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Milo Todd discusses the research process for his debut, The Lilac People. This sweeping historical fiction novel shares a devastating chapter in trans history. Debut novelist Milo Todd joins me to discuss his book, The Lilac People, in honor of Pride Month. This heartbreaking historical fiction novel uncovers a devastating chapter in queer and trans history.Milo's novel centers on a group of trans and intersex patients at Berlin's Institute for Sexual Science as Hitler's regime begins its rise to power. Through stunning research and unforgettable characters, readers uncover a nearly erased history to life—while drawing chilling parallels to today's political climate.In our conversation, Milo shares how real historical figures and overlooked archives shaped the characters in his novel—and why it was crucial to honor the lives of those whose stories were almost erased from history.In this moving conversation, Milo and I discuss:How Milo discovered the history of the Institute for Sexual Science and the work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld—and the biggest surprises when researching their legacy.The challenges with research for this novel in the face of the pandemic and the creative avenues he took to build his storyHow Milo sees trans people as being the canaries in the coal mine as we discuss one of his story's most impactful scenesHow Milo's teaching work with trans youth informs his writing and what actions he believes are most impactful in allyship today.BONUS BOOK LIST: This week, I'm sharing a companion book list of 26 LGBTQ History Books to read, including new releases and backlist titles, that offer illuminating details on the joys and triumphs throughout queer history. Meet Milo ToddMilo Todd is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grantee and a Lambda Literary Fellow. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine and elsewhere. He is the co-editor-in-chief of Foglifter and teaches creative writing to queer and trans adults. The Lilac People is his debut novel.Mentioned in this episode:Browse the 2025 MomAdvice Summer Reading Guide (with ads) or download the 48-page reading guide ($7) to support our show. If you are a show patron, check your inbox for your copy as part of your member benefits—thank you for supporting my small business! Download Today's Show TranscriptJoin the June Book Club Chat (The Reckless Oath We Made)BONUS BOOK LIST: 26 LGBTQ Books to Read for Pride MonthRed Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale LoftonLarry Hoffer (@getbookedwithlarry)The Lilac People by Milo ToddThe Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFaddenYou Can't Ask ThatInstitute for Sexual ScienceIn Memoriam by Alice WinnMilo's EventsThe Queer WriterA sample of Max Meyers's narrationMilo's InstagramWe Are Bookish (NetGalley's blog)milotodd.comHow to Jazz Up Your Book Club While Reading The Lilac PeopleConnect With Us:Join the Book Gang PatreonConnect with Milo on Instagram or his WebsiteConnect with Amy on Instagram, TikTok, or MomAdviceGet My Happy List NewsletterGet the Daily Kindle Deals NewsletterBuy Me a Coffee (for a one-time donation)
Slushies, this episode finds Kathy, Lisa and Jason gearing up for AWP, and it's the last one with Divina at the table (we'll miss her contributions!). Three poems by Luiza Flynn-Goodlet get close reading by the team. Lisa admits to feeling initially resistant to the Ars Poetica form with the first poem, but admits to being won over and others agree. Jason connects the meditation on death in this poem and its personification of death to Anthony Hecht's Flight Among the Tombs: Poems. The delightful ways in which the first and third poems are in conversation with each other rounds out a layered discussion. (Not to be missed – Jason attempting some Gen Z slang with his farewell!) At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Samantha Neugebauer, Lisa Zerkle, Jason Schneiderman, Divina Boko, Lillie Volpe (sound engineer) Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Northwestern University Press) and Look Alive (winner of the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Familiar (Madhouse Press, 2024) and The Undead (winner of Sixth Finch Books' 2020 Chapbook Contest). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a Poetry Editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter. Her critical work has appeared in Cleaver, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, and other venues. Bluesky: luizagurley.bsky.social, Website
Building visions towards a liberatory future will take creative power, vulnerability, radical imagination, and the capacity to honor difference in all its beauty. Lyo-Demi exemplifies this courage and power in their writing and poetry: “My diagnosis of “bipolar disorder,” in my opinion, is both a sensitivity towards and reaction to traumas (both personal and systemic) that yields strength, creativity, and passion, and my diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”…well that just makes me fabulous.” (From essay: Not Confused, Not Crazy) As we ‘reinvent the world,' many of us have to wade through the nuances of adopting or rejecting labels, and find ways to support ourselves and each other, both within and outside systems. In this episode, Lyo-Demi and I talk about DSM categories, the generative and difficult aspects of mental health concerns, and the gift and power of creativity. In this episode we discuss: the power of mutual aid and peer support reframing and depathologizing mental health diagnoses generative aspects of what gets labeled bipolar and mania honoring difference at the intersection of neurodiversity and gender queerness using creativity, graphic novels and stories to build visions toward liberation Bio Lyo-Demi Green (they/them) is a queer and non-binary writer, graphic novelist and tenured community college professor living in the San Francisco Bay Area on Ohlone Land. They have been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Foglifter, and elsewhere. They have been featured at dozens of reading series, slams, showcases, and workshops in schools, colleges, and open mics locally and across the country. They co-edited We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health with Kelechi Ubozoh, published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House in 2019. They authored Phoenix Song, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2022. They received a BA from Vassar College and have an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. LD has attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, was a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow, and was selected for Tin House and Stowe Story Labs. LD's queer and trans rom-com fantasy screenplay Journey to the Enchanted Inkwell was a finalist in several national contests. With the help of the Sequential Artists' Workshop, they adapted this project into a YA graphic novel script. They met their collaborating artist Jamie Kiemle through the online community Kids Comics Unite. LD is a decades-long fan of graphic novels, and they have taught them for over a decade at places like the San Francisco Art Institute and others. They are represented by literary agent Jennifer Newens of Martin Literary and Media Management. Links @leoninetales on IG and Threads www.ldgreen.org http://www.ldgreen.org/graphic-novel.html https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/phoenix-song/ Not Confused, Not Crazy Essay Resources: Find videos and bonus episodes: DEPTHWORK.SUBSTACK.COM Get the book: Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health Become a member: The Institute for the Development of Human Arts Train with us: Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum Sessions & Information about the host: JazmineRussell.com Disclaimer: The DEPTH Work Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Any information on this podcast in no way to be construed or substituted as psychological counseling, psychotherapy, mental health counseling, or any other type of therapy or medical advice.
Miller Oberman and Dion O'Reilly read and discuss Omotara James's "My mother's nerves are shot." and then do a deep dive into Oberman's newest collection, Impossible Things. Miller Oberman is the author of Impossible Things, forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2024 and The Unstill Ones, Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017. He has received a number of awards for his poetry, including a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Prize, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Poetry magazine's John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. Poems from Impossible Things have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Poem-a-Day, and Foglifter. Poems from The Unstill Ones appeared in Poetry, London Review of Books, The Nation, Boston Review, Tin House, and Harvard Review. Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes visual-literary collaborations and teaches at and serves on the board of Brooklyn Poets. He teaches writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School in New York. Miller is a trans Jewish anti-Zionist committed to the liberation of all. He lives with his family in Queens, New York.
Today on the show, incoming host Ella Saph speaks with the first-place winners in the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Writing Contest. Cambridge writer Bob Wake took home the gold for his poem "Mending Ruth," and Madison poet Diya Abbas took home the prize for their poem “Al-Eashiq." Both will present at a reading next week at the Wisconsin Book Festival, which will feature all the winners of the statewide 2024 Fiction & Poetry Contests. That reading is on Tuesday, October 29 at 7pm at Central Library.About the guests: Bob Wake is a writer and small press publisher in Cambridge, Wisconsin. He is the first-place winner of the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest, which he also won in 2017. His short stories have appeared in Madison Magazine, The Madison Review, Rosebud Magazine, and in Wisconsin People & Ideas. He is a recipient of the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.Diya Abbas is a first-generation Pakistani poet from the Midwest. She is the first-place poetry winner in the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Writing Contest. Her poems are featured or forthcoming in RHINO, Foglifter, Adroit, diode, The Offing, BAHR Magazine, and others. She is currently studying Creative Writing and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison through the First Wave program. Find more of their work at diyabbas.com.
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.
City Lights LIVE celebrates the publication of “the delicacy of embracing spirals” by mimi tempestt, published by City Lights, with a conversation between the poet and Truong Tran. Incendiary, lyrical poems of liberations from the phantasm of Black womanhood. Wedding fierce, jagged lines to an uncompromisingly lyrical flow honed over years of performance, mimi tempestt writes poems that are by turns cerebral, profane, revolutionary, comedic, erotic, and sentimental. “the delicacy of embracing spirals” is her second book, an investigation of the ways in which the personal narrative of Black womanhood can be expressed through a radically human lens. With a visual sensibility that eventually explodes across the page, the collection begins with microcosmic poems of personal struggle and spirals out to macrocosmic texts of social and political critique. The book culminates in a fantastic account of the impossible staging of a play where the lives of the characters and the audience are at stake. A blend of theatre and melodrama, narrative and lyricism, the delicacy of embracing spirals ranges from a confrontation with abusive lovers and predatory promoters, to an excoriation of police brutality and gender oppression, to a critique of the commodification of Black artists for white consumption. mimi tempestt expresses an ongoing dialectical consciousness about being Black, being woman, being queer, being radical, and most essentially, being complicatedly human. The poems engage with the “performance” of oppression that can deter the possibilities of selfhood, liberation, and autonomy, asking three central questions: “What haunts you? What hunts you? Who and what are you hunting?” mimi tempestt (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a M.A. in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Creative/Critical Ph.D. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, “the monumental misrememberings,” was published with Co-Conspirator Press/The Feminist Center for Creative Work in 2020. In 2021, she was selected for participation in the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & Writers, and was a Creative Fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco. Her works can be found in Foglifter, Interim Poetics, and at the Studio Museum in Harlem. A native of Los Angeles, she currently resides in Berkeley, CA. Truong Tran is a Vietnamese-American poet, visual artist, and teacher. He is an author of five collections of poetry and a children's book. As a visual artist, Tran is best known for mixed-media pieces, though he has worked in multiple mediums. You can purchase copies of “the delicacy of embracing spirals” at https://citylights.com/delicacy-of-emracing-spirals/. This event is made possible with the support of the City Lights Foundation. To learn more visit: https://citylights.com/foundation/.
In the episode we celebrate the co-hostess with the mostess on her 2 book deal with Harper Collins! Anastacia-Renee (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish) and, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist forthcoming from Amistad (an imprint of HarperCollins). They were selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows." Anastacia-Renee was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017), Arc Artist Fellow (2020) and Jack Straw Curator (2020). Her work has been anthologized in: Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Afrofuturism, Black Comics, And Superhero Poetry, Joy Has a Sound, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota's Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature. Her work has appeared in, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, A-Line, Cascadia Magazine, Hennepin Review, Ms. Magazine and others. Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.
The REEF Residency is a collaboration between the School of Critical Studies, School of Film/Video, and School of Art. Learn more about the REEF Residency. In this episode, we speak with 2022 REEF Residents, Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata. Their exhibition, Tense Renderings: the will and won't of spatial logics, opened at The REEF Los Angeles, June 24–July 24, 2022. Tense Renderings interrogates the motivations, conditions, and limitations of maps and mapmaking. The range of works include axonometric projection drawing; feminist, communally-woven textile; speculative sea and space colonization; and interventions into legal language delineating exclusion and belonging.Tense Renderings features 14 artists across time zones and disciplines: Jumanah Abbas, C. Bain, Amy Chiao, Natan Diacon-Furtado, Jen D'Mello, Alexsa Durrans, Christine Imperial, sj kim-ryu, Wesley Larios, Julia Saenz Lorduy, Sonya Merutka, Amanda Teixeira, Sarah Sophia Yanni, and Bz Zhang.View Tense RenderingsPress:24700: New Exhibition Interrogates Mapmaking in Tense Renderings: the will and won't of spatial logicsSimone Zapata is a poet and educator from San José, CA. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Quarterless Review, Tiny Spoon, Reed Magazine, and The Vassar Review. She serves as Managing Editor for The Beat Within, and as a poetry editor for MAYDAY. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. Fía Benitez is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Incorporating research from public archives, works in Root Rot index the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow, with recent solo and group exhibitions at The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include re:connections, water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.Beyond the Blue Wall's original theme music was composed and performed by 2020 Music alumnx, Socks Whitmore. You can learn more about Socks at sockswhitmore.com
In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Smilges is here in conversation with Travis Chi Wing Lau and Margaret Price.J. Logan Smilges (they/them) is author of Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence and Crip Negativity and assistant professor of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Led by commitments to transfeminism and disability justice, their scholarship and teaching lie at the nexus of disability studies, trans studies, queer studies, and rhetoric. Their other writing can be found in Disability Studies Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, and elsewhere.Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and Hypertext, as well as in three chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019), Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and Vagaries (Fork Tine Press, 2022). [travisclau.com]Margaret Price (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English (Rhetoric & Composition) at The Ohio State University, where she also serves as Director of the Disability Studies Program, as well as co-founder and lead PI of the Transformative Access Project. Her award-winning research focuses on sharing concrete strategies and starting necessary dialogues about creating a culture of care and a sense of shared accountability in academic spaces. During Spring 2022, she was in residence at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden, on a Fulbright Grant to study universal design and collective access. Margaret's book Crip Spacetime is forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2024. [http://margaretprice.wordpress.com].References:How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind by La Marr Jurelle BruceMia MingusJennifer NashM. Remi YergeauJasbir PuarCrip Negativity by J. Logan SmilgesA transcript of this episode is available: z.umn.edu/ep53-transcript
Join Noor Hindi and special guests for a celebration of her new book DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. What is political poetry and linguistic activism? What does it mean to bear witness through writing? When language proves insufficient, how do we find and articulate a pathway forward? DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. interrogates, subverts, and expands these questions through poems that are formally and lyrically complex, dynamic, and innovative. With rich intertextuality and an unwavering eye, Noor Hindi explores and interrogates colonialism, religion, patriarchy, and the complex intersections of her identity. Noor Hindi's debut is ultimately a provocation: on trauma, on art, and on what it takes to truly see the world for what it is/isn't and change it for the better. Get DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1871-dear-god-dear-bones-dear-yellow --------------------------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Noor Hindi (she/her/hers) is a Palestinian-American poet and reporter. She is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. is her debut collection of poems. She lives in Dearborn. https://noorhindi.com/ George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award in Poetry, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry, and was named on Best of 2020 lists with The Asian American Writers' Workshop, The New Arab, and Entropy Magazine. https://www.gabrahampoet.com/ Summer Farah is a Palestinian American poet and editor. She is currently the outreach coordinator for the Radius of Arab American Writers and co-writes the biweekly newsletter Letters to Summer. In 2021, she served as the poetry editor for the FIYAH Lit Palestine Solidarity issue. She is a Winter 2022 Tin House Fellow. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Mizna, LitHub, The Rumpus, and other places. https://summerfarah.com/ Ghinwa Jawhari is a Lebanese American writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She was born to Druze parents in Cleveland, OH. Her chapbook BINT was selected by Aria Aber for Radix Media's Own Voices Chapbook Prize. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear in Catapult, Narrative, Mizna, The Adroit Journal, and others. Ghinwa is a 2021 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop. https://www.ghinwajawhari.com/ Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese-American writer and illustrator. Her full-length collection THE MAGIC MY BODY BECOMES was a finalist for The Believer Poetry Award and won the 2017 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. She is a Radius of Arab American Writers board member and a 2022 Mass Cultural Council Fellow. jessrizkallah.com Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist and writer. He is the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Taurus. He has received fellowships from Rhizome DC, VisArts, Desert Nights Rising Stars, Halcyon Arts Lab, Mosaic Theater, and RAWI. His writing appears in Foglifter, Mizna, Peach Mag, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, the Shallow Ends, Prolit, and select bags of Nomadic Grounds Coffee. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, the Rachel Corrie Foundation's Shuruq Festival, the Alwun House Monster's Ball, Mosaic Theater, and has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. https://fargotbakhi.com/ Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/_xVod_w964A Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He looks at this idea in diverse literary, scientific, and cultural contexts from the vitality debate and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the perils of the CRISPR technology and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and The New Engagement, as well as in two chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019) and Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Image: “Experimental Life” © 2021 Saronik Bosu Music used in promotional material: “Future Life” by Ketsa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He looks at this idea in diverse literary, scientific, and cultural contexts from the vitality debate and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the perils of the CRISPR technology and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and The New Engagement, as well as in two chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019) and Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Image: “Experimental Life” © 2021 Saronik Bosu Music used in promotional material: “Future Life” by Ketsa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He looks at this idea in diverse literary, scientific, and cultural contexts from the vitality debate and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the perils of the CRISPR technology and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and The New Engagement, as well as in two chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019) and Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Image: “Experimental Life” © 2021 Saronik Bosu Music used in promotional material: “Future Life” by Ketsa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He looks at this idea in diverse literary, scientific, and cultural contexts from the vitality debate and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the perils of the CRISPR technology and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and The New Engagement, as well as in two chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019) and Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Image: “Experimental Life” © 2021 Saronik Bosu Music used in promotional material: “Future Life” by Ketsa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Poet Gabrielle Grace Hogan of the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin talks with Jared about using images to find theme in poetry, giving ourselves permission to write about happiness, and improving lesbian representation in the literary world. Along the way, they break down the similarities and differences between the New Writers Project and its sister program, the Michener Center for Writers. Gabrielle is a poet in her third and final year of the New Writers Project MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She's been published in the Academy of American Poets, Nashville Review, Salt Hill, CutBank, Foglifter, Peach Mag, and many other places. She has served as the Poetry Editor of Bat City Review, and Co-Editor of the online anthology You Flower / You Feast. Her debut chapbook Soft Obliteration is available from Ghost City Press. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or Podcast Addict. — Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. — Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com
Amy Lee Lillard is the author of a new book of short stories, Dig Me Out, from Atelier26 Books. Her characters are “witchy, feral, ready to tear free,” Chanelle Benz writes. But where did Amy draw her inspiration? What drew her to the short story format? Amy's fiction and nonfiction has been published in LitHub, Vox, Barrelhouse, Foglifter, Epiphany, Off Assignment, and Autostraddle (among others). She was shortlisted for the 2017 Berlin Writing Prize and named one of Epiphany's Breakout 8 Writers in 2018. By day, Amy works as a copywriter and marketer (and has for over 20 years). Plus, she's the co-creator and co-host of the funny and feminist podcast, Broads and Books. In this call, Amy walked us through her writing journey, from her experiences crafting unpublished novels to heading back to school for an MFA. She talked about the process of finding the right writing format, the right publisher, and how you, too, can make space for a little more fiction in your life.
Poet, editor, and critic Luiza Flynn-Goodlet talks with the editors of The Q&A Queer Zine about the challenges and opportunities involved when building an LGBTQ+ magazine from the ground up. Luiza is the editor-in-chief of Foglifter: a San Francisco Bay Area magazine by and for LGBTQ+ writers and readers.
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.
Matthew Clark Davison is the author of the debut novel Doubting Thomas, available from Amble Press. Davison is a writer and educator living in San Francisco. He earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, where he now teaches full-time. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews and 580-Split, and published in Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, (Inaugural Awardee/San Francisco State University), Cultural Equities Grant (San Francisco Arts Commission), the Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Support the show on Patreon Merch www.otherppl.com @otherppl Instagram YouTube Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Serena Chopra (she/her) is a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, and a visual and performance artist. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. She has two books, This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017), as well as two films, Dogana//Chapti (Official Selection at Frameline43, Oregon Documentary Film Festival, and Seattle Queer Film Festival), and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a featured artist in Harper's Bazaar (India) as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications in Sink, Foglifter, Matters of Feminist Practice, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Central Avenue Publishing). In October 2020, Serena co-directed No Place to Go, an artist-made queer haunted house with Kate Speer and Frankie Toan. Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University. In this episode, Serena and Brandi talk about the intersections of Queer Memoir + Rhizomes, including: The way Serena isn’t just holding contradictions now but sees contradictions as “the situation of life.” How queer narratives don’t have to be “legible” or easily consumable. In what ways we’ve repressed our visionary intuitions in order to fit inside of institutions. The difference between an “arborescent” version of intelligence, and a “rhizomatic” version of intelligence. Tarot reading as a blueprint of our subconscious and engaging in reading and writing as a form of “bibliomancy.” The refusal to be contained by the capitalist and colonialist economies that create binaries and margins that oppress and harm us. The way you’re “supposed to be an academic” filters into one’s psyche. Growing up in ballet and the struggle to let go,
Read: Lyd Havens' poem "I only mis-gender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on" (flypaper lit), which they read on Episode 11Lyd Havens is a reader and writer currently living in Boise, Idaho. Their work has previously been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Foglifter, among others. They are the author of the chapbook I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018), the winner of the 2018 ellipsis… Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Their chapbook Chokecherry was published by Game Over Books in May 2021.Purchase: Lyd Havens' Chokecherry(Game Over Books, 2021).
Today we have Venita Blackburn on the show. Works by Venita have appeared in newyorker.com, Harper’s, Story, McSweeney’s, Apogee, Split Lip Magazine, the Iowa Review, DIAGRAM, Foglifter, Electric Literature, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, and others. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship in 2014 and several Pushcart prize nominations. She received the Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction, which resulted in the publication of her collected stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, in 2017. In 2018 she earned a place as a finalist for the PEN/Bingham award for debut fiction, finalist for the NYPL Young Lions award and recipient of the PEN America Los Angeles literary prize in fiction. Her next collection of stories, HOW TO WRESTLE A GIRL, will be published in the fall of 2021 by MCD books. She is the founder and president of Live, Write (livewriteworkshop.com), an organization devoted to offering free creative writing workshops for communities of color. Her home town is Compton, California, and she is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at California State University, Fresno. Venita's Website Outline of Topics Where do you like to eat in Fresno? Questions about Black Jesus and Other Superheroes Discussion of genre and flash fiction Overrated vs Underrated Questions about How to Wrestle a Girl Book Recommendations Book Recommendations James Baldwin Everything Toni Morrison Sula Marjorie Liu Monstress Vol. 1 Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone This Is How You Lose the Time War Brian K Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matt Wilson Paper Girls Venita's books Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl Our Patreon Page
Matthew Clark Davison is the author of Doubting Thomas (Amble Press in 2021) and creator of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD. His textbook The Lab, Experiments in Writing Across Genre, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2022. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on Guernica, The Advocate, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Exquisite Pandemic, and others. Matthew also teaches full time in SF State's Creative Writing MFA and BA programs. Episode Highlights Matthew shares about how he first started writing in church services after he ran away from home. We discuss his new book, Doubting Thomas, and how the political landscape of the last two US presidencies influenced the story. We explore the themes of control and surrender. Matthew shares his experience with organized religion and how his perception has changed since being introduced to GLIDE Memorial Church in San Francisco. Web links Find more at MatthewClarkDavison.com Connect with Matthew on Instagram & Twitter Help us support the queer community & keep the podcast going - Support us on Patreon. Grab your FREE Guide: The Self-Confident Queer - Download it here. Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. And follow us on Instagram! Join our mailing list to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.
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
Wayne Goodman in conversation with Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, poet, reviewer, and editor-in-chief at Foglifter
Have you always thought you might have a story to tell? Been curious to start writing, but maybe aren't confident or quite sure about how to get started? Us too! Listen in on Author and Teacher, Matthew Clark Davison as we chat about how anyone with inspiration can get started writing.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introducing Booksmith's newest Upstream author: Matthew Clark Davison!Upstream, for the uninitiated, is our ongoing (and ever-growing) effort to partner with local authors to provide an unending supply of signed books available for purchase—without events, lines, or hassle. Order and enjoy.Matthew Clark Davison's debut novel, Doubting Thomas is writer/editor Michael Nava's first acquisition for the newly-minted Amble Press. His textbook, called The Lab, Working Across Genre, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2022. Partially based on the (now online) non-academic school Matthew started in 2007 in a friend's living room, also called The Lab, the book aims to help readers (whether or not they consider themselves writers) generate new and surprising material, then shape it.His prose is anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in Foglifter, The Advocate, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, Cultural Equities Grant, Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award.Matthew earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he now teaches creative writing full-time. “An unlikely outcome,” Matthew says, as he left home at fifteen, a runaway and high school dropout, who eventually landed in San Francisco. Labeled "high-risk” for AIDS, he somehow survived, and Janice Mirikitani encouraged Matthew to study Creative Writing at SFSU, soon after he started his first writing class with Jan and June Jordan in the basement of Glide Church.Matthew has also coached writing at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and continues to coach established and aspiring writers on their creative manuscripts. He served as the Chief Artistic Strategist at Performing Arts Workshop, where he worked for eleven years as a teaching artist (his first residency was a twelve-week writing workshop for LGBTQ+ Youth) and as a mentor to newly-hired teaching artists who aimed to bring intensive residencies in various art forms to young people.A recent transplant from San Francisco to Oakland, Matthew lives with his husband Ansu, an immunologist, HIV and cancer researcher.To order Doubting Thomas for pick-up or free Bay Area shipping, order below and put your signature request in the comments field.Doubting Thomas: A Novel (Paperback)By Matthew Clark Davison$16.95ISBN: 9781612941998Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order NowPublished: Bywater Books - June 8th, 2021 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Dani Tirrell and guest Anastacia-Renee talk about Queer Mama Crossroads, being a queer Mother and being present in her joy. “Black love looks like Afrofuturism rocking a retro shirt and re-(purposed) commitment. Hair a mess of love, lips blinking with “yes,” eyes moist with home.” Anastacia-Renee is a multigenre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist and Deep End Podcast co-host. She is a 2020 Arc Fellow(4Culture),recipient of the 2018,James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington Artist (Literary), Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019),Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House (2015-2017), and Jack Straw Curator (2020). Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee's work has been published in, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Spirited Stone, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Pinwheel, The Fight and the Fiddle, Glow, The A-Line, Ms. Magazine and many more. https://www.anastacia-renee.com/ https://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/7398 Recorded over Instagram Live on September 19, 2020. About CD Forum: The CD Forum is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to present and produce Black cultural programs that encourage thought and debate for the greater Seattle area. Our vision is to inspire new thoughts and challenge assumptions about Black Culture.
Weand're opening the talk-back lines with author Gary Blackford who wrote and'The Fog Lifterand'. Weand'll be talking about and'Winning between the earsand' or how to control your thought life. Help Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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