonzales, who wrote an essay about Oliver for The Bitter Southerner. In part one of Ursa’s book club episode, they go in-depth on four of Oliver’s short stories: “Key to the City,” “Health Service,” “Traffic Jam,” and “Neighbors.”
Episode Links and Reading List:
- The Short Stories and Too-Short Life of Diane Oliver (Michael A. Gonzales, The Bitter Southerner, 2022)
- “Key to the City” (Red Clay Reader II, 1965)
- “Health Service” (Negro Digest, November 1965)
- “Traffic Jam” (Negro Digest, July 1966)
- “Neighbors” (The Sewanee Review, 1966)
- Diane Oliver obituary (Jet, 1966)
More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton
Support Future Episodes of Ursa Short Fiction
Become a Member at ursastory.com/join.
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Introducing Ursa: Why We Love Short Fiction
Ursa Short Fiction
06/06/22 • 28 min
Acclaimed authors Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) and Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev) introduce Ursa Short Fiction, a new anthology podcast dedicated to celebrating short stories, with a spotlight on underrepresented voices. Join us for author interviews, book club chats, and audio stories from some of your favorite writers and emerging talent.
Transcript: https://ursastory.com/introducing-ursa-short-fiction-podcast/
Support Ursa: https://ursastory.com/join
Authors and Books Mentioned in This Episode
Heads of the Colored People, by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
How to Sit, by Tyrese Coleman
The World Doesn’t Require You, by Rion Amilcar Scott
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, by ZZ Packer
The work of J. California Cooper
The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor
12 Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis
The Travelers, by Regina Porter
Claire of the Sea Light, by Edwidge Danticat
You are Free, by Danzy Senna
The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, by Danielle Evans
I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat, by Christopher Gonzalez
Milk Blood Heat, by Dantiel W. Moniz
Writing from Dawnie and Deesha
Introducing Ursa: A Letter from Co-Founder and Editorial Director Dawnie Walton
A Love Letter to Short Stories, by Deesha Philyaw
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
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Dantiel W. Moniz on Hometowns, Girlhood, and the Life Experiences that Fuel Fiction Writing
Ursa Short Fiction
05/17/23 • 57 min
It’s a very special “Three Ds from Duval” episode of Ursa Short Fiction! Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton welcome fellow Jacksonville native Dantiel W. Moniz, author of the acclaimed 2021 short story collection MILK BLOOD HEAT.
Moniz talks about how growing up in Jacksonville informed the stories in MILK BLOOD HEAT, and how real-life experiences serve as a jumping-off point for the stories we tell.
“It’s always as a seed or a starting off point because the story is a thing that allows me to get past what actually happened or what I think actually happened, and then explore what could have happened.”
Reading List: Books, Stories, and Authors Mentioned
- MILK BLOOD HEAT, by Dantiel W. Moniz (Grove Press)
- “An Almanac of Bones,” by Dantiel W. Moniz (Apogee Journal)
- “Eula,” by Deesha Philyaw (Apogee Journal)
- The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans
- The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, by Mariana Enríquez
- Manywhere, by Morgan Thomas
- The Getaway Car, by Ann Patchett
- Dantiel W. Moniz’s website
About the Author
Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Award, a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship, and the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction. Her debut collection, Milk Blood Heat, is the winner of a Florida Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Tin House, and elsewhere. Moniz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches fiction.
Read More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)
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Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
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Rubén Degollado on Writing a Family Story, 25 Years in the Making
Ursa Short Fiction
08/23/23 • 55 min
Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton go in-depth with Rubén Degollado, author of the novel The Family Izquierdo, which started out as a short story collection about a single family.
Degollado's story “The Seven Songs” was featured on last week’s episode, and he discusses his journey to writing and publishing the book, as well as how he navigated his writing journey alongside his career as an educator. He first started writing the Izquierdo family stories in the late '90s, eventually developing the family curse and tensions, and playing with point of view to inhabit the lives of the many family members.
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Degollado aims to represent his own family, experiences, and community through The Family Izquierdo, and he quotes Toni Morrison, who said “if there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
“A lot of the stories I read were about immigrants, and I think those are great stories. I love immigrant stories, but that’s not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about what happens after. What happens post immigration.”If you haven't already, be sure to listen to last week's episode featuring Degollado's story, “The Seven Songs.”
Reading List- "The Seven Songs" by Rubén Degollado (Ursa Short Fiction, Season Two, Episode 15)
- The Family Izquierdo (W. W. Norton)
- The Family Izquierdo audiobook (Blackstone Publishing / Downpour.com)
- The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
- Throw (Rubén Degollado)
- "A Temporary Matter" (Jhumpa Lahiri)
- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer)
- Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
- Sabrina & Corina: Stories (Kali Fajardo-Anstine)
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
- The World Doesn't Require You (Rion Amilcar Scott)
- Brownsville (Oscar Casares)
- Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Rubén Degollado’s work has recently appeared in Literary Hub, CRAFT, The Common, and elsewhere. His novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Young Adult book for 2020. His debut literary novel The Family Izquierdo is a long list title for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Rubén lives and writes along the southern border, in the Río Grande Valley of Texas.
More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)
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Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

Shows We Love: Black & Published
Ursa Short Fiction
01/31/24 • 46 min
While we put the final touches on Season Three, we wanted to share an episode from another podcast that we think you’ll love: Black & Published, hosted by Nikesha Elise Williams.
On today’s episode, Nikesha’s guest is Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the historical fiction novel TAKE MY HAND. It's a story based on the real-life Relf sisters of Montgomery, Alabama, who were forcibly sterilized by the workers of a federal family planning clinic in 1973.
Subscribe to listen to more episodes from the latest season of Black & Published:
https://blackpublished.buzzsprout.com/
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Ursa Presents: Reckon True Stories, with Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon
Ursa Short Fiction
07/09/24 • 48 min
Dawnie Walton and Deesha Philyaw introduce us to Reckon True Stories, a brand new podcast hosted by Deesha and acclaimed author Kiese Laymon, dedicated to all things nonfiction.
Listen, then follow the show in your favorite podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://link.chtbl.com/truestories
Guests for Season One include writers Roxane Gay, Imani Perry, Alexander Chee, Minda Honey, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Samantha Irby. Produced in partnership with Reckon.
We'll also have more episodes of Ursa Short Fiction coming this fall! Sign up for email updates: https://ursastory.com
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Season 3 Sneak Preview!
Ursa Short Fiction
10/24/24 • 10 min
We're back! Dawnie Walton and Deesha Philyaw give us a special sneak preview of what's in store for Season Three.
Show notes:
- Support this season with a membership or one-time contribution, and get access to bonus episodes: ursastory.com/join
- Follow our other show, Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw and Kiese Laymon.
- Read more about Dawnie Walton's next novel!
- Contact us via email: [email protected]
Produced by: Dawnie Walton, Deesha Philyaw, and Mark Armstrong
Associate Producer: Marina Leigh
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

Nafissa Thompson-Spires on the Making of ‘Heads of the Colored People’
Ursa Short Fiction
08/02/23 • 52 min
Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton go deep with Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of the beloved 2018 collection Heads of the Colored People, to discuss Heads’ origin, the texts and other media that influenced Thompson-Spires, inspirations for her stories and characters in the collection, and their shared love for the Notes app.
Thompson-Spires is candid about her upbringing in California and her own family, and how those experiences have shaped her work in terms of characters, autobiographical-leaning-but-fictionalized events, and even her ideas of place and the ways that racism persists in different ways in different parts of the country.
Support this show by becoming an Ursa Member: https://ursastory.com/join/
Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned
- Heads of the Colored People (Nafissa Thompson-Spires)
- Mat Johnson
- The Guardian Interview with Nafissa Thompson-Spires
- Mark Anthony Neal
- Victor LaValle
- Paul Beatty
- Shirley Jackson
- Flannery O'Connor
- George Schuyler
- Ishmael Reed
- James McCune Smith
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
- Solmaz Sharif
- Sandeep Parmar
- Charles Dickens
- Hacks
- Reservation Dogs
- Lot (Bryan Washington)
- Milk Blood Heat (Dantiel W. Moniz)
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
- Seeking Fortune Elsewhere (Sindya Bhanoo)
- Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song
- 'Alright' (Kendrick Lamar)
- Denne Michele Norris
About the Author
Nafissa Thompson-Spires wrote Heads of the Colored People, which won the PEN Open Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Siedenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her collection was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Award, and several other prizes. She also won a 2019 Whiting Award.
She earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Root, Ploughshares, 400 Souls , and The 1619 Project, among other publications. New writing is forthcoming in Fourteen Days, edited by Margaret Atwood.
She’s currently the Richards Family Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Cornell University.
More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw)
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Dawnie Walton)
***
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Producer: Mark Armstrong
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

06/22/22 • 42 min
Co-hosts Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton speak with writer William Pei Shih, author of the Ursa Original “Happy Family,” a story about a lost childhood, a struggling restaurant, and a bygone era of Chinatown. (Warning: This episode contains “Happy Family” spoilers.)
“Your character has to fail in telling their story,” Shih says. “I think that's one of the beautiful things about fiction. It truly is the messiness of life.”
Shih’s stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories 2020, VQR, McSweeney’s, and The Southern Review, among many other publications. He spoke with Philyaw and Walton about his approach to writing and developing characters, how “Happy Family” first came to life, and how hearing the audio version changed his storytelling approach.
This episode is sponsored by Catapult: Award-winning classes by writers, for writers. Ursa listeners get 20% off upcoming online classes with the coupon code URSA20. Go to catapult.co/classes.
Additional production support for this episode by Veronica Smith.
Episode Links and Reading List:
- “Happy Family” (Ursa)
- “Enlightenment” (VQR)
- “Necessary Evils” (Southern Review)
- What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah
- Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell
- Look How Happy I’m Making You, by Polly Rosenwaike
More from William Pei Shih:
- "The Golden Arowana" (The Masters Review), about a precious and rare fish, a young man and his grandmother from China, and the road trip of a lifetime—to Pittsburgh, and what happens when one finds more than they bargained for.
- "My Son," (F(r)iction, Spring 2021), a story focusing on father/son cross-generational and cross-cultural struggles and miscommunications.
- More stories: https://williampeishih.com/home/publications/
More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton
Support Ursa by becoming a Member in Apple Podcasts, or by going to ursastory.com/join
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join

Nana Nkweti: ‘I Always Knew I Was Going to Write Stories’
Ursa Short Fiction
10/19/22 • 57 min
On the Season One finale of Ursa Short Fiction, co-hosts Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton talk to Nana Nkweti, author of the acclaimed short story collection, Walking on Cowrie Shells (Graywolf Press).
Nkweti’s story “Dance the Fiya Dance,” performed by Enih Agwe, was featured in Episode 15.
Support Future Episodes of Ursa Short Fiction
Become a Member at ursastory.com/join.
About the Author
Nana Nkweti is a Cameroonian-American writer, Whiting Award winner, and AKO Caine Prize finalist whose work has garnered fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Ucross, Byrdcliffe, Kimbilio, Hub City Writers, the Stadler Center for Poetry, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her first book, Walking on Cowrie Shells, was hailed by The New York Times review as a “raucous and thoroughly impressive debut” with "stories to get lost in again and again." The collection is also a New York Times Editor's Choice, Indie Next pick, recipient of starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and BookPage; and has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Oprah Daily, The Root, NPR, Buzzfeed, and Thrillist; amongst others. The work features elements of mystery, horror, myth, and graphic novels to showcase the complexity and vibrance of African diaspora cultures and identities. She is a professor of English at the University of Alabama where she teaches creative writing courses that explore her eclectic literary interests: ranging from graphic novels to medical humanities onto exploring works by female authors in genres such as horror, Afrofuturism, and mystery.
Episode Links and Reading List:
- “Dance the Fiya Dance” (Ursa)
- Walking on Cowrie Shells (Graywolf Press)
- Nana Nkweti’s website
- “Nana Nkweti’s Tales of Cameroonians at Home and in America” (Deesha Philyaw, The New York Times Book Review)
- Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine
- Bloodchild, Octavia Butler
- “The Secret Sci-Fi Life of Alice B. Sheldon” (NPR)
More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton:
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
- The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join
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FAQ
How many episodes does Ursa Short Fiction have?
Ursa Short Fiction currently has 41 episodes available.
What topics does Ursa Short Fiction cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts, Books and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on Ursa Short Fiction?
The episode title 'The Life and Short Stories of Diane Oliver (Part One)' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Ursa Short Fiction?
The average episode length on Ursa Short Fiction is 46 minutes.
How often are episodes of Ursa Short Fiction released?
Episodes of Ursa Short Fiction are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Ursa Short Fiction?
The first episode of Ursa Short Fiction was released on Jun 6, 2022.
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