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We're exploring the ways we find and bring joy into our lives. It’s about the things we do not because it’s a job or a necessity, but simply because we love to do them.

This Is My Thing: Fountain Pens!

Cindy Miller shops for fountain pens at Paper Place in Austin, TX October 7. 2025
Michael Lee
/
KUT
Cindy Miller shops for fountain pens at Paper Place in Austin, TX October 7. 2025

On This Is My Thing, we are continuing our mission to talk with people about the things they do just for themselves – not because it’s their job and not because it’s a responsibility, just because they love to do it. The stuff you do because it’s your thing.

The latest episode of This Is My Thing is about fountain pens — collecting them, writing with them, repairing them, hitting the road to find them, and just getting together with friends to talk about them. We're talking with two members of the Austin Pen Club, Cindy Miller and Craig Bond, about all of those things and more.

We’ll talk about how they each fell in love with this type of writing utensil and find out what these pens (and the community they've found around them) mean to them.

On this page, you can listen to the on-air version of this story, but if you check out the This Is My Thing podcast feed, you’ll find a longer version of this piece (as well as some older pieces you might have missed or might just want to listen to again). There’s some great stuff in there that couldn’t fit into the shorter on-air version, so check it out!

Mike is the production director at KUT, where he’s been working since his days as an English major at the University of Texas. He produces and hosts This Is My Thing and Arts Eclectic, and also produces Get Involved and the Sonic ID project. When pressed to do so, he’ll write short paragraphs about himself in the third person, but usually prefers not to.