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This week on Memoir Nation, Jill Ciment joins us to talk about what it means to reconsider a previously written memoir, and what that says about the nature of truth. We're diving into the unreliability of truth, how we see things differently over time, and the nature of memoir as a flawed container for our stories. We're also two weeks into the rebrand of this podcast, and Brooke and Grant invite you to check out Memoir Nation at www.memoirnation.com and sign up to join us at any level of membership—including free. We're excited for what's in store! Jill Ciment is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Body in Question, Heroic Measures, and The Tattoo Artist, as well as two memoirs—Half a Life and her most recent, Consent. Born in Montreal and based in both Brooklyn and Gainesville. Her work has been adapted for film and widely anthologized, and she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Jill is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jennifer Haigh's first novel, Mrs. Kimble, won the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Mercy Street, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker and won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her short stories have been published widely, in the Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. Published in eighteen languages, her work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michener Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Boston. Her new novel, Rabbit Moon, is the focus of our talk today. Jennifer joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. They talk about her time in Shanghai and how being there inspired the novel, why she wrote a novel about sisters, writing multiple points of view, writing minor characters, what she reads when she's writing fiction, how much she knows going in, why she doesn't plot, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded on April 4, 2025) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
1. What to do when you've done everything you were supposed to do and ended up in a place you don't want to be. 2. Why the question “What do you want?” is terrifying – and how to start answering it authentically for yourself. 3. The power of imagining what does not yet exist in order to make space for new possibilities. 4. The gift of a “midlife crisis” 5. What a mother's job really is. About Celeste: Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, is available now. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages. TW: @pronounced_ing IG: @pronounced_ing To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Die Diskothek wartet mit einer Premiere auf. Und zwar wird das einzige Streichquartett der amerikanischen Komponistin Ruth Crawford Seeger besprochen. 1931 hat sie es in Berlin und Paris geschrieben als Stipendiatin der Guggenheim Foundation. Crawford-Seeger gehört zu den so genannten Ultramodernisten, eine Strömung in den USA, die alles Herkömmliche in der Musik ablehnte. Dennoch bediente sie mit ihrem Streichquartett eine äusserst traditionelle Gattung. Nur wie? Mit radikal dissonanter Kontrapunktik bis hin zur Heterophonie, dem Erklingen mehrerer verschiedener Themen gleichzeitig. Oder mit konstruktivistischen Prinzipien über einen ganzen Satz. Im regulären Konzertbetrieb selten zu hören, an Festivals schon eher (kürzlich am Lucerne Festival) gibt die Diskothek hier die Gelegenheit, Bekanntschaft mit einer Komponistin zu machen und einem äusserst spannenden Werk. Gäste von Benjamin Herzog sind: Jaronas Scheurer, Musikwissenschaftler, und Judith Gerster, Cellistin.
Paul Lisicky joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about how his appreciation for Joni Mitchell and love of her work shaped his life as a musician and a writer, vulnerability and uncertainty on the page, falling outside the containers of what's expected, the singular and universal in our work, vulnerability and uncertainty in our creative process, corralling ourselves back to our 5 senses, feeling structure in our bodies, writing for the reader, developing ourselves as artists, being tenacious in pursuing our vision, writing about our idols, and his new book Song So Wild and Blue. Also in this episode: -image-based writing -writing a proposal for the first time -how structure can help liberate our work Books/Authors mentioned in this episode: Sigrid Nunez Elizabeth McCracken Sarah Manguso Mary Gaitskill Joy Williams Barry Lopez Annie Liontis E.J. Koh All Fours by Miranda July Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books including Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship. A recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, he is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Camden. He lives in Brooklyn. Website: http://www.paullisicky.net/ Connect with Paul: https://bsky.app/profile/paullisicky.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paul_lisicky/ Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/song-so-wild-and-blue-a-life-with-the-music-of-joni-mitchell-paul-lisicky/21517908?ean=9780063280373 – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers
Paul Lisicky is the author of the memoir Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, available from HarperOne. Lisicky is the author of seven books, including Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, The Cut, Fence,the New York Times, Ploughshares, and in many other publications. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Rose Dorothea Award from the Provincetown Library. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Antioch University Los Angeles, Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere. He is currently a Professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Camden, where he is Editor of StoryQuarterly. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Twitter Instagram TikTok Bluesky 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
A very special episode this week, as Josh and Drusilla dive into the work of video artist Cecilia Condit and Possibly in Michigan. From wiki: “Cecelia Ann Condit[2] (born 15 December 1947) is an American video artist. Condit's films are noted for their attempts to subvert traditional mythologies of female representation and psychologies of sexuality and violence. Condit has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, Mary L. Nohl Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Council and National Media Award from the Retirement Research Foundation. Her work has been shown internationally in festivals, museums and alternative spaces and is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and Centre Georges Pompidou Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France. In 2008, Condit had her first solo show exhibition at the CUE Art Foundation in New York.[3]Also discussed: Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) and the Joan Micklin Silver collection, The Secret (2007), remembering Gene Hackman through 1972's Prime Cut, aesthetics, and more! One of Josh's super 8 films, Siren: https://vimeo.com/119029341 NEXT WEEK: The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976) Follow them across the internet:Bloodhaus: https://www.bloodhauspod.com/https://twitter.com/BloodhausPodhttps://www.instagram.com/bloodhauspod/ Drusilla Adeline:https://www.sisterhydedesign.com/https://letterboxd.com/sisterhyde/ Joshua Conkelhttps://www.joshuaconkel.com/https://bsky.app/profile/joshuaconkel.bsky.socialhttps://www.instagram.com/joshua_conkel/https://letterboxd.com/JoshuaConkel/
Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown's first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry.
Ep. 126 “The Playbook” with Author James Shapiro This week Katie is joined by author, professor, and Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theatre, James Shapiro. They talk about Shapiro's new book “THE PLAYBOOK: A Story of Theatre, Democracy, and The Making of a Culture War” which is the story of the start and end of the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s. Shapiro shares how this reflects our current time. James Shapiro's (https://www.jamesshapiro.net/) essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and many more. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, The New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the American Academy in Berlin. Follow us on social media and let us know your thoughts and questions – https://linktr.ee/nobusinesslikepod Our theme song is composed by Vic Davi.
In this episode, Phillis Levin, the author of six poetry collections, offers an in-depth look at her newest book, An Anthology of Rain, published by Barrow Street Press. A “poet's poet,” Levin discusses her career, including her previous works such as Mr. Memory & Other Poems (Penguin) and her accolades, which include the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Phillis shares her creative process, her inspirations drawn from her childhood, and her experiences traveling around the world, including her time spent in Slovenia and Japan. She also reflects on the significance of poetry in different cultures and offers insights on the importance of “cleaning the palate” in her writing routine. The episode concludes with Phillis's reading of the title poem, “An Anthology of Rain,” providing a glimpse into her intricate and profound poetic voice.About Phillis LevinPhillis Levin is the author of An Anthology of Rain (Barrow Street Press, 2025), her sixth collection, available in paperback and e-book. Phillis Levin is a singular poet known for her lyricism. Her fifth collection, Mr. Memory & Other Poems (Penguin), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and received a starred review from Library Journal, which also named the book one of its Top Picks of the Year in Poetry. Phillis is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet and the recipient of several prizes, including the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award for Temples and Fields (University of Georgia Press). A Guggenheim Fellow, Phillis has also received a Fulbright Scholar Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.Website: https://phillislevin.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phillis-levin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phillislevinpoet/ Amazon: https://a.co/d/2GDrKkv About Christi CassidyChristi Cassidy is the host of Moving Along (https://movingalongpodcast.com), a podcast about travel, relocation and life transitions. She has worked in book publishing as a publicist, licensing director and freelance editor (https://editmaven.com) for 35+ years. She has an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She lives in the Hudson Valley just north of New York City.
Today on Speaking Out of Place I talk with award-winning novelist Laila Lalami about her new novel, The Dream Hotel. What happens when the state, with the pretext of protecting public safety, can detain indefinitely certain individuals whose dreams seem to indicate they may be capable of committing a crime? Set in a precarious world where sleep-enhancing devices and algorithms provide the tools and formulae for making one's unconscious a witness to one's possible waking life, this novel touches on a myriad of political, philosophical, and moral concerns as they particularly connect to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, privacy, and the security state.Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.
Have you ever gotten consumed by watching a couple argue in public and trying to decipher what's really going on between them? Denise Duhamel's deliciously entertaining “How It Will End” offers us that experience. Come for the voyeurism, stay for the awareness it stirs up. Why are we so captivated by other people's disagreements? And how can what we notice about them teach us about ourselves?Denise Duhamel is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Pink Lady, Scald, and Blowout. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Denise Duhamel's poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. Order your copy of Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig) wherever you buy books.
Cornelius Eady is a Professor of English and John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From September 2021 to December 2022, he served as interim Director of Poets House in New York City. Eady published his first collection, Kartunes, in 1980. His second collection, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), was chosen as winner of the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Poetry Award by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth. He has published eight other collections, including The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In addition to his poetry, Eady has written musical theater productions, collaborating with jazz composer Diedre Murray. The two worked together on Running Man, a roots opera libretto that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and Brutal Imagination, recipient of Newsday's Oppenheimer Award. Eady is also a musician, and he performs with the literary band Rough Magic and the Cornelius Eady Trio, which recently released the album Don't Get Dead: Pandemic Folk Songs. (June Appal Recording, 2021). Eady has published five mixed-media chapbooks with accompanying CDs, including Book of Hooks (Kattywompus Press, 2013), Singing While Black (Kattywompus Press, 2015) and All the American Poets Have Titled Their New Books The End (Kattywompus Press, (2018). With poet Toi Derricote, Eady founded Cave Canem, a beloved nonprofit organization that supports emerging Black poets via a summer retreat, regional workshops, prizes, events, and publication opportunities. In 2016, Eady and Derricote were honored with the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem, and, in 2023, they won the Pegasus Award for service in the field of Poetry by the Poetry Foundation. Eady's other honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.Links:Bio and Poems at The Poetry FoundationBio and poems at Poets.org"Poet Cornelius Eady on exploring the everyday lives of Black people in America"--PBS News HourCornelius Eady Group website"Emmett Till's Glass Top Casket" at the Poetry Society of AmericaCave Canem
Cornelius Eady is a Professor of English and John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From September 2021 to December 2022, he served as interim Director of Poets House in New York City. Eady published his first collection, Kartunes, in 1980. His second collection, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), was chosen as winner of the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Poetry Award by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth. He has published eight other collections, including The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In addition to his poetry, Eady has written musical theater productions, collaborating with jazz composer Diedre Murray. The two worked together on Running Man, a roots opera libretto that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and Brutal Imagination, recipient of Newsday's Oppenheimer Award. Eady is also a musician, and he performs with the literary band Rough Magic and the Cornelius Eady Trio, which recently released the album Don't Get Dead: Pandemic Folk Songs. (June Appal Recording, 2021). Eady has published five mixed-media chapbooks with accompanying CDs, including Book of Hooks (Kattywompus Press, 2013), Singing While Black (Kattywompus Press, 2015) and All the American Poets Have Titled Their New Books The End (Kattywompus Press, (2018). With poet Toi Derricote, Eady founded Cave Canem, a beloved nonprofit organization that supports emerging Black poets via a summer retreat, regional workshops, prizes, events, and publication opportunities. In 2016, Eady and Derricote were honored with the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem, and, in 2023, they won the Pegasus Award for service in the field of Poetry by the Poetry Foundation. Eady's other honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.Links:Bio and Poems at The Poetry FoundationBio and poems at Poets.org"Poet Cornelius Eady on exploring the everyday lives of Black people in America"--PBS News HourCornelius Eady Group website"Emmett Till's Glass Top Casket" at the Poetry Society of AmericaCave Canem
Today's poem will leave you “knowing very well what it was all about.” Happy reading.Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motivated as a child, but he became interested in poetry during his high school years. He attended Fresno City College and California State University–Fresno, and he earned an MFA from the University of California–Irvine in 1976.His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. Since then, Soto has published numerous books of poetry, including You Kiss by th' Book: New Poems from Shakespeare's Line (Chronicle Books, 2016), A Simple Plan (Chronicle Books, 2007), and New and Selected Poems (Chronicle Books, 1995), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.Soto cites his major literary influences as Edward Field, Pablo Neruda, W. S. Merwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Christopher Durang, and E. V. Lucas. Of his work, the writer Joyce Carol Oates has said, “Gary Soto's poems are fast, funny, heartening, and achingly believable, like Polaroid love letters, or snatches of music heard out of a passing car; patches of beauty like patches of sunlight; the very pulse of a life.”Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); a memoir, Living Up the Street (Strawberry Hill Press, 1985); and numerous young adult and children's books. For the Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto to Nerdlandia, an opera.Soto has received the Andrew Carnegie Medal and fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Northern California.-bio via Academy of American Poets This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Steve Pincus is Thomas Donnelly Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He has written widely on the History of Britain, the British Empire, comparative revolutions, and the relationship between institutions and economic growth. His books include "1688: The First Modern Revolution," "The Heart of the Declaration"; "Protestantism and Patriotism." He is just now completing "The British Empire: A Global History." He has held fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows, the American Philosophical Society, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the ACLS, and All Souls College, Oxford. He has supervised over 25 doctoral dissertations. Visit NDISC: www.ndisc.nd.edu *** The views and opinions expressed by the author are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of any employer past or present nor the University of Notre Dame, the College of Arts & Letters, and the Notre Dame International Security Center.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of Libertie and We Love You, Charlie Freeman, one of the New York Times Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in the Vogue, Glamour,the Wall Street Journal, Elle, Buzzfeed, Transition Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, American Short Fiction and other places. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently Features Director at Harper's Bazaar as well as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Recorded October 18, 2024 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University Edited by Michele Moses Music by Dani Lencioni Art by Leanne Shapton Sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf The Critic and Her Publics is a production of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, and Literary Hub.
In an era where even toothpaste shopping can trigger an existential crisis, intellectual historian Sophia Rosenfeld explore how we became both imprisoned and freed by endless options. Her new book The Age of Choice traces our evolution from a world where nobility bragged about not having any choices to one where choice itself has become our modern religion. From voting booths to gender identity, from Amazon's infinite scroll to dating apps' endless swipes, Rosenfeld reveals how "freedom of choice" conquered modern life - and why having too many options might be making us less free than we'd like to think.Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Rosenfeld:* Choice wasn't always central to freedom: Historically, especially among nobility, freedom was associated with not having to make choices. The modern equation of freedom with endless choice is a relatively recent development that emerged alongside consumer capitalism and democracy.* The transformation of choice from moral to preferential: There's been a fundamental shift from viewing choice primarily as a moral decision (like Hercules choosing between right and wrong paths) to seeing it as an expression of personal preference (like choosing between toothpaste brands). The mere act of having choice became morally significant, rather than actually making the "right" choice.* Democracy's evolution transformed voting: The shift to secret ballots in the late 19th century marked a crucial change in how we exercise democratic choice, moving from communal decision-making to private, individual choice - a change that philosophers like John Stuart Mill actually opposed, fearing it would reduce democracy to consumer-style selection.* Choice can work against collective good: While individual choice is celebrated as freedom, it can actually hinder addressing collective challenges like climate change or public health, where limiting individual choices might better serve the common good.* The paradox of modern choice: While we've extended choice into previously unthinkable areas (gender identity, sexuality, family relationships), many people are simultaneously seeking ways to reduce choice overload - from AI recommendations to personal shoppers - suggesting we may have reached the limits of how much choice we can handle.Sophia Rosenfeld is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches European and American intellectual and cultural history with a special emphasis on the Enlightenment, the trans-Atlantic Age of Revolutions, and the legacy of the eighteenth century for modern democracy. Her newest book, to be published by Princeton University Press in February 2025, is entitled The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life. It explores how, between the 17th century and the present, the idea and practice of making choices from menus of options came to shape so many aspects of our existences, from consumer culture to human rights, and with what consequences. She is also the author of A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-Century France (Stanford, 2001); Common Sense: A Political History (Harvard, 2011), which won the Mark Lynton History Prize and the Society for the History of the Early American Republic Book Prize; and Democracy and Truth: A Short History (Penn Press, 2019). Her articles and essays have appeared in leading scholarly journals, including the American Historical Review, the Journal of Modern History, French Historical Studies, and the William and Mary Quarterly, as well as publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dissent, and, frequently, The Nation. From 2013 to 2017, she co-edited the journal Modern Intellectual History. In 2022, A Cultural History of Ideas, a 6 volume book series covering antiquity to the present for which she was co-general editor with Peter Struck, appeared with Bloomsbury and won the Association of American Publishers' award for best reference work in the humanities. Her writing has been or is being translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Hindi, Korean, and Chinese. Rosenfeld received her B.A. from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, the Mellon Foundation, both the Remarque Institute and the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris, and the American Council of Learned Societies, as well as visiting professorships at the University of Virginia School of Law and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Prior to arriving at Penn in January 2017, she was Professor of History at Yale University and, before that, the University of Virginia. She also served a three-year term from 2018 to 2021 as Vice President of the American Historical Association, where she was in charge of the Research Division. In 2022, she held the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the Library of Congress, and she was also named by the French government Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Among her other ongoing interests are the history of free speech, dissent, and censorship; the history of aesthetics (including dance); the history of political language; political theory (contemporary and historical); the history of epistemology; the history of information and misinformation; the history of the emotions and senses; the history of feminism; universities and democracy; and experimental historical methods.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Kim Addonizio was featured with a tribute to her and her poetry students in issue 67 and featured on Rattlecast 88. Kim authored nine poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet's Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her most recent collection is Exit Opera (W.W. Norton, September 2024). She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. Recent books include Now We're Getting Somewhere: Poems (W.W. Norton) and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin). Find more information at: https://www.kimaddonizio.com As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem with a title that begins with “Poem in Which I” after Denise Duhamel. For the next word in the title, find a random verb on randomwordgenerator.com. Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem that explores the perspective of the other side, and arrives somewhere opposite to where the poem begins. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Though not yet the Dantesque hells that they are today, airports in 1954 were already places of union, separation, and general existential anxiety. This meditation comes from a serious and sphinx-like Winters at the height of his poetic development–though not yet at his own “terminal,” here he is a man who already has plenty to look back on. Happy reading.(Arthur) Yvor Winters was born in Chicago on October 17, 1900. While studying at the University of Chicago he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to relocate to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the sake of his health. His early poems, published in 1921 and 1922, were all written at a tuberculosis sanitarium. He enrolled at the University of Colorado in 1925, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1926, he married the poet and novelist Janet Lewis. He spent two years teaching at the University of Idaho in Moscow before entering Stanford University as a graduate student, receiving his PhD in 1934. From 1928 until his death, he was a member of Stanford's English department.Winters's books of poetry include The Early Poems of Yvor Winters, 1920–1928(Swallow Press, 1966); Collected Poems (1952; revised edition, 1960), winner of the Bollingen Prize; Poems (Gyroscope Press, 1940); Before Disaster (Tryon Pamphlets, 1934); The Proof (Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930); and The Immobile Wind (M. Wheeler, 1921). In Defense of Reason (Swallow Press, 1947), Winters's major critical work, is a collection of three earlier studies: The Anatomy of Nonsense (New Directions, 1943); Maule's Curse (New Directions, 1938); and Primitivism and Decadence (Arrow Editions, 1937).Winters was also a prolific and controversial critic who believed that a work of art should be “an act of moral judgement” and attacked such literary icons as T. S. Eliot and Henry James. The chair of the Stanford English department notoriously denounced Winters as a “disgrace to the department.”Winters's honors include a National Institute of Arts and Letters award as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He died on January 25, 1968, in Palo Alto, California.-bio via Academy of American Poets This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
We're speaking with Distinguished Professor James Goodman, of Rutgers University, Newark, where he teaches history and creative writing. Our conversation focuses on what Goodman teaches his graduate students about writing, and how these lessons about form, voice, and pacing are rooted in his own writing experiences. Goodman has received fellowships and awards from NYU, Princeton, Rutgers, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his book, Stories of Scottsboro, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Don't forget to rate and review our show and follow us on all social media platforms here: https://linktr.ee/writingitpodcast Contact us with questions, possible future topics/guests, or comments here: https://writingit.fireside.fm/contact
Today's poem offers an incisive analogy for analogies. Happy reading.A.E. (Alicia) Stallings is the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She grew up in Decatur, Georgia, and studied classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford University. Her poetry collections include Like (2018), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Olives (2012), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Hapax (2006); and Archaic Smile(1999), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award and finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and she is a frequent contributor to Poetry and the Times Literary Supplement.Stallings's poetry is known for its ingenuity, wit, and dexterous use of classical allusion and forms to illuminate contemporary life. In interviews, Stallings has spoken about the influence of classical authors on her own work: “The ancients taught me how to sound modern,” she told Forbes magazine. “They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.”Stallings's latest verse translation is the pseudo-Homeric The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice (2019), in an illustrated edition with Paul Dry Books, and her latest volume of poetry is a selected poems, This Afterlife (2023, FSG). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, the journalist John Psaropoulos.-bio via Poetry Foundation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Are home movies the grecian urns of the twentieth century? Today's poem says, “sort of.”Poet, editor, essayist, playwright, and lyricist Mary Jo Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She grew up in Michigan and Maryland, and earned degrees from Harvard and Cambridge University. A former editor at the Atlantic Monthly, poetry editor at the New Republic, and co-editor of the fourth and fifth editions of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, Salter's thorough understanding of poetic tradition is clearly evident in her work. Salter is the author of many books of poetry, including A Kiss in Space (1999), Open Shutters (2003), A Phone Call to the Future (2008), Nothing by Design (2013), and The Surveyors (2017). Her second book, Unfinished Painting (1989) was a Lamont Selection for the most distinguished second volume of poetry published that year, Sunday Skaters (1994) was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and Open Shutters was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Salter has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and taught for many years at Mount Holyoke College. She is currently the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Well before October 7th 2023, we were already witnessing too many examples of the worst in higher education with a lack of diversity of ideas and debate. Numerous U.S. college campuses had become intellectual and ideological monocultures. Then, immediately following October 7th, we saw something much darker, but perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised. Many of us lament what is happening in higher education. But at CallMeBack, we have also observed some bright spots — universities with inspiring leaders and healthy intellectual climates — and we want to try to understand what is happening at these universities that have bucked the trend. In this episode, we have a discussion about Vanderbilt University. Our guest is Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt University's ninth chancellor. He previously served in leadership roles at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and at the University of Chicago, where he served as dean of the Harris School of Public Policy. In addition to his role as chancellor, Diermeier is University Distinguished Professor in the Owen Graduate School of Management and Distinguished University Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts & Science. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has published five books and more than 100 research articles in academic journals. In our conversation, which was recorded on campus, Chancellor Diermeier discusses how the university has developed its policies around free speech, institutional neutrality, and campus order. In the face of staggering levels of intolerance -- not to mention pro-Hamas protests effectively taking over some campuses -- has Vanderbilt become a model for how to get it right? The article referenced in this episode - Chancellor Diermeier's piece in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Free speech Is Alive and Well at Vanderbilt University' https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-speech-is-alive-and-well-at-vanderbilt-university-023884d1 Additional piece recommended, Chancellor Diermeier in the Wall Street Journal: ‘Scholarly Associations Aren't Entitled to Their Opinions' https://www.wsj.com/opinion/scholarly-associations-arent-entitled-to-their-opinions-it-chills-debate-harms-young-faculty-2584c09c?st=LK2G22&reflink=article_imessage_share
Filmmaker Brett Story and labour organizer Chris Smalls join us this week on Below the Radar. Brett is the co-director of UNION, a documentary film that follows the efforts of the Amazon Labor Union and their campaign to unionize the first Amazon warehouse in American history. The movement was spearheaded by Chris, a former Amazon warehouse supervisor who was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against Amazon's lack of COVID-19 safety protocols. Brett and Chris chat about the process of making the film, the state of organizing in the contemporary moment, and the international reception of UNION. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html Resources: Brett Story: https://brettstory.ca/ Chris Smalls: https://www.instagram.com/chris.smalls_/?hl=en Amazon Labor Union: https://www.amazonlaborunion.org/ UNION: https://www.unionthefilm.com/ DOXA Documentary Film Festival: https://www.doxafestival.ca/ Bio: Bretty Story: Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including at CPH-DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She is the director of the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America. The Hottest August was a New York Times Critics' Pick and was called one of the ten best documentary films of 2019 by over a dozen publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety's 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch. In 2020 she was nominated for a Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto. Her most recent film, UNION, co-directed with Stephen Maing, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024. Chris Smalls: Christian Smalls is the founder of the Amazon Labor Union, an independent, democratic, worker-led labor union at Amazon in Staten Island. He is also the founder of The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW), a nationwide collective of essential workers and allies fighting for better working conditions, better wages, and a better world. Smalls was formerly an Amazon warehouse supervisor, helping open three major warehouses in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut during his five years with the company, but he was fired in 2020 after organizing a protest against the company's unsafe pandemic conditions. Smalls has been profiled by media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, CBC Radio, Salon, and Jacobin. He lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “ Union Power — with Brett Story and Chris Smalls.” Below the Radar, SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 5, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/255-brett-story-chris-smalls.html.
Joseph Millar is the author of six books of poetry, including Dark Harvest: New & Selected Poems. His latest collection, Shine, was published in October of 2024. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Johns Hopkins University before spending 30 years in the San Francisco Bay area working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. He has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in such magazines as DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, APR, and Ploughshares. Millar teaches in Pacific University's low-residency MFA Program. Find more here: https://www.josephmillar.org/ As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Pick a photographic portrait featuring someone you don't know personally, and write a short poem that explores their story. Next Week's Prompt: Write a braid poem in which three or more stories are woven together. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Bob Hicok was born in 1960 in Michigan and worked for many years in the automotive die industry. A published poet long before he earned his MFA, Hicok is the author of several collections of poems, including The Legend of Light, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry in 1995 and named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year; Plus Shipping (1998); Animal Soul (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Insomnia Diary (2004); This Clumsy Living (2007), which received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress; Words for Empty, Words for Full (2010); Elegy Owed (2013), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Sex & Love (2016). His work has been selected numerous times for the Best American Poetry series. Hicok has won Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has taught creative writing at Western Michigan University and Virginia Tech.When asked by interviewer Laura McCullough about the relationship between restraint and revelation in his work, Hicok replied, “Because I don't know where a poem is headed when I start, it seems that revelation has to play a central part in the poems, that what I'm most consistently doing is trying to understand why something is on my mind… Maybe writing is nothing more than an inquiry into presences.” Hicok is currently associate professor of creative writing at Purdue University.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Ellen Bass joins the Hive in anticipation of her appearance at UCSC for the Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading on November 7. Full details about the event can be found here. Poems by Ellen which she reads in this episode: Laundry, Because, Black Coffee, Any Common Desolation, and Bringing Flowers to Salinas Valley State Prison About Our Guest: Ellen Bass is a Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Other poetry collections include Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)—which was a finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize, The Publishers Triangle Award, The Milt Kessler Poetry Award, The Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award—The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002), which won The Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the first major anthology of women's poetry, No More Masks! (Doubleday, 1973). Her poems have frequently appeared in The New Yorker and The American Poetry Review, as well as in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Sun and many other journals and anthologies. She was awarded Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and The California Arts Council and received the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman's Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review'sLarry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her non-fiction books include Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth (HarperCollins, 1996), I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1983), and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse(Harper Collins, 1988, 2008), which has sold over a million copies and has been translated into twelve languages. Ellen founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, CA jails. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA writing program at Pacific University. Maggie Paul is the author of Scrimshaw (Hummingbird Press 2020), Borrowed World, (Hummingbird Press 2011), and the chapbook, Stones from the Baskets of Others (Black Dirt Press 2000). Her poetry, reviews, and interviews have appeared in the Catamaran Literary Reader, Rattle, The Monterey Poetry Review, Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and Phren-Z, SALT, and others. She is a poet and non-fiction writer in Santa Cruz, California. Maggie's print interview with Ellen Bass can be found here.
Philip Metres is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (Copper Canyon 2024), Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon, 2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan, 2018), Sand Opera (Alice James, 2015), and I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State, 2015). His work—poetry, translation, essays, fiction, criticism, and scholarship—has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Watson Foundation. He is the recipient of the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Lyric Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio Find more here: https://philipmetres.com/ As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem in haiku stanzas (tercets with lines of five, then seven, then five syllables). Do not make it haiku! Next Week's Prompt: Write a villanelle that mentions your favorite season. Make each refrain slightly different. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he read and memorized as part of his own becoming; mitigating our impulses toward violence with tenderness, and more.Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown's first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
E132 | When Novels Want To Be WrittenCyrus Cassells is a Poet. Translator. Cultural Critic. Actor. Professor. Cyrus is best known for his 9 poetry books, most recently “Is There Room For Another Horse On Your Horse Ranch.” His books have earned numerous accolades, including the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Pulitzer Prize nominations.Cyrus has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a Regents' Professor and University Distinguished Professor of English at Texas State University. From 2021 to 2022 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Texas. Rome, Paris, Montreal, Mexico City and Hawaii are just some of the places he loves - and places where he has lived.www.cyruscassells.com/
IN THIS EPISODE: In this unique episode taking us to Latin America, Denise Silber interviews HBS alumna Christine Kenna, Partner at a leading early-stage VC fund in Mexico, in order to explore and amplify the often overlooked opportunities for venture capital investment in the region. Drawing from her experience as a former Silicon Valley executive, operational manager in LatAm, and board member, Christine Kenna shares insights on identifying innovative business models and supporting entrepreneurs in this emerging market. Listeners will gain valuable takeaways on the region's tech landscape, the importance of local partnerships, and the evolving role of women in venture capital. Christine Kenna also discusses her initiatives to empower women in VC, the necessary balance between personal values and profess GUEST BIO: Christine Kenna, an alumna of the Harvard Business School, is Partner at IGNIA, a leading venture capital fund investing in global technology companies reinventing the way to do business across Latin America. Christine, a trailblazer in the investor and entrepreneurial ecosystems, co-founded Mujeres Invirtiendo and MBA Mujeres de México to accelerate the careers of professional women in LatAm. With 15+ years of VC experience, she serves on IGNIA´s boards and is an independent Board Member of ALSEA and the Kauffman Fellows. Recognized as one of Latin America's top female investors, Christine's background includes leadership roles at Google, EF Education First, and EY Parthenon and The Guggenheim Foundation. Christine did her undergraduate degree at Duke University and is a Kauffman Fellow.
Patricia Engel is the author of five books including the newest collection of short stories, The Faraway World; Infinite Country, a New York Times Bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick; The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, and a New York Times Notable Book. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami. Patricia Engel joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss how ideas become short stories or novels, how Veins of the Ocean started as a short story and became a novel, how the ending a short story differs from the ending of a novel, why she likes first person, knowing what to leave out in a short story, and more. For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We've stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You'll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on April 25, 2024) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets. Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing; and he has translated the Philoctetes of Sophocles. He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. We talked about how he puts a collection together, vulnerability and guardedness, To the Lighthouse, relationships, darkness, truth and revelation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today's spotlight is on the literary magazine The Threepenny Review. I'm joined by the magazine's founding and current Editor, Wendy Lesser. Wendy Lesser is the author of twelve nonfiction books and one novel; her latest book, entitled Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery, came out from Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2020. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and many other institutions, and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her journalistic writing about literature, dance, film, and music has appeared in a number of periodicals in America and abroad. Born in California and educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley, Lesser now divides her time between Berkeley and New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Today's spotlight is on the literary magazine The Threepenny Review. I'm joined by the magazine's founding and current Editor, Wendy Lesser. Wendy Lesser is the author of twelve nonfiction books and one novel; her latest book, entitled Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery, came out from Farrar Straus & Giroux in May 2020. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and many other institutions, and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her journalistic writing about literature, dance, film, and music has appeared in a number of periodicals in America and abroad. Born in California and educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley, Lesser now divides her time between Berkeley and New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Valzhyna Mort joins Kevin Young to read “Testimonies” by Victoria Amelina, which Mort translated from the Ukrainian, and “Map,” by Wisława Szymborska, which was translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh. Mort's collection “Music for the Dead and Resurrected” won the 2021 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. Her other honors include a 2021 Rome Prize in literature and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Fund.
Just when you thought you were out, The Daily Poem pulls you back in–to poems about movies. Today's charming and earnest poem imitates the medium it describes (film) by swapping memorable images and sensations for linear propositions. Happy reading.Amy Clampitt was born and raised in New Providence, Iowa. She studied first at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and later at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in New York City. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Clampitt held various jobs at publishers and organizations such as Oxford University Press and the Audubon Society. In the 1960s, she turned her attention to poetry. In 1974 she published a small volume of poetry titled Multitudes, Multitudes; thereafter her work appeared frequently in the New Yorker. Upon the publication of her book of poems The Kingfisher in 1983, she became one of the most highly regarded poets in America. Her other collections include A Silence Opens (1994), Westward (1990), What the Light Was Like (1985), and Archaic Figure (1987). Clampitt received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Clampitt taught at the College of William and Mary, Amherst College, and Smith College.Joseph Parisi, a Chicago Tribune Book World reviewer, called the poet's sudden success after the publication of The Kingfisher “one of the most stunning debuts in recent memory.” Parisi continued, “throughout this bountiful book, her wit, sensibility and stylish wordplay seldom disappoint.” In one of the first articles to appear after The Kingfisher's debut, New York Review of Books critic Helen Vendler wrote that “Amy Clampitt writes a beautiful, taxing poetry. In it, thinking uncoils and coils again, embodying its perpetua argument with itself.” Georgia Review contributor Peter Stitt also felt that “The Kingfisher is … in many ways an almost dazzling performance.” In the Observer, Peter Porter described Clampitt as “a virtuoso of the here and the palpable.” Porter ranked her with the likes of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop.Critics praised the allusive richness and syntactical sophistication of Clampitt's verse. Her poetry is characterized by a “baroque profusion, the romance of the adjective, labyrinthine syntax, a festival lexicon,” said New York Times Book Review contributor Alfred Corn in an article about Clampitt's second important collection, What the Light Was Like (1985). Indeed, the poet's use of vocabulary and syntax is elaborate. “When you read Amy Clampitt,” suggests Richard Tillinghast in the New York Times Book Review, “have a dictionary or two at your elbow.” The poet has, Tillinghast continues, a “virtuoso command of vocabulary, [a] gift for playing the English language like a musical instrument and [a] startling and delightful ability to create metaphor.” Her ability as a poet quickly gained Clampitt recognition as “the most refreshing new American poet to appear in many years,” according to one Times Literary Supplement reviewer.Clampitt's work is also characterized by erudite allusions, for which she provides detailed footnotes. Times Literary Supplement critic Lachlan Mackinnon compared her “finical accuracy of description and the provision of copious notes at the end of a volume,” to a similar tendency in the work of Marianne Moore. “She is as ‘literary' and allusive as Eliot and Pound, as filled with grubby realia as William Carlos Williams, as ornamented as Wallace Stevens and as descriptive as Marianne Moore,” observed Corn. Washington Post reviewer Joel Conarroe added Walt Whitman and Hart Crane to this list of comparable poets: “Like Whitman, she is attracted to proliferating lists as well as to ‘the old thought of likenesses,'” wrote Conarroe. “And as in Crane her compressed images create multiple resonances of sound and sense.”What the Light Was Like centers around images of light and darkness. This book is “more chastely restrained than The Kingfisher,” according to Times Literary Supplement contributor Neil Corcoran. Conarroe believed that the poet's “own imagery throughout [the book] is sensuous (even lush) and specific—in short, Keatsian.” Corn similarly commented that “there are stirring moments in each poem, and an authentic sense of Keats' psychology.” He opined, however, that “her sequence [‘Voyages: A Homage to John Keats‘] isn't effective throughout, the reason no doubt being that her high-lyric mode” does not suit narrative as well as a plainer style would.Clampitt's Archaic Figure (1987) maintains her “idiosyncratic style,” as William Logan called it in the Chicago Tribune. New York Times Book Review contributor Mark Rudman noted the poet's “spontaneity and humor; she is quick to react, hasty, impulsive, responsive to place—and to space.” In the London Sunday Times, David Profumo further praised Archaic Figure. Taking the example of the poem “Hippocrene,” the critic asserted that this work “demonstrates her new powers of economy, the sureness of her rhythmic touch and the sheer readability of her magnificent narrative skills.” “Amy Clampitt,” concluded Logan, “has become one of our poetry's necessary imaginations.”Clampitt died in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1994. Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Today's poem is lovely, dark, and deep. Loneliness, Americana, Edward Hopper, literary illusions, clams: it has it all. Happy reading!Poet and editor Grace Schulman (b. 1935) was born Grace Waldman in New York City, the only child of a Polish Jewish immigrant father and a seventh-generation American mother. She studied at Bard College and earned her BA from American University and her PhD from New York University. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, and served as the poetry editor of the Nation from 1972 to 2006. She also directed the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center from 1973 to 1985. She has published nine collections of poetry, including Again, the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2022 (Turtle Point Press, 2022) and Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Harper Collins, 2022). Her collection of essays, First Loves and Other Adventures (2010), reflects on her life as a writer and reader.Typically written in a lucid free verse that occasionally reaches vatic heights, Schulman's poems often take on subjects of art, history, and faith. Schulman's history is usually that of her beloved New York City, where she has lived and worked as a dedicated poetry advocate all her life. Earthly moments and details of city life constantly suggest larger spiritual questions. Poet Ron Slate has described Schulman as “not only a poet of praise, but one who addresses the grounding questions of this mode. How and why do we find beauty in adversity?”Schulman names Hopkins, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, Whitman, and Marianne Moore as her influences. When Schulman was a teenager she was introduced to Moore, who had a profound effect on her poetics. Schulman wrote on the poet in a critical study, Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement (1986), and edited The Poems of Marianne Moore (2004). Schulman has received numerous awards for her work, including the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and Pushcart prizes. She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work has been published in the Nation, the New Yorker, and numerous other magazines and journals, and appeared in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1998.She lives in New York City and East Hampton.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Day 7: Mark Wunderlich reads his poem “No Horse.” We are honored to be the first publisher of this poem. Mark Wunderlich is the author of four collections of poems, the most recent of which is God of Nothingness published by Graywolf Press. His other collections include The Earth Avails, winner of the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude, and The Anchorage, which received the Lambda Literary Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amy Lowell Trust, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wallace Stegner program at Stanford University. He serves as Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars graduate writing program, and chairs the Writing Committee at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He lives near Catskill, New York. 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 a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this fourth year of our series is from the second movement of the “Geistinger Sonata,” Piano Sonata No. 2 in C sharp minor, by Ethel Smyth, 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.
Roxana Robinson is the author of eleven books—seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Four of these were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors' Choices. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, Best American Short Stories, The Southampton Review, Ep!phany and elsewhere. Her work has been widely anthologized and broadcast on NPR. Her books have been published in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain. Roxana Robinson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the president of the Authors Guild. She has received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award,” given by Poets and Writers, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. Her latest novel is Leaving. Roxana Robinson joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss beginnings and endings, backstory, animal companions as characters, love scenes, theme, opera, and much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We've stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You'll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on May 8, 2024) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novel Blue Ruin, available from Knopf. Kunzru is the author of six other novels, Red Pill, White Tears, Gods Without Men, My Revolutions, Transmission, and The Impressionist. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, he is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and writes the "Easy Chair" column for Harper's Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Twitter Instagram TikTok Bluesky 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
In conversation with Wil Haygood Paul Hendrickson's books include Sons of Mississippi, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, a National Book Award finalist. A creative writing teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 25 years and a feature writer at The Washington Post for the two decades before that, he is the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, among other institutions. In Fighting the Night, Hendrickson tells the story of his father's World War II service as a nighttime fighter pilot and the sacrifices he, his family, and his generation made on behalf of their country. Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Wil Haygood has, over a storied 30-year career, worked at the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and as a globetrotting investigative reporter. He is most famous for his 2008 Washington Post article, ''A Butler Well Served by This Election,'' about the White House steward who bore witness to some of 20th century America's most notable events and figures. He later expanded the article into a bestselling book that was adapted into the critically acclaimed film The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker. Haygood is also the author of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World and popular biographies of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/16/2024)
Founded in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides support to what their current website says are "exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions." In Circle of Winners: How the Guggenheim Foundation composition Awards Shaped American Music Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2023), Denise Von Glahn studies the institution between its founding and the late 1930s, with special emphasis on the music composition award. Funded by the Guggenheim mining fortune, the Foundation took early shape from the efforts of Carroll Wilson, Frank Aydelotte, and Henry Allen Moe--three Rhodes Scholars who initially struggled to envision and implement the organization's ambitious goals. One of the few groups providing support to composers before WWII, Von Glahn explains how the Foundation's selection practices and the network that helped to shape and sustain its work impacted American classical music and picked winners in the American musical marketplace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Today's poem ponders what love makes of language. Happy reading.A.E. (Alicia) Stallings is the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She grew up in Decatur, Georgia, and studied classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford University. Her poetry collections include Like (2018), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Olives (2012), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Hapax (2006); and Archaic Smile (1999), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award and finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and she is a frequent contributor to Poetry and the Times Literary Supplement.Stallings's poetry is known for its ingenuity, wit, and dexterous use of classical allusion and forms to illuminate contemporary life. In interviews, Stallings has spoken about the influence of classical authors on her own work: “The ancients taught me how to sound modern,” she told Forbes magazine. “They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.”Stallings's latest verse translation is the pseudo-Homeric The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice (2019), in an illustrated edition with Paul Dry Books, and her latest volume of poetry is a selected poems, This Afterlife (2022, FSG). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, the journalist John Psaropoulos. -bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021); Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), which won the National Book Award; Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Ararat (1990), which won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her other honors include The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Glück was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and named the 12th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003. Glück has taught English and creative writing at Williams College, Yale University, Boston University, the University of Iowa, and Goddard College. She died in 2023.-bio via Library of Congress Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 455, my conversation with author Min Jin Lee. The episode first aired on January 9, 2019. Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2022, Lee received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. In 2023, Lee served as the Editor of Best American Short Stories. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram TikTok 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
Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in Jamaica to Scottish and Russian parents. He moved to the United States when he was 17 to study at Columbia University. After his time in the army, and a brief period in France, Simpson worked as an editor in New York City before completing his PhD at Columbia. He taught at colleges such as Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.A contemporary of confessional poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, Simpson's early work followed a familiar arc. In the New York Times Book Review, critic David Orr noted its highlights: “Simpson has followed a path lined with signposts sunk so deep in our nation's poetic terra firma that they've practically become part of the landscape. Those signposts declare that a poet born in or around the 1920s should (1) begin his career writing witty, ironic formal poems bearing the stamp of Eliot and Auden; then (2) abandon that formalism for a more 'natural' free verse approach, while (3) dabbling in surrealism; until (4) finally settling on social, conversational poems in the manner of a man speaking to men.” While Simpson's early books like The Arrivistes (1949) and A Dream of Governors (1959) show the influence of Auden, they also speak to his horrific experiences in World War II, where he served in the 101st Airborne Division and saw active duty in France, Belgium, and Germany. Simpson's intense formal control, at odds with the visceral details of soldiering, also earned him comparisons to Wilfred Owen. At the End of the Open Road (1963) won the Pulitzer Prize and marked a shift in Simpson's poetry as well. In this and later volumes, like Searching for the Ox (1976) and The Best Hour of the Night (1983), Simpson's simple diction and formally controlled verses reveal hidden layers of meaning.Simpson's lifelong expatriate status influenced his poetry, and he often uses the lives of ordinary Americans in order to critically investigate the myths the country tells itself. Though he occasionally revisits the West Indies of his childhood, he always keeps one foot in his adopted country. The outsider's perspective allows him to confront “the terror and beauty of life with a wry sense of humor and a mysterious sense of fate,” wrote Edward Hirsch of the Washington Post. Elsewhere Hirsch described Simpson's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, At the End of the Open Road (1963), as “a sustained meditation on the American character,” noting, “The moral genius of this book is that it traverses the open road of American mythology and brings us back to ourselves; it sees us not as we wish to be but as we are.” Collected Poems (1988) and There You Are (1995) focus on the lives of everyday citizens, using simple diction and narratives to expose the bewildering reality of the American dream. Poet Mark Jarman hailed Simpson as “a poet of the American character and vernacular.”A noted scholar and critic, Simpson published a number of literary studies, including Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994), The Character of the Poet (1986), and Three on the Tower: The Lives and Works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams (1975). Simpson also penned a novel, Riverside Drive (1962), and the autobiographies The King My Father's Wreck (1994) and North of Jamaica (1972).Simpson's later work included The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems (2003), a collection that spans his 60-year career, and Struggling Times (2009). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Simpson received numerous awards and accolades, including the Prix de Rome, the Columbia Medal for Excellence, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. He was a finalist for the prestigious Griffin International Poetry Award, and his translation of Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology (1997) won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.Simposon died in Setauket, New York in 2012.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Today's poem marks the ides (or idus) or March, a day classically associated with the settling of debts (and maybe old scores, too).One of the foremost editors, literary critics, and anthologists of contemporary American literature, David Lehman is also one of its most accomplished poets. Born in New York City in 1948, Lehman earned a PhD from Columbia University and attended the University of Cambridge as a Kellett Fellow. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including New and Selected Poems (2013), Yeshiva Boys (2009), and When a Woman Loves a Man (2005). Two of his collections, The Evening Sun (2002) and The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (1998), were culled from Lehman's five-year-long project of writing a poem a day. Yusef Komunyakaa called The Daily Mirror “a sped-up meditation on the elemental stuff that we're made of: in this honed matrix of seeing, what's commonplace becomes the focus of extraordinary glimpses....” Lehman has also written collaborative books of poetry, including Poetry Forum (2007), with Judith Hall; and Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (2005), a collection of sestinas he wrote with the poet James Cummins.Lehman inaugurated The Best American Poetry series in 1988. As series editor, he has earned high acclaim for his pivotal role in garnering contemporary American poetry a larger audience. In an early interview about the series with Judith Moore, Lehman noted “I want the books to have a lot to commend them beyond the poems themselves. The 75 poems are of course the center of the book, but we want also to have a foreword by me that can provide a context, that gives an idea of what happened in poetry this year, and an essay in which the guest editor propounds his or her criteria.” Lehman's work as an editor also includes such volumes as The Best American Erotic Poems (2008), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006), A.R. Ammons: Selected Poems (2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (2003), and Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms (1996). He was the director of the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry and the Under Discussion series from 1994 to 2006.A prominent literary and cultural critic, Lehman has published works ranging from an indictment of deconstruction, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991); to a history of the New York School of Poets, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (1998); to a meditation on the influence of Jewish songwriters in American music, A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (2009). Lehman's numerous honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award. On faculty at both the New School and New York University, he lives in New York City.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf, Sasha and photographer, Kelli Connell discuss her brand new book, Pictures for Charis, published by Aperture. Kelli talks about her fascination with and subsequent extensive research on Charis Wilson and the eleven year relationship she had with legendary photographer Edward Weston, and how what she learned guided her own exploration of portrait-making and landscape work while collaborating with her wife of fourteen years, Betsy Odom. Sasha and Kelli also discuss Kelli's renowned series, Double Life, which also explores the relationship between photographer and model as well as gender and identity. https://www.kelliconnell.com https://aperture.org/books/kelli-connell-pictures-for-charis/ http://www.decodebooks.com/connell.html Kelli Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer / sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications of her work include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture, March 2024), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture), Photo Art: The New World of Photography (Aperture), and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. Connell is an editor at SKYLARK Editions and a professor at Columbia College Chicago. This podcast is sponsored by picturehouse + thesmalldarkroom. https://phtsdr.com