Podcasts about cave canem poetry prize

Many of us have sought information about our family history, trying to solve those unanswered questions about our predecessors. In the quest for truths about others through examining their lives and lineage, we may also find truths about ourselves in the process. In his latest release and nonfiction debut, The Dead Don't Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd Shit, New York Times bestselling author Julian Randall braids past with present as he retraces the life of his grandfather, a white-passing patriarch driven from a town in Mississippi, all the way to Randall's own internal battles with depression and how he ultimately emerged from its depths. Randall weaves pop culture into his pages, exploring grief, family, emotional health, and the American way with a medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Seattle writer Ally Ang joins Randall in conversation for an evening of laughter, tears, and everything in-between. Julian Randall is a contributor to the #1 New York Times bestseller Black Boy Joy and his middle-grade novel, Pilar Ramirez and the Escape From Zafa, was published by Holt in 2022. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Tin House, and Milkweed Editions. He is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle, the 2019 Frederick Bock Prize, and a Pushcart prize. His poetry has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY. His first book, Refuse, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He lives in Chicago. Ally Ang is a gaysian poet and editor based in Seattle, Washington. Their work has been published in Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Foglifter, Columbia Journal,and elsewhere. They are a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, a Tin House workshop alum, and a 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program fellow. Ang holds a BA in sociology and Asian American studies from Wellesley College and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington. They are currently working on their first full-length poetry collection. When not writing, Ang can be found gazing longingly at bodies of water or doting on their cat, Gomez.

Donika Kelly joins Kevin Young to read “One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver, and her own poem “Sixteen Center.” Kelly is the author of two poetry collections, and the recipient of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she teaches at the University of Iowa.

In their latest collection of poems, Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Brionne Janae dives into the deep, unsettled waters of intimate partner violence, queerness, grief, and survival. This event took place on July 6, 2023. “I've decided I can't trust anyone who uses darkness as a metaphor for what they fear,” poet Brionne Janae writes in this stunning new collection, in which the speaker navigates past and present traumas and interrogates familial and artistic lineages, queer relationships, positions of power, and community. Because You Were Mine is an intimate look at love, loneliness, and what it costs to survive abuse at the hands of those meant to be “protectors.” In raw, confessional, image-heavy poems, Janae explores the aftershocks of the dangerous entanglement of love and possession in parent-child relationships. Through this difficult but necessary examination, the collection speaks on behalf of children who were left or harmed as a result of the failures of their parents, their states, and their gods. Survivors, queer folks, and readers of poetry will find recognition and solace in these hard-wrought poems—poems that honor survivorship, queer love, parent wounds, trauma, and the complexities of familial blood. Get Because You Were Mine from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/... Speakers: Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021), which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017). Janae is the recipient of the St. Botoloph Emerging Artist award, a Hedgebrook Alum, a proud Cave Canem Fellow, and a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry (2022), Ploughshares, the American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, the Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Janae is the co-host of the podcast The Slave is Gone. Off the page they go by Breezy. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist whose work garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Her first poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published through Write Bloody Press. Flame is a recipient of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture's CityArtist grant and served as Hugo House's 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry. Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, Poetry Magazine, PANK, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review, and elsewhere. She is recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, and 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency. JR Mahung is a Belizean-American poet from the South Side of Chicago and one half of the Poetry duo Black Plantains with Malcolm Friend. They teach, write, and study in Amherst, MA. JR is a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2017 Emerging Poet's Incubator Fellow, and the 2018 Individual World Poetry Slam representative for the Boston Poetry Slam. Tweet them about rice and beans @jr_mahung. Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine, editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, and author of Blue Hallelujahs. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among other foundations. Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/oQzdrRc6y7k Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly about their grand statements, big revelations, sentential seduction, queering forms, the power of vulnerability, and love poems. We're taking a break and will be back for our next episode with guests Yiyun Li & Edmund White on January 16,  2024. Happy Holidays, LitFam!   LINKS Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com www.melissafebos.com www.donikakelly.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook TRANSCRIPT Annie: (00:00) This episode is dedicated to Chuck, a dog we have loved, and Donika and Melissa's sweet pup.   Annie & Lito: Welcome to LitFriends! Hey Lit Friends!   Annie: Welcome to the show.    Lito: Today, we're speaking with memoirist Melissa Febos and poet Donika Kelly, lit friends in marriage,   Annie: About seduction, big boss feelings, and sliding into DMs.   Lito: So grab your bestie,   Annie & Lito: And get ready to fall in love!   Annie: What I love about Melissa Febos, and you can feel this across all four of her books, is how she declares herself free. There's no ambiguity to this. This is her story, not your telling of it, not your telling of her. I meet her on the page as someone who's in an act of rebellion or an act of defiance. And I was not really surprised but delighted to find that, when I read Donika Kelly, I had sort of the same reaction, same impression. And I'm wondering if that's true for you, and, Lito, what your understanding of vulnerability and its relationship to power is.   Lito: The power for me in these conversations, and the power that the authors that we speak with possess, seems to me, in the ways that they have found how they are completely unique from each other. And more so than in our other conversations, Donika and Melissa, their work is so different. And yet, as you've pointed out, the overlap, and the fire, the energy, the defiance, the fierceness is so present. And it was present in our conversation. And so inspiring.   Annie: Yeah. I'm thinking even about Melissa Febos has this Ted Talk. (01:54) Where she says "telling your secrets will set you free." And it feels that not only is that true, but it's also very much an act of self reclamation and strength, right? Where we might read it as an act of weakness. It's actually in fact, a harnessing of the self.   Lito: Right, it's not that Melissa has a need to confess. It's that she really uses writing to find the truth about herself and how she feels about something, which that could not differ more from my writing practice.   Annie: How so?   Lito: I find that I sort of, I write out of an emotion or a need to discover something, but I already sort of am aware of where I am and who I am before I start. I find the plot and the characters as I go, but I know sort of how I feel.   Annie: Yeah, I think for me, I do feel like writing is an act of discovery where maybe I put something on the page, it's the initial conception, or yeah, like you coming out of a feeling. But as I start to ask questions, right, for me, it's this process of inquiry. I excavate to something maybe a little more surprising or partially hidden or unknown to myself.   Lito: That's true. There is a discovery of, and I think you're, I think you've pointed to exactly what it is. It's the process of inquiry, and I think both of them, and obviously us, we're doing that similar thing. This is about writing, about this, this is about asking questions and writing through them.   Annie: Yeah, and Donika Kelly, we feel that in her work, her poetry over and over, even when they have the same recurring, I would say haunting images or artifacts. Each time she's turning it over and asking almost unbearable questions.   Lito: Right.   Annie: And we're joining her on the page because she is brave enough and has an iron will and says, no, I will not not look this in the eye.    Lito: That's the feeling exactly that I get from both of them is the courage, the bravura of the unflinching.   Annie: I think something that seemed to resonate with you was (03:58) how they talk about writing outside of publishing right? Yeah.   Lito: Yeah, I love I love that they talk about writing as a practice regardless, they're separated from The need to produce a work that's gonna sell in a commercial world in a capitalist society. It's more about the daily practice, and how that is a lifestyle and even what you said about the TED talk, that's just her. She's just talking about herself. Like that she's just telling an absolute truth that people don't typically talk about.   Annie: Right. And it's a conscious, active way to live inside one's life. It's a form of reflection, meditation, and rather than just moving through life, a way to make meaning of the experience.   Lito: I love that you use the word meditation because when you talk about meditation, you think of someone in a lotus position quietly being, but the meditations that both of them do, these are not quiet.   Annie: No. And of course we have to talk about how cute they are as married literary besties.   Lito: Oh my god, cute and like, they're hot for each other.   Annie: Oh my god.   Lito: It's palpable.   Annie: So palpable, sliding into DMs, chatting each other up over email.   Lito: They romanced each other, and I hope—no—I know they're gonna romance you, listener.   Annie: We'll be right back.   Lito: (05:40) Back to the show.   Annie: Melissa Febos is the author of four books, including the best-selling essay collection Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a Lambda finalist, and was named a notable book by NPR, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and others. Her craft book Body Work is a national bestseller and an Indie's Next Pick. Her forthcoming novel The Dry Season is a work of mixed form nonfiction that explores celibacy as liberatory practice. Melissa lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly, and is a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Lito: Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in poetry and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Donika has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and was long listed for the National Book Award. (06:00) Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Annie: Well, thank you for joining us for LitFriends to talk about the ultimate lit friendship. It does seem like you've won at the game of lit friends a little bit, having married your lit friend. I think of you both as writers who are in the constant act of subversion and resisting erasure. And that's the kind of work that Lito and I are drawn to, and that we're trying to do ourselves. And your work really shows us how to inhabit our bravest and most complex selves on the page. So we're really grateful for that.   Melissa: Thanks.   Annie: Yeah, of course. I mean, Donika, I think about poems of yours that my friends and I revisit constantly because we're haunted by them in the best way. They've taken residence inside of us. And you talk about what it means to have to do that work. And you've said, "to admit need and pain, desire and trauma and claim my humanity was often daunting. But the book demanded I claim my personhood."   And Melissa, I think you know how much your work means to me. I mean, as someone who is raised as a girl in this country and writing creative nonfiction, Body Work should not be as revelatory as it is. Yet what I see is that you're shaping an entire generation of nonfiction writers, many of them women. So, you know, also very grateful for that. And you've talked about that in Body Work. You've said "the risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery to place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent broken world is the opposite of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you." So we'll talk more in a bit about courage and vulnerability and how you all do the impossible things you do, but let's dive into your lit friendship.   Melissa: Thank you, Annie, for that beautiful introduction.   Donika: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk about our friendship.   Lito: We're so excited to have you here.   Melissa: Talk about our special friendship.   Annie: Very special friendship. Friendship with benefits.   Lito: So tell us about your lit friend, Melissa, tell us about Donika.   Melissa: (09:07) Tell us about her. Okay, she's fucking hilarious, like very, very funny and covers a broad spectrum of humor from like, there's a lot of like punning that goes on in our house, a lot of like silly wordplay, bathroom humor, and then like high level, like, literary academic sort of witticism that's also making fun of itself a lot. And we've sort of operated in all of those registers since like the day we met.   She is my favorite poet. There's like those artists that whose work you really appreciate, right? Sometimes because it's so different from your own. And then there are those artists whose work registers in like a very deep sort of recognition where they feel like creative kin, right? And that has always been my experience of Donika's work. That there is a kind of creative intelligence and emotionality that just feels like so profoundly familiar to me and was before I knew anything about her as a human being.   Okay, we also like almost all the same candy and have extremely opposite work habits. She's very hot. She only likes to watch like TVs and movies that she's seen many times before, which is both like very comforting and very annoying.   Lito: Well, I'm gonna have to follow that up now. What are some of the top hits?   Melissa: Oh, for sure, Golden Girls is at the very top. I mean…   Annie: No one's mad at that.   Lito: We can do the interview right now. Perfect. All we need to know. A++!   Melissa: She's probably like 50% of the time that she's sleeping, she falls asleep to the soundtrack of the Golden Girls or Xena, maybe. But we've also watched the more recent James Bond franchise, The Matrices, (11:00) and Mission Impossible, never franchises I ever thought I would watch once, let alone multiple times at some point.   Annie: I mean, Donika, your queerness is showing with that list.   Lito: Yeah.   Donika: I feel seen. I feel represented accurately by that list. She's not wrong. She's not wrong at all. But I've also introduced to her the pleasure of revisiting work.   Melissa: That's right.   Donika: And that was not a thing that Melissa was doing before we met, which feels confusing to me. Because I am a person who really likes to revisit. She was buying more books when we met, and now she uses the library more, and that feels like really exciting. That feels like a triumph on my part. I'm like…   Annie: That is a victory. Yeah.   Donika: …with the public services.   Melissa; Both of these examples really allude to like this deep, fundamental sort of capitalistic set of habits that I have, where I… like there's like this weird implicit desire to try to read as many books as possible before I perish, and also to hoard them, I guess. And I'm very happy to have been influenced out of that.   Annie: Well it's hard not to think—I think about that tweet like once a week that's like you have an imaginary bookshelf, and there are a limited amount of books on that you can read before you die, and that like troubles me every day.   Melissa: Yeah it's so fucked up. (12:22) I don't want that. It's already in my head. I feel like I was born with that in my head, and I'm trying to get free.   Lito: Same. Serious book FOMO, like…   Donika: There are so many books y'all.   Lito: I know. It's not possible.   Donika: And, it's like, there are more and more every year.   Annie: Well, uh Donika tell us about Melissa.   Donika: Oh Melissa As she has already explained we have a lot of fun It's a funny household. She's hilarious. Um, and also she's a writer of great integrity, which you know I'm sitting on the couch reading Nora Roberts, and she's like in her office hammering away at essays, and I don't know what's going on in there. I'm very nosy. I'm a deeply nosy person. Like, I just I want to know like what's going on. I want to know the whole history, and it's really amazing to be with someone who is like here it is.   Annie: How did you all meet?   Donika: (13:20) mere moments after Trump was elected in 2016. I was in great despair. I was living in Western New York. I was teaching at a small Catholic university. Western New York is very conservative. It's very red. And I was in this place and I was like, this place is not my place. This place is not for me. And I was feeling very alone. And Melissa had written an essay that came out shortly after about teaching creative writing at a private institution in a red county. And I was like, oh, she gets it, she understands.   I started, I just like looked for everything. I looked for like everything that she had written. I read it, I watched the TED talk. I don't know if y'all know about the TED talk. There was a TED talk. I watched the TED talk. I was like, she's cute. I read Whip Smart. I followed her on Twitter. I developed a crush, and I did nothing else. So this is where I pass the baton. So I did all of that.   Melissa: I loved Bestiaries, and I love the cover. The cover of her book is from this medieval bestiary. And so I just bought it, and I read it. And I just had that experience that I described before where I was just like, "Oh, fuck. Like this writer and I have something very deep in common." And I wrote her. I DMed her on Twitter.   Sometimes I obscure this part of the story because I want it to appear like I sent her a letter by raven or something. But actually, I slid into her DMs, and I just was like, "hey, I loved your book. If you ever come to New York and want help setting up a reading, like I curate lots of events, da da da." And I put my email in. And not five minutes later, refreshed my Gmail inbox, and there was an email from Donika, and…   Donika: I was like, "Hi. Hello. It's me."   Annie: So you agree with this timeline, Donika, right? Like, it was within five minutes.   Donika: Yeah, it was very fast. And I think if I hadn't read everything that I could get my hands on that Melissa had written, I may have been a little bit slower off the mark. It wasn't romantic. Like the connection, I wasn't like, oh, this is someone who like I want to (15:41) strike up a romantic relationship with, it really was the work. Like I just respected the work so much.   I mean, I did have a crush, like that was real, but I have crushes on lots of people, like that sort of flows in and out, but that often is a signifier of like, oh, this person will be my friend. And I was still married at the time and trying to figure out, like that relationship was ending. It was coming to a quick close that felt slow. Like it was dragging a little bit for lots of reasons.   But then once it was clear to me that I was getting divorced, Melissa and I continued writing to each other like for the next few months. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, I'm getting divorced. I was like, I'm getting divorced. And then suddenly the emails were very different. From both of us. It wasn't different.   Melissa: There had been no romantic strategy or intent, you know, and I think which, which was a really great way to, we really started from a friendship.   Annie: And sounds like a courtship really. I mean, it kind of is an old fashion.   Melissa: Yeah, in some way, it became that. I think it became that. But I think it was, I mean, the best kind of courtship begins as a, as a friendly courtship, you know what I mean? Where it was about sort of mutual artistic respect and curiosity and just interest. And it wasn't defined yet, like, what sort of mood that interest would take for a while, you know?   Lito: So how do you seduce each other on and off the page?   Donika: That's a great question.   Melissa: That is a great question.   Donika: I am not good at seduction. So that is not a skill set that is available to me. It has never been available.   Lito: I do not believe that.   Annie: I know. I'm also in disbelief out here, really.   Melissa: No one believes it, but she insists.   Annie: I feel like that's part of the game, is my feeling, but it is not.   Melissa: It's not. Here's the thing I will say is that like Donika, I've thought a lot about this and we've talked a lot about this because I balked at that statement as well. It's like Donika is seductive. Like there are qualities about her that are very seductive, but she does not seduce people. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't like turn on the charisma and shine it at you like a hypnotist. Like that's not… (18:08) that's not her form of seduction, but I will say…   I can answer that question in terms of like, I think in terms of the work, since we've been talking about that, like in a literary way, both in her own work, like the quality, like just someone who's really good at what they do is fucking sexy, you know? Like when I was looking for like a little passage before this interview, I was just like, "ah, this is so good." Like it's so attractive when someone is really, really good at their craft. right? Especially when it's a crop that you share.   Donika: So Melissa does have the ability to turn on what she has written about, which I think is really funny. Like she like she has like, she has a very strong gaze. It's very potent. And one of my gifts is to disrupt that and be like, what are you doing with your eyes? And so like, when I think about that in the work, when I'm reading her work, and I'm in like its deepest thrall, it is that intensity of focus that really like pulls me in and keeps me in. She's so good at making a grand statement.   Melissa: I was just gonna bring that up.   Donika: Oh, I think she and I like often get to, we arrive at sort of similar places, but she gets there from the grand statement, and I get there from the granular statement, like it's a very narrow sort of path. And then Melissa's like, "every love is a destroyer." I was like, whoa, every one? And there's something really compelling about that mode of— because it's earnest, and it's backed up by the work that she's written. I would never think to say that.   Melissa: I have a question for you, lit friend. Do you think you would be less into me if I weren't? Because I think for a nonfiction writer, I'm pretty obsessed with sentences. It's writing sentences that makes, that's the thing I love most about writing. It's like where the pleasure is for me. So I'm a pretty poetically inclined nonfiction writer. If I were less so, do you think that would be less seductive to you as a reader or a lit friend?   Donika: I mean, that's like asking me to imagine like, "so, what if… (20:30) water wasn't wet?" I just like, I can't like, I can't imagine. I do think the pleasure of the sentence is so intrinsic to like, I think there's something in the, in your impulse at the sentence level. That means that you're just careful. You're not rushing. You're not rushing us through an experience or keeping us in there and focused. And it's just it's tricky to imagine, or almost impossible to imagine what your work would look like if that weren't the impulse.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's an essential part of your style in some ways, that you're taking that time.   Melissa: Mm-hmm.    Annie: And how you see the world. Like I don't even think you would get to those big revelations Donika's talking about without it.   Melissa: Yeah. Right. I don't, yeah, I don't think I would either. We'll be right back.   Lito (21:19) Hey Lit Fam, Lit Friends is taking a break for the holiday. We hope you'll join us for our next episode with our guests, Ian Lee and Edmund White on January 16th. Till then, may your holiday be lit, your presents be numerous, and your 2024 be filled with joy and peace. If you'd like to show us some love, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much. Big hugs to you and yours. Thank you for listening. And thank you for making season one a big success!   Annie: (22:05) Welcome back.   Lito: I've noticed that both of you, you know, you have your genres that you work in, but within that you're experimenting a lot with form and structure. Does anything of that come from being queer? I guess it's a question about queering forms of literature, and what that has to do also with the kinds of friendships that queer people have, and if that's different, maybe. So I guess I'm asking to connect form with queerness and friendship.   Melissa: That's a beautiful question. I think, and I'm starting with thinking about my relationship to form, which has been one of inheriting some scripts for forms. This is what an essay should look like. This is what plot structure looks like. This is how you construct a narrative. And sort of taking those for granted a little bit, and then pretty early on, understanding the limitations of those structures and the ways that they require that I contort myself and my content such that it feels like a perversion or betrayal of sort of what I'm dealing with, right? And so the way I characterize my trajectory, the trajectory of my relationship to form has been sort of becoming conscious of those inherited forms, and then pushing the boundaries of them and modifying them and distorting them and adding things to them and figuring out, letting my work sort of teach me what form it rests most easily in and is most transparent in. And I suspect that my relationship to friendship and particularly queer friendship mimics that.   Donika: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I'm reminded of Denise Levertov has this essay titled "On the Function of the Line." And in it, she presents an argument that closed forms, received forms, are based on a kind of assumption of resolution, and that free verse or open design, like in a poem, it shows evidence of the speaker's thinking.   (24:24) Right? So that where the line breaks, the speaker is pausing, right? To gather their thoughts or like a turn might happen that's unexpected that mimics the turns in thinking. And I really love that essay. Like that essay is one of my favorites. So when I think about my approach to form, I'm like, what is the shape that this poem is asking for? What is the shape that will do, that will help the poem do its best work? And not even like to be good, but just like to be true.   I really love the sonnet shape. Like it's one of my favorite shapes. And it's so interesting and exciting to use a shape that is based on like argumentative structure or a sense of resolution, to explore. Like to use that as an exploratory space, it feels like queering our, like my expectations of what the sonnet does. Like there's something about the box. If I bounce around inside that box, there's gonna be something that comes out of that, that I wouldn't necessarily have gotten otherwise, but it's not resolution. Like the point is not resolution.   And when I think about my relationships and my chosen family, in particular, and to some degree actually my given family, part of what I'm thinking about is how can I show up and care and what does care look like in this relationship and how can I make room to be cared for? And that's so hard, like being cared for is so much more alien to me than, like, as a concept, like I feel like very anxious about it. I'm like, "am I asking for too much?" And like over and over again, my chosen family is like, "no, it's not too much. Like we, we got each other."   Melissa: I think particularly for queer people, we understand that it doesn't preclude romance or healthy kinds of dependency or unhealthy kinds of dependency, you know, that all of the things that happen in a very deep love relationship happen inside of friendship, where I think sort of like straight people and dominant culture have been like, "oh, no, like friendship isn't the site of like great romance or painful divorce or abuse." And queer people understand that all of those things happen within relationships that we call friendships.   Annie: (26:46) Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing you both talk about kind of queer survival and joy and even, Donika, what you were saying about having to adjust to being cared for as a kind of, you know, that's a sort of, to me, it's a sort of like a survivor's stance in the world. One of the things that I love about my kinship with Lito as, you know, my queer lit friend and, you know, brother from another mother is that he holds that space for me and I, you know, vice versa.   Even thinking about vulnerability, I think you both wield vulnerability as a tool of subversion too, right? And again, Lito and I are both creating projects right now that require a kind of rawness on the page. I'm about to publish a memoir called Sex with a Brain Injury, so I'm very consciously thinking about how we define vulnerability, what kind of work it does to reshape consciousness in the collective. And the ways that you each write about trauma helps us understand it as an act of reclamation, you know, power rather than powerlessness. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what is or what can be transformative about the confessional and maybe even more to the point, what does your lit friend teach you about vulnerability?   Melissa: (28:06) Oh, God, what doesn't she teach me about vulnerability? It's interesting because like you're correct that vulnerability is like very central to my work and to the like lifelong project of my work, and also like there's literally nothing on earth I would like to avoid more. And I don't think that is visible in my work, right? Because my work is the product of counteracting that set of instincts, which I must do to survive because the part of me that wants to avoid vulnerability, its end point is like literally death for me.   It is writing for me often starts from like kind of a pragmatic practice. I don't start like feeling my feelings. I write to get to my feelings and sometimes that doesn't happen until like after a book is published sometimes. You know like it's really interesting lately I've been confronting some feelings in like a really deep way that I think I have gotten access to from writing Girlhood, which came out in 2021. And it's like I had to sort of lay it all out, understand what happened, redefine my role in it and everyone else's. And I definitely had feelings while I was writing it. But like the feelings that Donika refers to as the big boss, like the deepest feelings about it. Like I, I feel like I'm only really getting. to it now.   My relationship to vulnerability, it's just like, it's a longitudinal process, you know? And there's no one who's taught me about that and how to be sort of like gentle and patient within that and to show up for it than Donika.   And I'm just thinking of like, you know, starting from pretty early in our relationship, she was working on the poems in The Renunciations, and over the years of our early, the early years of our relationship, she was confronting some childhood, some really profound childhood trauma. And she was doing that in therapy. And then there were like pieces of that work that she had to do in the poems. And I just watched her not force it. And when it was time, she like created the space to do the work. And like, I wasn't (30:35) there for that. I don't think anyone else really could have been there for that. And just like showing up for that work.   And then like the long tail of like publishing a book and having conversations with people and the way that it changes one's relationship and like the act of the vulnerability—achieved feels like the wrong word—but the vulnerability like expressed or found in the writing process, how that is just like a series of doorways and a hallway that maybe it never terminates. Maybe it doesn't even turn into death. I don't know. You know, but I've just seen her show up for that process with like a patience and a tenderness for herself at every age that I find incredibly challenging. And it's been super instructive for me.   Donika: Ooh. I, I'm, it makes me really happy to know that's your experience of like being like in like shared artistic space together. I think I go to poetry to understand, to help myself understand what it is that I'm holding and what it is that I wanna put down. Like that's what the poems are for. You know, like the act of writing helps me sort out what I need and what I wanna put down because narrative is so powerful. It feels like the one place where I can say things that are really hard, often because I've already said them in therapy.   Right? So then it's like, I can then explore what having said those hard things means in my life or how it sits in my life. And what Melissa shows me is that one can revise. I know I've said this like a few times, but that one can have a narrative. Like I think about reading Whipsmart and the story that she has about herself as a child in Whipsmart, and then how that begins to change a bit in Abandon Me. And then in Girlhood, it's really disrupted. And there is so much more tenderness there, I think. It looks really hard. Like, honestly, that joint looks hard because I might be in a poem, but I'm in it for like, like we're in it, like if I were to read it out loud for like a minute and a half.   Melissa: (33:50) It's interesting hearing you talk. I wonder if this is true. I think I'm hearing that it is true. And I think that's where it's with my experience that you often get to the feelings like in therapy or wherever, and then write the poems as more of a sort of emotional, but like also cognitive and kind of systemic and like a way of like making sense of it or putting it in context. And I think very much I, there'll be like deeply submerged feelings that emerge only as like impulses or something, you know, but I experience writing— I don't that often feel intense emotion while I'm writing. I think it's why that is writing is almost always the first place that I encounter my own vulnerability or that I say the like unspeakable thing or the thing that I have been unable to say. I often write it and then I can talk to my therapist about it or then I can talk to Donika about it.   And I think I can't. I'm too afraid or it feels like too much to feel the feelings while I'm writing. So I sort of experience it as a cognitive or like intellectual and creative exercise. And then once I understand it, sometime in the next five years, I feel the feelings.   Annie: Do you feel like it's a kind of talking to yourself or like talking outside of the world? Like what is it in that space that does that for you?   Melissa: Yeah, I do. I mean, it's like. Talking outside the world makes more sense to me than talking to myself. I mean, it is talking to myself, right? It's a conversation with myself, but it's removed from the context of me in my daily life. That's why it's possible. Within my daily life, I'm too connected to other people and my own internal pressures and just like the busy, superficial part of me that's like driving a lot of my days. I have to get away from her in order to do that work.   And so the writing really happens in a kind of separate space and feels like it is not, it has a kind of privacy that I don't experience in any other way in my life, where I really have built or found a space where I am never thinking about what other people think of me, and I'm not imagining a skeptical reader. (35:18) It is really like this weird spiritual, emotional, creative, intellectual space that is just separate from all of that, where I can sort of think and be curious freely.   And I think I created that space or found it really early on because I was, even as a kid, I was a person who was like so concerned with the people around me, with the adults around me, with what performances were expected of me. And being a person who was like very deeply thinking and feeling, I was like, well, there's no room for that here. So I need to like find somewhere else to do it. And so I think writing became that for me way before I thought about being a writer.   Lito: That's so fascinating to me. I think that's so different than how I work or Donika works or a lot of people I know. We'll be right back.   Lito: (36:26) Back to the show.   So this question is for both of you really, but it just makes me wonder then like, what is the role for emotion, but in particular anger? How does that like, when things get us angry, sometimes that motivates us to do something, right? So if you're not being inspired by an emotion to write, you're writing and then finding it, how does anger work as not only a tool for survival, but maybe a path towards personhood and freedom?   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking, I can't write out of that space, the space of anger. It took me a long time to get in touch with anger as a feeling. That took a really long time because in my family, in my given family, the way that people expressed anger was so dangerous that I felt that I didn't want to occupy those spaces. I didn't want to move emotionally into that, into that space if that was what it looked like. And it took me a long time to figure out how to be angry. And I'm still not sure that I'm great at it. Because I think often I'm moving quickly to like what's under that feeling. And often what's under my feelings of being angry, often, not always, is being hurt, feeling hurt. And I can… write into exploring what that hurt is, because I know how to do that with some tenderness and some care.   Melissa: I feel similarly, which is interesting, because we've never talked about this, I don't think. But anger is also a feeling that I think, for very different reasons, when I was growing up… I mean, I think just like baseline being socialized as a girl dissuaded me from expressing anger or even from feeling it, because where would that go?   But I also think in the particular environment that I was in, I understood pretty early that my expressions of anger would be like highly injurious to the people around me and that it would be better if I found another way to express those things. I think my compulsive inclinations have been really useful in that way. And it's taken me a lot of my adult life to sort of… (38:44) take my anger or as Donika said, you know, like anger for me almost always factors down to something that is largely powerlessness, you know, to sort of not take the terror and fury of powerlessness and express it through like ultimately self harming means.   Writing can be a way for me to arrive at like justifiable anger and to sort of feel that and let that move through me or to be like, oh, that was unjust. I was powerless in that situation. You know? Yeah, it has helped me in that way. But like, if I'm really being honest, I think I exhaust myself with exercise. And that's how I mostly deal with my feelings of anger.   Annie: Girl.   Melissa: Yeah, there's also a way I will say that like, I do think it actually comes out in my work in some ways. Like there is like a very direct, not people-pleasing vibe and tone in my work that is genuine, but that I almost never have in my life. Like maybe a little bit as a professor, but like    When Donika met me, she was like, "Oh… like you're just like this little gremlin puppy person. You're not like this intense convicted former dominatrix." You know, which is, I express it in my writing because it is a space where I'm not worried about placating or pleasing really. It's a space where I'm, I am almost solely interested in what I actually think.   Donika: I was just thinking about like the beginning of, I think it's "Wild America," when you talk about like not cleaning your room, Melissa. Because you didn't, like when you were a kid, right? It was like you cleaned your room when you wanted to appear good, but that didn't matter to you when you were alone in your room. Like you could get lost in a book or you could, you know, like just be inside yourself alone when you were alone in your room. And that's one of my favorite passages that you read. Like I'm always sort of like mouthing along, like it's a song.   Melissa: (40:57) I'm just interested and I really love the sort of conception of like a girl's room as a potential space that sort of maps on to the way I described the writing space where it's just like a space where other, where the gaze of others, or the gaze that we're taught to please like can be kept out to some extent. And just like, you know, that isn't true, obviously for like lots and lots and lots of girls, but just that there is an impetus for us to create or invent or designate a space where that is true.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's what she's up to in "A Room of One's Own."   Annie: It makes me think of like girls' rooms as like kind of also these reductive spaces, like they all have to have pink or whatever, but then you like carve out a secret space for yourself in that room, which I think is what you're talking about with your writing.   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking about what happens when you don't have a room like that, cause I didn't, like I absolutely did not have a room that was… inviolable in some way or that like really felt like I could close the door. But writing became a place where that work could happen and where those explorations could happen and where I could do whatever I want and I had control over so many aspects of the work. And I hesitated because I was saying I didn't have that much control over the content.   Like I might think, oh, I'm gonna write a poem about this or a poem about that. And as is true with most writing, the poems are so much smarter and reveal so much more than I might have intended, but I could like shape the box. There are just like so many places to have control in a poem, like there's so many mechanisms to consider where like when Melissa was first sharing like early work with me, I would get so nervous because I would wanna move a comma.   Because in a poem, like that's a big deal, moving somebody's commas around, changing the punctuation. And she was like, "it doesn't matter."   Melissa: I would get nervous because she would be like, "well, I just have one note, but it's like, kind of big." And I would be like, "oh, fuck, I failed." And she would be like,    Donika: "What's going on with these semicolons?"   Melissa: She'd be like, "I just, these semicolons."   Annie: You know, hearing you both talk about (43:20) how you show up for one another as readers, right? In addition to like romantic partners. I mean, we do have the sense, and this can be true of all marriages, queer or otherwise, where like we as readers have a pretty superficial understanding of what you kind of each bring to the table or how you create this protective space or really see one another. I imagine that you've saved yourselves, but I'm curious about to what extent this relationship may have also been a way to save you or subvert relationships that have come before. And yet at the same time, we've asked this question of other lit friends too, which is, you know, what about competition between lit friends? And what does that look like in a marriage? What is a good day versus a bad day?   Donika: I mean, we could be here for years talking about that first question. And so I'm gonna turn to the second part to talk about competition, which is much easier to handle.   I feel genuinely and earnestly so excited at the recognition that Melissa has received. Part of what was really exciting for me about the beginning of our relationship that continues to be exciting is that, is getting to watch someone be truly mid-career and navigate that with integrity. It feels like such a good model, for how to be a writer.   I mean, she's much more forward-facing than I would ever want to be. But I think in terms of just thinking about like, what is the work? How, like, where is the integrity? Like, it's just, it's always so, so forward and it feels really grounding for me and us in the house, so it's always big cheers in here. It helps that we write in different genres. I think that's super helpful.   Melissa: I think it's absolutely key. Yeah.   Donika: It's not, I mean, I think, and that we have very different measures of ambition. I think those two things together are really, really helpful.   But I've read everything that Melissa has written, I think. (45:38) There might be like a few little, I mean, I've read short story, like that short, there was like a short story from like shortly, I think after you, like before you were in your MFA program, maybe.   Melissa: Oh my God. What short story?   Donika: I can't, I'll find it. And show it to you later.   Melissa: Is it about that little plant?   Donika: No, no, it might've been an essay. I'm not sure.   Annie: I love this. This is sort of hot breaking news on LitFriends.   Donika: It's like, I've just like, I did a deep Google dive. I was like, I want to read everything and it's, it feels really exciting.   Melissa: You know, I've dated writers before, and it was a different situation. And I think even if I hadn't, even before I ever did, I thought, that seems unlikely to work. Because even though there are lots of like obvious ways that it could be great, the competition just seemed like such a poison dart that it would be really hard to avoid because writers are competitive, and I'm competitive. And maybe it would have been harder if we were younger or something.   And certainly if we were in the same genre, I think actually, who knows? Maybe it would be possible if we were in the same genre, but it would require a little more care. Even if for some reason we would never publish again, we would keep writing. It just like it functions in our lives in similar ways. And it's like a practice that we came to, you know, I have a more hungry ambition or have historically. And I think our relationship is something that helps me keep the practice at the center because we're constantly talking about it. And I'm constantly observing Donika's relationship to her work. So it really hasn't felt very relevant. Like it's kind of shocking to me how, how little impact competition or comparing has in our relationship. It's really like not even close to one of the top notes of things that might create conflict for us, you know, and I'm so grateful for that. And so happy to have like underestimated what's possible when you have a certain level of intimacy and respect and sort of compatibility with someone.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Annie: (47:57) Welcome back. Well, then I'm wondering, you know, you both have had some like incredible successes in the last few years. And I'm wondering if conversely, you've been able to show up for one another in moments of high pressure or exposure, or, you know, having to confront the world, having been vulnerable on the page in the ways you have been.   Melissa: Donika was not planning on having a book launch for The Renunciations.   Donika: What's a book launch? Like, why do people do that?   Annie: Listen, mine's going to be a dance party, Donika. So…   Melissa: And I made, meanwhile, like when I published Abandon Me, I had a giant dance party that I had like several costume changes for during. But I remember feeling pretty confident about making a strong case multiple times for her to have a book launch for The Renunciations. And also like having a lot of respect and like tenderness watching her navigate what it meant to take work that vulnerable and figure out how to like speak for it and talk about it and like present it to the world. Parts of her would have preferred to just let the book completely speak for itself out there.    Donika: But you were right it was a good time.   Melissa: I was right.   Donika: Because like when Melissa's so when Girlhood came out it was like, that was still the time of like so many virtual events. And it was just like, I think that first week there was like something every day that week, like there was an event every day that week. And now, now like, again, I had to be talked into having a book launch. So I own this. Um, but I was like, Ooh, why, why would you do that? Oh, yeah. Four?   Melissa: This is definitely one of the ways that she and I are like diametrically opposed, and therefore I think, helpful to each other in sort of like creating a kind of tension that can be uncomfortable but is mostly good for both of us to be sort of pulled closer to the middle.   Donika: But my favorite part of that is then hearing you give advice to your friends who are very similar and be like, "whoa, you did too much. You put too many things on the calendar."     Melissa: (50:15) You know, some people would say that that's hypocrisy, but I actually think, I have a real dubious like position and thinking about hypocrisy because I am an expert in overdoing things. And so I think I speak from, I am like the voice of Christmas future. You know what I mean? I'm like, let me speak to you from the potential future that you are currently planning with your publicist. And like, it's not pretty and it doesn't feel good. And it's not, it has not delivered the feeling that you're imagining when you're scheduling all those events.   Annie: I can appreciate this. And I appreciate Donika's kind of role, this particular role in a relationship, because sometimes I just have to go see Leto and literally just lay on Lito and be like, stop me from doing anymore.   Melissa: I know, I know.   Lito: You and Sara are like super overachievers. I have to be like, "can you calm down?"   Annie: We do too much.   Lito: Way too much. What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next?   Donika: I got two answers to this. The first one is the Cape Cod lesbian mystery. I'm ready. You know, we got, I've offered so much assistance as a person who will never write prose. Um, but I got notes and ideas. The second one is, uh, a micro essay collection titled Dogs I Have Loved. Cause I think it would be a New York Times bestseller.   Lito: Oh, I love that.   Donika: I know.   Lito: Speaking of, who's the little gremlin puppy there?   Donika: Oh, yeah, that's Chuck. Chuck is a 15-year-old chihuahua. I've had him since he was a puppy.   Annie: Is Chuck like a nickname, or is that just, it's just Chuck?   Donika: It's just Chuck.   Lito: I love that.   Melissa: His nickname is Charles sometimes. One of his nicknames is Charles, but his full name is Chuck.   Melissa: OK, so I would say, I mean, my first thought at this question was like, I want Donika to keep doing exactly what she's been doing? As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a lot of other voices getting in the way of that process. My second thought is that I'm really interested. I've never heard her talk. She has no interest in writing prose of any kind. She is like deeply wedded to poetry. But I have heard her talk more recently about potential collaborations with (52:40) other artists, visual artists and other writers. And I would, I'm really excited to see what comes out of that space.   Lito: Would you all ever collaborate beyond your marriage?   Annie: I could see you all doing a craft book together.   Melissa: I feel like we could make like a chapbook that had prose and poems in it that were responding to a shared theme. I could definitely see that.   Donika: I really thought you were gonna say Love Poems for Melissa Febos, that's what you wanted to see next.   Melissa: I mean, I already know that that's on deck, so I don't... I mean, it's in, it's on the docket. It's on deck. Yeah. So…   Lito: Those sonnets, get to work on the sonnets.   Donika: Such a mess.   Melissa: This is real, you think, this is not, like, a conversation of the moment. This is…   Annie: Oh no, we can, this is history.   Donika: "Where's my century of sonnets?" she says.   Lito (53:33) What is your first memory?   Donika: Dancing?   Melissa: Donika telling me I'm pretty.   Annie (54:15.594) Who or what broke your heart first?   Melissa: Maddie, our dog.   Donika: Kerri Strug, 1996 Olympics. Vault.   Lito: Atlanta.   Donika: The Vault final. Yeah. Heartbreaking.   Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history, living or dead?   Donika: I just thought Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm gonna go with that.   Lito: I love Gwendolyn Brooks.   Donika: Oh yeah.   Melissa: My first thought is Baldwin.   Donika: It's a great party. We're at a great party.   Melissa: I just feel like I would be like, "No, James!" all the time.   Melissa: (54:30) Or like Truman Capote.   Lito: It'd be wild.   Donika: Messy. So messy.   Annie: What's your favorite piece of music?   Melissa: Oh my god, these questions are crazy! "Hallelujah"?   Donika: Oh god, there's an aria from Diana Damraus' first CD. She's a Soprano. And it's a Mozart aria, and I don't know where it's from, and I can't tell you the name because it's in Italian and I don't speak Italian, but that joint is exceptional. So that's what I'm gonna go with. Oh God, just crying in the car.   Lito: If you could give any gift to your lit friend without limitations, what would you give them?   Donika: Just like gold chains. So many gold chains. Yeah! If I could have a gold chain budget, it'd be a lot.   Annie: (55:23) Donika, we can do this.   Lito: Achievable.   Donika: I mean, yeah. Yeah.   Lito: Bling budget.   Donika: That's the first thing I thought.   Annie: Love it.   Donika: Just like gold, just thin gold chains, thick gold chains.   Melissa: I'm going to go with that, then, and say an infinite sneaker budget.   Lito: Yes. Oh, I want a shoe room. (55:50) That'd be awesome.   Melissa: We need two shoe rooms in this house, or like one. Or we just need to have a whole living room that's just for shoes.   Donika: I just like there's just like one closet that's just like for shoes. Like that's what we need.   Lito: That's great.   Donika: Yeah, but it's actually a room. Yes. With like a sorting system, it's like computer coded.   Annie: Soft lighting. That's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Lito: We'll be back next week with our guests Yiyun Li and Edmund White.   Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast.   Lito: Don't forget to reach out and tell us about the love affair of you and your LitFriend.   Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velázquez. Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton.   Annie: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Lito: Lizette Saldana is our marketing director.   Annie: Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.   Lito: And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez.   Annie: This was LitFriends, Episode Three.    

Tune in for the second half of our special two-part podcast featuring Major Jackson, who shared selections from his new book Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064909) (W.W. Norton & Co, 2023) at a recent event at APR's home base, the Philadelphia Ethical Society. Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including_ The Absurd Man_ (2020),_ Roll Deep_ (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn _(2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include: _Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America's Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson _edited by Amor Kohli. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in _American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, and World Literature Today. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Today we finish up our annual 6-week summer rebroadcast series. We'll return next week, September 12th with all new episodes for Season 13. A reminder that during this rebroadcast series, our friends of the show, Elly and T have been releasing a companion podcast called Trauma Bonded, where they discuss and dissect each episode of This Is Actually Happening. So check them out if you haven't already, as they will continue releasing new episodes alongside the show as the new season begins next week. Today's rebroadcast episode was one of the most powerful and personally impactful episodes for me and for the show itself. Titled “What if you entered the Void?” it follows the unbelievable journey of Dexter Booth and originally aired as episode 158 on July 28th, 2020.A man suffering the deep generational traumas of poverty, racism, abuse and mental illness finds transformative power in an ancient plant medicine.Producer: Whit MissildineToday's episode featured Dexter L. Booth. Dexter is the author of the poetry collection, Scratchingthe Ghost from Graywolf Press, which won the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as the chapbook Rhapsody from Etchings Press. Booth's poems have been included in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2015, The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, The Golden Shovel Anthology honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. He is a professor in the Ashland University MFA program and a residential faculty member at Paradise Valley Community College where he teaches poetry and English composition. You can find out more about Dexter, his writing and teaching by following him on Instagram@dexter_two_omelettes, or on Facebook or Twitter. You can find his books Scratching the Ghost and Rhapsody on Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever books are sold.Social Media: Instagram: @actuallyhappeningWebsite: www.thisisactuallyhappening.comSupport the Show: Support The Show on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/happeningEngage with the Community: Join the This Is Actually Happening Discussion Group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/201783687561039/Shop at the Store: The This Is Actually Happening online store is now officially open. Follow this link: www.actuallyhappeningstore.com to access branded t-shirts, posters, stickers and more from the shop. Content/Trigger Warnings: domestic abuse, mental illness, suicide, explicit languageIntro Music: "Illabye" – TipperMusic Bed: “Union Flow” - SpunticOutro Music: "The Moon is Down" - El Diablo & Adam Schraft (Rojo y Negro) @eldiablosf @rojo-y-negro www.eldiablobass.com/ ServicesIf you or someone you know is struggling with the effects of trauma or mental illness, please refer to the following resources:National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)Crisis Text Line: Within the US, text HOME to 741741See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, new host Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Donika Kelly. The author of two poetry collections, The Renunciations and Bestiary, Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Rita Dove called The Renunciations, “poetry of the highest order,” and Nikki Finney, who selected Kelly's first book for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, wrote, “Bestiary's lesson is complicated and also simple. Love can be hunted down.” Using erasures or Greek myths, writing from terror and travel, Kelly never approaches an event, state, or image in only one way. Today, we hear from a new sequence of poems featured in the June issue of Poetry, and Kelly also answers a question from the void. 

On April 11, 2023, The Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring poets Camille T. Dungy and Major Jackson.Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems; The Absurd Man; Roll Deep; Holding Company; Hoops; and Leaving Saturn, which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. Jackson is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. We make poetry magic on the second Wednesday of every month. We have returned to the Wild Detectives in person, but fret not, podcast fans! We will be releasing recordings of the live show every month for y'all. On 1/11/23, we featured poet Laura Neal. Laura Neal is a poet, greatly influenced by social and environmental narratives. She earned an MFA from the University of Maryland College Park and a BA from Bowie State University. Her work is published in Academy of American Poets and Birmingham Poetry Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, CALLALOO, and the Juanita Craft Artist-in-Residence Program. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and finalist for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas and is a contributing writer for Southwest Contemporary magazine and BURNAWAY magazine. She is also co-member of the artist collaborative, CALCIUM. Presented by The Writer's Garret https://writersgarret.org/ www.logencure.com/innermoonlight

The New York Women's House of Detention was a fixture of Greenwich Village from 1932 to 1974. For public historian Hugh Ryan, its position as a cultural center is proof that jails and prisons were not always peripheral to the development of communities in the United States. In fact, they were sometimes considered in the urban planning of cities and neighborhoods. Ryan discovered the Women's House of Detention (also known as The House of D) on a walking tour, where he also learned of its unfamiliar history as a queer landmark. His curiosity unearthed a plethora of evidence verifying this claim, largely drawn from social worker documentation of the queer experiences of justice-involved youth and working-class people throughout the twentieth century. In his recent book, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison (Bold Type Books, 2022), Ryan asserts: "The House of D helped make Greenwich Village queer, and the Village, in return, helped define queerness for America. No other prison has played such a significant role in our history, particularly for working-class women and transmasculine people." Ryan also demonstrates how people housed at the institution, such as notable activists Angela Davis and Afeni Shakur, informed each other about the intersections of Black and queer liberation movements. In this episode, Malcolm Tariq, senior manager of editorial projects for PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing, asks Ryan about being a student of abolition, the ethics of constructing narratives from archives, and how people in the House of Detention participated in the resistance efforts at nearby Stonewall in 1969. Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator, and most recently, the author of The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, which New York Magazine called one of the best books of 2022. His first book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors' Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association. Since 2019, he has worked with the NYC Dept. of Education to develop LGBTQ+ inclusive educational materials and trainings. Malcolm Tariq is a poet and playwright from Savannah, Georgia. He is the author of Heed the Hollow (Graywolf, 2020), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry, and Extended Play (Gertrude Press, 2017). He was a 2016-2017 playwriting apprentice at Horizon Theatre Company and a 2020-2021 resident playwright with Liberation Theatre Company. A graduate of Emory University, Malcolm holds a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is the senior manager of editorial projects for Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America.

Tracy K. Smith is the author of five poetry collections, including Such Color: New and Selected Poems; Wade in the Water, winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and shortlisted for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her debut collection, The Body's Question, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2002. Her second book, Duende, won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She also edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ross Gay is the author of The Book of Delights, a life-affirming collection of short lyric essays that reminds readers to appreciate so-called ordinary wonders, even during turbulent times. His several volumes of poetry include Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Be Holding, winner of the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award; and Bringing the Shovel Down. A writing professor at Indiana University, Gay has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and Cave Canem. Inciting Joy explores the ways that people can inspire love and compassion by recognizing that which unites us. Major Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont, a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and the poetry editor of the Harvard Review. He is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man, Holding Company, and Leaving Saturn, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among numerous other periodicals and journals. Jackson's many honors include the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A Beat Beyond is a collection of essays, interviews, and notes that delve into the intellectual and spiritual aspects of poetry in order to understand its political, social, and emotional functions. (recorded 10/27/2022)

Join Chris of The Poetry Question in conversation with Courtney Faye Taylor, author of Concentrate (Graywolf Press) and winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! COURTNEY FAYE TAYLOR is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Concentrate, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in November 2022. It is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Courtney earned her BA from Agnes Scott College and her MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program where she received the Hopwood Prize in Poetry. She is also the winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Charlotte Street Foundation, Courtney's work can be found in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, The New Republic and elsewhere. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tpq20/support

Join Chris in a sit-down with Aurielle Marie, author of Gumbo Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! Award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural strategist Aurielle Marie (they/she) is a Black queer storyteller, a political organizer, and child of the Deep South by way of Atlanta. They received their Bachelor's in Social Justice Strategy and Hip-Hop Theory from the Evergreen State College. Aurielle's poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in the TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, Black Warrior, BOAAT Journal, Sycamore Review, Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Palette Poetry, and Ploughshares. She's received invitations to fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA Voices, and Tin House. Aurielle is a 2017 winner of the Blue Mesa Review poetry award. She's the Lambda Literary 2019 Poetry Emerging Writer-in-Residence. She won the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writers Award for Poetry. Aurielle's poetry debut, Gumbo Ya Ya is the 2020 winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and is out from the University of Pittsburgh Press. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly's poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and longlisted for the National Book Award.  A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the nonfiction writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. donikakelly.com Twitter: @officialdonika “Self Portrait as a Body, a Sea” was originally published in the Sewanee Review, 2017.  Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.  Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this second year of our series is the first movement, Schéhérazade, from Masques, Op. 34, by Karol Szymanowski, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

This episode, Jamal and Nate are joined by close friend F. Douglas Brown, the author of two poetry collections, ICON (Writ Large Press, 2018), and Zero to Three (University of Georgia, 2014), winner of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (URB Books, 2016), a chapbook of poetry as part of the Floodgate Poetry Series. Brown, an educator for over 25 years, currently teaches African American Poetry and African American Studies at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, where he serves as the Director of the Office of Equity and Inclusion. When he is not teaching, writing or with his children, he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area. Resources cited/read during the show: Affinity Literary Organizations: https://cavecanempoets.org/ (Cave Canem), http://www.kundiman.org/ (Kundiman), https://www.jmu.edu/furiousflower/index.shtml (Furious Flower Poetry Center), https://blackpoetsspeakout.tumblr.com/ (#Blackpoetsspeakout), https://www.cantomundo.org/ (Canto Mundo), https://lambdaliterary.org/ (Lambda Literary), https://macondowriters.com/ (Macondo Writers Workshop), https://www.vidaweb.org/ (VIDA), https://www.vonavoices.org/ (Vona) Books: http://www.fdouglasbrown.com/ (Zero to Three, ICON,) both by F. Douglas Brown; https://upittpress.org/books/9780822946953/#:~:text=Teaching%20Black%3A%20The%20Craft%20of,%2C%20playwriting%2C%20and%20literary%20criticism. (Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature) Schools: https://www.gesuschool.org/ (Gesu School Philadelphia) Music: The O'Jays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfJgc9cWjbQ (Message in our Music); Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EdxM72EZ94 (Sign'O The Times) Essays: https://www.mitosmag.com/infideles/2018/9/26/postautonomous-literatures (Josefina Ludmer's “Literaturas Posautónomas”) translated by Shaj Mathew; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K78harJDXpgy7RqgZQcBudQ0CSgDv_8w/view?usp=sharing (Susan Willis: “Eruptions of the Funk: Historicizing Toni Morrison)” Poems: Ishmael Reed: https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/reed/onlinepoems.htm (“beware: do not read this poem”); Ross Gay: http://www.gabbyjournal.com/ross-gay/ (“Feet”); Geffrey Davis: “https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/king-county-metro (King County Metro)”; Mahogany Browne: “https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/write-poem-ferguson (Working Title)”; Jayne Cortez: “https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90811/don39t-ask-1980 (Don't Ask/1980)”

Join Chris & Courtney of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Julian Randall, author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), Pilar Ramirez & the Escape from Zafa (Holt), and the upcoming The Dead Don't Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry. Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Callaloo, BOAAT and the Watering Hole. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Julian is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle. His writing has been published in New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY, and anthologized in Black Boy Joy (which debuted at #1 on the NYT Best Seller list), Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed and Furious Flower. He has essays in The Atlantic, Vibe Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ole Miss. He is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, as well as the middle grade novel Pilar Ramirez And The Escape from Zafa (Holt, Winter 2022), and The Dead Don't Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books, Spring 2023). He can be found on Twitter @JulianThePoet. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In conversation with Major Jackson Garrett Hongo was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for the poetry collection The River of Heaven. His other books of poetry include Yellow Light and Coral Road. The distinguished professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon and a regular contributor to SoundStage! Ultra, Hongo also authored Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi and The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays. Writing about his lifelong passion for sound reproduction equipment, music in many formats, and the poetic voices that influenced him most, The Perfect Sound is a celebration of all things audio. The Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and the poetry editor of The Harvard Review, Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man and Leaving Saturn. His many honors include the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has published poems and essays in a wide variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Ploughshares. (recorded 3/2/2022)

Meff & Jenny chat with Head Sorceress Shawn in our inaugural dialogue on race & SPOP. It's gonna get wicked nerdy. Head Sorceress Shawn is a playwright, author, and a huge nerd. She is the creator and facilitator of the Queer Women's Torah Workshop. Her debut collection of story-poems, The Red Door, was a semi-finalist for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and will soon be published by Ben Yehuda Press.  Her non-fiction writing about living at the intersection of Black and Jewish has been featured in Tablet Magazine and the Tribe-Herald. She is currently developing Project Tzimtzum, inspired by theater and role-playing games. Project Tzimtzum aims to create spaces for playing, dreaming, learning, and making within the Jewish world and beyond.  Shawn can be found on Twitter @ProjectTzimtzum Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/heyadoracast Find more info at Heyadora.gay or on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @heyadoracast. Send us your thoughts and feelings at heyadoracast@gmail.com.

Gary Jackson is the author of two poetry collections entitled Origin Story (University of New Mexico Press, 2020) and Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf Press, 2010), for which he received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Gary discusses the unique experience of growing up in the midwest with Black, Korean, and Indigenous roots; moving to Korea—his grandmother's homeland—as an adult; and the way racial discrimination takes on different forms overseas.

Why do empty places sometimes lend themselves to reflection or contemplation? In this poem, a poet — describing herself as a nonbeliever — goes into a chapel to sit. In the corner there are some girls talking, there are stained glass windows, and the poet is at once at home in herself and far from the woman she loves. The high emptiness of the church seems to give a resting place for the emptiness she's feeling. While there's no resolution, the larger empty space offers a holding place for the poet.Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations and Bestiary, the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, Donika has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic online, The Paris Review, and Foglifter. She currently lives in Iowa City and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Some friends gather and smoke at a doorway in a city. There's Malik, and Johnny Cash, and Lefty, and Jësus. And the poet, Major Jackson. They've known each other their whole lives, and they wonder who they'll turn out to be. In a moment of disclosure, Major tells his friends he wants to be a poet, astonishing them, and himself too it seems. In friendship and ribbing, in desire and teasing, this poem wonders who a person is, and what it means to hope.Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Ronaldo Wilson, winner of the Publishing Triangle's 2010 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, the 13th Annual Asian American Literary Award for Poetry, 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and so many other accolades looks back at the powerful creative alliance we formed on the streets of New York in the early 90's.

Donika Kelly is the author of THE RENUNCIATIONS (Graywolf 2021) and BESTIARY (Graywolf). BESTIARY is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The collection was also long listed for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, Donika has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic online, The Paris Review, and Foglifter. She currently lives in Iowa City and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Major Jackson reads his poetry and discusses his work. Jackson is author of five collections of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and he serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. On Wednesday, May 5, 2021, Jackson will give a virtual reading as a guest of the UO’s Creative Writing Program. Register: http://crwr.uoregon.edu

This is the third and final in a series of events curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston in collaboration with The BreakBeat Poets and Haymarket Books, to celebrate the release of his new collection, Doppelgangbanger. Poets: Cortney Lamar Charleston is originally from the Chicago suburbs. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and BA in Urban Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. While attending Penn, he was most interested in the business as a political entity, the relationship between the public and private sectors and the physical and sociological construction of cities. It was during his college years that he began writing and performing poetry as a member of The Excelano Project. Charleston's academic interests, coupled with his upbringing spent bouncing between Chicago's South Side and its South and West suburbs, immediately influence his written work. Charleston's poems paint themselves against the backgrounds of past and present; they grapple with race, masculinity, class, family, faith and how identity is, functionally, a transition zone between all of these competing markers. Said differently, his poetry is a kind of marriage between art and activism, a call for a more involved and empathetic understanding of the diversity of the human experience. This same line of thought frames his philosophy as Poetry Editor at The Rumpus. He also currently serves on the Alice James Books Editorial Board. Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Callaloo, BOAAT, Tin House, Milkweed Editions, and The Watering Hole. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Julian is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle and the 2019 Frederick Bock Prize. His poetry has been published in New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY and anthologized in The Breakbeat Poets Vol.4, Nepantla and Furious Flower. He has essays in Vibe, Black Nerd Problems, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ole Miss. He is the author of Refuse (Pitt, Fall 2018), winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, the Middle Grade novel Pilar Ramirez And The Prison of Zafa (Holt, Winter 2022). He talks a lot about poems and other things on Twitter at @JulianThePoet. José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/d7eErci3NLs Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, we discuss the life and work of poet F. Douglas Brown. He is the author of two poetry collections, ICON (Writ Large Press, 2018), and Zero to Three (University of Georgia, 2014), winner of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. Included in this episode is a reading of Brown's poem, "How to Tell My Dad that I Kissed a Man”Support the show (https://getlit.org/donate/)

On the anniversary of Lucille Clifton’s passing, join Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Clifton House in a celebration of her generous spirit and writing. Our esteemed featured speaker is Natasha Trethewey. Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the memoir Memorial Drive (2020). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recorded On: Saturday, February 13, 2021

Guest host Eddie Glaude is joined by poet Natasha Trethewey on episode 145 of The Quarantine Tapes. Natasha’s most recent book is her memoir, Memorial Drive. In their conversation, Eddie asks her about the process of writing and releasing that book into this moment of political and social reckoning.Natasha offers a deep look at her process of crafting this book in an emotional and thoughtful episode. She talks about why she found it so important to tell her mother’s story in this book and how she took control of that narrative in her writing process. Eddie and Natasha’s conversation is warm, familiar, and wide-reaching, ranging from comparing gumbo recipes to parsing the role of silence in writing.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-trethewey Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the memoir Memorial Drive(2020). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“You try to take off your skin to try to get rid of this voice, and it goes all the way down to the bone.” Producer: Whit Missildinethisisactuallyhappening.comInstagram: @actuallyhappeningContent/Trigger Warnings: domestic abuse, mental illness, suicide, explicit languageToday’s episode featured Dexter L. Booth. Dexter is the author of the poetry collection, Scratching the Ghost from Graywolf Press, which won the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as the chapbook Rhapsody from Etchings Press. Booth’s poems have been included in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2015, The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, The Golden Shovel Anthology honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. He is a professor in the Ashland University MFA program and a residential faculty member at Paradise Valley Community College where he teaches poetry and English composition. You can find out more about Dexter, his writing and teaching by following him on Instagram @dexter_two_omelettes, or on Facebook or Twitter. You can find his books Scratching the Ghost and Rhapsody on Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever books are sold.Support The Show: You can support the show by contributing on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/happening, by supporting our sponsors, including today’s sponsor: Park Predators, the podcast.Intro Music: "Illabye" - TipperMusic Bed: “Union Flow” - SpunticOutro Music: "The Moon is Down" - El Diablo & Adam Schraft (Rojo y Negro) @eldiablosf @rojo-y-negro www.eldiablobass.com/This Is Actually Happening Store: This Is Actually Happening online store now officially open. Follow this link https://www.teepublic.com/stores/this-is-actually-happening-store?ref_id=9467 to access branded t-shirts, posters, stickers and more from the shop.

Amber Flora Thomas, a writer and poet, professor and more joined us today for BoCo Town. The author of Eye of Water: Poems which was selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her other books include, The Rabbits Could Sing: Poems (University of Alaska Press, 2012) and Red Channel in the Rupture: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2018). You can find her poetry in publications we shared below. Brian Burke (Back Pocket Buddha) hails from New York but has been in North Carolina for over 20 years. He has been playing music and performing for audiences since his days in high school playing guitar. Listen in to learn about his musical life.Support the show (https://www.artsofthepamlico.org/support/)

This week in the pharmacy we have the poet DONIKA KELLY! All the poems we prescribe and talk about in this episode can be found here: http://bit.ly/2zO7zUm Donika is the author of BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, long listed for the National Book Award (2016), and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (2017), and the chapbook AVIARIUM (500 Places 2017). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she received her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. She is an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, where she teaches creative writing. If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please (pretty please) could you leave us a nice review on iTunes, Also, in the next year, I’m trying to raise funds for the S.H.E College Fund initiative in Kenya by learning 52 poems in 52 weeks. Here is my 52 Poems in 52 Weeks Donations Page: https://chuffed.org/project/52-poems-in-52-weeks If you’re feeling some poetry-love after listening, a donation, no matter how small (or large) would be greatly appreciated. Don’t forget, the Poetry Pharmacy is open every day on Twitter, dispensing poems for whatever ails body and soul. Feel free to @/DM us there, or email us here (thepoetrypharmacy AT gmail.com) with your requests for a poem prescription.

We were invited to do our show live on stage at the super awesome Sanibel Island Writers Conference with three renowned poets. Our guestS Major Jackson, January Gill O’Neil, and Annemarie Ní Churreáin.----more----Major was born and raised in Philadelphia, and is author of four books of poetry, including Roll Deep, Holding Company, Hoops and Leaving Saturn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold University Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont. January was born in Norfolk, Virginia and she is the author of Misery Islands – winner of a 2015 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, and Underlife. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. Annemarie is a poet and writer from Donegal, Ireland. Her debut collection Bloodroot was shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland, and for the 2018 Julie Suk Award in the U.S. She lives in Dublin.

Can bringing poems to the masses be an antidote to our toxic civic culture? US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, believes we can break down barriers with poetry. In 2017, Smith was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the director of Princeton University’s creative writing program and lives in New Jersey. Listen to her passion and inspiration for poetry and writing. Smith’s first collection, The Body’s Question (Graywolf Press, 2003), won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2002. Her second book, Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent collection, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In April 2018, Graywolf Press will publish her book Wade in the Water.

The United States Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars, a ''strange and beautiful'' book of verse that ''pulses with America's adolescent crush on the impossible, on what waits beyond the edge of the universe'' (New York Times). Her other work includes the celebrated poetry collections Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award; The Body's Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize; and the memoir Ordinary Light, a finalist for the National Book Award. A professor of creative writing at Princeton and contributor to myriad anthologies and periodicals, Smith earned a fellowship with the Academy of American Poets. Her latest collection ties the truths of America's present to its fraught founding history. Watch the video here. (recorded 4/5/2018)

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the memoir Ordinary Light and four books of poetry: Wade in the Water, (April 2018); Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award; and The Body's Question, which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith is also the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award and a Whiting Award. She was the Literature protégé in the 2009-2011 cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In June 2017 she was named the 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress, and in March 2018 she was re-appointed to a second term for 2018-19.

Tracy K. Smith, Feb. 17, 2018, Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, Thirteenth Season, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Emory University Tracy K. Smith, 22nd US poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, gives a reading of her poems, as part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Ordinary Light,” and three books of poetry. Her collection “Life on Mars” won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as New York Times Notable Book. The collection is partly a tribute to her late father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Telescope. “Duende” won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. “The Body’s Question” was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 13th season. Smith is the seventh U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 31th reader overall.

Tracy K. Smith, Feb. 17, 2018, Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, Thirteenth Season, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Emory University Tracy K. Smith, 22nd US poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, gives a reading of her poems, as part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Ordinary Light,” and three books of poetry. Her collection “Life on Mars” won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as New York Times Notable Book. The collection is partly a tribute to her late father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Telescope. “Duende” won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. “The Body’s Question” was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith’s reading at Emory is part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 13th season. Smith is the seventh U.S. poet laureate to be featured in the series, and the 31th reader overall.

Donika Kelly is a delightful ball of energy who is more prone to stability when it comes to her writing than any cliched poet’s angst, and it’s lovely to listen to her talk about how she stays inspired to do her best work. Donika Kelly is the author of BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, long listed for the National Book Award (2016), and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (2017), She’s also the author of the chapbook AVIARIUM (500 Places 2017). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she received her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, and Gulf Coast. She is an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, where she teaches creative writing. 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tracy K. Smith is the author of three books of poetry.Her most recent collection, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005.

Reginald Harris of Poets House in New York hosts this annual reading by Cave Canem poets Kyle G. Dargan and Amber Flora Thomas.Kyle Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry, Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003). For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Dargan has partnered with the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He is currently an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University and the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine.Amber Flora Thomas is the recipient of several major poetry awards, including the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize and Ann Stanford Prize. Her published work includes Eye of Water (2005) which won the Cave Canem Prize and The Rabbits Could Sing (2012). She is assistant professor of English at East Carolina University. Recorded On: Sunday, December 1, 2013

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker's precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker's precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Black Swan, her debut collection of poems that mixes vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, and gives voice to women past and present. With her second, ]Open Interval[, nominated for the 2009 National Book Award, Van Clief-Stefanon “marries a wildness of vision with a lens-maker’s precision.” She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. She is currently working on a third collection of poetry, The Coal Tar Colors. She lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 22616]

Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq's Ophelia, named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work, selected by Rita Dove for the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She received the 2008 Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry. Currently, she is Professor of English and Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 17125]

Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq's Ophelia, named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work, selected by Rita Dove for the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She received the 2008 Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry. Currently, she is Professor of English and Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 17125]

Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia, named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work, selected by Rita Dove for the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She received the 2008 Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry. Currently, she is Professor of English and Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 17125]

Natasha Trethewey is author of Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia, named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work, selected by Rita Dove for the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She received the 2008 Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry. Currently, she is Professor of English and Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 17125]

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15430]

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15430]

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15430]

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15430]

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton.  

Tracy K. Smith received degrees in English and creative writing from Harvard and Columbia, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Her first book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and her most recent collection, Duende: Poems, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches creative writing at Princeton.  

 Hosted by the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips and Natasha Trethewey gave a special reading as part of the 30th anniversary celebration for Callaloo , the premier journal of literature, art, and culture of the African Diaspora. Founded in 1976 by editor Charles H. Rowell in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Callaloo publishes original works and critical studies of black artists and writers worldwide.Yusef Komunyakaa's numerous books of poems include Neon Vernacular (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Komunyakaa is a chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.Carl Phillips' collection The Rest of Love (2004) won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His recent collections are Quiver of Arrows and Riding Westward. Phillips is Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University.Natasha Trethewey won the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for her first collection of poems, Domestic Work (2000). Since then she has published two more collections of poetry and received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard (2006). Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University.Recorded On: Friday, October 26, 2007

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon received her B.A. from Washington and Lee University and her M.F.A. from Penn State. Her work has appeared in such journals as African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Rattapallax, and Shenandoah, and in several anthologies, including Bum Rush the Page and Role Call. A semi-finalist in the “Discovery”/The Nation Contest in 1999 and 2001, she was one of 20 writers featured in the 2005 PSA Festival of New American Poets. Her first book, Black Swan, was awarded the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.Ernesto Quiñonez is the author of the novels Bodega Dreams, which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title as well as a Borders Bookstore Original New Voice selection, and Chango’s Fire.J. Robert Lennon is the author of six novels, including Happyland, serialized in Harper’s in 2006, and the forthcoming Castle. He is also the author of Pieces For The Left Hand, a collection of 100 anecdotes.All three writers are members of the Cornell University Creative Writing faculty. They delivered the Richard Cleveland Memorial Reading on March 28, 2008, at the Hollis Auditorium in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place the following day. Leading the conversation were three Cornell Lecturers in English: Stephanie Gehring, Jon Hickey, and George McCormick.

This episode features Natasha Trethewey reading from her latest collection, Native Guard, about a unit of black soldiers who played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Among Natasha Trethewey's many honors are a Guggenheim fellowship, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

This episode features Natasha Trethewey reading from her latest collection, Native Guard, about a unit of black soldiers who played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Among Natasha Trethewey's many honors are a Guggenheim fellowship, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.