Casey Walker, "Islands" The Common Magazine (Fall, 2025)

·49 min·4 clips

A man recounts how his parents drowned on a whale-watching trip in the Azores, leaving him with a haunting guilt.

The episode begins with a promotional segment for the New Books Network audience survey, followed by host Emily Everett introducing the podcast and guest Casey Walker. Walker reads the first paragraphs of his story 'Islands', which tells of a narrator whose parents died in a boating accident in the Azores, leaving him and his twin brothers to sell their family summer house in Maine. Walker summarizes the plot, focusing on the narrator's anxiety about impending parenthood and tensions with his brothers. He explains that the story originated from autobiographical experiences, including trips to Maine and fears about moral failure in parenting. The editorial process with The Common involved multiple drafts over years, with editors helping Walker articulate the story's architectural connections between themes like loss, guilt, and family dynamics. Walker reflects on his writing philosophy, citing George Saunders and emphasizing the importance of unexpected discoveries in storytelling. He then discusses his novel 'Mexicali', forthcoming from Knopf in 2027, which is set in the border town of Mexicali during Prohibition and the Mexican Revolution, based on his upbringing in the Imperial Valley. Walker shares that the novel took over a decade to write, with challenges in structuring historical events without forcing characters into them. He also mentions a new novel project set in Lisbon, inspired by family ancestry and a mysterious poet manuscript. The episode concludes with mutual appreciation between Everett and Walker for their collaborative work on 'Islands'.

As heard by us

A story about how revision helps a draft reveal its own structure.

The episode treats Casey Walker's "Islands" as an exercise in revision and editorial shaping. A story that sat on a desk and in a computer for a decade, then came together after the pages were written in a week or two with help from The Common, becomes a case study in how…

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Why you'd press play

For when your draft has one too many loose threads.

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