YourArtsyGirlPodcast

Lee Matthew Goldberg is an awesome fiction writer and screenwriter hailing from NYC.  Listen to us discuss his new book, "The Ancestor", learn what led him to writing, how he starts his novels, & find out some of his inspirations & processes! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://leematthewgoldberg.com Order your copy here:  https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/goldberg-ancestor/ BIO:  Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. ORANGE CITY is forthcoming in 2021. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

Listen to poet, John Compton, read his poetry and discuss his journey into writing poetry, publishing, and connecting with industry folks! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com https://www.facebook.com/josh.compton.12914 Bio:  John Compton (formerly John Thompson) is a 33-year-old gay poet who lives in Kentucky. His poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. He has published 1 book and 5 chapbooks: "trainride elsewhere" (August 2016/TBA) from Pressed Wafer/Rouge Wolf Press; "that moan like a saxophone" (December 2016); Ampersand (March 2019) from Plan B Press; "a child growing wild inside the mothering womb" (June 2020) from Ghost City Press; "burning his matchstick fingers his hair went up like a wick" (Fall), From Dark Heart Press, "to wash all the pretty things off my skin" (end of 2021) from Ethel Zine & Micro-Press. Compton has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.   https://ghostcitypress.com/2020-summer-series/a-child-growing-wild-inside-the-mothering-womb   https://www.planbpress.com/store/p56/ampersand_by_john_thompson.html   https://www.amazon.com/that-moan-like-saxophone-thompson-ebook/dp/B01NBP6JL3   winter poem mouth open letting snow cover my burial plot of words & fingers too cold to dig the tongue out: frozen corpse, the stature of teeth chirping a ruptured poem   we seeded him holy you'll find him in a chair sequenced gay is vandalism we used white rags & smoke to purify him to bleach the sin, to poach the black resin from the heart-skin to bring him right by rules of man his arms & ankles tied    crosswise the naked body a rosary         bead tucked in each wound   how we bury fish motionless in my womb... i remembered my fish - i was eight. it was floating belly up. i tapped on my stomach as a mother – a little girl trying to tap her fish from sleep. i gave birth to a stillborn. my father explained to me how we bury fish: i heard the toilet flush behind my sobbing.   John Compton Book Launch and Open Mic with Redheaded Stepchild https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlBdFVBCcE  

Yay!  The 60th episode.  How surreal.  I introduce to you Clinnesha D. Sibley, a writer & playwright with many publications and theatrical productions under her belt.  Hear us discuss her process, her advice to writers, & what creative projects she's working on now.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://thewriteaddiction.com A Love Letter to Ntozake You played with Barbies and watched as little boys gawked at Cindy Crawford in a Pepsi commercial. Your teacher suggested The Babysitters Club, “Kristy’s Great Idea” for your book project because it was heartwarming, not um…controversial… like The Bluest Eye. You watched The Cosby Show and knew you wanted to be that kind of black. You were eating grandma’s field peas and okra when you got your period. Mama was workin. Stayed workin. Your body changed immediately and grandma gave you a girdle. Same kind of girdle she gave your mama. You stayed lookin in the mirror hoping your ass would catch up to your chest and hips. It never did, not on its own. Sophomore year, he let you wear his letterman. It was warm and smelled like November. He never let anyone but you wear his letterman. He told you he loved you. You didn’t know a man could ever do that. He would take back the number 7 when y’all hated one another. Back and forth, the jacket began to smell less like autumn and more like alcohol and meat. /// You were in the McDonald’s bathroom when you got one line and a faint. You cried into your chicken nuggets. You told your best friend and her mama who’s cool. Then, cool mama told you ’bout Mrs. Poole… He said he would come, too. He lied. But he brought you somethin to eat afterwards. /// You left home after graduation. Your mama had to work graduation day, and the day you moved away. Grandma put a rolled up one hundred dollar bill in your hand for gas money and groceries. You got a job on campus. He needed money and you would take care…he hated that you could do that. You hated going home, and seeing him reminded you of how much you hated yourself. So, you changed your look. You found a college best friend who got you into places you were too young to be in. She’s better than your old best friend who’s been actin real funny. You hate her cuz you hate you. And she hate you cause of that thing with him. You say she pulls you down every time you get elevated. But you high more than you elevated. (High, drunk people don’t keep their scholarships.) Your school daze become filled with nights you don’t remember. And now, you goin back home. At least you tried. One day, you’re gonna finish. /// Friend was like, I told you. You had white liquor in you that night, and you fought her. You looked at yourself in the McDonald’s bathroom mirror and didn’t like the scratches, or your nose, your eyes, what the perm did to your hair, your dark skin, or the fact that you flunked out of college. Maybe your mama waz right when she called you a dumb ho; that was before she got in bed with her best friend’s man. You hate everything about yourself, and your mama’s probably right about you bein a dumb ho, so… You sleep with him again. He tightens his sweaty palm around your heart. You remember the baby. This time, you won’t need Mrs. Poole. /// Two healthy babies later, you’ve changed your look again. People wonder what’s different. They don’t wonder what your new hurt is. They just know you’ve got babies by him, and so does your best friend. But you’re the main one cuz he looks at you just like the boys looked at Cindy Crawford. You haven’t seen him since y’all got into it at his mama’s house. You’ve been texting her cause she helps you understand him more…she cares about you more than your own mama…more than your best friend, who loves him, too. You finally talk to your mama about him, and she hugs you. Apologizes and says things can only get worst. /// His mama said he’s becoming like his daddy. You realize that absent in one place means present in another. There’s a new woman… You consider going back to school. You re-apply and get in. He sees you trying to move on without him, and it gets really bad really fast, like your mama said. You pray, cause every time your grandma prayed, things got better, and people would even come back Home. You didn’t confirm with admissions, but you keep a record of dreams in a spiral notebook. /// You were working part time at the library when you came across for colored girls who consider suicide when the rainbow is enuf in the return vault. You experienced it and realized somebody was missing what you were missing. You realize that you were born with the capacity to love yourself, and that changes the way you look at your daughters. -------------------------------------------------- BIO:  Clinnesha Sibley, a native of McComb, Mississippi, is a published author, community leader, and educator. She promotes creative-mindedness—believing that visual, performing, and literary arts can change the way we think about some of life’s most important questions. A writer of plays, poetry, prose, essays and creative non-fiction, Clinnesha has received numerous awards including the Holland New Voices Award, the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and the Mississippi Theatre Association Adult Playwriting Award.  Her writing has also appeared in national literary journals, anthologies, and various publications and anthologies including Feels Blind Literary, Quince Magazine, In Full Color, Black Masks Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine. Clinnesha committed to training exclusively as a playwright while attending Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. As an Interdisciplinary Career Oriented Humanities major, she learned to focus inward—exploring identity, psyche, and the human condition. It was at this historically black college that Clinnesha also learned the connection between social activism and artistic practice. She received her M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville becoming the first African-American to earn such a degree from that institution. Her plays have been called feminist, protest, political, southern, and circular. After teaching on the college/university level for many years, Clinnesha decided to move into secondary residential education, and is currently the Literary Arts Instructor at Mississippi School of the Arts where she teaches young writers to become socially-engaged artists. Clinnesha is married to her high school sweetheart, Keith Sibley, and they have three children: Kaylee, Karlee, and Keith Jr.

Dominique M. Carson has interviewed over 100 notable figures in entertainment.  Listen to us discuss how she became a journalist for major publications and author of two biographies as well as how message therapy has sustained her while she continued to pursue her artistic goals. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://dominiquecarson.contently.com   BIO: Dominique M. Carson is a freelance journalist, researcher, massage therapist, reporter and author. Carson's work has been featured in several publications including Ebony.com, The Grio, NBC News, Singersroom.com, Soultrain.com, Education Update, and Brooklyn news media outlets. She interviewed over 100 notable figures in entertainment such as Charlie Wilson, Regina Belle, Patti Labelle, Kirk Franklin, and many more. She also collaborated with Brooklyn historian and journalist, Suzanne Spellen and launched a 118 page journal on Lefferts Manor, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, and is releasing a biography on an R&B musician this fall while her first book is going through some legalities.

Listen to this week's featured guest, poet, Angela M. Brommel.  We discuss her influence & her new poetry collection, "Mojave in July". We also talk about her past & current projects supporting the art & literary community as an art curator & Editor-in-Chief at the Citron Review. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://tolsunbooks.com/shop/mojave-in-july-pre-order Mojave in July by Angela M. Brommel You can’t explain to friends from home how the desert makes it better, but you try: Imagine a heat so dry that it presses down into the earth, releasing its scent so that it takes on the comforting smell of clay pots in your grandmother’s kitchen when you were a child, or your hideout under the evergreens where you used to sit for hours smelling only the dirt, the sap, the pine. Imagine a smell that reminds you of the kitchen on holidays: sage, rosemary, and something you chase that is reminiscent of honey, but feels like love. Some people still fight it. They call the heat oppressive, they call it unrelenting. They have not learned how to live within it. You must learn to smell the water beneath the surface. You must learn to let the heat pass through you, warming your bones, your ligaments, and all the pieces that you call you. Let the heat draw out everything unneeded. Let it put you to bed midday. Let it make you new. --- Images/Angela M. Brommel Book cover image art/Su Limbert --- BIO: Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. In 2018, her chapbook, Plutonium & Platinum Blonde, was published by Serving House Books. Her poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry blog, The North American Review, The Literary Review’s (TLR) Share, and many other journals and anthologies. A 2018 Red Rock Canyon Artist in Residence, Angela served as the inaugural poet of the program. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and an MA in Theatre from the University of Northern Iowa. Mojave in July is her debut full-length poetry collection. Angela is the Executive Director of the Office of Arts & Culture as well as affiliate faculty in Humanities at Nevada State College. You can also find her at The Citron Review as Editor-in-Chief.

Gay Majure Wilson wrote a biography on the suffragist, Sue Shelton White, entitled: "Some Woman Had to Fight: The Radical Life of Sue Shelton White".  Listen to us discuss Gay's story on how she started writing and how she decided to write Sue Shelton White's biography. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes https://www.amazon.com/Some-Woman-Had-Fight-Radical-ebook/dp/B0859NBB58 BIO: Gay Majure Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and has worked as a writer, editor and project manager in software development and investment banking in Dallas, New York and London. She earned a master’s degree in family and consumer sciences from the University of Tennessee at Martin and is now an author and registered dietitian in Jackson, Tennessee. Book Synopsis Some Woman Had to Fight: The Radical Life of Sue Shelton WhiteThis biography explores the personal, political and professional life of Sue Shelton White, a militant suffragist, pioneering Tennessee lawyer and vocal leader in the controversial protests and tireless lobbying campaign for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women their equal right to vote 100 years ago.  gaymwilson@gmail.com

Check out Susana H. Case!  She is a NYC poet & a sociology professor at New York Institute of Technology.  Listen to us discuss how her academic work and poetics intersects & where she gets her ideas! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://susanahcase.com Susana reads from her book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIyObZ_PToo http://broadstonebooks.com/Susana_H_Case.html The poems in this collection are inspired by the ways in which gender (and sometimes other divisions) creates opportunities for both victimization and survival. A theme woven throughout is the tension between being objectified and being human. There are three sections. The first section is organized around the idea of the stereotype of the living doll, and rebellion against that concept. The middle section, an ekphrastic section, is inspired by the life and the nutshell studies, crime model constructions, of Frances Glessner Lee, "mother of modern forensics," and includes some black and white images that are in the public domain. The third section, which includes the title poem, focuses more fully on the negative effects of objectified existences. Bio: Susana H. Case is the author of seven books of poetry. Drugstore Blue, from Five Oaks Press, won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). She is also the author of five chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes. Her most recent chapbook is Body Falling, Sunday Morning from Milk and Cake Press. One of her collections, The Scottish Café, from Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press in Poland. Her poems appear widely in magazines and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in: Calyx, The Cortland Review, Fourteen Hills, Portland Review, Potomac Review,Rattle, and RHINO, among others. Dr. Case is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City.

I introduce to you Anne Marie Wells @amwellswrites from Wyoming, a poet and playwright.  You will find interesting tidbits about her work & her life: when she was a nanny for a rock band she wrote a draft of 70,000 word novel in 3 days, among other things!  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://annemariewellswriter.com ------------------------------ Enemy Bridge My enemies will someday hold their dying mother in their arms, and their crooked hole of a mouth screaming anguished into the air above will become my next breath. We will share the same chorus of pain, the secret song that unites us all, a universal refrain that asks us to bless this world for its suffering for it’s the only thing that builds the bridge of empathy. Selected by Muddy River Poetry Review, Spring 2020 ---------------------------------- Shell Holding the shell of the man he used to be to my ear, his tidal voice crashed ashore, calling me to watch a nest of turtles break free from their sandy womb, frantic to find their ocean mother; a race from first breath to moonlit waves. I will remember you this way, I promised. Selected for publication by In Parentheses, Winter 2020 ---------------------------------- Bio: In 2015, Anne Marie Wells published her children’s book, MAMÃ, PORQUE SOU UMA AVE?/MOMMY, WHY AM I A BIRD? (Imprensa Universidade de Coimbra). She earned first place in the Riot Act Regional New Play Festival in 2017 for her play, LOVE AND RADIO (AND ZOMBIES... KIND OF), and earned second place in 2018 for her play, LAST. ONLY. BEST. In 2019, the Wrights of Wyoming judges blindly selected four of her theatrical works for the statewide play festival in Cheyenne (LAST. ONLY. BEST.; MISS SNICKLEFRITZ'S MURDER MYSTERY; THE DOOR; and INDIGO SIREN). In 2020, her play LAST. ONLY. BEST. was selected for publication in The Dallas Review, and her 10-minute play, THE DOOR will appear in The Progenitor Art & Literary Journal. Anne Marie is also an avid storyteller and performed in and won several Cabin Fever Story Slams and was selected by The Moth to perform in a 'Main Stage' event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2019. Her poems have appeared or will appear in In Parentheses, Lucky Jefferson, Unlimited Literature, Soliloquies Anthology, Muddy River Poetry Review, Variant Literature, Poets' Choice, Meniscus Journal, Changing Womxn Collective, and The Voices Project. Facebook: @annemariewellsriter Instagram: @anne___.marie Twitter: @amwellswrites Pintrest: annemariewellswriter Tumblr: @annemariewellswriter

This week, I talk to Filipino American writer, Jason Tanamor.  It was great discovering his work & learning more about him and his writing processes.  His latest book: "Vampires of Portlandia" is a Filipino American urban fantasy novel.    http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://tanamor.com Bio:   Jason Tanamor has 10 plus years of experience as an entertainment writer and interviewer for Yahoo!, the Moline Dispatch/Rock Island Argus, Cinema Blend, Celebrity Cafe, Strip Las Vegas Magazine, Pulse Magazine, and Zoiks! Online.   Tanamor has interviewed the likes of author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club); comedians Demetri Martin, Jim Breuer (SNL, Half Baked), Aisha Tyler (Talk Soup, The Ghost Whisperer), Dane Cook, and Gabriel Iglesias; musicians Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), Ann Wilson (Heart), Taylor Momsen (The Pretty Reckless and Gossip Girl), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Henry Rollins (Black Flag); and baseball legend Pete Rose.   He has covered everyone from Steve Martin to Jerry Seinfeld and from Evanescence to President Obama (see gallery).   With novels, Tanamor enjoys writing in different genres. He is the critically acclaimed author of the dark novels, "Anonymous" (which received a star review from Publishers Weekly) and "Drama Dolls"; the satirical novels, "Hello Fabulous!" and "She's the One?"; and the epic superhero themed children's book, "I Heart Superhero Kid". His newest novel, "Vampires of Portlandia," is an urban fantasy.  Pre-order it here: http://www.tanamor.com/p/vampires-of-portlandia.html   Tanamor is married and has a family of fur children. He currently lives and works in the Portland, Oregon area. 

Check out this episode with writer, Anya Ow, a Singaporean residing in Australia.  We discuss her work, her "co-workers" (cats), & reads a segment from her newly released novella, "Cradle and Grave". http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://anyasy.com http://neonhemlock.com

This week, I feature Filipinx visual artist, Pam Peacock.  She is the very talented younger sister of Eddie Peacock, a former classmate and neighbor of mine at Clark Air Force Base & Angeles City, Philippines. Listen to us discuss her work, her process, future plans, & how she is holding up during this pandemic. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://thevoyagerpeacock.com Instagram: @thevoyagerpeacock

I'm back in effect, and this week, I am featuring, Filipinx poet, Ina Cariño.  We discuss her work and her future plans and how she is holding up during this Coronavirus pandemic. Note: I will be discussing how other writers/poets/artists and creatives are dealing with creating during these times. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes www.inacarino.com Bio: Born in the Philippines, Ina Cariño is a queer Filipinx-American writer. She holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC, and is a 2019 Kundiman Fellow. Her work appears in Waxwing, New England Review, The Oxford Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, and VIDA Review, among other journals. In 2019, Ina founded a reading series in the Triangle area of NC called Indigena, which centers marginalized voices, including but not limited to those of BIPOC, QTPOC, and people with disabilities. Through her writing, Ina explores the navigation of being American as a brown body, and the deeply impactful effects of living in the diaspora. She hopes to find paths to not just justice, but also to healing of self and community. It Feels Good to Cook Rice by Ina Cariño it feels good to cook rice it feels heavy to cook rice it feels familiar                           good        & heavy                      to cook rice                           when I cook rice                   it is because hunger is not just                              an emptiness but a longing                                          for multo:                                    the dead who no longer linger                   two fingers in water                   I know just when to stop:                   right under the second knuckle in the morning          chew it                                                         with salted egg in the evening          chew it                                                         with salted onion at midnight          eat it                                                         slovenly                 with your peppered hands           licking relishing                         each cloudmorsel                                                       sucking greedy   as if                 there will no longer be any such thing as rice                               good                 is not the idea of pleasure                                           rather                                                it is the way                                                          I once tripped                                             spilled a basket                 of hulls & stones onto soil —                 homely sprinkle of husks                 as if for a sending off —                                 how right it was: palms                                 brushing the chalk of it                                 swirls rising in streaking sun                                 heavy                 is not the same as burden                                             rather it is falling rice                                                   as ghostly footfalls —                                             trickling mounds                                                           scattered on wood —                 my dead lolo in compression socks                 my dead lola in red slippers scuffing                 & a slew of yesterday’s titos & titas                                 their voices traveling to me                                 tinny                                ringing                                  as if from yesterday’s nova familiar just                 what it sounds like family                 blood home                 marrow bone                 grit calcified memories                                 of things that feel good                                                                 & heavy                 calcified                                 as in made stronger by mountain sun                 only to have them crumble                                 after enough time has passed                 (just like the mountain forgot what it used to be)                             still it feels good to cook rice it feels good to eat rice    even by myself & it feels familiar to know                with each grain I swallow I strap myself to my own                                          heavy                             hunger ------------------------------------------------------------ Below are links to her other works: http://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-3-2019/bitter-melon/ http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue20/7_Carino-It-Feels-Good-to-Cook-Rice.php https://readwildness.com/21/carino-bodies https://www.the-orb.org/post/when-i-sing-to-myself-who-listens IG: @indigena.collective  / Facebook: Facebook.com/indigenaNC/

Thanks for tuning in and being patient! Episode 50 features poet/writer, Tony Robles who I have back on the show. He had just been awarded the Carl Sandburg Writer-In-Residency. Tony discusses his past & current work.  He also recites his poem, "My Father's Music".   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com https://www.nps.gov/carl/learn/news/2020-wir-tony-robles.htm   http://tonyrobles.wordpress.com   My Father's Music My father's music Percolates and palpitates Like hot coffee dreaming A tap dancer's arrival Hitting throat with the Right note, going back, Deep, unopposed My father's music is Caught in a kettle whose Grease endured screams And flame of gas stove Decisions where curling irons Bent notes and contemplated Hooks landing on the chin and Announcing a verdict on a Rippled canvas My father's music is An empty cup of my Favorite things where soup Is made from pain and Love is made from rain My father's music is Made in wood when he Would then wouldn't then Would again and would Is softer than stone and Woodn't you know it? My father's music is the Chamber of cool poking Into the greenness of the Sun's estate of ecstatic static My father's music Is sky minus rain Divided by sun Multiplied by incense In the smoldering Pyramid of branches My father's music is the In-time pantomime of The heaven-hell debate Whose defense rest On the 8th day My father's music floats And glides from Head to thigh and on that other Side where up is down and down Is up, sticking like flap jacks Whose wings lap lap lap the Tick tock oil of greasy time My father's music Skips, bumps, burps, Slurps, sizzles on the Sunny side of the street Crackle pop Bop Pan fried With an Egg on Top My Father's Music   ------------------ If you are interested in being featured on yourartsygirlpodcast.com, please send me your bio, black and white photo, and work samples to yourartsygirl@gmail.com .  Please know I cannot respond to every email, but I will reach out to if I'd like to feature you on the show!

Beverly Parayno is a talented fiction and creative non fiction writer. Learn more about her journey as a writer and her tremendous volunteer & outreach work for arts organizations. Do follow her work.  She is someone to look out for!  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://www.beverlyparayno.com Bio: Beverly Parayno is from East San Jose. Her fiction, memoir, essays, and author interviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Bellingham Review, World Literature, The Rumpus, Warscapes and Huizache, among others. Her work has been translated into Mandarin by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is currently working on a memoir entitled RUN, set during her teenage runaway years in upstate New York in the mid-1980s. Parayno earned an MA from University College Cork and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Currently, she serves on the board of PAWA, a nonprofit arts organization and publisher dedicated to supporting and promoting Filipinx writers, and on the executive committee of Litquake. She is a grants consultant for social justice nonprofits in the Bay Area. You can find her at www.beverlyparayno.com.

I open this new year, 2020, with John A. Vanek: a mystery/thriller writer with a sleuthing priest series about Father Jake Austin's life. Listen to him discuss how having a great creative writing teacher in college while going to med school inspired him to write & publish poetry & now a mystery series. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://www.johnvanekauthor.com   BIO: John A. Vanek graduated from Case  Western Reserve University, where his passion for creative writing took root. He received his M.D. from the University of Rochester and practiced medicine for a quarter century, but his interest in writing never waned. Medicine was his life, but mysteries became his drug of choice.  He began honing his craft in creative writing workshops and college courses and was gratified when his early work won contests and was published widely. He now lives happily as an ink-stained-wretch in Florida with Geni, his wife, fellow writer, and best friend. He teaches a poetry workshop for seniors at a local college, and enjoys swimming, hiking, sunshine, good friends, and red wine. John is an active member of the International Thriller Writers. DEROS (book 1): Father Jake Austin returns home in search of inner peace after a brutal war, but a series of murders force him to confront his own violent past, regrets over lost love, and his doubts about the priesthood.    Miracles (book 2): Father Jake Austin’s life is hurled into the vortex of three storms: A dying sister, a bleeding Virgin Mary statue, and a comatose infant in the intensive care unit. What will be left standing after these tempests have passed?  Absolution (book 3): Father Jake Austin must decide whether to turn his back on his biological father, the man who deserted him as a child, or to turn the other cheek and save him from a vengeful drug lord, risking his own life and the lives of those he loves.  Genesis of the Father Jake Austin Mystery Series: Father Jake Austin is a fictional character, but aspects of his personality and struggles are modeled after two Catholic priests who became my close friends and confidants. When I first met them, I expected the usual stereotypes, but when their Roman collars came off, I found that they were simply human. One priest confessed his attraction to a young nun. Call his love unrequited; he called it hell. I watched this righteous man struggle with his commitment to his vows. This became the inspiration for Jake and Emily’s relationship in my novels. Seeing these men wrestle with the same emotions that we all share shattered my preconceived notions. I wanted to portray Father Jake as a spiritual man, but as realistically as possible.  Coffeetown Press in Seattle, WA published DEROS and Miracles in paperback & eBook formats in 2018 & 2019 respectively. Book 3, Absolution, will be released March 15, 2020.  *** Thorndike Press (an imprint of Gale/Cengage, which merged with McGraw Hill in 2019) recently purchased the large-print rights to DEROS and Miracles as part of their Clean Reads selections for libraries and schools. Clean Reads is billed as: "General fiction, mystery and romance titles that do not contain graphic violence, explicit sexuality or strong profanity. Full of encouragement, warmth and humor that you’d be comfortable giving to your grandmother!"    Note: get your  local library to stock John Vanek's large-print editions!   *** In praise of the Father Jake Austin Series:  “Interesting, nuanced characters in a finely wrought setting.” -- Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of Wilde Lake.  "John Vanek guides the reader through the seldom-seen worlds of both medicine and the priesthood. His years as a physician at a Catholic hospital make him the perfect creator of this literary mystery, but few physicians can manage prose as well as Vanek does." -- Sterling Watson, Professor of Creative Writing at Eckerd College, and author of Suitcase City.  “A riveting tale of mystery and murder. Superb storytelling with a deft touch by this talented author who keeps ratcheting up the tension until the explosive ending. A page-turner, but the characters linger in your memory. File DEROS  under 'good books to read.' ” -- Ann O'Farrell, author of the Norah's Children Trilogy. “John Vanek writes from a place of unusual experience and expertise while bringing the reader into worlds of mystery, medicine, and religion — and the human connections that bridge them all. Father Jake Austin is an intriguing and emotionally compelling character.” - Michael Koryta,  New York Times bestselling author of How It Happened “John A. Vanek deftly takes readers up to the high wire of difficult moral choices. Father Jake Austin’s search for a balance between science and faith will make you a fan of the series, the mystery genre, and physician-writer John Vanek.” - Martin Kohn, PhD, director, Program in Medical Humanities, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine  Buy John A. Vanek's books! Fiction: Order from Amazon! Order from Amazon! Poetry Order from Amazon!

Closing out this year with a sensational guest: poet, Nick Carbó!  Listen to this episode and discover how Nick's Filipino American literature and poetry anthologies helped catapult Filipino-American poetics.  Find out what he's been up to and listen to him read some of his poems! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   You can purchase Secret Asian Man here:  https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Asian-Man-Nick-Carbo/dp/1932339639 Some interesting links pertaining to Nick's work! http://archivio.el-ghibli.org/index.php%3Fid=1&issue=01_05§ion=6&index_pos=5&inlingua=t.html Nick on NPR: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1667164   ------------------------------------------------------------- THE BOY IN BLUE SHORTS The screaming woman on the other side Of our tall black gate Would have thrown a rock at me My maid, Rosita, sheltered me from the insults— Something about my being Retarded and full of worms The woman nudged her son forward. Blue shorts, clean t-shirt, rubber slippers. She said her little boy was the one Who should have been adopted, he was healthy. He looked about my age, four or five. We were both silent. “I want to see the Mr. and the Mrs., they are making a big mistake!” Rosita bolted the gate, took me by the hand— “those are bad people, don’t listen to them!” I felt the crisp whiteness of her skirt all the way across The garden back to our house. ------------------ The next poem was recently scrolled on the big screen in the big U2 and Bono's Joshua Tree concert in Manila in December 2019. They might use the poem in some video in the future. DIRECTIONS TO MY IMAGINARY CHILDHOOD If you stand on the corner Of Mabini Street and Legazpi Avenue, Wait for an orchid colored mini-bus With seven oblong doors, Open the fourth door— An oscillating electric fan Will be driving, tell her to proceed To the Escolta diamond district— You will pass Maneng Virays bar, La isla de los ladrones book shop, The Frederick Funston fish sauce factory, And as you turn left into Calle de los recuerdos, You will see Breto, Bataille, and Camus Seated around a card table playing Abecedarian dominoes— Roll down your window and ask Them if Mr. Florante and Miss Laura Are home, if the answer is yes, Then proceed to Noli Me Tangere Park, And wait for a nun named Maria Clara— If the answer is “je ne sais pas!” then turn Right into the parking lot of Sikatuna’s Supermarket to buy a basketful Of lanzones fruit, then get back To Calle de los Recuerdos until you reach The part that’s lined with tungsten-red Juan Tamad trees, on the right will be A house with an acknowledgements page And and index, open the door and enter The page and look me in the eye.   Bio: On the day Nick Carbó (kar-boh) was born on October 10, 1964 in a village beside the sea in the Philippines, the number one song was “Oh Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison. One can imagine that riff (cue in Da-na-na, na-na, da-na-na, na-na) following him the rest of his life after being born to a poor peasant family and quickly improving his lot in life when he was adopted by a well-to-do Spanish/Filipino couple at around fifteen months old. Yes, there would be pretty women walking in and out of his life with the first being his adopted mother Sophie who was half Greek and half Filipino/Spanish.

Courtney LeBlanc is a poet from the Arlington/DC metro area who has a full-length poetry collection out entitled Beautiful & Full of Monsters through Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.  Listen to this episode and learn more about her work and about us discussing self promotion and coordinating your own book tour, among other things! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   http://courtneyleblanc.com   Preorder your copy here: http://www.vegetarianalcoholicpress.com/titles/courtney-leblanc-beautiful-amp-full-of-monsters Bio:  Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, March 2020), The Violence Within (Flutter Press, 2018, currently out of print), and All in the Family (Bottlecap Press, 2016) , and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, wine, and tattoos. She blogs at WordPerv and she can be contacted at Courtney (dot) LeBlanc2015 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Ron Riekki and I had a great conversation about his work, his life, and our common experiences.  He is a Saami, Karelian, Finn, and Greek writer with many writing credits. He's studied with Anne Beattie, John Casey, Jayne Anne Phillips, Anselm Hollo, and Stuart Dybek, to name a few! He also hung out with actor Sean Penn! Do give a listen and learn about this fascinating writer! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes https://rariekki.webs.com/ You can order "Posttraumatic" here: https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781732336162/posttraumatic-a-memoir.aspx You can order "My Ancestors Are Reindeer Hers and I am Melting in Extinction" here: https://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Reindeer-Herders-Melting-Extinction/dp/1627202102 "In My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I am Melting in Extinction, Ron Riekki presents a collection of non-fiction, short stories, and poetry about the Karelian- and Saami-American experience. In true nomadic fashion, his writing takes the reader to Kuusamo, Utah, Berkeley, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Lake Mohave, Yosemite, Karelia, and a hazmat facility where all the animals on site have been forgotten. A mix of Anselm Hollo, Gregory Orr, Eric Torgersen, and Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Riekki’s writing forces the Saami-American voice to be heard, a voice that some might not even realize exists. It does. Furiously." You can order "Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice" here:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1611863082/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 You can order "The Many Lives of the Evil Dead" here: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-many-lives-of-the-evil-dead/ Bio:  Ron Riekki is a poet and award-winning screenwriter. He is the author of My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting In Extinction: Saami-American Non-Fiction, Fiction, and Poetry, U.P.: A Novel, and Posttraumatic: A Memoir. He edited five anthologies: The Way North (Michigan Notable Book), And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917–2017, Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Independent Publisher Book Award), Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice, and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead: Essays on the Cult Film Franchise. He's published his writing in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Wigleaf, Spillway, Poetry Northwest, and many other literary journals. Riekki is Saami-American, Karelian-American, and Finnish-American. If he ever got a tattoo, it'd say Sisu. His home is the north. The far north. No, farther than that.

This week I am talking to the inaugural Hartford Poet Laureate, Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, whom I've known personally for many years because I also claim Norwich as my "hometown", and as colleagues, we have seen each other "grow up" in the literary scene. Listen to Frederick-Douglass talk about how it was growing up in Norwich and his evolution from spoken word, to the academics, and onto the literary page.  He is prolific with literary and social justice projects literally all over the world while performing his Hartford Poet Laureate duties.  So, listen in. You'll be inspired! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   http://frederickdouglassknowles.com You can purchase BlackRoseCity here:  https://www.amazon.com/BlackRoseCity-Frederick-Douglass-Knowles-II/dp/1456729535 Bio:   Frederick-Douglass Knowles II is the inaugural Poet Laureate for Hartford, CT. His collection of poetry, BlackRoseCity, was featured at the 2018 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). His works have featured in the Connecticut River Review; Poems on the Road to Peace: A Tribute to Dr. King by Yale UP; Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry on HIV/AIDS by Third World Press. The Mississippi University for Women nominated his poem “Mason Freeman Cuts Jenkins Down” for a Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of the 2019 Nutmeg Poetry Award. Frederick-Douglass is an Associate Professor of English at Three Rivers Community College.

Suzanne Frischkorn is a talented and prolific poet living in Connecticut, my home state. Listen to her explain how she got into poetry and the poetry scene and what influenced her work and the many similarities that we shared "growing up" in CT as women writers and poets in our formative years. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes You can purchase Girl on a Bridge here: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/girl-on-a-bridge/ Poem from Girl on a Bridge --- Great Lash You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she's a whore. Our cornfields were paved in asphalt, sulfur lights snuffed our stars. When one of us had no shoes, we went barefoot, walking streets laid with tar. First we coated lashes blackest black from tubes of green and pink, our eyes lined kohl. If it was Thursday we found boyfriends and waited by the liquor store for anyone to buy us Smirnoff. Anyone at all. We were not sweet girls. * We were not sweet girls, yet we wore silver chains with silver hearts & crosses, onyx rings, blush, lipstick, powder. Hair flipped by vent brush before entering a night without stars. Our parents were line dancing, were bank tellers, were absent. We were a family that knew nothing about its members. * We cut school and watched Foxes. We cut school and drank vodka. We cut school and got stoned, did our makeup, walked the streets. One of us got out. One of us ran into our connection working a shoe store, one of us glimpsed another with a baby, one of us marries her Thursday night boyfriend and shatters her image. * We were not sweet girls, no. If there had been corn, or stars? Maybe the deep sweet girlness would have surfaced ― dreamy fresh-faced girls ― petals listening to rain.   You can purchase Lit Windowpane here:  https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/lit-windowpane/ Poem from Lit Windowpane-- Window  A damp windowsill means nothing— it’s no bird tapping       on a pane— I am waiting  for the swallow’s stone, the anodyne       to illness brought by sparrow song. This morning rain gathers in still puddles and the songbirds      sing without percussion― loud notes echo  the empty street— they sing and       sing and sing. No owl has brushed its wing against our windowpane and sunlight      overcomes the clouds. Thrush birdsong: lacey throated stars. The April        of our fifth year reeds withered around the pond.  Last summer I painted the porch ceiling       robin’s egg blue. Spring now and the sparrows  weave a nest in our dryer vent.      I watch you ladder your way into their world, lift  bits of twine and sticks and string, yet      you know they will return. How I love you then— how I should have loved you all along.   BIO:  Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Lit Windowpane (2008), Girl on a Bridge, (2010) and five chapbooks.  Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook, Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Visit her website: https://suzannefrischkorn.com/

Tony Remington is a photographer and painter who practices many other art forms. Listen to us discuss his humanistic photojournalist style and portraiture, his vision and desire to continue to create in many genres such as cartooning.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes https://www.instagram.com/xtoid/ https://tonyremington.wixsite.com/mysite Article on the Al Robles Express, 2019, by Lisa Suguitan Melnick:  http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/the-al-robles-express-is-on-the-right-track Article on Tony Remington's exhibit by Carlos Zialcita: http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/tony-remingtons-launching-point-to-fil-am-consciousness Bio: Tony Remington grew up in San Francisco's Haight/Ashbury and has lived in many parts of San Francisco such as Daly City and West Oakland. Although he had experience many Balikbayan trips to the Philippines with his parents, in 2005 he began a series of extended visits to the Philippines that accumulated to more than seven years. In 1970 he began his life as a photographer, became involved in Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State College, and developed an interest in Eastern Philosophy. Upon leaving college and after completing his first major photographic essay in the Philippines, he began his work in the post-International Hotel community of San Francisco with poet/activist Al Robles and poet/social worker Presco Tabios. It was here working as food delivery person for home-bound seniors in a makeshift re-established post "Manilatown" he photographed the "Manongs" from 1977 to 1981. The bulk of his economic life span included odd jobs such as handyman carpentry, but most notably to commericial photography, working 15 years as a commercial digital product photographer for two prepress/printing companies. The mainstay of Tony Remington's vision is rooted in his ongoing body of work as a social realist photographer. This influence formally began to transfer into his paintings in 2017 as the official artist of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation's 50th Anniversary of the International Hotel Eviction of August 4. In his own words "I believe in a deeper indigenous sense of continued spiritual evolution." Manong Wilfred Ventura, post Manilatown era, Amparo Hotel, San Francisco, CA, 1979, by Tony Remington   Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA, 1975, by Tony Remington   Ondoy Flood, Philippines, 2009, by Tony Remington   "Greetings from an Old Soul", Artex Compound Barangay, Panhulo, Malabon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, 2009, by Tony Remington Laga Festival, Kalinga Apayao, Cordilleras of Luzon, Philippines, 2019, by Tony Remington Juanita Tamayo Lott at the 5th Annual Filipino American International Book Fest, San Francisco Public Library, October 2019, by Tony Remington

John Davis Jr. is a Floridian poet residing in the Tampa Bay area. He has been writing and publishing for about 20 years.  Listen to us discuss how the Florida landscape and his love for travel influences his work and about his future projects.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com http://poetjohndavisjr.com You can purchase "Hard Inheritance" here: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Inheritance-John-Davis-Jr/dp/1944355197/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1508088573&sr=8-2&keywords=Hard+Inheritance You can order "Middle Class American Proverb here: https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Class-American-Proverb-Davis/dp/0942544129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414094131&sr=8-1&keywords=Middle+Class+American+Proverb Bio:  John Davis Jr. is a Florida poet. His books include Hard Inheritance (Five Oaks Press, 2016), Middle Class American Proverb (Negative Capability Press, 2014), and two other collections. His poems have been published internationally, with appearances in magazines like Nashville Review, Barren magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Common online, and Steel Toe Review, among many others. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa in addition to a master's in education. He presently serves as associate dean of academic affairs for Keiser University in Clearwater.     Typewriter Thief Silver keys drew me in – neatly lettered and numbered circles the size of my fingers. If only I could hear those hammers, smell ink pressed free. Taken by its store display, I sought a rhythm of permanence: the striking discharge of my name. Once cops found the Remington in my neighbor’s shed, they said That boy, as if nobody else would want black applause from a curious carriage’s well-oiled melody played on paper and ended with a single bell – done. Police returned it to Mister Howard, who let it sit because his name was already on too many buildings. They booked me in, had me hold a sign with Courier numbers – white holes of zeroes captured by print’s hard impact.     Creek Wading with a Young Son Arriving by bike, we know to whisper like the woods: This stream’s soft trill and the wind’s slow travel through pines drown the drone of highway lanes beyond the palmetto-frond hands opening toward water. Predator, provider: This anonymous tributary takes and gives alike as our four bare feet bring clouds from its white sand bottom – swirling rising residue stirs south, settles back beneath water. Your passage here disproves ancient philosophy: I am the nameless man who stepped in the same time twice thanks to your smaller, faster-filling tracks. My deeper plunges do not slow this aging water. In sunlit pockets along the dark-patched course, shadow fish dart like memories – there, gone. But we have neither hooks nor bread today, so black scales brush our foreign ankles underwater. Your sunken toes discover some animal’s rib and like a tribesman, you lift it, fling it forward. It skips, ripples holes in two distant points before rocking and sinking in new familiar water.

Listen to my interview with Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo, currently residing in Hawai‘i, an amazing poet with raw insight and stories. I had the chance to meet him out in San Francisco in October at the 5th Annual Filipino American International Book Festival where I learned of his work and found out that we also share some interesting parallels and intersections. Listen to him read and discuss his poems from his debut full-length poetry collection, "Leaving Our Shadows Behind Us" published by Bamboo Ridge Press in 2019. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   Me & Elmer at the 5th Annual Filipino American International Book Festival in San Francisco, October 2019, organized by PAWA, Inc. & San Francisco Public Library. You can order his book here at: Bamboo Ridge Press -------------------------------------------------- SIBULAN Negros Oriental, Philippines At the mouth of the sea where the Ocoy River ends, brown bodies of naked boys pop in and out of the swirling water, like fish gasping for air. Foaming soapsuds stained with dirt from clothing women scrub on the river banks dissolve in the green water, like this half spoonful of sugar I just dropped into my cup of tea.   AFTER THE LOVE-MAKING Be honest, you insist, catching your breath. I want you to describe how I made love to you. Do you really care? I ask. You nod. All right then, I say, swiping my wet lips with my tongue.  You're a half-ripe tangerine, somewhat sweet, a bit sour, even after dipped in salt. BIO: Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo is an emerging voice in local literature, who translates his feelings into his poetry, reinterpreting his life experiences and working diligently to maintain authenticity. His poems are uniquely provocative, often sad in depicting his journey from an abusive childhood in the Philippines, through the trials of an overseas Filipino worker enduring and witnessing injustice and torture in the Middle East, to the challenges of a hard-working immigrant in 21st-century Hawai‘i. This is an important collection that offers a glimpse into a life of laboring to survive. Sometimes self-deprecating and occasionally humorous, Pizo’s distinctive poetry affirms the redemption found in the small sparks of humanity.  

Nick Flynn agreed to come on YourArtsyGirlPodcast, so I got a chance to pick his brains a little! We talk about his upbringing, the production of his film, "Being Flynn" that was based on his famed memoir "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City", some of his writing process, his new work, as well as hear him answer a question posed by one of my listeners, P.K. Harmon out in Guam.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://nickflynn.org You can order Nick Flynn's new collection of poetry here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/i-will-destroy-you     https://wwnorton.com/books/Another-Bullshit-Night-in-Suck-City Bio:  Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and as a case-worker with homeless adults.  He is the author of twelve books, including the New York Times best-selling memoir "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City".  His most recent book is "I Will Destroy You" (Graywolf, 2019).  He has received fellowships from (among other organizations): The Guggenheim Foundation, The Fine Arts Work Center, and The Library of Congress.  His work has won two PEN prizes, been a finalist for France's Prix Femina, and has been translated into fifteen languages. Some of the venues his poems, essays, and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the National Public Radio's "this American Life".  Since 2004, he has spent each spring in residence at the University of Houston, where is a professor on the Creative Writing faculty.

Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús is definitely a Renaissance woman! She is a scholar, a classical singer, a poet, & a visual artist. Listen to her discuss her journey into creativity through her earlier beginnings as a classically trained mezzo-soprano. As a feminist scholar, it wasn't until she found her voice in poetry with various publications to her first poetry collection "peminology", did her world open up even more to include visual arts in her artistic and intellectual repertoire.   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Order "peminology" here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/melinda-luisa-de-jes%C3%BAs/peminology/paperback/product-23634481.html PEMINOLOGY by Melinda Luisa de Jesús Published by Paloma Press Release Date: March 2018 ISBN: 9781387483686 Pages: 80, full-color Available on Lulu and at select bookshops In honor of International Women’s Day, Paloma Press is proud to announce the release of PEMINOLOGY, a first poetry collection by Melinda Luisa de Jesus, a feminist of color who teaches and writes about critical race theory, girlhood and monsters, and believes, “as did the ancients, that a poem can change the world.” Excerpt: Jealousy 1. Wanting to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed, small-boned and delicate ivory-complexioned, sweet and ladylike a fairy princess, or green-eyed and red-haired like a mermaid Anything but brown-skinned brown-eyed black-haired loud big fat different. 2. I love your poems I hate your poems I want to lick them, chew the paper they’re on savor each line then swallow them whole make them mine. 3. Wishing I felt more connection Planted in American soil wilting bleached I long to be coconut, carabao brown.   Advance words: “Melinda Luisa de Jesús’ debut collection of poems comes from a space of longing, rebellion, grief, love, poetics and politics. Bold, unafraid and uncompromising, peminology carves out a space for de Jesús’ vision and her generation of Filipinas in immigrant America. She speaks in multiple voices and registers, as a daughter, to a daughter, as a mother, to a mother, as a storyteller, dredging up a past and confronting fiercely the present. peminology is poetic auto ethnography. It must be read. It must be heard. It must be listened to. This is Asian-America. This is post-Trump’s America. This is the America we live in.” —Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, author of The Postcolonial Citizen: The Intellectual Migrant “peminology is bold, raw, and honest. Weaving between past and present, de Jesús creates a narrative of traumas that connect girlhood to womanhood. Charting the intersections of racial and feminist awakenings, these poems offer avenues for shame and rage to become strength and resistance. “The Tractor,” “Patriarchy,” and “Imagine That” are but a few examples of the timely critiques—anthems, even—that de Jesús situates amidst her chronology of oppression and opposition. Her experimentation with form, including the hay(na)ku, the hay(na)ku sentence, and the pantoum, interrupts Western poetic conventions as much as the language and imagery itself. The stand out poem—“Bellies”— followed by “Pantoum for Eloisa,” explores the heartbreaking complexities of brown women negotiating motherhood and white imperialism. This collection will leave you simultaneously heartbroken and empowered, ready to rise out of your seat to demand recognition, and sit down with your child to nurture self-love. A must-read for 2018.” —Linda Pierce Allen, co-editor of Global Crossroads: A World Literature Reader and Questions of Identity: Complicating Race in American Literary History   Bio: Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor and former Chair of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005). Her academic writing has appeared in Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices; Completely Mixed Up: Mixed Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art; Approaches to Teaching Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; Radical Teacher; The Lion and the Unicorn; Ano Ba Magazine; Rigorous; Konch Magazine; Rabbit and Rose; MELUS; Meridians; The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Delinquents and Debutantes: TwentiethCentury American Girls’ Cultures. She is also a poet and her chapbooks, Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems; Petty Poetry for SCROTUS Girls’ with poems for Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama; Defying Trumplandia; Adios Trumplandia!; James Brown’sWig and Other Poems; and Vagenda of Manicide and Other Poems were published by Locofo Chaps in 2017. Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was published by Paloma Press in 2018. In Spring 2019 Melinda was the Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she organized the Pinay Power II: Celebrating Peminisms in the Diaspora conference (see pinaypower.ca for more info). She is a mezzo-soprano, a mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty. More info: http://peminist.com Twitter: @peminology 

Upon my visit to San Francisco to attend the 5th Annual International Filipino American Book Festival, I had the pleasure to learn about Betty Ann Besa-Quirino's work and her prolific Filipino cookbooks.  However, after interviewing her and learning more about her on YourArtsyGirlPodcast, I found Ms. Betty Ann to be even more fascinating than ever that I wanted to keep on talking to her. For as most authors, she does more than writing Filipino cookbooks and food blogs, she is a journalist, creative writer and an artist as well! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes https://www.asianinamericamag.com/about/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1723844802/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1977701973/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2 Bio:  Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino, is a journalist, and a multi-award-winner of the Plaridel Writing Awards and has been a winner of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Awards. She is the author of her newest cookbook “Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot”. Other cookbooks she has written are: “My Mother’s Philippine Recipes” and “How To Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks”. She is a correspondent for Positively Filipino online magazine; and blogs about Filipino home cooking on her site AsianInAmericaMag.com Betty Ann, as she is fondly called, was born in the Philippines and raised in Tarlac province where her way of life was molded early on by her parents’ farming and agricultural business. From the time she was a little girl, Betty Ann learned how to cook traditional Philippine dishes from her mother and has transformed these culinary skills to modern day Filipino cooking in her American kitchen. Based in New Jersey, Betty Ann is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP-New York); the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance; the Association of Culinary Historians of the Philippines. Instant Filipino Recipes Cookbook: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food In a Multicooker Pot. (2018; Amazon.com) – This is perhaps the first Filipino cookbook published in America with recipes for the popular kitchen appliance, the Instant Pot or multicooker. The author has put together 36 traditional Philippine recipes, each with full color photos and shares a faster way to cook these classics without losing the soul of mom’s cooking. My Mother’s Philippine Recipes (2017; Amazon.com) – The author shares a collection of her mother’s recipes from her childhood, often served to family and friends who stopped by their home in Tarlac. The Besa home was known to locals as “the home along the highway”, a stopover of friends and family enroute to Baguio. Friends relished the multi-course meals her mother prepared with produce ingredients harvested from their farm, expertly grown by her father. War & Forgiveness article:  http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/war-and-forgiving Instagram: @bettyannquirino Twitter: @bettyannquirino Pintrest: BettyAnnBesa Quirino Elizabeth Ann Besa- Quirino elizabethannbesaquirino Correspondent, PositivelyFilipino.com Blog: www.AsianInAmericaMag.com

This week, I will take you to the small island of Guam where Dr. Irena Kečkeš works and lives.  She teaches Fine Arts at the University of Guam and is a master printmaker who creates and exhibits internationally.  Listen to her explain her illustrious career and her adventurous journey in keeping true to her art and why it is important for her to connect with her art community all over the world. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://irenakeckes.wixsite/irenaart "Bonding" Exhibit - Santander, Spain ARTIST STATEMENT | Irena Kečkeš Living and working in diverse artistic and scholarly environments in Europe, Japan, USA, New Zealand, and more recently Guam, has shaped my approach to art making and thinking. My main artistic practice is printmaking. I employ both Eastern and Western print methods, placing an equal importance on concepts and technologies. My art research has been informed by ecologically responsive, and expanded forms of contemporary print, as well aspects of phenomenology, deep ecology, and Buddhist practice and philosophy. While using one of the oldest printmaking methods, woodblock printing, my practice has moved towards what may be called an extended field of print; my large-scale woodcuts are often placed alongside the three-dimensional objects – carved wooden plates. More recently I have been printing on diverse material: from translucent tracing papers (woodcut print installation “Polyphonic”, 2017), to plastic and Mylar sheets, to various fabrics. I also collaborate with other artists in making a print installations, such as was the project “Bonding”, a large print installation made of woodcuts and linocuts on fabric, exhibited in Spain during the Impact 10 international printmaking conference in 2018. Merging intellectual and physical acts of making, exploring embodied ways of knowing, and mind-body interrelations have been key components of my artistic query. My PhD study, completed in 2015, investigated forms of contemporary printmaking, its relationships with aspects of Buddhism, and more. It explored if and how a Buddhist notion of interconnectedness may inform ecologically mindful printmaking. Likewise, the cycle of my works titled “Black Prints” (2015) explored the process of carving as a meditative practice. This approach remains present in most of my work, today as well. In creating my prints, an equal importance has been placed on concepts, on technologies and on blending art with craft, and body with mind. "Polyphonic" Exhibit    (Woodcuts) Bio:  Irena Kečkeš received PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Auckland, New Zealand (2015), MFA in printmaking from Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan (2005) and BA in art education, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, Croatia (2000). Integrating theory and practice has been a key element to her research through which she has been exploring connections between eco-Buddhism and printmaking, extended forms of print and art/craft relationship. Her practice involves large-scale monochrome woodcuts and print installations. Irena’s artwork has been exhibited internationally in many group and independent exhibitions. She presented at several international printmaking conferences including IMPACT 10 international printmaking conference in Santander, Spain (2018), SGCI 2016 in Portland USA, IMPACT 9 in China (2015), IMPACT 8 in Scotland (2013), 3rd IMC in Hawaii (2017) and 2nd IMC in Tokyo, Japan (2014). She will next participate in SGCI 2020, in Puerto Rico. Since 2015, Irena is an Associate Professor of Art at College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at University of Guam.

Learn about Daniel García Ordaz, his poetry and insights.  He is a poet, songwriter and teacher from McCallen, TX, doing amazing things for his community as the founder of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes You can order here:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EYRBUTU/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i3   You can order here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HWW4BVS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0   Daniel's Poets & Writers page:  https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/daniel_garcia_ordaz   Email:  poetmariachi@gmail.com Website:  www.amazon.com/Daniel-Garc%25C3%... Twitter:  @poetmariachi RSS feed:  poetmariachi.wixsite.com/blog   Bio:  Daniel García Ordaz is the founder of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival and the author of You Know What I’m Sayin’? and Cenzontle/Mockingbird. His focus is on the power of language, which he celebrates in his writings and talks. He defended his thesis, Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Empowerment Through Mimicry, to complete his terminal degree, an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, and he co-edited Twenty: In Memoriam, a response by poets across the U.S. to the Sandy Hook shootings. García is a teacher and writer, and a recognized voice in Mexican American poetry. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, academic collections, and anthologies. He was born in Houston and raised in Mission, Texas. His publishing experience including editing and book cover design credits. He appears in the documentary, “ALTAR: Cruzando fronteras/Building bridges" itself an altar offering to the late Chicana scholar and artist Gloria E. Anzaldúa, one of his great influences for this collection. García was one of five authors and the only poet chosen to participate in the Texas Latino Voices project in 2009 by the Texas Center For The Book, the state affiliate of the Library of Congress. He has been a featured reader and guest at numerous literary events, including the Dallas International Book Fair, McAllen Book Festival, Texas Library Association events, TAIR, TABE, and Border Book Bash, among others. García’s work has also appeared in Juventud! Growing up on the Border (VAO Publishing), Poetry of Resistance: Voices For Social Justice (The University of Arizona Press), La Bloga, Left Hand of the Father, Harbinger Asylum, Interstice, Encore: Cultural Arts Source, 100 Thousand Poets For Change, Gallery: A Literary & Arts Magazine (UTRGV), Boundless, and The Mesquite Review, among others. See a videos of him on YouTube and follow him at @poetmariachi.   Cenzontle*   “Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird And what makes a mockingbird special, anyway? Why it’s the trill from her tongue, the cry from her lungs, the sway of her lips, it’s her dusty, rusty, crusty cries, the trail of tears in her eyes on sheet music playin’, floatin’ and swayin’ to the beat, beat, beating, way-laying, saxopholaying, assaulted, accosted, bushwhacked and busted, cracked open, bruised, banged and accused, flat broke and broken terror bespoken— a token of survivin’, of thrivin’, of juke joint jump jivin’ of death cheaten daily through unwanton wailin’.   Why a mockingbird’s got diamonds at the souls of her blues, whip-lashed back-beats at the edge of her grooves, croons of healing above strangely-fruited plains of grieving. She lets loose veracity with chirps still rising at the edge of a knockabout life, troubled and toiled beat-boxed, embroiled, de-plumed, defaced, ignored, encased, caged and debased ‘cause of the color of her skin. But as the din fades and the cool of eve rolls in, there she stands—chest huff-puffed and proud, unbowed and loud, endowed with the power of flight, under the big dip of night, echoing the ancient Even cry of a lioness defending her pride in that sweet mother tongue: I rise up, and, Adam, I shall not be moved today!   The mockingbird sings what the heart cannot pray. The mockingbird sings what the heart cannot pray.   *Cenzontle is the Nahuatl word for the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos.   Our Serpent Tongue   Your Pedro Infantecide stops here. There shall be no mending of the fence. You set this bridge called my back yard ablaze with partition, division labelization, fronterization y otras pendejadas de alienization Yo soy Tejan@ Mexico-American@ Chican@ Chingad@ Pagan@-Christian@ Pelad@ Fregad@ I flick the slit at the tip of my tongue con orgullo knowing que when a fork drops, es que ¡Ahí viene visita! a woman is coming a woman with cunning a woman sin hombre with a forked tongue is running her mouth—¡hocicona! ¡fregona!— a serpent-tongued ¡chingona! with linguistic cunning a cunning linguist turning her broken token of your colonization into healing y pa’ decir la verdad You are not my equal You cannot speak like me You will not speak for me My dreams are not your dreams My voice is not your voice You yell, “Oh, dear Lord!” in your dreams. I scream “A la Chingada!” in my nightmares Your Pedro Infantecide stops here. There shall be no mending of the fence.    

Check out one of the young mover and shaker of the art world: Heidi Luerra.  She is an art entrepreneur who made it her business to showcase a wide range of artists all across the globe with RAW:natural born artists, the world’s largest independent arts organization. She recently launched her new book to continue on with that vein, helping artists & creatives with the business side of art-making entitled "The Work of Art, A No Nonsense Field Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs". http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://rawartists.com     Order Heidi's book here: "The Work of Art"   Website: http://heidiluerra.com Bio: Heidi Luerra is the Founder & CEO of RAW:natural born artists, the world’s largest independent arts organization. For almost 20 years, Heidi has worked with creatives and artists of all types. Originally a Northern California native, Heidi moved to Los Angeles at age eighteen to fulfill her dream of being a fashion designer, in turn, earning her business stripes the hard way as an independent creative entrepreneur. Over the past decade, Heidi has grown RAW to a worldwide operation in over 80 cities with almost 200k artists in the RAW community. She currently oversees a team of sixty from RAW headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. On September 17, 2019 Heidi launched her first book, "The Work of Art, A No Nonsense Field Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs (written by a creative entrepreneur who has endured her share of nonsense)."  

Margo Taft Stever is a prolific poet who has worked with many great poets through the years and through her work founding the Hudson Valley Writers Center and Slapering Hol Press.  Listen to us discuss her two books of poetry that was released this year, her work process and philosophies! http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes You can purchase a copy here:  CavanKerry Press   You can order your copy here: Kattywompus Press.     END OF HORSES   I write to you from the end of the time zone. You must realize that nothing survived after   the horses were slaughtered. We sleep below the hollow burned-out stars.   We look into dust bowls searching for horses. When you walk in the country,   you will be shocked to meet substantial masses on the road. We do not know whom to blame   or where the horses were driven, who slaughtered them, or for what purpose. Had the horses slept   under the linden trees? The generals and engineers pucker and snore on the veranda.   First published in chapbook, Ghost Moose, Margo Taft Stever, Kattywompus Press, 2019. Forthcoming in Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis.   Bio: In 2019, CavanKerry Press published Margo Taft Stever’s book, Cracked Piano, and Kattywompus Press published her chapbook, Ghost Moose. Her four other poetry collections are The Lunatic Ball, 2015; The Hudson Line, 2012; Frozen Spring, 2002; and Reading the Night Sky, 1996. Her poems have appeared widely in journals such as Verse Daily, upstreet; Plume, Blackbird; Salamander; Poem-A-Day, The Academy of American Poets; Cincinnati Review; Salamander; Prairie Schooner; New England Review; Poet Lore; West Branch; Seattle Review; and in numerous anthologies. She co-authored Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Asia (Zhejiang University Press, 2012 and Orange Frazier Press, 2015) and created a traveling exhibition of “Looking East photographs. She is the founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the founding editor of Slapering Hol Press.   Website: https://margotaftstever.com      

Listen to me and Luisa Kay Reyes discuss how she got into writing, her many other talents such as singing operatic and classical music, playing the piano, and the many languages she speaks.  We also talk about the lost art of letter writing. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   Changing Dollars by Luisa Kay Reyes published in Little Rose Magazine, March, 2019 As we walked into the empty breezeway of this Spanish Colonial style building that was set off of the main plaza of a rural village in Michoacan, Mexico, the sole gentleman standing there pulled out a very dusty and rickety small wooden table from the back corner along with an equally flimsy small chair and set it out in the middle of the foyer for my father.  Who promptly set his dark colored cloth bag full of Mexican currency on the top of the table. And as soon as I turned around, what had merely a second before been an empty outside corridor styled with the traditional Spanish archways, was now filled with a long line of working men who were eager to change their U.S. Dollars into Mexican pesos. It was a most exposed way of changing money.  Causing my mother to not unjustly worry about the safety of my brother and me as we were visiting our father during the summer and accompanying him while he conducted his in person money exchanges.  With it being the early 1990s and the use of Western Union, Mejico Express, and other means of electronically transferring money internationally not yet in vogue along with the reticence of the mainstream banks to change dollars in a land where counterfeit movies, music, knock-off purses, and fake sterling silver jewelry could be easily purchased at any weekly street market; there was a great demand for those willing to undergo the inherent dangers and risks of such an enterprise.  And my father happened to be one of them. With our proud to be an American side of the family comprising of teachers and professors who were highly educated but receiving at best average compensation, the mass quantities of U.S. Dollars being changed into pesos that day were a first for my brother and me.  For we had never beheld so many bills even during our periodic long drawn out Monopoly games. Yet, as the line continued increasing with the men continually bringing their dollars to change, it soon became evident that while the U.S. Dollars flowing through that day would never run out, the Mexican pesos that our father had brought with him for the exchanges - might. Once the glamour of seeing so many dollars in one place wore off and the day evidenced that it would be a sizeable one, my brother and I ventured out of the breezeway into the village’s central plaza and looked around for what treats we could find to eat.  We were deep in the heart of Mexico in the region that had once housed the mighty Purepecha empire, but with Michoacan being a primarily agricultural state, the current necessities of making a living had commanded many to go up to “el Norte” and figure out how to send their dollars back home. While every year hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of monarch butterflies migrate up to three-thousand miles from Canada and North America to their winter homes in the oyamel fir trees of Michoacan, over time it became apparent that they weren’t the only entity undergoing such a lengthy journey.  For the next time my brother and I went to visit our father in Michoacan, his money exchange business was now a brick and mortar one with several branches operated by his siblings throughout the area. “Why doesn’t Mexico just use the dollar as their currency once and for all?”  I asked my father. For it certainly seemed like a much simpler option than this continual hassle of changing money back and forth from dollars to pesos and vice versa. “Well, that’s what I’ve always said” was his reply.  “But it is better for me that they don’t.” Then late one night we went to meet with some city officials who were wanting to buy some dollars for the city treasury.  For with the ever present concern of the Mexican peso undergoing further devastating devaluations, even the city was deeming it expedient to have some dollars on hand. And my father’s business was in a position to sell them some dollars at a better price than the banks could offer.     Now that the money exchanging business was more official with its office in the center of the historic colonial era downtown, lots of money orders, cashier’s checks, and IRS refund checks were coming through the teller windows, as well. Often times they weren’t filled out properly and we would have to draw arrows back and forth between the “pay to” and the purchaser fields. There were also some very wrinkled diminutive peasant women covered in their native shawls among the clientele now who were coming through with thousands of dollars worth of money orders, the result of five or more sons sending their earnings back home. The locals informed us that Michoacan had reached the point to where there were more people from Michoacan living in the U.S. than in Michoacan, itself.  And the rural villages that we used to go to with our father, were now devoid of men. Since all of the able-bodied males from the ages of twelve to fifty were in the United States working. We actually missed getting to explore some of the outlying villages like we’d done before, although, sometimes my brother was able to accompany the security guards to some of the more remote branches. Why the banks were so hesitant to enter into the money exchange business was a bit mystifying for my brother and me.  Since after seeing so many dollar bills come through, it was quite easy to spot the counterfeit ones. There was just something a little bit off about the swamp green ink color or the thickness of the paper not feeling quite the same.  Yet, one time, my brother took back a counterfeit bill to the States. And after eating at a restaurant, he decided to see if he could get away with using it. Sure enough, the friendly server accepted the bill without question. And fearing that she might receive a reprimand if her boss were apprised of the fact that she had just accepted a counterfeit, I insisted we tell her to bring it back and let us pay with the real money.   She didn’t want to do so.  She just couldn’t see how the bill was a counterfeit since she swore it looked identical to the real thing.  But, after a while, we convinced her to let us pay with the real money and still a bit puzzled by it all she reluctantly accepted to make the exchange.  Admitting to us that she simply couldn’t tell the difference between it and the real money. Having more employees in the money exchange business meant there was less for us to do during our summer visits.  So my brother and I got to indulge in a lifestyle barred from us in the USA, that of spending the day in the country clubs and fine dining in the evenings.  Yet one time I decided I wanted to save some of my money to buy a new cd player. A notion for which I was quickly called to task, since my father felt the money he gave us to spend during our visits was for us to have a good time.  So, while I still managed to save back some and make my purchase when we went back to the States, I did learn to spend the money freely. A lesson I learned perhaps too well. Then one day while I was in college and driving to my local bank in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to deposit my refund check from the U.S. Treasury, I held it up and stared at it in disbelief.  I knew that getting a refund back was far better than owing money and going on an installment plan to make monthly payments to the IRS. But I couldn’t help but stare at its pale yellow background emblazoned with the statue of liberty on it.  Since I was all too familiar with these checks. They were the ones I’d seen the peasants cash back in my father’s business in Mexico. And somehow it had never occurred to me that I would one day receive one of those, as well. But upon glancing at the amount, it occurred to me that I had a lot more work to do before I could match their sums.  And now I understood first-hand where they came from. https://www.facebook.com/LuisaKayReyesWriter/   http://www.amazon.com/author/luisakayreyeswriter/

Kay Fabella is a Filipina-American Creative living in Spain.  Listen to her inspiring story about her struggles with depression and how she carved out her space and made her name living her dream abroad, as well as publish her book: "Rewrite Your Story", showing others how to find their voice as they find their way through adversities.   http://www.yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Click this link to order Kay's book! Bio: Just when Kay Fabella was beginning to feel that she’d found her path to success―graduating from college in 3 years, a paying job in the midst of a recession, and a bright future ahead―she was diagnosed with clinical depression. A lifelong overachiever who started reading at age 2, graduated high school at 16, and college at 19, burnout forced Kay to re-evaluate her own definition of success. She decamped for the support of family in Los Angeles, and began a journey of healing to stay away from meds and hospitals. Along the way, Kay discovered how to create a life that was aligned with who she was―eventually leading her to create her dream life and business in Spain. The practices that Kay cultivated over the past 10 years to thrive post-burnout and manage her mental health eventually inspired her to write this book. Rewrite Your Story chronicles how Kay recovered from burnout, and walks you through the practices she herself cultivated to begin to ask what success looked like on her terms… and invites you to do the same for your life. Today, Kay operates her business as The Story Finder as a Filipina-American expat in Spain. Stories = diversity = inclusion = social change, and it’s Kay’s mission to give underrepresented entrepreneurs a platform to grow their audience by leveraging the power of their stories. She’s been featured in Fast Company, Thrive Global, Huffington Post and Spanish-language newspaper, El País.

Heather Davis and Jose Padua are powerhouse poets and writers that have worked and encouraged each other's work throughout the years.  Listen to us discuss their journey, their writing process and their challenges and their joys as poets who are married together with children. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Bio:  Jose Padua’s first full-length book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by former poet laureate Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is now out from the University of Arkansas Press. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Bomb, Salon.com, Beloit Poetry Journal, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Unbearables, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and others. He has written features and reviews for Salon, The Weeklings, NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times, and has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets' Café, the St. Mark's Poetry Project, and many other venues. He was a featured reader at the 2012 Split This Rock poetry festival and won the New Guard Review’s 2014 Knightville Poetry Prize. After spending the past ten years with his wife (the poet Heather L. Davis) and children in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he and his family are back in his hometown, Washington, D.C. Padua also writes the blog Shenandoah Breakdown,  (http://shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/). Samples: These So Long Days We Spend in the Middle of Things--Shenandoah Breakdown https://shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/these-so-long-days-we-spend-in-the-middle-of-things/ A Short History of Everyone in the World – Verse Daily http://www.versedaily.org/2019/ashorthistoryofeveryone.shtml Gin and the River – Pea River Journal https://peariverjournal.com/2013/11/29/pushcart-nominee-jose-padua-gin-and-the-river/ Two poems - Bomb https://bombmagazine.org/articles/two-poems-padua/ My Confederate Town https://www.salon.com/2013/10/27/why_do_confederate_flags_remind_me_of_home_partner/ A Life of Uncontrollable Urges (or Tourette’s and the Writing Life) https://voxpopulisphere.com/2014/08/21/jose-padua-a-life-of-uncontrollable-urges-or-tourettes-and-the-writing-life/   Bio: Heather Lynne Davis earned a B.A. in English from Hollins University and an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. She attended the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets and is a winner of the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize at Syracuse University, a Larry Neal Writer’s Award, Bethesda Literary Festival essay and poetry prizes, and the Arlington County Moving Words Poetry Contest. She is the author of The Lost Tribe of Us, which won the 2007 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and has published two short stories in the Rehoboth Beach Reads anthology series. A short story is also forthcoming in the anthology Us Against Alzheimer’s: Stories of Family, Love, and Faith. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Poet Lore, Puerto del Sol, and Sonora Review, among others. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, the poet José Padua, and their son and daughter. She is at work on a novel.     A few poems and links to poems are here: https://heatherlynnedavis.com/poetry/  

Lynn McGee is a poet with many fine publications and accolades.  Listen to us discuss our childhood experiences growing up as military brats, her reading some of her fabulous poems and find out where and how she gets her ideas for her poetry collections.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://lynnmcgee.com  Order her book:  http://broadstonebooks.com/Lynn_McGee.html Bio:  Lynn McGee is the author of the poetry collection, "Tracks"(Broadstone Books, 2019);  Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), and two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1997).  Lynn earned an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University, where she held teaching and merit fellowships. She was awarded a MacDowell fellowship, is a winner of the Judith's Room Emerging Writers Award, and taught writing at private and public colleges (George Washington University, Columbia University, Southern Methodist University, Brooklyn College/CUNY and others) as well as having led poetry workshops in public schools in New York City as an artist-in-residence with Teachers and Writers Collaborative. A 2015 Nominee for the Best of the Net award, Lynn was also a nominee for the McGovern Prize and the Pushcart Prize, and was a semi-finalist for the Dana Award. She is a recipient of the NYC Literacy Center's Recognition Award for her work in adult literacy, and received the Heart of the Center Award from the LGBT Community Center in New York City. Today she is a communications manager at Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York. She lives in the Bronx, New York.

Listen to Tyler Gillespie and I discuss his beginnings being born and raised in Tampa Bay, Forida, his future plans, and listen to him read some of his excellent poems from his Florida Man: Poems and up and coming collections!   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes https://tylermtg.com/ Order your copy here!  https://www.redflagpoetry.com/store/p19/Florida_Man%3A_Poems_by_Tyler_Gillespie.html   Bio: Tyler Gillespie is a poet and award-winning journalist published in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Vice, The Daily Beast, Salon, GQ, The Nation, and Playboy.  He is the author of Florida Man: Poems and the forthcoming nonfiction collection Florida Men & Monsters: My Search for Pythons, Pioneers and the Truth about Paradise (University Press of Florida). He also wrote a chapbook Dirty Socks and Pine Needles(Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012) and co-edited the humor collection The Awkward Phase: The Uplifting Tales of Those Weird Kids You Went to School With.  His creative work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and appears in publications such as The New Yorker, Brevity, Los Angeles Review, and the anthology LGBT Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and an MA in Journalism & Media Studies from the University of South Florida. 

Listen to Briana discuss how she got into poetry, her new collection & future projects & plans!   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes You can by her book here:  https://www.amazon.com/Loose-Lips-Briana-Mu%C3%B1oz/dp/1889568066 Interview on San Diego Voyager:  http://sdvoyager.com/interview/meet-briana-munoz-briana-munoz-north-county Instagram: @womanofwords BIO: Briana Muñoz is a writer from San Diego, CA. now living in Los Angeles, CA. Her poetry and short stories have been published in four editions of the Bravura Literary Journal. In the 2016 publication of the Bravura, she was awarded the second-place fiction prize. She has been published in LA BLOGA, an online publication, the Poets Responding page and in the Oakland Arts Review. Her poem “Rebirth” was featured in the Reproductive Health edition of the St. Sucia zine, a publication dedicated to “Exposing What It Is To Be A Mujer”. Briana’s work was one of ten chosen for “The Best of LA BLOGA” from 2015. One of her prouder writing accomplishments is being able to have been part of the 2017 U.S. delegation attending the international poetry festival of Havana. In March of 2018, she presented her poetry at the 21st international Spanish literature and studies conference in Quito, Ecuador. Briana is excited to continue sharing her poetry in print and spoken form. When she isn't typing away, she enjoys traveling, live music, cats, and thrift stores.

Rae Luskin is an award winning creative activist, author and artist.  Listen to her give tips on how to gain a new or different perspective through visual and creative exercises as well as writing prompts.  This is a lively episode jam-packed with great ideas for art lovers, novices and seasoned professionals. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://thewinningadventure.com   Bio: Rae Luskin is an award winning artist, author, activist and the creative mindfulness mentor dedicated to raising awareness of creativity as a positive catalyst for health and well-being. She specializes in interactive presentations, providing creative tools and strategies to foster self-worth, resilience, healing, and out of the box thinking. For twenty years she has helped individuals and teams discover their passion, purpose and authentic power to become confident and effective change leaders and creative problem solvers. Rae, a community activist passionately focuses her lens on improving the lives of women and children whether designing art work for Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s “ask” gun safety campaign or sharing her personal story of healing from childhood sexual abuse.  Rae believes when we share our stories of resilience, people know they are not alone and it creates a positive ripple of hope. In 2016 she received woman of Distinction award and was nominated for Beauty In Beauty Out award. She is the author of Art From My Heart a self-discovery journal, Stuck to unstoppable journal and the Creative Edge: 30 days of creativity prompts  and the Benjamin Franklin award winning inspirational book, The Creative Activist: Make the World Better, One Person, One Action at a Time.  She has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Roosevelt University and a Master’s degree in Urban Planning.   https://youtu.be/BLGDYoqTp0s

Listen to Emily Vieweg discuss her journey to writing poetry with all the complexities and challenges being a single mother of two, and juggling a full-time job and creative writing classes, and surviving bad advice from well-meaning professors.   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   Conversations with Beethoven and Bach by Emily Vieweg   Emily Vieweg, in her chapbook collection Conversations with Beethoven and Bach, evokes an image of the poet who, deeply entrenched in the complexities of 21st century life as a mother, reaches across time to link with wit and grace her experiences with classical musicality. In her vignettes, so much turns on a single word such as “frolic” that evokes love and fear and changes in both society and environment.  ~ Clifford Peterson, 2017 ~ Taleamor Park Residency Director   BIO: Emily Vieweg is a poet and writer originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She earned her MFA in poetry in 2015 and has published two short chapbooks of poetry. Emily's poetic success includes publications appearing in Indolent Books What Rough Beast, Santa Fe Writers Project, as well as winning Best Performance Work in the 2nd Annual Human Rights Arts Festival for her poem, "Vision." Emily lives in Fargo, ND, where she is a single working mother of two, volunteer car wrangler, human rights advocate, and office assistant.    Web: http://emilyvieweg.com Fb: facebook.com/EmilyViewegWriter Tw: twitter.com/EmilyJVieweg Etsy: etsy.com/shop/EmilyVPoeticsEtc  

Edward Vidaurre is the barrio poet from East LA & Poet Laureate of McAllen, TX.  He has amassed several collections of poetry and has been a pivotal voice in the LatinX literary community where he runs Flowersong Books and continues to write and publish.  Listen to us discuss his process, his influences, his experiment with jazz and heavy metal music, and him reading a couple of his inspiring poems. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   JazzHouse ~ compelling love songs to the intensity of everyday life; from the magic in the routine to the marvels and miraculousness of living. Edward Vidaurre takes us with him on his life trip, from East LA to the Rio Grande Valley and the all the far reaching roots that accompany him in the form of ancestors, spirits, family, and other familiars. JAZzHOUSE is a base camp, and a life. We are invited in to share some food, some cafecito, or a glass of wine - to sit awhile and be grateful for every minute we are alive. BIO: Edward Vidaurre, the 2018-2019 McAllen,Texas Poet Laureate and author of six collections of poetry: I Took My Barrio on A Road Trip (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015),Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Press 2016), and Ramona & Rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy & Unedited Necessary Poems (Hercules Publishing 2018),JAZzHOUSE (Prickly Pear Press, 2019) and forthcoming from King Shot Press, WhenA City Ends. Vidaurre has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Vidaurre was the Director of Operations in 2018 for the Valley International PoetryFestival, moderator for Poets Responding, and founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino - a reading series in the Rio Grande Valley. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and resides in McAllen. He writes from the front lines of the Mexican-American borderlands of El Valle in south Tejas. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, California.   Poet Laureate: City of McAllen 2018-2019 Publisher: FlowerSong Books Founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino   http://edwardvidaurre.blogspot.com/ vidaurre.poet@gmail.com 

We are definitely having fun here at http://YourArtsyGirlPodcast.com! Michelle Peñaloza has a new full-length poetry collection, "Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire" & we were all abuzz about it! We also discuss the necessary "hustle" of promoting our poetry because the struggle is real, ya'll. That's why tapping into "community" & getting on this podcast show is such a symbiosis of sorts. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://michellepenaloza.com Michelle Peñaloza is author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, which won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize and will be published in August 2019 by Inlandia Institute. She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Her work can be found in places like Prairie Schooner, upstreet, Pleiades, The Normal School and Third Coast. She is the recipient of fellowships from the University of Oregon, Kundiman and Hugo House as well as the 2019 Scotti Merrill Emerging Writer Award for Poetry from The Key West Literary Seminar. Michelle has also received scholarships from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives, farms, and writes in rural Northern California. Michelle made a "mixtape" for her poetry collection. Check it out!   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3uAR57qg44gKhnG3uDQTtG?si=Y5vAGHaNTxGbLswX4wPBeg

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor is a storyteller, writer and poet residing in Washington state. We talk about her new collection of poetry "Dancing Between Bamboo Poles", her rich family history, about being "silenced" and Filipino stereotypes, to name a few. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   http://rebeccamabanglomayor.com Rebecca's email: rmm.wordbinder@gmail.com   Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor’s non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in print and online in several journals and anthologies including Katipunan Literary Magazine, Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults, Kuwento: Small Things, and Beyond Lumpia, Pansit, and Seven Manangs Wild: An Anthology. Her poetry chapbook Pause Mid-Flight was released in 2010. She is also the co-editor of True Stories: The Narrative Project Vol. 1, and her poetry and essays have been collected in Dancing Between Bamboo Poles. She has been performing as a storyteller since 2006 and specializes in stories based on Filipino folktales and Filipino-American history. Rebecca, as Rebecca A. Saxton, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University in 2012, her BA in Humanities from Washington State University in 1998, and her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003. Artist’s Statement: As a Filipino American writer and performance storyteller, my art is based on the impact of heritage on shaping and informing personal experience and the importance of self-expression as a method of healing. I view my writing and performing as subversive acts against invisibility and silence in a society where women of color are often viewed through an objectifying, exoticizing lens. Raised in a family focused on assimilation, I grew up sheltered from the Vietnam War and the Marcos dictatorship by a shield of language. Becoming a socially aware cultural activist has been a process of understanding the impact of the American Dream trope on my family and upbringing. As a result, I have connected with diverse ethnic groups who also value art as a method of self-expression and an act of compassion. A desire for wholeness drives my art which seeks to weave past and present, folktale with fact, subjectivity with objectivity into works which entertain and enliven others.  

This episode takes us to Baguio, Philippines, where I talk to fiction writer and poet, Monica Macansantos.  We talk about her writing process, her travels, her education, influences, and publishing process as we catch her at the brink of getting her novel published. Please keep an eye out on this fabulous Filipina writer!   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes      http://www.tayoliterarymag.com/monica-macansantos Monica Macansantos was a James A. Michener Fellow in Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA in Fiction and Poetry. She also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington, International Institute of Modern Letters. Her fiction has appeared in failbetter.com, Women's Studies Quarterly, The Masters Review Anthology, Day One, and TAYO Literary Magazine, among other places, while her nonfiction and journalism have appeared in Aotearotica, Takahe, New Naratif, ​SBS Life, and VICE, among other places. Her essay,"Becoming A Writer: The Silences We Write Against", was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2016. Her novella, "Leaving Auckland" (serialized in three parts on failbetter​), was a Top 25 Finalist in the Summer 2016 Glimmer Train Fiction Open, while her story, "Stopover", earned an Honorable Mention in the Winter 2013 Glimmer Train Fiction Open. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook (2014) and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2012 & 2019). She is currently Branches Nonfiction Editor of Rambutan Literary ​and is also working on her first novel. She is represented by Kerry D'Agostino of Curtis Brown, Ltd. in New York City.  https://www.monicamacansantos.com/publishedwork.html

Dr. Gregory Byrd is a poet, novelist and professor at Florida's St. Petersburg College.  We discuss his new poetry collection, his completion of his first novel, his growing up in Florida in a working class family, and how it shaped his aesthetics.   http://www.yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Order your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Name-God-Who-Speaks-Poems/dp/1680031864   This is the Name for the God who Speaks Father, you would know these primal prayers, light flashing in the west behind live oaks, a sky-slashed language dead after Conquest. From that living world, we share only lightning, an old god speaking light out of darkness, a chant of rain as alphabet where water flowing is a word. I found picture of us twenty-five years ago, after your divorce. We stood in front of the old Florida Keys house where I grew up. You poured concrete there to appease those Calusa gods, then steered your small boat into their vast ocean where you taught me words that cannot be spoken for greenrayed depths, the language of whale sharks surfacing, fishblood across decks and on hands. Loneliness of the Gulf Stream moves, over the horizon lightning chants, dark, by the time you hear its name.   Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared widely in journals such as the Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Milosao (Albania, in translation), Poeteka (Albania, in translation), and many others.  Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005), which won the first Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for Florida Poets.  He has received a Creative Pinellas Rapid Returns Fellowship (2016), Fulbright Fellowship to Albania (2011), an SPC Distinguished Teaching Award (2015) and a Pushcart Prize Nomination (1988).  Greg has a B.A. from Eckerd College, M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Greg’s scholarly and artistic interests are influenced by the culture and landscape of Florida as well as by his studies in poetry.  Tampa poet Silvia Curbelo writes that Greg’s poems “embody the restless energy of the Florida landscape, a place of stories fathers tell over beers and heroes facing unordinary times.”  In his poems, you’re likely to come across references to Puccini, Beethoven, Faust, or Genesis in one line and then to images of Everglades muck, rusted shotguns or dead tarpon in the next. He has recently finished a novel about an American pilot flying for the British during World War I, Where Shadow Meets Water.  When not working on his writing, Greg fishes the flats near Clearwater, sails, rides his bicycle and works on his 1966 Ford pickup. He is founder and advisor of the Student Veterans Association at St. Petersburg College. C.V.: https://gregorybyrd.wordpress.com/curriculum-vita-gregory-byrd/ Website: http://gregorybyrd.wordpress.com/poetry/ Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/GregoryByrdPoetry Grant blog for Creative Pinellas:  http://www.rapidreturns.org/gregory-byrd  

Casey Clague is my first featured poet who is local to me here in the Tampa Bay area.  They just completed their MFA in Creative Writing from University of South Florida. Listen to them read a couple of poems and learn more about their future goals and their interest in literary criticism and what they do for the local literary/art community in Tampa. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   http://caseyclague.com   Casey Clague holds an MFA from the University of South Florida. They live in Tampa where they cofounded the Read Herring reading series and serve as Assistant Poetry Editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection. Critical and creative work appears or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle; Permafrost; Gravel; New Writing; and elsewhere.    ANATTA   Darling, according to physics, with the air    pulled out   from around                         our atoms and the atoms compressed,   we could fit in a sugar cube. Humanity, I mean.   The skin-bound                                      divisions of us. Finally, the closeness   we sought                     when we pricked   our fingers     to make blood                                       brothers and sisters.            What we came close to in sex   but even then                                       were separated by a silk-thin veil of sweat.   Before entropy sends its tendrils through          our blank spaces,   crushes down our bodies in city buses and offices,   let’s draw out            the dead air.   Forget it like a hymn.                                      Don’t say:   In that viewless room we would all just face   the center. What would we do                         with ourselves?

Kai Coggin is a Filipina American poet/writer with a newly released full-length poetry collection entitled "Incandescent" by Sibling Rivalry Press. Listen to us discuss how she came into poetry, the importance of her teachings, her amazing encounter and longstanding friendship with famed Chicana writer, Sandra Cisneros, and how she didn't know she submitted her first poetry submission to my literary & art online magazine, "The Manila Envelope", five years ago, among the many other "parallels" we have. She also reads a poem from "Incandescent" and explains the premise of it.   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes You can order your copy here:  https://siblingrivalrypress.bigcartel.com/product/incandescent-by-kai-coggin      Visit her website:  https://www.kaicoggin.com/   Incandescent everything in me is a volcano everything in me is a blazing new sun everything in me is a conflagration of words everything in me is a color that makes up wildfire everything in me is a phoenix wing ablaze everything in me is a heart’s inferno everything in me is a lucent moon glowing growing giving off light light light in whatever form I can incandescent means emitting light as a result of being heated and isn’t everything heated and isn’t everything shamefully ablaze and isn’t everything burning before us and isn’t the whole wide world turning to ash can we still find the light in all that is being lost can we still project a vision that leads humanity forward can we still search out beauty in the rubble can we still shine amidst the trouble can we name ourselves luminous and believe it we must we do if you recognize this is how you move through life you are incandescent, too

Huda Al-Marashi discusses her mesmerizing Muslim-American memoir published by Prometheus Books, "Then Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story" in this episode.  We talk about her influences, her challenges writing about her family and her life and a lot about the writing craft. More importantly, she talks about the accomplishment of being picked up by a large publishing house after years of submitting and revising. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://www.hudaalmarishi.com Huda Al-Marashi is the Iraqi-American author of "First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story", a book the Washington Post called"a charming, funny, heartbreaking memoir of faith, family, and the journey to love. If Jane Austen had grown up as a first-gen daughter of Iraqi parents in the 1990s, she might have written this.” Excerpts from this memoir have also been anthologized in Love Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim American Women, Becoming: What Makes a Woman, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women and Extreme Religion. Her other writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the LA Times, al Jazeera, VIDA Review, Refinery 29, The Rumpus, The Offing and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Cuyahoga County Creative Workforce Fellowship and an Aspen Summer Words Emerging Writer Fellowship. Huda currently resides in California with her husband and three children. Visit her at www.hudaalmarashi.com.

Listen to Alonso Véner, a Costa Rican writer residing in Japan, speaks of how he started writing poetry and his new interest in writing short stories. His challenge as a Latin American writer living abroad writing in Spanish, is the lack of professional literary Spanish translators to help him translate his work for a wider public. If, after listening to the show, know of someone who may be able to assist him with that, please contact him at info@alonsovener.com. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   Alonso's short story collection! https://www.amazon.com/Alonso-V%25C3%25A9ner/e/B007WRM9SA?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&qid=1557405652&sr=1-2   You can visit his blog at:  https://veneraciones.wordpress.com His personal webpage:  www.alonsovener.com  e-mail address:  info@alonsovener.com   The following is a translation of one of his poems:   BEYOND   When my waits come to an end, and over the garden, there is nothing left, I think I see your hand drawing my smile in the mud, dragging away the petals of good-bye, of ashes, like broken glass next to my window are hanging chrysalis who teach me there are always flowers beyond the storm.    

Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. is a Filipino poet living in Singapore. Listen to us discuss his latest poetry collection, and hear him read a couple poems from his collection, "Aria and Trumpet Flourish".  We talk about poetic forms, his influences and his process of honoring the creative process by writing everyday. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes   Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. is the author of Aria and Trumpet Flourish (Math Paper Press, Singapore), as well as chapbooks, Requiem and Hymnal (Vagabond Press, Australia). His poems have been published in Rattle, Hayden's Ferry Review, Likhaan, Shanghai Literary Review, and other journals and anthologies. He has received prizes from the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Kokoy Guevara Poetry Competition, British Council, among others. Born in the Philippines, he has been based in Singapore since 2011. For more information or to reach out to Rodrigo, please visit his Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/ariaandtrumpetflourish/

Marivi Soliven is the author of "The Mango Bride" that was published by Penguin Press.  She is a Filipina writer now residing in San Diego. Listen as she explains how she got the idea for the novel, how the novel made its impact helping Filipino women in domestic violence situations and what she is working on next.  http://www.yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes http://www.marivisoliven.com Marivi Soliven's debut novel The Mango Bride (Penguin, 2013) won the 2011 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award, the Philippine counterpart of the Pulitzer Prize. The novel has been translated into Spanish and Filipino, and a film adaptation is in process, with a projected release date next year. Stories and essays from 16 earlier books have appeared in anthologies in Manila and the United States. When not writing or organizing literary events, she works as a telephonic Tagalog interpreter. Order your copy on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Mango-Bride-Marivi-Soliven/dp/0451239849/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428507765&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mango+bride.  

This episode takes us to Los Angeles where I got a chance to talk to Dr. Gregory Phillips.  It was his exquisite photography that caught my eye and prompted me to reach out him.  You will be amazed, just as I was, when I learned he has lived a rich life and the courage it took for him to stand for his conviction as an artist with a vision.  http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Dr. Gregory Phillips is a former English professor, who six years ago decided to leave teaching and pursue his life as an artist. He was living and teaching in Minnesota and woke up one cold, winter day and decided to move to Los Angeles to chase his dream to be an actor. That summer, he packed his car and headed west. It was the best decision he's ever made, he said. He's also a writer and photographer. In terms of his photography, it started as a hobby, some fifteen years ago. Shortly after starting, it became clear that he has an eye. Photography for him is a way to document the things he sees. When he first started making pictures, his subjects were mainly flowers, in color. One day, he started shooting black and white and a new world opened up for him. His hope is that when people see his photos, they have the same reaction: be moved and understand that no matter how dark the moment may be, there's always light.  You can contact him and see more of his photos by following him on his Instagram: @cgregoryp  

This episode takes us to Hawaii where I talk to photographer and writer, Floyd K. Takeuchi, about his beginnings as a photographer and writer, and his artistic philosophy on creating beautiful images of the people and places of Micronesia, Oceania, and the Pacific region. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Floyd K. Takeuchi is a writer-photographer who specializes in Hawaii, Japan and Oceania. He has had five solo photo exhibits in Japan and 15 shows, mostly solo exhibits, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was awarded “Best in Show” in one of Hawaii’s largest juried photo exhibits. A collection of his photographs was acquired by the College of Micronesia-FSM as part of that college’s 25th anniversary last year. He has also had commissions to photograph in the Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands for new hotel developments in those island nations. Floyd has also spent more than four decades working as a journalist and media executive in Hawaii, Guam, Fiji and Japan. He has published four books based on his photography and writing, along with an e-book that includes more than 30 videos of the best dancers in Oceania performing at the Festival of Pacific Arts. An American with degrees from Boston University and the University of Hawaii, Floyd was born and raised in the Marshall Islands, and his family lived on Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, for nearly 20 years. Website: www.floydtakeuchi.com Instagram: @fktakeuchi  Artist’s Statement; Floyd K. Takeuchi After leading two media companies through the unchartered waters following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2009 Great Recession, I decided I was past due for an infusion of creativity, to remember why I became a journalist 42 years ago. And that was to tell stories that help people better understand the world around them. This time, I rely on a camera to tell those stories. And I made the decision to focus on stories that showcased beauty, physical and spiritual; that honored traditions; and, which emphasized cultural values of the Pacific region. I’ve followed that standard in nearly every large, small, commercial and personal photography project I’ve taken on over the past decade. Whether it’s been documenting the behind the scenes life of a hula halau or school for nearly two years, roaming the side streets of Tokyo searching for signs of solitude and peace in one of the world’s most frenetic cities, or as I have in recent weeks, traveling by small planes and boats in the outer atolls of the Marshall Islands to do portraits of the master weavers who are reviving one that nation’s great cultural and artistic traditions, I try to remain true to my artistic values: search out beauty; honor traditions; and, respect diverse cultural values. -------------------------------------------------------------- Here are some of the great photos by Floyd K. Takeuchi.  (Note: images are copyrighted by Floyd K. Takeuchi). "Halau - A Life in Hula" "Pasefika" "Xavier High School: School on the Hill"