DBS #91: Has Inclusive Language Gotten Out Of Hand?

Meet
Our Hosts

Caleb James K.

Caleb James K. is the former Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal, Drunken Pen Writing, and the host of the DPW Podcast. He’s also a fiction writer, poet, and aspiring novelist.

Spencer Church

A former aspiring comic book artist, Spencer is the cohost of the DPW Podcast as well as a short story writer and avid reader.


We start the episode with some harmless Dragon Ball talk. After that, we continue the civil conversation with a fresh look at our writing habits: We discuss the importance of setting, hooking the reader early, establishing characters, and creating atmosphere. 

Once we exhaust the civil conversation, we get into the meat and potatoes of the stew and discuss inclusive language in writing. This includes a list of words you used to be able to say but are now considered outdated and what you should use instead. This of course digresses into our opinions of inclusive language. And boy howdy do we give our opinions!

A Murakami Minute: 1Q84 Book One Drunken Pen Writing Podcast

We're back with a brand new episode of our hit mini-series, A Murakami Minute! This time around, we tackle Haruki Murakami's nearly 1200-page monster of a sci-fi, magical realism, and romance novel, 1Q84.  In this first episode, we discuss book one of three (the novel is broken down into three books). Our conversation focuses less on the story and more on Murakami's writing style, the translation (and its issues), what we like and dislike about the books so far, and the cultural differences between Japanese fiction and Western writing. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @dpwpodcast You can check out Caleb's work at http://www.calebjamesk.com. 
  1. A Murakami Minute: 1Q84 Book One
  2. DBS #141: Discussing The Best Non-Superhero Comics Of The 2020s
  3. #228: Keeping The Pace
  4. BOTM #25: Revisiting Blood Meridian
  5. #227: Examining The Illiteracy Crisis

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