On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jason McCall interviews Brooke Champagne.

Brooke Champagne is the author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy. Her writing appears widely in literary journals and has received various awards, including the inaugural William Bradley Prize for the Essay for her work “Exercises.” Her essays have been selected as Notables in several editions of Best American Essays. She is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is an Assistant Professor of English in the MFA Program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize); Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and co-winner of the 2013 Etchings Press Whirling Prize); I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.

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Conversation topics include:

-- finding time

-- 20+ years of teaching

-- reading turning into writing

-- Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy

-- trying to quit writing

-- putting together an essay collection

-- time's role in craft

-- approaching the page in different stages of life

-- sports and new projects

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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.