It's a booktastic megasode! Nearly 20 minutes of big book energy, opening with books that made me go "mmm" in 2024, and closing with what I'm excited to read in 2025. (Could this be the soft relaunch of the Asynchronous Book Club? Yeah, why not!)

As ever, check content warnings before you pick up anything we discuss here on the podcast; reading should be a refuge, not a trigger. And remember: reading is reading is reading, whether you're reading books with your eyes or your hands or your ears.✌️

Until next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• S04:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads
• S04:E05 | Regift: On Booksgiving + Five Books for Your Fab Fam (and Favorite Freaks)
• S01:E02 | My Top Books of 2022 & Relational Reading
• S01:E16 | Little Reviews: Victoria Chang, Maggie Nelson, Heather Christle + May Book Club Picks

IG: @littleoracles

Let's talk about mirror rot! And also how it inspired me to write this episode all about the agnosticism of inspiration, and how your idiosyncratic log of the year (whether it's in your phone's notes app, your watch history, your box of ticket stubs) can not only help you reflect on the year that's gone, but also take you into the new one with a cache of cool curios to fuel your creative practice.

Wishing you a wonderful New Year! Until next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Talkin' about burnout and the pressure of the vision board: S04:E06 | Rekindle: On Burning Out, Learning Grace, and Making Art for Yourself

IG: @littleoracles

Let's burn your vision board! Not really! (But kind of?) In this episode, we're talking about taking space, practicing grace, and reminding ourselves of why we make what we make ... and for whom, and why it's not the best move to let your calendar control your creative work.

Heavily inspired by a great Bluesky thread about making art for yourself by game designers Sean and Navi Drake of A Couple of Drakes.

Resources

• The season-opening three-parter about coming back to creativity: S04:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads, S04:E02 | Reconnect: On Prompts, Cross-Pollination, and Creative Elasticity, S04:E04 | Reframe: On Commitment as Self-Care and How to Kick Inertia's Ass
• Get good at being lazy with me (and learn about the weird Christian history of Sloth!) | S01:E03 | Getting Good at Being Lazy: Creative Pressure, the Seven Deadly Sins, and an ABC Plot Twist
• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive

IG: @littleoracles

Happy Booksgiving! We're inaugurating a new Jolabokaflod-inspired holiday, Little Oracles style ... because gifting a book is cool as hell. Featuring five books I won't flinch about giving to fabulous friends (and fellow weird-fiction freaks).

• If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
• Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
• Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
• Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

Thanks so much for being here, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive
• Books and media referenced | If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English: Pure Colour by Sheila Heti and Weather by Jenny Offill; Hera Lindsay Bird: Fleabag (TV show, created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Dolly Alderton (author), The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (album by Chappell Roan); The Friend: Splinters by Leslie Jamison, Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner; Cursed Bread: Diabolique (film, 1955), I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, Mona by Pola Oloixarac

IG: @littleoracles

In this final installment of the season-opening three-parter, we look at personal obligation (in a good way) and how to say goodbye to creative stasis with a handful of stagnancy-busting strategies (and even some creative prompts!).

Until next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine! <3

Resources

• Episodes one and two of this three-parter: S04:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads and S04:E02 | Reconnect: On Prompts, Cross-Pollination, and Creative Elasticity
• Follow the luminous Lindsay Stewart on Instagram and listen to our Creative Chat, S01:E10 | Creative Chat with Lindsay Stewart: Making Home, Building Brands, and Finding Your Happy
• Creative Mornings | Breakfast lecture series for the creative community
• Get some oomph from these eps about starting your next creative project | S02:E15 | The Hot Takes Episode: The Inspiration Fallacy & I'm Your Bucklebury and S02:E18 | Hauntings I: A Micro-Series Debut, My Golden Ghouls, & October ABC Picks
• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive

IG: @littleoracles

In this spontaneous emergency episode in response to the 2024 U.S. election, I'm calling out your creative spirit: in times like these, we need mourners, we need menders, we need makers. We need your creative revolution.

We'll resume our three-part series about coming back to creativity next week, but until then, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Episodes one and two of this three-parter: S04:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads and S04:E02 | Reconnect: On Prompts, Cross-Pollination, and Creative Elasticity
• Follow the luminous Lindsay Stewart on Instagram and listen to our Creative Chat, S01:E10 | Creative Chat with Lindsay Stewart: Making Home, Building Brands, and Finding Your Happy
• Creative Mornings | Breakfast lecture series for the creative community
• Get some oomph from these eps about starting your next creative project | S02:E15 | The Hot Takes Episode: The Inspiration Fallacy & I'm Your Bucklebury and S02:E18 | Hauntings I: A Micro-Series Debut, My Golden Ghouls, & October ABC Picks
• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive

IG: @littleoracles

In part two of the season-opening three-parter, we're talking about the power of prompts, ways to cross-pollinate your creativity, and how creative elasticity makes you an even mightier maker.

Until next time, take care, keep creating, and stay divine. <3

Resources

• Episode one of this three-parter: S01:E01 | Retread: On Coming Back to Creativity + Five Fave Creepy Reads
• Vide-Poche: Pockets and Their Contents show catalog
• Highlighted episodes! S01:E01 | Hey, Hi, Howdy! Welcome to Little Oracles and Creative Chat with Peter Gaucys: On Conversations, Conductors, and Contextual Ghosts
• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive

IG: @littleoracles

We're back, baby ... back to basics, that is. In this first episode of a season-opening three-parter, we talk about rereading as inspiration mining; leaning into complementary crafts to prime the proverbial creative pump; and five of my fave creepy reads, just in time for Halloween week (plus two bonus boogedy-boos just for you):

• Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (trans. Saskia Vogel)
• At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich
• Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (trans. Polly Barton)
• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell)
• Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
• BONUS! Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson
• BONUS! Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Thanks so much for being here, and, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

Resources

• Find every episode of the pod in the Little Oracles Archive
• More book talk! Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (S02:E20 | Books About Crossing Over); Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (S02:E10 | Books About Fallout); Second Place by Rachel Cusk (S02:E16 | Books About Dissonance)

IG: @littleoracles