Who are you and what’s Wyrd Woman about?

I’m the author of three books, and the co-creator of Broads and Books Productions. Wyrd Woman is a show that I wrote, produced, and performed.

It’s about a woman who’s isolated herself from an increasingly terrifying outside world, and who, over the course of nine nights, experiences visions and visitations of women throughout time.

What’s the first podcast you ever listened to?

My very first podcast was something like The Daily from the New York Times – just a news show. But my first audio fiction was The Bright Sessions. I was hooked, and so impressed! The ability to tell such a rich and full story via audio really stuck with me.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

My friend Erin and I are book nerds. And in 2018, she had the idea that we should start a book podcast. We spent months researching our niche and teaching ourselves how to do it, and in early 2019, we launched our first show, Broads and Books. We gave book recommendations on a theme, and infused the show with our strange sense of humour, resulting in lots of offbeat stories, funny tangents, and more.

We ran that show for four years, then decided to expand. We formed Broads and Books Productions in 2023, with a number of new shows under our umbrella, including Wyrd Woman.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

I love a good limited series with a narrative nonfiction thread. Classy was so well done from a content and technical perspective – thoughtful, explorative, kind, and truthful in how class impacts not only our lives and futures, but our sense of self. It really hit home, echoing some of my own experiences.

In fiction, I am so inspired by the epic, funny, dark, touching show that is Midnight Burger. I also find The Silt Verses so amazing – how they work with sound to create internal and external horror in a fully imagined world is so cool!

Where did the concept for Wyrd Woman come from?

In early 2023, I was making final edits for my memoir, A Grotesque Animal. The book is about class, gender, sex, generational trauma, and more, but was initially sparked by my discovery at age 43 that I’m autistic. In the process of writing that book, I dove deep into the feeling of being different and never understanding why until middle age. In one of the sections, I did some research into key historical moments, including today, where being different, or weird, was dangerous.

And then that summer of 2023, I was feeling really scared. In the U.S., Trump was back with a vengeance. My state, Iowa, was taking a hard right turn, banning books, outlawing abortion, and, like so many other states, criminalizing being LGBTQ. I was looking at a future where Trump won again, and how these dangers would only increase. I thought about history, all the times that people had a chance to run before they were captured, hurt, or killed, and wondered if this was the time. It was terrifying.

I’d been wanting to try my hand at audio fiction. And all of these things came together into a story that crosses time and connects women who are different. I brought in characters from Viking times, the Middle Ages, the Victorian era, the USSR in the 1930s, and more, all of whom were living through terror, and who were targeted for living outside the norm. I think more than anything I was writing this for myself, a queer, disabled, deeply weird woman, to give myself hope in a dark time. And I wanted to share that with all the others like me.

You’ve also written a short story collection – Exile in Guyville – how do you decide which of your writing should be a short story and which could go on to be an audio drama? What do you think that audio can add to the art of storytelling?

I wrote the stories of Exile in Guyville in 2019, and at the time I was not yet considering audio as a storytelling mechanism. So I threw everything I had into writing.

These days, I’m still figuring out when a story will be written and when it’s audio. There’s something ineffable about what divides and dictates the two. I’m finding that if something feels inert on the page, or it’s not working in some way, it might be needing a soundscape.

In addition to Wyrd Woman, you have two other podcasts, Fuzzy Memories, and Midwest Weird. Could you tell us more about those?

Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine featuring strange stories. Like a traditional print literary magazine, writers submit their stories or essays, and we choose the best fit. But instead of putting that story in a print magazine or online, we turn it into a podcast episode with narration and soundscape. So a story like “36 Hours in the SPAM Museum”, which would be wonderful enough as a print story, is made even more rich and strange with the author’s intonations and music and sound to enhance and punctuate. I do the sound design, and it’s such a fun and intense experience, being able to bring another writer’s weird story to light in an equally weird way. We specifically feature writers from the American Midwest, as it’s a region that is often written off as backward or boring. But as our writers show, it’s also a region of hauntings, surprises, and the uncanny.

Fuzzy Memories is pure comedy and heart. I host the show with Erin and Heath, two of the funniest people ever. And we talk about pop culture from the 1980s and 90s. Whether it’s the utter inanity of 1987’s “Jaws: The Revenge”, 1989’s cutthroat world of fast food pizza, or 1997’s actual football jail, we find the best, worst, and just bizarre. It’s an excellent laugh, and we have so much fun doing it.

Across your work there is an emphasis on the concept of “weird” – could you tell us what being weird means to you?

When I was a kid, we didn’t have much reading material at home. But my mom subscribed to a few women’s magazines, and I tore through them. And at ten years old, I understood some of the tropes and the messages being sent. So I wrote a parody, called “Weird Woman Magazine.” It was about girls and women that don’t fit in the pages of “normal” magazines. I made little business reply cards, and ads for tonics, and quizzes testing your weirdness. I thought it was hilarious and true, but no one else seemed to get it. Or maybe they just didn’t like the idea that I could be proud of being a bit strange and different.

Then, and later, and now, I always felt different. I always felt weird. I found lots of words to help me understand that difference – feminist, queer, autistic – but it all boiled down to abnormal. Atypical. Odd. And in the grand tradition of retaking ownership of words used to denigrate, like the LGBTQ community reclaiming the old slur “queer,” I often summarized those identities into a word that had been an insult, and now I tried to wear proudly.

“Weird” means seeing things others don’t. “Weird” means creating things others won’t. “Weird” is perspective, and identity, and value. It’s content, and creation, and community.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a podcaster?

To just teach yourself the thing, and work at it, and fail and try again. In the past I often found myself waiting for some kind of permission to start a creative project. Nobody is going to grant that, and nobody should. Podcasting is such a unique and immediate art form, one that lets creators experiment without the gatekeepers of publishing. And that’s an incredible opportunity for people willing and ready to create!

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

You can find my books and shows at www.amyleelillard.com!

Listen to Wyrd Woman on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other popular podcast apps >>

The post Wyrd Woman: A sci-fi exploration of non-conformist women appeared first on POD BIBLE.

With the first episode launching this Monday 25th October, Jackie The Ripper is a five-part audio comedy drama podcast which offers an absolutely hilarious, gruesome and timely reimagining of the Jack the Ripper murders. In this retelling, we see a ruthless female serial killer terrorising male victims while teasing her killing spree on social media. From the makers of hysterical spoof comedy podcast, The Offensive, this brand-new audio drama follows the woman-hunt of Whitechapel, with sharp, satirical dialogue from voice-over actors from Mumbai to New Zealand.

Number 1 in the Apple Podcast Fiction Charts today, Pod Bible caught up with writer Joel Emery and director Adam Jarrell to discuss the intricacies of making a hit podcast and much more!

Could you describe the concept behind Jackie The Ripper and what it was like establishing a comedic spin on such an infamous story?

This is a retelling. We’ve kept the finer details, victim’s names are similar, dates are the same, locations are precise – however, we’ve tweaked two things… It’s modern day – and the killer is a woman and she’s going for the men of Whitechapel. True crime is one of the most popular genres across all media at the moment, and has been for some time. We’ve become accustomed to putting comedic spins on tough subjects throughout our three years on The Offensive, and with the gender roles being reversed from the original events, it allowed us the artistic license to get creative with the “gory details”. There’ll be a serious moment in the postmortem, broken by a character saying the word ‘knob’ once too often.

What importance do these dates have on the release of the series?

It’s Halloween week! For some reason we all find Halloween quite fun, so the nature of Jack The Ripper fits it well with late October, a chance for a little scare here and there, but mostly laughs at the expense of our protagonists and a few de-bollocked victims. The boring answer to that was a few international football breaks, meaning the occasional week off from our weekly show ‘The Offensive’, and allowing ourselves to dive head first into Whitechapel.

Was the female characterisation of Jack The Ripper simply part of the comedic agenda or do you feel it takes on more of a social importance?

If you research 1888 and Jack the Ripper and what he did to Mary Ann, Annie, Liz, Catherine and Mary Jane… And you don’t come out the other end of that a feminist – then you’ve got something wrong with you. Neither of us know the reality of being a woman, so while feminism remains a strong theme in the show – it would be disingenuous and obnoxious to present the show to the world as purely how us blokes see it. Other themes are in there, social cohesion (or lack there of), masculinity crisis, loss and pride.  Ultimately we build from the comedy first and foremost. It’s embarrassing to admit that knobs and balls being chopped off is still funny to us. And we know it’s funny to people older and much wiser than we are. It just is.

Already Scheduled for March 2022, series two of Jackie The Ripper will be released! What do the listeners have to look forwards to in the upcoming sequel!?

Well, historically we know that Jack the Ripper committed AT LEAST five murders, and without giving away any spoilers, each season consists of five episodes, and you can bet we’re not doing an episode per murder. The already fleshed out (no pun intended) characters have a long journey ahead of them, and with this being such an ensemble piece, there’s more than meets the eye (ear) on quite a few of them. As I say, no spoilers, as they’re no fun at all, but you’re in for quite a ride.

Jackie The Ripper, a Stak production, is

available on all podcast platforms now!

The post Jackie The Ripper is a hilarious new audio drama, just in time for Halloween appeared first on POD BIBLE.