"I gave Cindy's eulogy—I was 18 years old—and the job never quite felt finished."

This is a SPECIAL EPISODE of Sad Me of the Past, where we invite young writers from the Iowa Youth Writing Project (IYWP) to talk about a ghost story they created for the Ghosts on the Radio haunted audio anthology.

"I’m working on a collection of essays about faith, art, and conversion—more specifically, about the way devotional art can act as a sort of vehicle for “translating” religious ideas into a vocabulary that’s more hospitable to secular audiences."

"Giving myself permission to experiment with something new—like writing an essay in the form of dictionary entries modeled after Bob Flanagan's The Book of Medicine—is so exciting and invigorating."

"I knew in high school that I wanted to study Cinema and Screenwriting, so I was looking for a university with a rigorous writing program, in a location that would foster my love for art."

"I was thrilled to come to the University of Iowa and join the awesomely diverse writing communities here (poets! novelists! essayists! comic writers!)"

"Being able to create art or write about something that directly relates to the world around me currently makes me feel like I have a special place in history."

"Translation is a craft that requires a lot of discipline and focus, and I usually try to find large chunks of time (4+ hours) rather than small increments."

On this episode, author Madeline McDonnell shares all sorts of secrets with us from being admonished in Middle English, reading in trees, dramatic countdowns to playing an evil Jack-o-lantern in a 3rd grade play with Mindy Kaling, starting three books at the same time, and the importance of friends.

"For me, the biggest source of inspiration for any translation project I’m working on is the source text itself! Translation forces you to read intimately, and you have to be quite intimate to rewrite the text in a different language."