Zach Powers – The Migraine Diaries: A singular, first-person novel.

This story goes into the interior life of a thirty-something man who has just lost the best friend he ever had, a man he has known for ten years, a man he has seen most every day of those ten years as they pursued their separate creative projects and shared a social life, a man who knew to kick the narrator’s butt when it needed kicking and offer the right encouraging words when it was words and not a kick the narrator needed. All of that, suddenly gone. Told in the form of a headache journal, the novel renders the first year of loss starting with the beachside funeral/ash spreading of the friend’s remains, and captures the mix of headache hopelessness with the need to carry on, building to the final resolve. In this way, it is like life itself. Not all bleak. Filled with humor. Even offering moments of weirdness.

Zach Powers is the author of the short story collection Gravity Changes, winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize; and also a prior novel, First Cosmic Velocity, which combines history and fiction to look at the sham of the Soviet space program in 1964 and earlier. His writing also has appeared in American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and other publications. He is the executive and artistic director of The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and Poet Lore, the nation’s oldest poetry journal. He is originally from Savannah, Georgia, and now lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Hosted by William Miller

• Zach Powers discusses how The Migraine Diaries functions not just as a grief novel, but also as a chronic illness narrative and, most importantly, a story about friendship and surviving loss together.
• The conversation explores the ethics of writing chronic illness narratives, especially avoiding the traditional “everything gets resolved” story arc that doesn’t reflect real-life experiences with migraines or grief.
• Zach shares deeply personal inspirations behind the novel, including the deaths of close friends and his own struggles with chronic migraines, while emphasizing the book is fiction rather than autobiography.
• A major theme of the interview is how friendship can become the emotional anchor of a story, sometimes even more powerful than romance.
• Zach explains his fascination with experimental storytelling, layered narratives, fragmented structure, and allowing readers to interpret meaning rather than over-explaining themes.
• The discussion dives into the surreal “corgi” sequences in The Migraine Diaries, which blend grief, hallucination, memory, and imagination into symbolic emotional journeys.
• Zach reflects on his earlier novel First Cosmic Velocity and how his writing evolved from more traditional narrative structures into more expansive and unconventional literary forms.
• The episode also explores Zach’s acclaimed short story collection Gravity Changes, including his philosophy that fiction does not need to explain every surreal or impossible element to the reader.

“You don’t have to explain the sheep.” — Zach Powers on discovering the freedom of literary fiction and surreal storytelling.

“The friendship aspect is the actual thing driving everything in the background — how to be a good friend and maintain that in the face of adversity.”

Find out more about Zach Powers on his website.

This entire interview is also available to watch on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

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Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 - Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved

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Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water

In an immigration novel not like others, a Nigerian daughter wants to try life in America, and so once more she enters the visa sweepstakes. Her mother says nothing, though she has been forewarned by a conduit of the oracle, “this time, the order of things will be shaken. The souls will lose their own way.” These are the tensions within Olfunke Grace Bankole’s first novel, The Edge of Water.

There are matters here of faith in self and faith in matters larger than the self, as well as events that outstrip all planning and vision—including the failure to envision some real possibilities. What comes from this is a novel with a linear narrative constructed across an arc whose parts are anything but linear—where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The Edge of Water was a finalist for the New American Voices Award given by the Institute for Immigration Research, which is presented at the Fall for the Book festival.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Harvard-educated lawyer and recipient of the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, and her original writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, the Antioch Review and Stand. Her work won first place in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and she was a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She also has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about Grace on her website.

Connect with Grace on Instagram.

Purchase a copy of The Edge of Water on Bookshop.org.

• A powerful exploration of fate vs free will, and how belief systems shape the choices we make.
• Redefines “home” in immigrant stories—less about place, more about identity, community, and peace.
• Moves beyond the typical American Dream narrative, showing the emotional and psychological realities of immigration.
• Highlights women’s resilience and agency, especially within patriarchal and cultural expectations.
• Examines how generational trauma and relationships between mothers and daughters shape identity.
• Shows how small decisions during major life moments can completely alter someone’s path.
• Blends spirituality, Yoruba tradition, and modern life, creating a layered, immersive world.

“We like to think we’re in control—until life reminds us how much of it was never ours to decide.” - Olufunke Grace Bankole

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This episode is also available for viewing on our YouTube channel.

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Recorded & Produced by Jon D PodCom

Be sure to check out our website for more information about our hosts, guests, and ways you can support the show: UpstartCrow.org

Follow us on Facebook here.

Thank you for listening to Upstart Crow, a part of Watershed Lit Radio.

© 2026 Upstart Crow Podcast – All Rights Reserved