ListenUp is Etude's quarterly podcast. This issue, we feature a panel of readers and writers of literary nonfiction as they debate controversial issues that plague the genre. Through the lens of some of the more recent scandals, they consider such questions as: How important and how possible is objectivity? Can journalists avoid being exploitive? And where do we draw the line when it comes to literary license?

The Panelists:
ZACK BARNETT is a 2007 graduate of the Literary Nonfiction Program at the University of Oregon. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, Zack was inspired to write about a journalist who searched for truth in the countryside of Stalin's Russia. He is now at work on a project combining his experiences in the Peace Corps with historical research.

KELSEY WALLACE is a feisty Aquarius who has spent the past six months immersing herself in the life of an all-woman rock band for an ethnographic case study also known as her thesis, for which she will earn a master’s degree from the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism this June. Her blog, Fun With Feminism, contains her observations on the ever-evolving state of feminism.

ALLYSON WRIGHT is a freelance writer and graduate student in the Literary Nonfiction Program at the University of Oregon, where she earned a B.A. in 1981. She has a propensity for writing about the deceased because they don’t tell lies, at least very often.

Host and co-producer:
MICHELLE THERIAULT, a former newspaper reporter, is a freelance writer and graduate student in the Literary Nonfiction Program at the University of Oregon.

Technical director and co-producer:
KATIE CAMPBELL is a narrative nonfiction writer and multimedia journalist who will graduate from the University of Oregon’s Literary Nonfiction Program this June.