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Words on a Wire
Words On A Wire

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

By Daniel Chacón,
Will Rose
Published September 29, 2025 at 9:00 AM MDT
stephanieelizondogriest.com

On this episode of Words on a Wire, host Daniel Chacón welcomes award-winning author Stephanie Elizondo Griest, whose adventurous spirit has carried her from the Texas/Mexico borderlands to 50 countries and 49 states. A celebrated writer of six books—including Around the Bloc, Mexican Enough, All the Agents and Saints, and her latest, Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life—Griest brings a lifetime of stories that bridge cultures, geographies, and personal journeys.

Her work, featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, and Oxford American, explores identity, creativity, and resilience. In this conversation, she and Daniel reflect on the joys and challenges of a writer’s life, the power of storytelling across borders, and what it means to turn even life’s hardest journeys—such as her fight with cancer—into art.

Tune in for an inspiring and deeply personal exchange with one of today’s most dynamic voices in creative nonfiction.

Additional information

Originally aired on September 28, 2025

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Words On A Wire KTEP Programming
Daniel Chacón
Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories, Unending Rooms, was the 2007 winner of the Hudson Prize. He has also been awarded the American Book Award, the Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, and the Southwest Book Award. His first collection of stories, Chicano Chicanery was a finalist in the Patterson Fiction Prize and his novel and the shadows took him is available from Simon and Schuster. His new book is a collection of stories called Hotel Júarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops. He’s a professor of Fiction Writing, Kafka, and Latino/a literature in the Creative Writing Department at UTEP.
See stories by Daniel Chacón
Will Rose
Will Rose is a longtime technology and marketing executive based out of NYC and Texas. He is the co-founder of Words on a Wire’s publishing imprint, eRadical Books, and now spearheads marketing strategy for the Words on a Wire podcast. He also serves as Chief Technology Officer at the EdTech startup, Student Select, and as Head of Data Science at the artificial intelligence company, Harqen AI.
See stories by Will Rose
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