The Plague Remedy Podcast

thoughtful, provocative conversations
with writers and thinkers
hosted by Stephen Sacco

Word by Word with Hannah Sward author of 'Strip: A Memoir'

Hannah Sward is the daughter of the late poet, Robert Sward. She is the multi-award-winning author of Strip: A Memoir, receiving the attention of authors such as Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, Melissa Broder, and NYT bestselling novelists Jill Schary Robinson and Caroline Leavitt. 

Sward has appeared on Book TV CSPAN, NBC CA Live and others. She has also been a guest on dozens of panels and podcasts such as AWP, Writers on Writing, On Writing Memoir, Dopey, and One Day At A Time. 

Widely published in literary journals in the US, Canada, and the UK, her most recent work has appeared in publications such as NY Times (TLS), LA Times, HuffPost, The Rumpus and Memoir Land. She was a regular contributor at The Fix and Erotic Review and columnist and editor at Third Street Villager in Los Angeles. 

Hannah is on the board of Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging incarcerated writers.

John Burnside 1955 - 2024

John Burnside was a national treasure.

He was a poet, memoirist, novelist, academic, and nature columnist for The New Statesman. His collection Black Cat Bone won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Poetry Prize, making him only one of four poets to win both for a single collection. His memoir A Lie About My Father won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. His novel Summer of Drowning won the Costa Book Award. He taught creative writing at the University of St Andrews and was also a solid bloke. He will be missed.

Post-Punk and Poetry
Matthew Caley

Matthew Caley recently taught poetry at the University of St Andrews, the University of Winchester and Royal Holloway University, London.

His first collection, Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He has published six more since, four with Bloodaxe, Apparently (2010), Rake (2016), Trawlerman’s Turquoise (2019) and To Abandon Wizardry (2023). His work has been featured in many anthologies, including Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), Poems of the Decade (Forward Worldwide, 2011), The Picador Book of Love Poems (Picador, 2011), Pestilence (Lapwing, Belfast, 2020) and Divining Dante (Recent Work Press, 2021). Prophecy Is Easy, a pamphlet of very loose versions from French twentieth-century poets was published by Blueprint in 2021.

He’s read his work from StAnza in Fife – where he gave the StAnza Lecture 2020 – to the Globe Theatre, London; from Galway to the Czech Republic, to Novi Sad, Serbia. He lives in London with the Czech-born artist Pavla Alchin.

How a Corporate Lawyer's 5% Chance of Survival led to the Writing Life with Ricky Monahan Brown

Ricky Monahan Brown suffered a massive haemorrhagic stroke in 2012. His memoir, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, became one of The Scotsman’s Scottish Nonfiction Books of 2019.

The live literature and music series he co-founded, Interrobang?! won the Saboteur Award for the Best Regular Spoken Word Night in Britain for 2017. Field Work, an Interrobang?! evening of storytelling, poetry and music at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Gaelic, Scots and English that Ricky produced and co-wrote, won a Top Scottish Alternative Media Award for 2018 from Bella Caledonia.

Ricky’s short fiction has been widely published, including by 404 Ink, Eemis Stane and the Dublin Inquirer. His flash fiction has won and been shortlisted for many awards. His debut novella will be published in 2023.

A stroke awareness ambassador for the British Heart Foundation, Ricky has spoken with national newspapers and television news programmes about his life and work, and spoken to online festivals and a full conference room at the EICC.

An Army of Women, Sisters on Elephants, and Mark Twain with author Phong Nguyen

Phong Nguyen is a writer of historical fiction (Bronze Drum), experimental fiction (Roundabout: an Improvisational Fiction), spinoffs (The Adventures of Joe Harper), alternate history (Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History), dirty realism (Memory Sickness), and more.


He teaches fiction writing at the University of Missouri, where he is the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing. He has edited volumes including Nancy Hale: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master and Best Peace Fiction: A Social Justice Anthology.

Phong grew up in Hightstown, New Jersey and has lived in nine different U.S. states, though he has called Missouri home for the last 15 years. He alternates summers travelling abroad and teaching for the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.

Where can I find Phong Nguyen?

Phong Nguyen's Books (but not all of them)

Phong's two books (and then some) -

Phong's Two Other Recommendations

A Raucous Joyful Interview with an OG of Letters Laurie Stone

Laurie Stone is the author of Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing That Is Happening (Dottir Press), My Life as an Animal, Stories (TriQuarterly Books, Northwestern University Press), the novel Starting with Serge (Doubleday), and the essay collection Laughing in the Dark (Ecco).

She is the editor and contributor to the memoir anthology Close to the Bone (Grove). A longtime writer for the Village Voice (1974-1999), she has been the theatre critic for The Nation and critic-at-large on Fresh Air.