Writers Who Read

Gary Alan McBride
Monthly podcast. Next episode on Sunday, May 10.

Gary Alan McBride founded the Boulder, Colorado-based Writers Who Read novel study group in May of 2018. Since then he and other local writers have been analyzing 10 novels per year within 12-18 months of their publication. Gary is also the author of the WwR reference guide, Literary Forensics: How Reading Can Make You a Better Writer, available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook in bookstores and at online retailers worldwide. More information here: https://LiteraryForensicsBook.com.


WwR is focused 100% on today's fiction, mostly in advance of academic scholarship, so we live on the cutting edge of contemporary analysis. And that's how we like it. Our goal is to read like a writer and not wait for someone else to tell us what to think. That means we read with intent--to become better at noticing what the author is doing to manage our emotions and manipulate our point of view. And so it doesn't matter whether what we read is critically acclaimed or academically vetted, because we can learn the same lessons from bad writing as from highly polished prose. We use our own reactions to the text to discover where to dig, and we use Literary Forensics techniques to sift through the layers. Our goal is to uncover the author's intent and to identify the tools they used to create their story so we can use them in our own writing.


On our monthly podcast Gary is joined by Whitney Pinion, Mira Landry, and sometimes others guest readers. We discuss our own textual discoveries as well as insights gleaned from our group discussion, because as much as we can learn on our own, we can learn so much more about how to read and write when we listen to others' viewpoints.


And that's where you come in, dear listener. We invite you to join us each month, 10 months a year, for a new episode when we discuss the latest literary techniques and publishing trends so that you can try out these techniques for yourself and maybe add your voice to ours.


We are Writers Who Read.

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59 episodes  •  0 archived  •  
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April 12
April 12
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March 22
March 22
47 mins
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March 8
March 8
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February 22
February 22
48 mins
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February 8
February 8
2 mins
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January 25
January 25
45 mins
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January 11
January 11
4 mins
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Dec 28, 2025
Dec 28, 2025
46 mins
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Dec 14, 2025
Dec 14, 2025
1 min
S3 E1·
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025
49 mins