Podcasts about Black Lawrence Press

During her term as 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita, the Academy of American Poets awarded Luisa A. Igloria one of twenty-three Poet Laureate Fellowships in 2021, to support a program of public poetry projects. She is the recipient of the Immigrant Writing Series Prize from Black Lawrence Press for Caulbearer (2024), and was one of 2 Co-Winners of the 2019 Crab Orchard Poetry Prize for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, fall 2020). In April 2021, the Writers Union of the Philippines (UMPIL) conferred on her the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas lifetime achievement award in the English poetry category. In 2015, she was the inaugural winner of the Resurgence Prize (UK), the world's first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. Former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey selected her chapbook What is Left of Wings, I Ask as the 2018 recipient of the Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Prize. Other works include The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2018), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), and 10 other books. She is lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, September 2023). Her poems are widely published or appearing in national and international anthologies, and print and online literary journals including The Georgia Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Cincinnati Review, The Common, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Diode, Missouri Review, Rattle, Poetry East, Your Impossible Voice, Poetry, Shanghai Literary Review, Cha, and others. Luisa served as the inaugural Glasgow Visiting Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University in 2018. Luisa also leads workshops at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk (and serves on the Muse Board). She is a Louis I. Jaffe Professor and University Professor of English and Creative Writing, and a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015. Since 2010, she has been writing (at least) a poem a day. www.luisaigloria.com Social Media: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/VAPoetLaureate2020 Instagram @poetslizard X/Twitter @ThePoetsLizard https://linktr.ee/thepoetslizard

Building visions towards a liberatory future will take creative power, vulnerability, radical imagination, and the capacity to honor difference in all its beauty. Lyo-Demi exemplifies this courage and power in their writing and poetry: “My diagnosis of “bipolar disorder,” in my opinion, is both a sensitivity towards and reaction to traumas (both personal and systemic) that yields strength, creativity, and passion, and my diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”…well that just makes me fabulous.” (From essay: Not Confused, Not Crazy) As we ‘reinvent the world,' many of us have to wade through the nuances of adopting or rejecting labels, and find ways to support ourselves and each other, both within and outside systems. In this episode, Lyo-Demi and I talk about DSM categories, the generative and difficult aspects of mental health concerns, and the gift and power of creativity. In this episode we discuss: the power of mutual aid and peer support reframing and depathologizing mental health diagnoses generative aspects of what gets labeled bipolar and mania honoring difference at the intersection of neurodiversity and gender queerness using creativity, graphic novels and stories to build visions toward liberation Bio Lyo-Demi Green (they/them) is a queer and non-binary writer, graphic novelist and tenured community college professor living in the San Francisco Bay Area on Ohlone Land. They have been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Foglifter, and elsewhere. They have been featured at dozens of reading series, slams, showcases, and workshops in schools, colleges, and open mics locally and across the country. They co-edited We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health with Kelechi Ubozoh, published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House in 2019. They authored Phoenix Song, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2022. They received a BA from Vassar College and have an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. LD has attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, was a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow, and was selected for Tin House and Stowe Story Labs. LD's queer and trans rom-com fantasy screenplay Journey to the Enchanted Inkwell was a finalist in several national contests. With the help of the Sequential Artists' Workshop, they adapted this project into a YA graphic novel script. They met their collaborating artist Jamie Kiemle through the online community Kids Comics Unite. LD is a decades-long fan of graphic novels, and they have taught them for over a decade at places like the San Francisco Art Institute and others. They are represented by literary agent Jennifer Newens of Martin Literary and Media Management. Links @leoninetales on IG and Threads www.ldgreen.org http://www.ldgreen.org/graphic-novel.html https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/phoenix-song/ Not Confused, Not Crazy Essay Resources: Find videos and bonus episodes: ⁠DEPTHWORK.SUBSTACK.COM⁠ Get the book: ⁠⁠Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health⁠ Become a member: ⁠The Institute for the Development of Human Arts⁠ Train with us: ⁠Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum Sessions & Information about the host: ⁠⁠JazmineRussell.com⁠⁠ Disclaimer: The DEPTH Work Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Any information on this podcast in no way to be construed or substituted as psychological counseling, psychotherapy, mental health counseling, or any other type of therapy or medical advice.

In Sara Johnson Allen's novel Down Here We Come Up (Black Lawrence Press 2023), Kate Jessup's mother lures her back home to North Carolina. Jackie Jessup is a con-artist, always working a scheme, always taking what she wanted, and she taught Kate to do the same. Now she's dying, and Kate is estranged and living far away in Boston. Kate, her mother, and a third woman, Maribel, have either alienated, given away, or otherwise lost their children. It's 2006, and Jackie has hatched a dubious plan for Kat to drive down to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, pretend she's the mother of Maribel's children, and sneak them back over the border into the states. Kate needs to figure out what's in it for her mother, because with Jackie Jessup, there's always a price to pay. This is a novel about class, inheritance, and flawed people making mistakes, taking risks, or trying to survive. Sara Johnson Allen was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. A recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar, the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize, an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and MacDowell fellowships, her work has appeared in PANK Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reckon Review, among others. She is finishing a second novel and starting a work of creative nonfiction, which is an exploration of cultural and political history through personal narrative, centering on her 17th century home in coastal Massachusetts. When she is not teaching or shuttling her three kids around, she writes about place and how it shapes us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Sara Johnson Allen's novel Down Here We Come Up (Black Lawrence Press 2023), Kate Jessup's mother lures her back home to North Carolina. Jackie Jessup is a con-artist, always working a scheme, always taking what she wanted, and she taught Kate to do the same. Now she's dying, and Kate is estranged and living far away in Boston. Kate, her mother, and a third woman, Maribel, have either alienated, given away, or otherwise lost their children. It's 2006, and Jackie has hatched a dubious plan for Kat to drive down to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, pretend she's the mother of Maribel's children, and sneak them back over the border into the states. Kate needs to figure out what's in it for her mother, because with Jackie Jessup, there's always a price to pay. This is a novel about class, inheritance, and flawed people making mistakes, taking risks, or trying to survive. Sara Johnson Allen was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. A recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar, the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize, an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and MacDowell fellowships, her work has appeared in PANK Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reckon Review, among others. She is finishing a second novel and starting a work of creative nonfiction, which is an exploration of cultural and political history through personal narrative, centering on her 17th century home in coastal Massachusetts. When she is not teaching or shuttling her three kids around, she writes about place and how it shapes us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Bio: African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 9 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black [all from POOR Press], Elohi Unitsi [Conviction 2 Change Publishing], Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate [Vagabond Books], Plans [originally Nomadic Press, now re-issued from Black Lawrence Press], Crimson Stain [ EYEPUBLISHEWE] and his newest, Discovery [ Southern Arizona Press] -- and 73 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far. Episode Summary: As the episode unfolds, Dee's definition of poetry is explored, as well as his views on the insane nature of modern reality, and the political and environmental issues that motivate his work. Throughout the episode Dee shares personal anecdotes, including his first live performance experience, and reads poems from his latest book, 'Discovery.' The conversation also touches on his influences, such as Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden and Sonia Sanchez. It also examines his thoughts on the poet's role in society, the editing process, and the ways in which his remarkably authentic, powerful and distinctive work contributes to the development of empathy and understanding between groups of different sociocultural and ethnic origins. Book: Discovery https:/www.amazon.com/dp/1960038540

We just had to start this episode with a reassurance that everyone was dressed, which you'll understand as soon as you read or listen to “Pneuma”, the poem by BJ Soloy that kicks everything off. The bonkers energy of a country and a world overflowing with bad news and tragedy is juxtaposed with some very real tenderness and self reflection in two astounding pieces by Soloy. These astutely paced poems are brimming with the overwhelm of modern life while threading in historical references (Brown vs. Board of Education, Troost Avenue, and scud missiles, for starters).   Some other links we think you'll like: Sapphic stanzas Marion's IMDB credit   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Samantha Neugebauer, Dagne Forrest, Jason Schneiderman, Lisa Zerkle, Isabel Petry BJ Soloy is the author of Birth Center in Corporate Woods (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press), Our Pornography and other disaster songs (Slope Editions, 2019), and Selected Letters, a chapbook out with New Michigan Press. He lives and dies in Des Moines, home of the whatever.   Pneuma   Put your pants back on, America. It's four in the morning & also   five, three, & two, simultaneously, you big lug. Plus, there's snow.    In this light, really any light, my nose looks like a tired potato   got punched in its mute mouth. With any light on, I want to see other people   when I look in the mirror, when I slouch in this bathroom booth where I hope to die   on the shitter, like an American, like one of yours. Clinton, TN is any other frowsy town   with a cock & balls scribbled on its playground slide & square pitbulls straining at their chains.    America, I came to bed late as always. You roll over, softly surprised & then delighted,    offering, “I forgot where I was.” I'm yawning, breathing just to get oxygen on this fire.      Well, tonight is not the only place I am tonight. Beyond me & between me light bulbs hiccup & burble    & a frenzied squirrel loses its map of maples & restarts. Maybe we ought to  take what we've still got & laminate it in frost    & then salt & then the gold leaf over spring's pat rapture.   There are things I've learned already this young soft year I don't know what to do with: one  gets a pregnancy test when in the ER   for their attempt on their own life. What to name that baby?    I worry I'm doing this wrong. I've got beans soaking, sharps  & meds hidden, the last dank well swill of our bank account  miraculously transformed into boxed wine. Winter's here    with its expressive eyebrows & doomed neighborhood cats  under every car. You yawn so I kiss you & you taste better  than free food, but you can't sleep & I try to stay up reading    but layers of exhaustion—wet blankets on this piss whisper  of a fire—keep accumulating. I worry you'll do it right next time  & I'm still attached to this day of ours, whatever day it is. Benesh   It's been a long night & your mouth already tasted like rain an hour ago. Writing often of the sky instead of tasting it, I look to the sconces & the sconces look fake & their light looks fake & I have authentic responses to both, which is how storms start. As seasons     digest themselves (a short talk on short talks), holiday cards become less applicable & so more affordable & Fox 8 or whatever news vans circle the weather or immanent site of tragedy tourism. Some nights I go out & walk the sidewalk in socks or bare feet     longer than I'd meant to & notice the crystal glass & homely bends & feel deeply the Troost neighborhood. My ears circle in on themselves, stereo sinkholes, by which I mean I'm eavesdropping & I'm sorry. I've had bad teeth forever & so got online & bought God's vibrator     as a toothbrush & sunburned my mirror & stood boldly before the middle-aged self. White as I am, I trust most the islands that kill their first tourists. Three weeks' swim away, a cargo ship full of luxury cars continues to burn in the Atlantic. A mother about a mile from right here     killed her dog & decapitated her son after calling the cops on the devil. The news: The snows. The Olympics. Rubble-crusted outskirts of Kiev. The soft snoring of our toddler. What do we do? I dither. I stand numb before the light. I look deeply. I look like Fabio     if, instead of an angular chin, his face flesh just sort of dangled & then if also  that formless dangle continued on down the rest of the frame. My point is I have long hair right now. A Hadean earth. A wobbling star. A thought floating in like pickled nimbus, ghost fart. In the mirror,        I am an amplified echo of my middle school self making muscles at himself, waiting for hair to grow, SCUD missiles arcing across the nightly news downstairs.  Tonight, I got news off Facebook, which makes me middle-aged again & sad. You'd already gone to bed when I found out Robert died. I didn't wake you up. I didn't even check you were asleep. You needed      a night & this news is not the night you needed. A neighbor is yelling at something,  maybe himself, & the still-lengthening night repeats. I rarely call in favors, but every  time I do, I claim to do it rarely, but still, please sleep. Please go to sleep or  keep sleeping. He was thirty-three. It's later still & your mouth is full  of rain. I'll tell you in the morning.

Episode 123: The Catholic Episode   Dear Slushies, we have a confession. We love being close readers as much as we love being close listeners. And if you are a fan of this podcast, we know the same is true for you. We're delighted to consider Charlie Peck's poems “Cowboy Dreams” and “Bully in the Trees” in this episode. We're talking about unreliable narrators, homeric epithets, dramatic enjambments, and the difference between small “c” catholicism and capital “C” Catholicism. Confession and exultation, Slushies! Floating signifiers and The Sopranos. It's a doozy! We hope you love listening in as much as we loved considering Charlie Peck's poems for PBQ.    (Oh, and we excitedly celebrate Jason's fifth collection launching in April, Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire!)   At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Samanatha Neugebauer   Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska and received his MFA from Purdue University. His poetry has appeared previously in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. His first collection, World's Largest Ball of Paint, is the winner of the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press and is forthcoming April 2024.   Twitter: @chip_nutter   Cowboy Dreams   Winedrunk along the river on a Tuesday, boy howdy, my life. I ignore another call from my mother because today  is about the matted grass and the skipping trout. When my brother jumps companies after the Christmas bonus, it's Ruthless. When I pillage the family silver to slick forty bucks at a pawn shop,  It's time you start thinking about recovery. Instinct makes me wreck anyone who comes  too close. You ever snapped a dog's stick just to watch his ears drop? I'm Catholic with how quick I loose my tongue to confess,  my guilt just a frequency my ears quit hearing.  One snowy May in the Colorado mountains, I stripped  to my underwear and raised my pack to wade the glacial river. Dried by a fire with a pot of beans. All night I dreamt of my lasso and revolver, riding the hot-blooded horse alone across the plains, no one in sight to hurt. Bully in the Trees   Indiana cornfields leave so much     to be desired, and lately I've desired nothing   but clean sheets and pretzel bread. For a decade    I was ruthless, took whatever I wanted:   last donut in the office breakroom, merged    lanes out of turn. I stole my roommate's    change jar, sat on the floor of a Wells Fargo    rolling quarters to buy an eighth. In this new year,   I promise I'll stop being the loudest in the room    like a bear ravaging a campsite just to be the bully   in the trees. For so long I thought my cruelty    was the world's fault, my stubbed toe blamed   on the coffee table's leg, not my stumbling in the dark.    Throwing every fish back to the river    doesn't forgive the hooked hole I caused.    Once, I undressed a woman in the giraffe enclosure,   but maybe that was a Soprano's episode. Once,    my life was so ordinary I replaced it   with the things I saw on television. I ate fifty    hard-boiled eggs. I robbed the bank and screamed   Attica! I stood in the trees cuffing the Nebraska    suburb and watched my mother set the table   through the window. A porcelain plate at each chair.    My ordinary life stranged by the window frame.   If I fall asleep before the credits, let me dream the rest.    My pockets are empty, but the metal detector still shrieks.

Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, Editor-in-Chief of the DMQ Review, San José State University professor emerita, lecturer, blogger, and workshop presenter who has taught over 100 workshops. She was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, 2011-2013. She has collaborated with both visual artists and musicians. She is Assistant Editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, Black Lawrence Press, 2018. Her work is included in many anthologies. Listening to Mars, her fifth book of poetry, was just released. Find more information on Sally, visit his website: https://sallyashton.com/ As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a haiku sequence that talks about love without mentioning it by name. Next Week's Prompt: Revise a poem that you wrote a long time ago by radically shifting its perspective. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Revision, it's a monster. It's also an absolute must. And it makes the difference between writers who are able to forge ahead and those who get stuck. But how do you go about it? And how do you avoid feeling like you're doing it all wrong? We've got authors Hesse Phillips (Lightbourne) and Sara Johnson Allen (Down Here We Come Up) on board to help us out.Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.Looking for a writing community? Join our new Facebook group. Hesse Phillips is a Novel Incubator graduate whose debut novel Lightborne, about the mysterious death of queer Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, comes out in the UK on May 2nd 2024.Sara Johnson Allen is a professor and author whose debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, was the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press. She is currently finishing a second novel and starting a work of creative nonfiction, an exploration of cultural and political history through personal narrative, centering on her 17th century home in coastal Massachusetts.Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

We hear from two listeners today: The first worries about narrative dissonance and his ability to spot it, the second is aching for a room of her own. Authors Sara Johnson Allen, Cara Wood, and Joanna Rakoff join us.Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.Sara Johnson Allen is a professor and author whose debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, was the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press. She is currently finishing a second novel and starting a book of nonfiction about her 17th century home in coastal Massachusetts. Cara Wood is a professional writer and marketer with a master's degree from Clark University. A graduate of GrubStreet Novel Incubator, her fiction is set in a future only slightly more terrifying than the present. Joanna Rakoff is the author of the bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the novel A Fortunate Age. Photo by Şahin Sezer Dinçer on Unsplash  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz's debut collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential. After dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, boundaries loosen, expectations fall away, and even the greatest skeptics believe-at least fleetingly-that anything could happen. These stories will stay with you. Rebecca Turkewitz is a writer and high school English teacher living in Portland, Maine. She is the author of Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023), a collection of thirteen spooky literary stories. Her fiction and humor writing have appeared in The Normal School, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, SmokeLong Quarterly, The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from The Ohio State University. She has been a resident at Hewn oaks Artist Residency and won a 2020 Maine Literary Award in the short works category. She loves cats, the ocean, and ghost stories. Recommended Books: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, Chain Gang All-Stars Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz's debut collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential. After dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, boundaries loosen, expectations fall away, and even the greatest skeptics believe-at least fleetingly-that anything could happen. These stories will stay with you. Rebecca Turkewitz is a writer and high school English teacher living in Portland, Maine. She is the author of Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023), a collection of thirteen spooky literary stories. Her fiction and humor writing have appeared in The Normal School, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, SmokeLong Quarterly, The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from The Ohio State University. She has been a resident at Hewn oaks Artist Residency and won a 2020 Maine Literary Award in the short works category. She loves cats, the ocean, and ghost stories. Recommended Books: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, Chain Gang All-Stars Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz's debut collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential. After dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, boundaries loosen, expectations fall away, and even the greatest skeptics believe-at least fleetingly-that anything could happen. These stories will stay with you. Rebecca Turkewitz is a writer and high school English teacher living in Portland, Maine. She is the author of Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023), a collection of thirteen spooky literary stories. Her fiction and humor writing have appeared in The Normal School, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, SmokeLong Quarterly, The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from The Ohio State University. She has been a resident at Hewn oaks Artist Residency and won a 2020 Maine Literary Award in the short works category. She loves cats, the ocean, and ghost stories. Recommended Books: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, Chain Gang All-Stars Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz's debut collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential. After dark, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, boundaries loosen, expectations fall away, and even the greatest skeptics believe-at least fleetingly-that anything could happen. These stories will stay with you. Rebecca Turkewitz is a writer and high school English teacher living in Portland, Maine. She is the author of Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023), a collection of thirteen spooky literary stories. Her fiction and humor writing have appeared in The Normal School, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, SmokeLong Quarterly, The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from The Ohio State University. She has been a resident at Hewn oaks Artist Residency and won a 2020 Maine Literary Award in the short works category. She loves cats, the ocean, and ghost stories. Recommended Books: NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, Chain Gang All-Stars Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this episode, John Linstrom tells us about Nature-Study, an educational movement that began in the rural classrooms of American Progressive Era. It takes students and learners of all kinds out of the classroom, away from the textbook, and into the world, to observe and learn. It offers us a mode of attunement to the world that we might use to heal the divide between rural and urban, and kindle the kind of social change we need to get the world off fossil fuels. Our conversation is centered around the new scholarly edition John edited of Liberty Hyde Bailey's The Nature-Study Idea (Cornell University Press, 2023), which just came out. It's the first book in the new The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library, a series for Cornell University Press reintroducing the ecological and critical-agrarian writings of L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John was one of our first guests on High Theory back in 2020 – so if you want to listen back, you can check out the episode on Ecosphere. John told me when were were preparing to record that there was some debate about the dash in “Nature-Study” back in the day, but that he was on the side of the dashers, because the women teachers who led the movement favored the dash. John is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at the Climate Museum in NYC. He is also the author of a book of poems called To Leave for Our Own Country coming out with Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. He believes in poetry's power to foster communities for change, human and more-than-human stories and visions of climate justice He received his PhD in Literature from New York University and his MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. John, Kim, and Saronik spent a lot of time together as grad students at 244 Greene St. in NYC. John and Kim used to run a working group on agriculture and literature, called Farm to Text. John lives in Queens, where gleans deep joy from holding his baby daughter, singing choral music, and eating large quantities of pesto. The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu, especially for his friend John, in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Today my guest is Sara Johnson Allen, author of the debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, which was the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize and just released from Black Lawrence Press.

Molly talks with author Ananda Lima about her book, "Mother/land".   Order "Mother/land" from an independent bookseller at this link: https://bookshop.org/a/10588/9781625570260 or at Amazon right here https://amzn.to/3F82UgN About Mother/land MOTHER/LAND is focused on the intersection of motherhood and immigration and its effects on a speaker's relationship to place, others and self. It investigates the mutual and compounding complications of these two shifts in identity while examining legacy, history, ancestry, land, home, and language. The collection is heavily focused on the latter, including formal experimentation with hybridity and polyvocality, combining English and Portuguese, interrogating translation and transforming traditional repeating poetic forms. These poems from the perspective of an immigrant mother of an American child create a complex picture of the beauty, danger and parental love the speaker finds and the legacy she brings to her reluctant new motherland. #Poetry #Latinx Studies. About the author Ananda Lima's poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming 2021) is the winner of the Hudson Prize. She is also the author of the chapbooks Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019, winner of the Vella Chapbook Prize), Amblyopia (Bull City Press – INCH series, 2020), and Tropicália (Newfound, forthcoming in 2021 winner of the Newfound Prose Prize). Her work has appeared or is upcoming in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, The Common, and elsewhere. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.

NO SPARE PEOPLE documents the joys and perils of a tiny mother-daughter family navigating life on the margins. From poems about finding autonomy as a queer, unpartnered parent by choice in the South to those chronicling a generation's economic instability, Hoover rejects so-called "acceptable losses" stemming from inequalities of gender, race, and class. The book asks, what happens to the woman no longer willing to live a lie? How does language invent not only identity, but possibility? Order "No Spare People" from Amazon right here https://a.co/d/87HOvSB About the author: Erin Hoover is the author of two poetry collections, Barnburner (2018) and No Spare People (forthcoming in 2023, Black Lawrence Press). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and Best New Poets, and in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. She lives in rural Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Tennessee Tech.

Sara Johnson Allen discusses the first pages of her debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, and her long road to publication. We talk about the power of the first pages in keeping you going, the importance of place description and how to make it move, how to find the balance between your front story and larger back story, and why it's often necessary to put a book aside to understand it fully enough to revise.Allen's first pages can be found here.Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.Sara Johnson Allen was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. Her first novel, Down Here We Come Up, is the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in August 2023. Her fiction has appeared in PANK Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reckon Review. She was recently awarded runner-up in the 2022 Third Coast fiction contest. In 2018, she was awarded the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar for her novel-in-progress. In 2019, she received the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize. She has also been awarded MacDowell fellowships and an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. When she is not grading papers or chasing after her three kids, she likes to write about ‘place' and how it shapes us.Thank you for reading The 7am Novelist. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

This week on The Maris Review, Sabrina Imbler joins Maris Kreizman to discuss their new essay collection, How Far the Light Reaches, out now from Little Brown. Sabrina Imbler is a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn. Their first chapbook, Dyke (geology), was published by Black Lawrence Press. Their essays and reporting have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Catapult, and Sierra, among others. Their debut essay collection is called How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tuck speaks with writer and creature enthusiast Sabrina Imbler (they/them). Topics include:  A Who's Who of the ocean's notable transsexuals  Writing about trans youth for the New York Times (lol, lmao) Seeking gender role models from creatures, plants, and fungi Why is a sad octopus more heartbreaking than a sad human? Plus: Neopets, the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe, and a goldfish driving a tank(?!) This Week in Gender: Carl Charles shares a trans Supreme Court update. Find Sabrina on Twitter @aznfusion and on tour. Their work is available on Defector and at simbler.github.io. How Far the Light Reaches is out on Dec 6, and Dyke (Geology) is available now from Black Lawrence Press. Join our Patreon (patreon.com/gender) to get access to our monthly bonus podcast, weekly newsletter, and other fun perks. Browse our nonprofit merch shop at bit.ly/gendermerch. Find episode transcripts at genderpodcast.com. We're also on Twitter and Instagram @gendereveal. Submit a piece of Theymail: a small message or ad that we'll read on the show. Today's messages were from Some Tending and Urge Surfer. Associate Producer: Ozzy Llinas Goodman Logo: Ira M. LeighMusic: Breakmaster CylinderAdditional Music: “Taoudella” by Blue Dot Sessions Sponsors: Urbody (promo code: TUCK15)

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence. Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise." Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence. Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise." Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence. Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise." Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence. Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise." Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com.

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence. Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise." Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/digital-humanities

Kristina Marie Darling's Daylight Has Already Arrived (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) spans six years and countless styles. Motifs and images reappear, but the formal choices are wide-ranging. The poet utilizes prose, analysis of Shakespeare, erasure, and even footnotes to create neither memoir nor mediation, but a deeply intimate perspective on a vast landscape of ideas. Darling creates a sense of urgency without ever sacrificing her delicate, but firm grip on her work. Darling is the author of thirty-six books, which include Look to Your Left: A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle; Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry; Silence in Contemporary Poetry; Silent Refusal: Essays on Contemporary Feminist Poetry; Angel of the North; and X Marks the Dress: A Registry (co-written with Carol Guess). Hal Coase is a PhD candidate at La Sapienza, University of Rome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Kristina Marie Darling's Daylight Has Already Arrived (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) spans six years and countless styles. Motifs and images reappear, but the formal choices are wide-ranging. The poet utilizes prose, analysis of Shakespeare, erasure, and even footnotes to create neither memoir nor mediation, but a deeply intimate perspective on a vast landscape of ideas. Darling creates a sense of urgency without ever sacrificing her delicate, but firm grip on her work. Darling is the author of thirty-six books, which include Look to Your Left: A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle; Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry; Silence in Contemporary Poetry; Silent Refusal: Essays on Contemporary Feminist Poetry; Angel of the North; and X Marks the Dress: A Registry (co-written with Carol Guess). Hal Coase is a PhD candidate at La Sapienza, University of Rome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Kristina Marie Darling's Daylight Has Already Arrived (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) spans six years and countless styles. Motifs and images reappear, but the formal choices are wide-ranging. The poet utilizes prose, analysis of Shakespeare, erasure, and even footnotes to create neither memoir nor mediation, but a deeply intimate perspective on a vast landscape of ideas. Darling creates a sense of urgency without ever sacrificing her delicate, but firm grip on her work. Darling is the author of thirty-six books, which include Look to Your Left: A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle; Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry; Silence in Contemporary Poetry; Silent Refusal: Essays on Contemporary Feminist Poetry; Angel of the North; and X Marks the Dress: A Registry (co-written with Carol Guess). Hal Coase is a PhD candidate at La Sapienza, University of Rome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

In today's episode, we welcome the incredible Gaia Rajan to discuss her collection KILLING IT (Black Lawrence Press). Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). Her work is published or forthcoming in the 2022 Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, diode, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the cofounder of the WOC Speak Reading Series, the Junior Journal Editor for Half Mystic, and the Web Manager for Honey Literary. She is the first place winner of the Princeton Leonard P. Milberg Poetry Prize, Sarah Mook Poetry Prize, and 1455 Literary Festival Contest, and a runner up for the Smith College Poetry Prize, Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, and Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize. Gaia is an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, studying computer science and creative writing. She lives in Pittsburgh. Gaia Rajan website: http://www.gaiarajan.com/ Gaia Rajan Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaiarajan Gaia Rajan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaiarajan/KILLING IT (Black Lawrence Press): https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/killing-it/ K-Ming Chang: https://www.kmingchang.com/about Molasses Books (Bushwick): https://www.instagram.com/molassesbooks/ Thank you for listening to The Chapbook!Noah Stetzer is on Twitter @dcNoahRoss White is on Twitter @rosswhite You can find all our episodes & contact us with your chapbook questions & suggestions here: https://bullcitypress.com/the-chapbook/Bull City Press website https://bullcitypress.comBull City Press on Twitter https://twitter.com/bullcitypress Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bullcitypress/ and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bullcitypress 

Immigration problems, climate issues, dysfunctional families, road barricades, and the division between haves and have nots play a role in this dream-like novel. Set in Wisconsin's stunning Northwoods, News of the Air (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) by Jill Stukenberg centers on a mother, father, and their teenage daughter, who voice the story from each of their perspectives. The novel opens with a pregnant Allie recalling her divorce, worried about her future, avoiding roadblocks to get to work at a Chicago museum, and frantic because of nearby eco-terrorism. In the next chapter, Allie and her husband Bud are proprietors of a far north rustic resort, and their previously homeschooled daughter Cassie, is about to finish her schooling in the local high school. Then two children show up in a canoe, and there is confusion about who they are and what they're doing in the Northwoods. Jill Stukenberg's short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, The Collagist (now The Rupture), Wisconsin People and Ideas magazine, and other literary magazines. News of the Air, her debut novel, won the Big Moose prize from Black Lawrence Press. Stukenberg is a graduate of the MFA program at New Mexico State University, has received writing grants from the University of Wisconsin Colleges, and has been awarded writing residencies at Shake Rag Alley and Write On, Door County. Jill is an Associate Professor of English at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point at Wausau. She grew up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and has previously taught in New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Jill enjoys cross country skiing, hiking, and sailing on Green Bay in a small, very old, but still bright blue sailboat with a cracked wooden tiller. She lives in Wausau with the poet Travis Brown and their eight-year-old. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Immigration problems, climate issues, dysfunctional families, road barricades, and the division between haves and have nots play a role in this dream-like novel. Set in Wisconsin's stunning Northwoods, News of the Air (Black Lawrence Press, 2022) by Jill Stukenberg centers on a mother, father, and their teenage daughter, who voice the story from each of their perspectives. The novel opens with a pregnant Allie recalling her divorce, worried about her future, avoiding roadblocks to get to work at a Chicago museum, and frantic because of nearby eco-terrorism. In the next chapter, Allie and her husband Bud are proprietors of a far north rustic resort, and their previously homeschooled daughter Cassie, is about to finish her schooling in the local high school. Then two children show up in a canoe, and there is confusion about who they are and what they're doing in the Northwoods. Jill Stukenberg's short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, The Collagist (now The Rupture), Wisconsin People and Ideas magazine, and other literary magazines. News of the Air, her debut novel, won the Big Moose prize from Black Lawrence Press. Stukenberg is a graduate of the MFA program at New Mexico State University, has received writing grants from the University of Wisconsin Colleges, and has been awarded writing residencies at Shake Rag Alley and Write On, Door County. Jill is an Associate Professor of English at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point at Wausau. She grew up in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and has previously taught in New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Jill enjoys cross country skiing, hiking, and sailing on Green Bay in a small, very old, but still bright blue sailboat with a cracked wooden tiller. She lives in Wausau with the poet Travis Brown and their eight-year-old. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jill Stukenberg's novel News of the Air (previously titled Labor Day) was selected as the 2021 winner of the Big Moose prize from Black Lawrence Press and will be published in fall 2022. Her short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, The Collagist (now The Rupture), The Florida Review, and other literary magazines. An Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, she has published in the area of creative writing pedagogy and has over twenty years of experience as a writing teacher. (Photo credit: Emma Whitman) ABOUT THE BOOK - NEWS OF THE AIR Allie Krane is heavily pregnant when she and her husband flee urban life after a rash of eco-terrorism breaks out in their city. They reinvent themselves as the proprietors of a northwoods fishing resort, where they live in relative peace for nearly two decades. That is, until two strange children arrive by canoe. Like the small ecological disasters lapping yearly at their shore, have the problems of the modern world finally found Allie, her husband, and their troubled cypher of a teenage daughter? This eco-novel of a family, told from three points of view, explores how we remake our lives once we open our hearts to all the news we've chosen to ignore.

Usually mysteries are reserved for true crime podcasts and cop shows, but in this week's episode, both our storytellers delve deep into a scientific puzzle in search of answers. Part 1: Sabrina Imbler encounters strange blobs in the ocean and becomes obsessed with figuring out what they are. Part 2: While visiting a new eye doctor, Derek Traub wonders if his Duane Syndrome and uneven vision are somehow connected. Sabrina Imbler is a writer based in Brooklyn. They are currently a staff writer at Defector Media on the creature beat. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Catapult, among others. Their chapbook Dyke (geology) came out with Black Lawrence Press, and their first book, an essay collection about sea creatures called How Far the Light Reaches, will be published on December 6, 2022 with Little, Brown. Derek Traub is a writer and storyteller currently living in—and frequently writing about—Los Angeles. For the last decade, he has worked as a writer for the LA Phil, where he recently wrote a book and recorded a podcast series about the Hollywood Bowl's first century. Both can be found at hollywoodbowl.com/first100years. Follow him on IG @froznla. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Live Caught (Black Lawrence Press 2022) by R. Cathey Daniels, we meet Lenny after he's stolen money and a skiff in an attempt to escape his abusive older brothers and ride the rivers until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Lenny is fourteen, and his family farm in western North Carolina has become a nightmare – he's already lost an arm and isn't sure which of his brothers' experiments is going to kill him. But he doesn't get very far when his boat and all the money he's stolen sink in a huge storm. If not for a crazy old priest who pulls him out from under a log, he'd be dead. Now the priest provides Lenny with a home and work. Lenny makes friends, especially with a stoner who seems to be drugging his own baby daughter. It soon becomes clear that the priest is running an illegal drug operation to provide for the poor people in his struggling parish. And a crooked local cop wants to collect a tax on the illegal drugs. Just like at home, Lenny's not sure he's going to survive. R. Cathey Daniels grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, attended Breward College and graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a master's degree in education. She is a 2016 graduate of the Stanford University Novel Writing Program. She was a semi-finalist in the North Carolina Writers' Network Doris Betts Fiction Prize in 2021, a semi-finalist for the 2020 University of New Orleans Press Novel Contest, and won first prize in the 2018 Retreat West First Chapter Competition. When Daniels isn't writing, she can be found in her garden, hiking, or shooting hoops with her grandchildren in her backyard in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Live Caught (Black Lawrence Press 2022) by R. Cathey Daniels, we meet Lenny after he's stolen money and a skiff in an attempt to escape his abusive older brothers and ride the rivers until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Lenny is fourteen, and his family farm in western North Carolina has become a nightmare – he's already lost an arm and isn't sure which of his brothers' experiments is going to kill him. But he doesn't get very far when his boat and all the money he's stolen sink in a huge storm. If not for a crazy old priest who pulls him out from under a log, he'd be dead. Now the priest provides Lenny with a home and work. Lenny makes friends, especially with a stoner who seems to be drugging his own baby daughter. It soon becomes clear that the priest is running an illegal drug operation to provide for the poor people in his struggling parish. And a crooked local cop wants to collect a tax on the illegal drugs. Just like at home, Lenny's not sure he's going to survive. R. Cathey Daniels grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, attended Breward College and graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a master's degree in education. She is a 2016 graduate of the Stanford University Novel Writing Program. She was a semi-finalist in the North Carolina Writers' Network Doris Betts Fiction Prize in 2021, a semi-finalist for the 2020 University of New Orleans Press Novel Contest, and won first prize in the 2018 Retreat West First Chapter Competition. When Daniels isn't writing, she can be found in her garden, hiking, or shooting hoops with her grandchildren in her backyard in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

On this episode of Black & Published, Nikesha continues National Poetry Month highlighting Ashanti Anderson, whose debut chapbook Black Under was the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition hosted by Black Lawrence Press. Ashanti is a Black Queer Disabled poet. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY magazine, and elsewhere in print and on the web. Episode Notes _________________________On this episode of Black & Published, Nikesha continues National Poetry Month highlighting Ashanti Anderson, whose debut chapbook Black Under was the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition hosted by Black Lawrence Press. Ashanti is a Black Queer Disabled poet. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY magazine, and elsewhere in print and on the web. During the conversation, Ashanti discusses why she spent two years feeling sorry for herself after receiving her MFA before moving forward with trying to put her poems in print. She also explains why she was looking for a press that centered artistic integrity and autonomy and why she centers the fullness of the Black experience in her work without the white gaze. Support the show (https://paypal.me/nikeshaelise)

In this episode, Ashanti Anderson talks about how as writers we'll always be affected by our peers and how to use different genres to feed our own, unique voices. Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is a Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. Her debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY magazine, and elsewhere in print and on the web. Learn more about Ashanti's previous & latest shenanigans at ashanticreates.com.How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you'll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. Join Rachael's Slack channel, Onward Writers! Rachael can be YOUR mini-coach, and she'll answer all your questions on the show! http://patreon.com/rachael See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jose Angel Araguz discusses his new collection "Rotura" from Black Lawrence Press, which former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera called, "A moving book where the voice undulates dark and soul-filled along cracked borders, rising boundaries and worn “brown gods” along the routes, grasping at fading shimmers of truth, family, longings and stark existence." Order your copy of "Rotura" here: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/rotura/ SUBMIT TO THE OPEN MIC OF THE AIR! www.poetryspokenhere.com/open-mic-of-the-air Visit our website: www.poetryspokenhere.com Like us on facebook: facebook.com/PoetrySpokenHere Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/poseyspokenhere (@poseyspokenhere) Send us an e-mail: poetryspokenhere@gmail.com

Shubha Sunder speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “A Very Full Day,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. In this conversation, Shubha talks about writing stories set in India, and how she built out the insular world of Indian retirees that “A Very Full Day” centers on. She also discusses teaching creative writing to undergrads, her revision process, and her forthcoming collection of stories Boomtown Girl, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. Shubha Sunder's debut short story collection, Boomtown Girl, won the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. She has published stories and essays in New Letters, The Common, Narrative Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories, won the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and Narrative "30 Below," and been shortlisted for The Flannery O'Connor Award, The Hudson Prize, and The New American Fiction Prize. She is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the City of Boston Artist Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Read Shubha's story in The Common at thecommononline.org/a-very-full-day. Read more at shubhasunder.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Shubha Sunder speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “A Very Full Day,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. In this conversation, Shubha talks about writing stories set in India, and how she built out the insular world of Indian retirees that “A Very Full Day” centers on. She also discusses teaching creative writing to undergrads, her revision process, and her forthcoming collection of stories Boomtown Girl, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. Shubha Sunder's debut short story collection, Boomtown Girl, won the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. She has published stories and essays in New Letters, The Common, Narrative Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories, won the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and Narrative "30 Below," and been shortlisted for The Flannery O'Connor Award, The Hudson Prize, and The New American Fiction Prize. She is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the City of Boston Artist Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Read Shubha's story in The Common at thecommononline.org/a-very-full-day. Read more at shubhasunder.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Shubha Sunder speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “A Very Full Day,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. In this conversation, Shubha talks about writing stories set in India, and how she built out the insular world of Indian retirees that “A Very Full Day” centers on. She also discusses teaching creative writing to undergrads, her revision process, and her forthcoming collection of stories Boomtown Girl, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. Shubha Sunder's debut short story collection, Boomtown Girl, won the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. She has published stories and essays in New Letters, The Common, Narrative Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories, won the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and Narrative "30 Below," and been shortlisted for The Flannery O'Connor Award, The Hudson Prize, and The New American Fiction Prize. She is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the City of Boston Artist Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Read Shubha's story in The Common at thecommononline.org/a-very-full-day. Read more at shubhasunder.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Shubha Sunder speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “A Very Full Day,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. In this conversation, Shubha talks about writing stories set in India, and how she built out the insular world of Indian retirees that “A Very Full Day” centers on. She also discusses teaching creative writing to undergrads, her revision process, and her forthcoming collection of stories Boomtown Girl, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. Shubha Sunder's debut short story collection, Boomtown Girl, won the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. She has published stories and essays in New Letters, The Common, Narrative Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories, won the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and Narrative "30 Below," and been shortlisted for The Flannery O'Connor Award, The Hudson Prize, and The New American Fiction Prize. She is a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the City of Boston Artist Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Read Shubha's story in The Common at thecommononline.org/a-very-full-day. Read more at shubhasunder.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcela Sulak returns to share her work as a translator! Marcela has published four titles with Black Lawrence Press–three poetry collections, including City of Skypapers (2021), Decency (2015) and Immigrant (2010), as well as her lyric memoir, Mouth Full of Seeds (2020). She's co-edited with Jacqueline Kolosov the 2015 Rose Metal Press title Family Resemblance. An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. Sulak, who translates from the Hebrew, Czech, and French, is a 2019 NEA Translation Fellow, and her fourth book-length translation of poetry: Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, was nominated for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation (University of Texas Press). Her essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, and Gulf Coast online, among others. She coordinates the poetry track of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is an associate professor in American Literature. She also edits The Ilanot Review and hosts the TLV.1 Radio podcast, Israel in Translation. Find more info and all the books here: http://www.marcelasulak.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write an echo verse poem by repeating the end syllable of each line, either verbatim or as a rhyme or slant rhyme. Robert Lee Brewer offers excellent examples of this form on the Writer's Digest website. Next Week's Prompt: Make the title of your poem a question and the body of your poem the answer (or the other way around!). The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Ashanti Anderson. Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is a Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. Her debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, POETRY magazine, and elsewhere in print and on the web. In this episode Ashanti Anderson and I discuss: How being an overthinker influences her poetry and the messages she wants to share. Why setting clear boundaries helps her guide the conversation around her writing. When she turns to prose poetry and why she thinks it defies hard and fast craft rules. Plus, her #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/391

Ashanti Anderson is a Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, and playwright. She holds an MFA from the University of California at Riverside, and teaches at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her debut chapbook, Black Under, is the winner of the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition and published through Black Lawrence Press.

We close out the year talking shop with the second half of Piñata Theory, Alan Chazaro's 2020 poetry collection out of Black Lawrence Press. We will return next year, and want to wish everyone a safe and happy 2022 filled with lots of books! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/literallyliterary/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/literallyliterary/support

Jessica Piazza is the author of three poetry collections and a children's book. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Jessica now lives in Los Angeles where she is a writing professor at the University of Southern Californiaand a book club facilitator for Literary Affairs. She co-founded Bat City Review and Gold Line Press, and is the 2019 recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency Program award. To learn more, visit www.jessicapiazza.com. The books  mentioned at the end of the interview are: Bree Rolfe, Who's Going to Love the Dying Girl / Unsolicited Press, 2021, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun / Knopf, 2021. The books pictured below by Jessica Piazza are Interrobang / Red Hen Press, 2013, This is not a sky / Black Lawrence Press, 2014 and Obliterations / Red Hen Press, 2016.  

Ashanti Anderson (she/her) is an award-winning writer who advocates for health equity, reproductive justice, disability rights, and criminal justice reform through her poetry, prose, playwriting, and more. A Black disabled queer woman herself, Ashanti's writing frequently explores the connections between identity and health. Her debut short poetry collection, Black Under, is forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press in Fall 2021 after winning the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Collection. Black Under reflects the African-American experience over several era, the author leaving no stone unturned in her interrogation of the racialized violence that has occurred throughout history. At once haunting and hopeful, Ashanti “documents atrocities while singing.” Ashanti has collaborated with universities, at-risk youth groups, nonprofits, and healthcare professionals to develop programs and activities that promote diversity, inclusion, and minority health. She received her MFA in Creative Writing in 2018 and went on to teach creative writing courses and workshops for both teens and adults. Leading by example, Ashanti encourages her students to develop multi-dimensional characters, find their unique voice, and do their research Awards and honors: • Winner, Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition (Spring 2020) • Winner, Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Contest (2018) • Winner, Haley's Flight, LLC Page-to-Screen Short Film Competition (2017)

Chris sits down with Alan Chazaro, author of Piñata Theory and This Isn't a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! Alan Chazaro's Website Bio: I write about things. After 10 years working as a public high school teacher in Louisiana, Massachusetts, and California, I decided to pursue my creative interests more seriously and have been living as a freelancer who travels when I can to enjoy cultures around the world. I'm a San Francisco Bay Area local with Mexican dual-citizenship, existing between both countries as I continue to write, edit, teach, and grow. In 2018, I graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco where I was a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow, which is awarded to a writer “whose work embodies a concern for social justice and freedom of expression.” Previously, I attended Foothill Community College, and later UC Berkeley, where I participated in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. I also picked up some game from Patricia Smith, among others, at the Voices Of Our Nations. My first poetry collection, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, was the winner of the 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition and my second, Piñata Theory, was awarded the 2018 Hudson Prize. They are both available with Black Lawrence Press. Currently, I'm working as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, managing an online basketball blog, HeadFake, moonlighting as a contributing writer at KQED and SFGATE, and just asking questions wherever I go. Shout out my Oakland School for the Arts students who drew portraits of me so I don't ever need to take an author photo. You can see what I'm currently thinking about here. _________________________- Check out The Poetry Question --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

"In poetry there's so much flexibility to see how things come together to form one poem in the end." Poet and writer Ananda Lima is here, discussing her new poetry compilation Mother/Land. With words and phrases in her native language Portuguese mixed in with the English text, it's a unique work from a linguistic point of view. In the poems, many themes of immigration, violence, and motherhood are discussed — but what are this artist's views of her adopted home country, America? Lima has many varied views of the country that gave her illustrious degrees and publications. What isn't sitting right? What is the promise and allure of America— and is it not resonating with some people who come here seeking to better their lives? If you like what we do, please support the show. By making a one-time or recurring donation, you will contribute to us being able to present the highest quality substantive, long-form interviews with the world's most compelling people. Ananda Lima is the author of Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), winner of the Hudson Prize, shortlisted for the Chicago Review of Books Chriby Awards. She is also the author of four chapbooks: Vigil (Get Fresh Books, 2021), Tropicália(Newfound, 2021, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize), Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020), and Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019, winner of the Vella Chapbook Prize). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She has served as the poetry judge for the AWP Kurt Brown Prize, as staff at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. She has been awarded the inaugural Work-In-Progress Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers, for her fiction manuscript-in-progress. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.

For our first look at Piñata Theory, the poetry collection by Alan Chazaro, we begin with our usual overview, but then dive into the first half of Chazaro's second poetry collection (from Black Lawrence Press). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/literallyliterary/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/literallyliterary/support

Episode 92 Notes and Links to Alan Chazaro's Work               On Episode 92 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Alan Chazaro, poet, hip hop head, baller, and artist in the truest sense of the word. The two talk about Alan's childhood in the Bay Area, the importance of music and hip hop in his work, as well as ideas of identity, cross-culturalism, pochismo, and gentrification, among other topics. The two discuss Alan's eccentric and diverse interests in arts of all types, and the inspiration for, and themes behind, his prize-winning This a Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album and Piñata Theory.            After nine years as a public high school teacher in Louisiana, Massachusetts, and California, Alan Chazaro decided to pursue his creative writing more seriously and has been living as a freelance writer who travels and enjoys new cultures around the world. He's a San Francisco Bay Area local but also has been finalizing his paperwork as a Mexican dual-citizen, so he's jumping between both countries while he continues to write, edit, teach, and grow. In 2018, he graduated with his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco where he was a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow, which is awarded to a writer “whose work embodies a concern for social justice and freedom of expression.” Previously, he attended Foothill Community College, and later UC Berkeley, where he participated in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. He also got some game from Patricia Smith, among others, at the Voices Of Our Nations summer workshops. His first poetry collection, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, was the winner of the 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition and his second, Piñata Theory, was given the 2018 Hudson Prize. They are both available with Black Lawrence Press. Currently, he's working as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, managing his online NBA zine HeadFake, moonlighting as an assistant poetry editor at AGNI Magazine, and raising money for NBA arena workers during COVID-19. For more info, find him on Twitter @alan_chazaro. Buy Alan Chazaro's Piñata Theory   Buy Alan Chazaro's This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album   Pinata Theory: A Conversation with Alan Chazaro from The Adroit Journal   Review: This is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album-done by José Hernández Diaz for Diode Poetry   Reviews: Identity as the Fractured Thing: Gustavo Barahona-López on Alan Chazaro's Piñata Theory-For Honey Literary Magazine   Buy Alan's Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge At about 3:30, Alan talks about his upbringing in the California Bay Area and his family's story, as well as how gentrification has affected his city and neighborhood   At about 8:10, Alan talks about his relationship with language and reading in his adolescent years,  as well as his family's experiences with assimilation   At about 9:45, Alan talks about the importance of sports and stereotypically-masculine pursuits in his life and in his writing   At about 10:50, Alan talks about a overwhelmingly-positive influence from his surrogate grandfather in his exploration of literature and art   At about 14:30, Alan talks about Bay Area music and its influence on him and his work   At about 15:55, Pete comes with two hot Bay Area hip hop takes    At about 16:55, Pete asks Alan about his usage of “pocho,” such as its used in his Twitter handle   At about 18:00, Alan shouts out Sara Borjas for her work in reclaiming the term “pocho/pocha,” which inspired him and his work-Sara will be in conversation with Pete in a few weeks!   At about 19:15, Pete and Alan discuss the book Pocho by Villarreal   At about 20:00, Alan highlights some chill-inducing literature in high school and college after being “academically , and he responds to Pete's question about representation    At about 21:20, Alan talks about merging different art forms and knowledge in community college in conjunction with formative texts like those of Martin Espada and the music of Lateef the Truthspeaker   At about 23:25, Alan discusses his evolving understanding of how representation was tied to his reading and artistic development   At about 27:20, Alan talks about his contemporary reading habits and listening habits, including Oakland's Ovrkast. and Offset Jim   At about 29:10, Pete wonders about any “ ‘Eureka' moments” for Alan in his artistic endeavors   At about 30:20, Alan talks about his unique and varied experiences growing up melded into the book he wanted to write   At about 31:50, Alan talks about his musical output and how “being a person of words and ideation” found a natural fit in hip hop and poetry   At about 34:05, Pete drop bar(s)   At about 35:00, Alan lays out the timeline that led to the publishing of Frank Ocean and Piñata Theory   At about 36:50, Alan discusses  some “seeds” that led him to put his publishing ideas into action and shouts out The June Jordan Poetry for the People program    At about 39:20, Alan discusses some of his motivations    At about 40:25, Pete asks Alan about his views on form, titles, and themes/concepts in poetry   At about 44:20, Pete wonders about Alan's philosophy on language and translation in his work, and Alan gives background on his poem written solely in Spanish   At about 46:20, Alan discusses identity and cross-culture, as well as music's thread through his life, including different genres   At about 50:35, Pete highlights love in its many forms as shown in some of Alan's poems   At about 52:10, Pete and Alan discuss themes of “home” and identity and love and belonging in some of Alan's Piñata Theory   At about 54:30, Alan shouts out his incredible grandfather and his appearances in Alan's poetry   At about 57:10, Pete and Alan discuss father/son relationships and ideas of masculinity, as well how searching for poetry ideas and threads     At about 59:45, the two discuss Alan's poem about watching the 1996 Julio Cesar Chavez and Oscar De la Hoya fight and its ramifications and metaphors   At about 1:01:55, Pete and Alan discuss themes of innocence and youth in Alan's poetry, with Alan shouting out Outkast as one of his many muses   At about 1:04:40, Alan describes the poetry collection's title and its “many cores”   At about 1:08:45, Alan shouts out East Bay Booksellers, Walden Pond Books, Pegasus Books as some local indie stores to support You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.  This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for the next episode, a conversation with Steph Cha. She is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She's a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology.  The episode will air on November 30.

Ananda Lima's poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) was the winner of the Hudson Prize. She is also the author of the chapbooks Vigil (Get Fresh Books, 2021), Tropicália (Newfound, 2021, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize), Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020), and Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019, winner of the Vella Chapbook Prize). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She has served as the poetry judge for the AWP Kurt Brown Prize, as staff at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. She has been awarded the inaugural Work-In-Progress Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers, for her fiction manuscript-in-progress. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Find the book and more at: https://www.anandalima.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write an apology poem. Nextx Week's Prompt: “A guy walks into a bar” is one of the most common joke intros. Write a poem that starts with that line. (It does not have to be a humorous poem.) The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Ashanti has written plays, poetry, and screenplays, and has recently released Black Under - which won the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. She reads two of the poems from this collection for you all to enjoy; come revel with us in her vivid imagery and stunning clarity of phrase. … Continue...Episode 121 – Poetry with Ashanti

Today I talked to Beth Alvarado about her new novel Jillian in the Borderlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) We first meet Jillian Guzmán when she is nine. She's mute, has a big imagination, and communicates through her drawings. She and her mother, Angie O'Malley live in the borderlands of Arizona and Mexico. Jillian can see ghosts – in the first story a dead child-bride saves her from the clutches of a predatory neighbor. These dark stories introduce faith healers, talking animals, and spirits of the dead. As she grows up, Jillian's drawings begin to both reflect and create the realities she sees around her, culminating at the Casa de los Olviados, a refuge for the sick and elderly run by a traditional faith healer, Juana of God. Beth Alvarado is an American author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her essay collection Anxious Attachments won the 2020 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was long listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the author of Anthropologies: A Family Memoir and Not a Matter of Love and other stories, which won the Many Voices Project Award. Her stories and essays have been published in many fine journals including The Sun, Guernica: An International Magazine of Politics and Art, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares. Three of her essays have been chosen as Notable by Best American Essays. She is a recipient of a 2020 Oregon Career Artist's Fellowship, and lives in Bend, Oregon, where she is core faculty at OSU-Cascades Low Residency MFA Program. I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Beth Alvarado about her new novel Jillian in the Borderlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) We first meet Jillian Guzmán when she is nine. She's mute, has a big imagination, and communicates through her drawings. She and her mother, Angie O'Malley live in the borderlands of Arizona and Mexico. Jillian can see ghosts – in the first story a dead child-bride saves her from the clutches of a predatory neighbor. These dark stories introduce faith healers, talking animals, and spirits of the dead. As she grows up, Jillian's drawings begin to both reflect and create the realities she sees around her, culminating at the Casa de los Olviados, a refuge for the sick and elderly run by a traditional faith healer, Juana of God. Beth Alvarado is an American author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her essay collection Anxious Attachments won the 2020 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was long listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spievogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the author of Anthropologies: A Family Memoir and Not a Matter of Love and other stories, which won the Many Voices Project Award. Her stories and essays have been published in many fine journals including The Sun, Guernica: An International Magazine of Politics and Art, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares. Three of her essays have been chosen as Notable by Best American Essays. She is a recipient of a 2020 Oregon Career Artist's Fellowship, and lives in Bend, Oregon, where she is core faculty at OSU-Cascades Low Residency MFA Program. I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Marcela Sulak has published four titles with Black Lawrence Press–three poetry collections, including City of Skypapers (2021), Decency (2015) and Immigrant (2010), as well as her lyric memoir, Mouth Full of Seeds (2020). She's co-edited with Jacqueline Kolosov the 2015 Rose Metal Press title Family Resemblance. An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. Sulak, who translates from the Hebrew, Czech, and French, is a 2019 NEA Translation Fellow, and her fourth book-length translation of poetry: Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali, was nominated for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation (University of Texas Press). Her essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, and Gulf Coast online, among others. She coordinates the poetry track of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University, where she is an associate professor in American Literature. She also edits The Ilanot Review and hosts the TLV.1 Radio podcast, Israel in Translation. Find more info and all the books here: http://www.marcelasulak.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem about unrequited love. Next Week's Prompt: A portmanteau is a blend of two words that combines their meaning. For example, brunch, spork, and sitcom are portmanteaus. Write a poem containing one or more portmanteaus. (Feel free to make up your own!) The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Ron Nyren's The Book of Lost Light—winner of Black Lawrence Press's 2019 Big Moose Prize and finalist in the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction—tells the story of Joseph Kylander, whose childhood in early 20th-century San Francisco has been shaped by his widowed father's obsessive photographic project and by his headstrong cousin Karelia's fanciful storytelling and impulsive acts. The 1906 earthquake upends their eccentric routines, and they take refuge with a capricious patron and a group of artists looking to find meaning after the disaster. The Book of Lost Light explores family loyalty and betrayal, Finnish folklore, the nature of time and theater, and what it takes to recover from calamity and build a new life from the ashes. Ron Nyren's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Mississippi Review, and 100 Word Story, among others, and his stories have been shortlisted for the O. Henry Awards and the Pushcart Prize. His writing about architecture, urban design, and sustainability has appeared in Urban Land, Interior Design, Metropolis, and elsewhere. He is the coauthor, with his spouse and writing partner Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers and a former editor of Furious Fictions: The Magazine of Short-Short Stories. Ron earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A former Stegner Fellow, he is an instructor in fiction writing for Stanford Continuing Studies. In his free time, he loves going to the theater, museums, and the San Francisco Bay. I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ron Nyren's The Book of Lost Light—winner of Black Lawrence Press's 2019 Big Moose Prize and finalist in the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction—tells the story of Joseph Kylander, whose childhood in early 20th-century San Francisco has been shaped by his widowed father's obsessive photographic project and by his headstrong cousin Karelia's fanciful storytelling and impulsive acts. The 1906 earthquake upends their eccentric routines, and they take refuge with a capricious patron and a group of artists looking to find meaning after the disaster. The Book of Lost Light explores family loyalty and betrayal, Finnish folklore, the nature of time and theater, and what it takes to recover from calamity and build a new life from the ashes. Ron Nyren's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Mississippi Review, and 100 Word Story, among others, and his stories have been shortlisted for the O. Henry Awards and the Pushcart Prize. His writing about architecture, urban design, and sustainability has appeared in Urban Land, Interior Design, Metropolis, and elsewhere. He is the coauthor, with his spouse and writing partner Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers and a former editor of Furious Fictions: The Magazine of Short-Short Stories. Ron earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A former Stegner Fellow, he is an instructor in fiction writing for Stanford Continuing Studies. In his free time, he loves going to the theater, museums, and the San Francisco Bay. I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Ron Nyren's The Book of Lost Light—winner of Black Lawrence Press's 2019 Big Moose Prize and finalist in the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction—tells the story of Joseph Kylander, whose childhood in early 20th-century San Francisco has been shaped by his widowed father's obsessive photographic project and by his headstrong cousin Karelia's fanciful storytelling and impulsive acts. The 1906 earthquake upends their eccentric routines, and they take refuge with a capricious patron and a group of artists looking to find meaning after the disaster. The Book of Lost Light explores family loyalty and betrayal, Finnish folklore, the nature of time and theater, and what it takes to recover from calamity and build a new life from the ashes. Ron Nyren's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Mississippi Review, and 100 Word Story, among others, and his stories have been shortlisted for the O. Henry Awards and the Pushcart Prize. His writing about architecture, urban design, and sustainability has appeared in Urban Land, Interior Design, Metropolis, and elsewhere. He is the coauthor, with his spouse and writing partner Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers and a former editor of Furious Fictions: The Magazine of Short-Short Stories. Ron earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A former Stegner Fellow, he is an instructor in fiction writing for Stanford Continuing Studies. In his free time, he loves going to the theater, museums, and the San Francisco Bay. I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

In season three, episode fourteen of Gotham Writers' Inside Writing, host Josh Sippie conducts a panel discussion with editors Kit Frick and Abayomi Animashaun. They discuss what chapbooks and anthologies are, when and how to submit to them, and what the writer can do to maximize their odds of being published. Links from the panelists: Black Lawrence Press's main submissions calendar: https://blacklawrencepress.com/submissions-and-contests/ Black River Chapbook Competition: https://blacklawrencepress.com/submissions-and-contests/the-black-river-chapbook-competition/ Entropy Mag's “Where To Submit” for June, July, August: https://entropymag.org/where-to-submit-june-july-and-august-2021/#chapbooks Entropy's general "Where to Submit": https://entropymag.org/category/where-to-submit/ Kit Frick's books and website: https://kitfrick.com/ Abayomi Animashaun's books: https://blacklawrencepress.com/authors/abayomi-animashaun/ Connect on social media! Kit Frick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kitfrick Black Lawrence Press on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackLawrence Gotham Writers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gothamwriters Josh's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sippenator101

Poet Rob Carney reads from his new book "Call and Response" just out from Black Lawrence Press. He also shares some of the advice he gives poetry students and a poem from his previous book, "The Book of Sharks." Get a copy of "Call and Response" here: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/call-and-response/ SUBMIT TO THE OPEN MIC OF THE AIR! www.poetryspokenhere.com/open-mic-of-the-air Visit our website: www.poetryspokenhere.com Like us on facebook: facebook.com/PoetrySpokenHere Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/poseyspokenhere (@poseyspokenhere) Send us an e-mail: poetryspokenhere@gmail.com

Alina Stefanescu posits that At First & Then by Danielle Rose is a collection in which “the feminine is reclaimed.” And it is. It is also a collection of lushly and cleverly crafted poetry that sees the self and the body as a multi-faceted state of being. One that is unafraid to dissect and question what makes the speaker who she is, what she is willing to let go of, and ultimately what moves her forward. Rose writes of expectation, experience, longing, violence, and possibility through the lenses of nature and society and marks her transition both internally and externally via poems which ask to spoken aloud. Danielle Rose is the author of At First & Then, available now from Black Lawrence Press, and The History of Mountains, forthcoming from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Hobart & Sundog Lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Alina Stefanescu posits that At First & Then by Danielle Rose is a collection in which “the feminine is reclaimed.” And it is. It is also a collection of lushly and cleverly crafted poetry that sees the self and the body as a multi-faceted state of being. One that is unafraid to dissect and question what makes the speaker who she is, what she is willing to let go of, and ultimately what moves her forward. Rose writes of expectation, experience, longing, violence, and possibility through the lenses of nature and society and marks her transition both internally and externally via poems which ask to spoken aloud. Danielle Rose is the author of At First & Then, available now from Black Lawrence Press, and The History of Mountains, forthcoming from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Hobart & Sundog Lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Alina Stefanescu posits that At First & Then by Danielle Rose is a collection in which “the feminine is reclaimed.” And it is. It is also a collection of lushly and cleverly crafted poetry that sees the self and the body as a multi-faceted state of being. One that is unafraid to dissect and question what makes the speaker who she is, what she is willing to let go of, and ultimately what moves her forward. Rose writes of expectation, experience, longing, violence, and possibility through the lenses of nature and society and marks her transition both internally and externally via poems which ask to spoken aloud. Danielle Rose is the author of At First & Then, available now from Black Lawrence Press, and The History of Mountains, forthcoming from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Hobart & Sundog Lit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Blake Kimzey founded and directs Writing Workshops Dallas & Writing Workshops Paris and is a co-founder of The Big Texas Read. Named one of D Magazine's Artists to Learn From, he is a graduate of the MFA Program at UC Irvine; Blake also sits on the Board of the Elizabeth George Foundation and received a generous Emerging Writer Grant from the Foundation. Blake discusses self-censorship, giving yourself permission to write, and the value of consuming other people’s lived experiences.His fiction has been broadcast on NPR, performed on stage in Los Angeles, and published by Tin House, McSweeney’s, VICE, Longform, The Los Angeles Review, and The Masters Review, Booth, and selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2015. Blake’s collection of short tales, Families Among Us, an Indie Bestseller, was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014. He is working on his first novel and is represented by Ryan Harbage. He has taught in the Creative Writing Programs at SMU, UT-Dallas, and UC-Irvine. Follow him on Twitter @BlakeKimzey.Originally recorded on September 17, 2020Host, Earlina Green Hamilton

Gayle Brandeis grew up in the Chicago area and has been writing poems and stories since she was four years old. She is the author of many titles, including Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write , the novel The Book of Dead Birds , which won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement. Her latest, Many Restless Concerns: The Victims of Countess Bathory Speak in Chorus was published by Black Lawrence Press and is now available. Oleta Bryson presents a collection of extraordinary stories gleaned from life experiences in It’s All About Perspective: Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life .

Julie Bloemeke's joins us tonight to discuss her first full-length collection of  poetry, Slide to Unlock. A semifinalist in numerous book prizes including the Crab Orchard Review First Book Award and the Crab Orchard Review Poetry Open Competition with Southern Illinois University Press; Slide To Unlock also took the Washington Prize through Word Works; and the Hudson Prize through Black Lawrence Press. Matt Coyle is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. He knew he wanted to be a crime writer when he was fourteen and his father gave him the simple art of murder by Raymond Chandler. He graduated with a degree in English from University of California at Santa Barbara. His foray into crime fiction was delayed for thirty years as he spent time managing a restaurant, selling golf clubs for various golf companies, and in national sales for a sports licensing company. Tru Athletix was created to provide a simple and effective way for student-athletes to find the right University or College. Their team of professional advisors is made of up retired and current professional athletes with many years of experience in College and Pro Sports help match student-athletes with an institution based upon their abilities.

Grant Faulkner is a champion for writers of all ages and all things storytelling. He is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has published two books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide, in addition to a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His short story collection, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2021. Grant is also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. Follow him on Twitter at @grantfaulkner and on Instagram at @grantfaulkner.

Becca Klaver writes in the poem 'Hooliganism Was the Charge,' It offered reassurance which said, “You are not alone; I can hear you.” Her forthcoming collection, Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press 2020), reminds us that no matter the digital distance between us we are never quite alone. A collection that both casts and dispels the bindings ever present via social media, patriarchy, and our own paths to growth, this collection allows readers to blur the lines between our sometimes carefully curated online lives and the magical beings we truly are. Part spell book and a rumination on technology, Klaver explores womanhood and feminism from a distance and up close. These poems ask for us to find a remembrance and a reconnecting. She asks in the poem Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie, what is burning in our little hearts?, and dares us to tear down what we think we know to find what we feel. Becca Klaver is the author of two books of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016)—and several chapbooks. Becca was a founding editor of Switchback Books and is currently coediting, with Arielle Greenberg, the anthology Electric Gurlesque. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, and in Poem-A-Day and Verse Daily. She was also the editor of Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and is cohost, with Lauren Besser, of the podcast The Real Housewives of Bohemia. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD). She is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and currently lives in Iowa City, IA. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is Founder of Linden Avenue Literary Journal, which she launched in 2012. Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook, published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia. Learn more about Athena here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Becca Klaver writes in the poem 'Hooliganism Was the Charge,' It offered reassurance which said, “You are not alone; I can hear you.” Her forthcoming collection, Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press 2020), reminds us that no matter the digital distance between us we are never quite alone. A collection that both casts and dispels the bindings ever present via social media, patriarchy, and our own paths to growth, this collection allows readers to blur the lines between our sometimes carefully curated online lives and the magical beings we truly are. Part spell book and a rumination on technology, Klaver explores womanhood and feminism from a distance and up close. These poems ask for us to find a remembrance and a reconnecting. She asks in the poem Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie, what is burning in our little hearts?, and dares us to tear down what we think we know to find what we feel. Becca Klaver is the author of two books of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016)—and several chapbooks. Becca was a founding editor of Switchback Books and is currently coediting, with Arielle Greenberg, the anthology Electric Gurlesque. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, and in Poem-A-Day and Verse Daily. She was also the editor of Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and is cohost, with Lauren Besser, of the podcast The Real Housewives of Bohemia. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD). She is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and currently lives in Iowa City, IA. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is Founder of Linden Avenue Literary Journal, which she launched in 2012. Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook, published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia. Learn more about Athena here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Becca Klaver writes in the poem 'Hooliganism Was the Charge,' It offered reassurance which said, “You are not alone; I can hear you.” Her forthcoming collection, Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press 2020), reminds us that no matter the digital distance between us we are never quite alone. A collection that both casts and dispels the bindings ever present via social media, patriarchy, and our own paths to growth, this collection allows readers to blur the lines between our sometimes carefully curated online lives and the magical beings we truly are. Part spell book and a rumination on technology, Klaver explores womanhood and feminism from a distance and up close. These poems ask for us to find a remembrance and a reconnecting. She asks in the poem Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie, what is burning in our little hearts?, and dares us to tear down what we think we know to find what we feel. Becca Klaver is the author of two books of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016)—and several chapbooks. Becca was a founding editor of Switchback Books and is currently coediting, with Arielle Greenberg, the anthology Electric Gurlesque. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, and in Poem-A-Day and Verse Daily. She was also the editor of Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and is cohost, with Lauren Besser, of the podcast The Real Housewives of Bohemia. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD). She is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and currently lives in Iowa City, IA. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is Founder of Linden Avenue Literary Journal, which she launched in 2012. Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook, published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia. Learn more about Athena here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I had the opportunity to talk with Zefyr Lisowski about her book Blood Box. Zefyr Lisowski is a trans and queer writer, artist, and North Carolinian currently living in NYC. She's a Poetry Co-editor for Apogee Journal and the author of Blood Box, winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award from Black Lawrence Press and forthcoming fall 2019; she's also the author of the microchap Wolf Inventory (Ghost City Press, 2018) and is a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop Fellow. Zefyr's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lit Hub, Nat. Brut., Muzzle Magazine, and DIAGRAM, among many other places; she's also received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, McGill University, the New York Live Ideas Fest, and the 2019 CUNY Graduate Center Adjunct Incubator Grant for the arts. A 2018 nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she also goes by Zef. Zefyr Lisowski's website Go buy Blood Box!  Media, artists, books, etc mentioned in this episode: Sharon Pollock's play Blood Relations Angela Davis's short story "The Fall River Axe Murders" Angela Davis's Bloody Chamber Lizzie Borden's film Born in Flames Lizzie (2018 film) Muriel Leung  Joey De Jesus  Jessie Rice Evans  Cyree Jarelle Johnson's SLINGSHOT  (and here's my interview with Cyree) Diana Khoi Nguyen's Ghost Of  Johanna Hedva's "Sick Woman Theory"  @Mx_ctrl is my Instagram handle, and...I definitely failed Inktober  Samuel Ace/ Linda Smukler's Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don't wash.  Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz Sound of Waves Breaking is "Cicada Single" by Jedo.

Bill welcomes award winning short story writer Beth Mayer to the show. Her short story collection We Will Tell You Otherwise won the Hudson Prize in fiction with Black Lawrence Press. Her fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun Magazine, and The Midway Review. She was a fiction finalist for The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (2016), her work recognized among “Other Distinguished Stories” by Best American Mystery Stories (2010), and her stories anthologized in both American Fiction (New Rivers) and New Stories from the Midwest (Ohio University). She currently teaches English at Century College in Minnesota. Don't miss it!

Today, I’m talking with Nina Boutsikaris. Her new book is called I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). And if you’ve ever said those words—I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry—you know they usually come at some crisis point in a conversation that’s already underway. A misunderstanding has happened or some confusion has started to mount, and so you try to reset and make things clear: “Hey look, I’m trying to apologize!” Boutsikaris makes this gesture throughout her book, yet the “you” to whom she’s speaking is not as simple as any one person. She speaks to friends and former lovers, artists and theorists, members of her own family, and, ultimately, to her younger self. Nor is she carrying on one conversation. She’s trying to describe what it means to be a self, a female self, one living through illness, loneliness, desire, and the aspiration to make art. And finally, her book is no simple apology. It’s more of a reckoning, an attempt to understand who we are in our brokenness and in our hopes. So if it is an apology, it’s an apology in the classic sense of the genre, like the one Socrates gives in Plato’s famous dialogue where he defends the value of philosophy or like the apology that Sir Philip Sydney gives in defense of poetry. In this classic sense, an apology is not merely apologizing, merely saying, “I’m sorry.” It’s offering a full account. It’s showing why, whatever the charge, whatever the crime, the case is more complex than those charging you could ever imagine and that not only are you perhaps not guilty and not only are those who accuse you perhaps not innocent, but also that guilt and innocence are too simple as categories to make sense of our complex and messy lives. It takes an apology like Boutsikaris gives to reveal that complexity and help us live with it and in it rather than reduce it to some simple—and false—truth. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Nina Boutsikaris. Her new book is called I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). And if you’ve ever said those words—I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry—you know they usually come at some crisis point in a conversation that’s already underway. A misunderstanding has happened or some confusion has started to mount, and so you try to reset and make things clear: “Hey look, I’m trying to apologize!” Boutsikaris makes this gesture throughout her book, yet the “you” to whom she’s speaking is not as simple as any one person. She speaks to friends and former lovers, artists and theorists, members of her own family, and, ultimately, to her younger self. Nor is she carrying on one conversation. She’s trying to describe what it means to be a self, a female self, one living through illness, loneliness, desire, and the aspiration to make art. And finally, her book is no simple apology. It’s more of a reckoning, an attempt to understand who we are in our brokenness and in our hopes. So if it is an apology, it’s an apology in the classic sense of the genre, like the one Socrates gives in Plato’s famous dialogue where he defends the value of philosophy or like the apology that Sir Philip Sydney gives in defense of poetry. In this classic sense, an apology is not merely apologizing, merely saying, “I’m sorry.” It’s offering a full account. It’s showing why, whatever the charge, whatever the crime, the case is more complex than those charging you could ever imagine and that not only are you perhaps not guilty and not only are those who accuse you perhaps not innocent, but also that guilt and innocence are too simple as categories to make sense of our complex and messy lives. It takes an apology like Boutsikaris gives to reveal that complexity and help us live with it and in it rather than reduce it to some simple—and false—truth. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this twenty-first episode of the Animal Riot Podcast we welcome Nina Boutsikaris, a writer of prose with ambitions to start an arts residency near her home in the Hudson Valley. Nina is the author of the recently released I'm Trying to Tell You I'm Sorry from Black Lawrence Press, from whose breathtaking pages she offers an excerpt--but not before we embark on discussions surrounding what it means to write candidly about conflicts involving family and friends, her experience as an MFA student at the DFW's begrudging alma mater, Arizona University, and her long-awaited, highly-anticipated foray into fiction--coming in 2021? Tune in to find out!  The transcript of this episode is available here. 

Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, and self. It’s called And It Begins Like This(Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and I immediately found myself asking, “What’s it? What’s this?” Not until over halfway through the book did McQueen make the answer clear, when she writes: “There is a story I once believed and it begins like this—a woman named Leanna Brown was a slave to Bedford Brown, Senator of North Carolina. Sometime during her enslavement she had a relationship with a white man who lived on a neighboring farm, and the results of their relationship produced three children, one of them my ancestor.” McQueen’s book is, in part, her attempt to learn the full and complicated truth of this story, to discover, as much as the record will allow, the history of her great-great grandmother. This search, it turns out, asks her no less than to grapple with the history of race relations in the United States and the ways in which it manifests in her own life and family. And It Begins Like This is a clear-eyed and powerful account not only of the experience of being an African American woman right now, but also a testament to the importance of this experience and the insight it brings for all Americans. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, and self. It's called And It Begins Like This(Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and I immediately found myself asking, “What's it? What's this?” Not until over halfway through the book did McQueen make the answer clear, when she writes: “There is a story I once believed and it begins like this—a woman named Leanna Brown was a slave to Bedford Brown, Senator of North Carolina. Sometime during her enslavement she had a relationship with a white man who lived on a neighboring farm, and the results of their relationship produced three children, one of them my ancestor.” McQueen's book is, in part, her attempt to learn the full and complicated truth of this story, to discover, as much as the record will allow, the history of her great-great grandmother. This search, it turns out, asks her no less than to grapple with the history of race relations in the United States and the ways in which it manifests in her own life and family. And It Begins Like This is a clear-eyed and powerful account not only of the experience of being an African American woman right now, but also a testament to the importance of this experience and the insight it brings for all Americans. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, and self. It’s called And It Begins Like This(Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and I immediately found myself asking, “What’s it? What’s this?” Not until over halfway through the book did McQueen make the answer clear, when she writes: “There is a story I once believed and it begins like this—a woman named Leanna Brown was a slave to Bedford Brown, Senator of North Carolina. Sometime during her enslavement she had a relationship with a white man who lived on a neighboring farm, and the results of their relationship produced three children, one of them my ancestor.” McQueen’s book is, in part, her attempt to learn the full and complicated truth of this story, to discover, as much as the record will allow, the history of her great-great grandmother. This search, it turns out, asks her no less than to grapple with the history of race relations in the United States and the ways in which it manifests in her own life and family. And It Begins Like This is a clear-eyed and powerful account not only of the experience of being an African American woman right now, but also a testament to the importance of this experience and the insight it brings for all Americans. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, and self. It’s called And It Begins Like This(Black Lawrence Press, 2018), and I immediately found myself asking, “What’s it? What’s this?” Not until over halfway through the book did McQueen make the answer clear, when she writes: “There is a story I once believed and it begins like this—a woman named Leanna Brown was a slave to Bedford Brown, Senator of North Carolina. Sometime during her enslavement she had a relationship with a white man who lived on a neighboring farm, and the results of their relationship produced three children, one of them my ancestor.” McQueen’s book is, in part, her attempt to learn the full and complicated truth of this story, to discover, as much as the record will allow, the history of her great-great grandmother. This search, it turns out, asks her no less than to grapple with the history of race relations in the United States and the ways in which it manifests in her own life and family. And It Begins Like This is a clear-eyed and powerful account not only of the experience of being an African American woman right now, but also a testament to the importance of this experience and the insight it brings for all Americans. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MFA in Poetry from Emerson College ('08), BA in Poetry from Pacific Lutheran University ('06). Lecturer in School of Humanities & Communication at California State University Monterey Bay ('13-present), Associate Poetry Editor for Black Lawrence Press ('10-13), Book Reviewer for Zoland ('12-13), Chief Editor of "Saxifrage" literary arts journal ('04-06), Poetry Reader for "Redivider" ('06-07). PUBLICATIONS AND PRIZES Anthologies: Crack the Spine XVI (CreateSpace, 2017), Montreal Prize 2013 Global Poetry Anthology (Vehicule Press, 2013), Poetry on Buses 2004: Facts & Fictions (4Culture, 2004) Journals: 322 Review, Able Muse, Angel City Review, Anomalous Press, Arbor Vitae, Artifice, Bellevue Literary Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, Crack the Spine, Eratio Poetry Journal, Fence, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Gambol, Hobble Creek Review, Homestead Review, Mad Hatters' Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Oranges & Sardines, Pearl Magazine, Ploughshares, Poetry Flash, Poetry Quarterly, Poets & Artists, Prairie Schooner, Provincetown Magazine, Rock & Sling, Saxifrage, Softblow, Soundzine, The Battered Suitcase, Brooklyn Rail, Thin Air Magazine, Word For/Word, zoland poetry

Kristy Bowen, the founder and editor of  dancing girl press & studios has been a pivotal vehicle for promoting women poets and writers in her e-zine "Wicked Alice" and chapbook series at "dancing girl press".  Listen to us discuss how she started the venture, how she chose the name of dancing girl press, how she grew the press and studio, and her influences and creative processes as a poet and an artist in the book arts. http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes Kristy Bowen is a writer and book artist working in both text and image. She is the author of  a number of chapbooks, zines, and artist book projects, as well as several full-length collections of poetry/prose/hybrid work, including SALVAGE  (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS (Sundress Publications, 2015). Based in Chicago, she runs dancing girl press & studio and spends much of her time writing, making papery things, and editing a chapbook series devoted to women authors.  You can download and read her chapbook: "the science of impossible objects"   To see more her insights, influences and processes follow her blog: https://kristybowen.blogspot.com/

TURN THE PAGE Host Kayla Greenwell interviews the literati and oddball creative-types with a focus on DIY and grassroots initiatives. This week, Kayla will interview Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish. Robert Vaughan’s writing has appeared in over 500 print and online journals. He leads writing roundtables at Red Oak Writing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Also, he teaches workshops, like the October 18-25 Poetry & Fiction: Writing from the Well of Diverse Genres at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin.He is in his 5th year as senior flash fiction editor at JMWW, as well as poetry and fiction editor at Lost in Thought magazine. He also is guest editor of Uno Kudo magazine, issue 5.Kathy Fish has joined the faculty of the Mile-High MFA at Regis University in Denver. She will be teaching flash fiction. Additionally, she teaches two-week intensive Fast Flash© Workshops. She also serves as Consulting Editor for the Queen’s Ferry Press series, THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS. Her fourth collection of short fiction, RIFT, co-authored with Robert Vaughan, is set to release in December, 2015 from Unknown Press.Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers, Black Lawrence Press, 2015, Richard Thomas (ed.), Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good,Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2015, H.L. Nelson and Joanne Merriam, (eds.), and various other journals and anthologies. She was the guest editor of Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2010. She is the author of three collections of short fiction: a chapbook of flash fiction in the chapbook collective, “A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women” (Rose Metal Press, 2008), “Wild Life” (Matter Press, 2011) and “Together We Can Bury It” available now from The Lit Pub.

TURN THE PAGE Host Kayla Greenwell interviews the literati and oddball creative-types with a focus on DIY and grassroots initiatives. This week, Kayla will interview Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish. Robert Vaughan’s writing has appeared in over 500 print and online journals. He leads writing roundtables at Red Oak Writing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Also, he teaches workshops, like the October 18-25 Poetry & Fiction: Writing from the Well of Diverse Genres at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin.He is in his 5th year as senior flash fiction editor at JMWW, as well as poetry and fiction editor at Lost in Thought magazine. He also is guest editor of Uno Kudo magazine, issue 5.Kathy Fish has joined the faculty of the Mile-High MFA at Regis University in Denver. She will be teaching flash fiction. Additionally, she teaches two-week intensive Fast Flash© Workshops. She also serves as Consulting Editor for the Queen’s Ferry Press series, THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS. Her fourth collection of short fiction, RIFT, co-authored with Robert Vaughan, is set to release in December, 2015 from Unknown Press.Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers, Black Lawrence Press, 2015, Richard Thomas (ed.), Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good,Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2015, H.L. Nelson and Joanne Merriam, (eds.), and various other journals and anthologies. She was the guest editor of Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2010. She is the author of three collections of short fiction: a chapbook of flash fiction in the chapbook collective, “A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women” (Rose Metal Press, 2008), “Wild Life” (Matter Press, 2011) and “Together We Can Bury It” available now from The Lit Pub.

Not even the truth about Santa Claus and George Washington could prepare Carter Edwards for what happened to Brontosaurus. Carter Edwards' work has appeared in Mathematics Magazine, Hobart, The New York Times, and others. His debut collection of fiction, The Aversive Clause, won the 2011 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press. His debut collection of poetry, From The Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes, was released last summer, also from Black Lawrence Press. He is a 2014 Poetry Fellow of the New York Foundation of the Arts, attended the graduate writing program at The New School in New York and lives in Brooklyn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press) Elizabeth Cantwell's debut book of poems is a startling reminder of the range of voices to be found in the poetic landscape of Los Angeles. A can't miss reading for lovers of poetry. Nights I Let The Tiger Get You is a neurotic journey through the surreal déjà vu of recurring dreams and the disorienting patterns of our own personal histories. The collection's poems view the failures of a family's internal structure through the distorted lens of the subconscious—but the language's twists and turns ultimately open the narrator's world to hope. Praise for Nights I Let The Tiger Get You “In her brilliant debut collection, Nights I Let the Tiger Get You, Elizabeth Cantwell excavates layers of contemporary anxiety to reveal that Blake's Tyger has been, all along, that rough beast slouching toward us, and is in fact now living among us -- with an unsettling intimacy -- in both our unconscious and daily lives. Elizabeth Cantwell's poems honor the disjunctions of voice and dislocations of consciousness present in our century, and their elegant and luminous shards glint in the darkness like the Tyger's stripes. These exquisite reflections form a kind of handbook of post-apocalyptic forms, as the most psychologically fraught aspects of our dreams slowly emerge as the actual landscapes of our lives.”-- David St. John “The surreal volleys in Elizabeth Cantwell's poems vividly capture the miniature catastrophes and cataclysms hidden within suburban America and its culture. Her poems 'Recess' and 'Interlude,' with their taut imagination, echo that horror in our lives to make something  happen. The tiger in these poems is real, synonymous with an unnamed anxiety, and roams at will through our haunted lives: ' we're flying  / onto some other field of pistols. We have / more than one shot.' Her vision is unconventional and often brilliant.”--Mark Irwin “Submerged in a burning sea of images, is the dreamer losing or finding herself?  "Fire self-replicates," yet she is "not a flame or a ripple."  Simultaneously bold and hermetic, these poems are ferociously interrogatory, seeking to distinguish between what can and cannot be saved.”--Claire Bateman Elizabeth Cantwell is finishing her PhD in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have recently appeared in such publications as Anti-, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, and the Indiana Review. Elizabeth's first book of poetry, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You, was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Her chapbook Premonitions is forthcoming from Grey Books Press. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and small dog.

As I waded into Erica Wright‘s first books of poems, I immediately became not only aware of my gender, but the event that is female, woman, girl, and child. In fact, gender – that construction site where culture and biology come together to play out their destructive and creative collaboration – seems at first to be the blueprint for the lyrical arguments made in each poem, but it turns out gender might only be a part of the poems’ machinery. Wright’s speaker, while someone who rejects the wide bubbly grin and feminine pose of the little girl, and indeed someone who prefers dirt under her nails instead of polish painted over them, wants us to understand that the violence of loneliness, regret, and vulnerability have perhaps less to do with gender or sex, but more to do with the fundamental element that makes us all human: the need to be loved and the need to love. Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press, 2011) is filled with both poems of confrontation and poems of striking tenderness, humor, and honesty. And yet the poet isn’t merely obsessed with the abstractions of the human interior. She draws heavily on imagery – both classical and contemporary; bleak and lush – to serve as the scaffolding we can hold onto while the speaker whispers in our ears one devastating truth after another. During our chat we talk about the poet’s childhood in rural Tennessee, the themes that drive her poetry, her recent adventure into prose writing, and so much more. I hope you enjoy our talk as much as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I waded into Erica Wright‘s first books of poems, I immediately became not only aware of my gender, but the event that is female, woman, girl, and child. In fact, gender – that construction site where culture and biology come together to play out their destructive and creative collaboration – seems at first to be the blueprint for the lyrical arguments made in each poem, but it turns out gender might only be a part of the poems’ machinery. Wright’s speaker, while someone who rejects the wide bubbly grin and feminine pose of the little girl, and indeed someone who prefers dirt under her nails instead of polish painted over them, wants us to understand that the violence of loneliness, regret, and vulnerability have perhaps less to do with gender or sex, but more to do with the fundamental element that makes us all human: the need to be loved and the need to love. Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press, 2011) is filled with both poems of confrontation and poems of striking tenderness, humor, and honesty. And yet the poet isn’t merely obsessed with the abstractions of the human interior. She draws heavily on imagery – both classical and contemporary; bleak and lush – to serve as the scaffolding we can hold onto while the speaker whispers in our ears one devastating truth after another. During our chat we talk about the poet’s childhood in rural Tennessee, the themes that drive her poetry, her recent adventure into prose writing, and so much more. I hope you enjoy our talk as much as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices