Podcasts about Illinois Arts Council

David Wojahn grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. Ever since his first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, Wojahn has been one of American poetry's most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalleled by any living American poet.”Wojahn's book World Tree (2011) received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004 (2006), which Peter Campion called “superb” and “panoramic” in a review for Poetry, showcases Wojahn's formal range, the scope of his personal narratives, and his intense, imaginative monologues and character sketches, such as his sonnets on pop culture icons and rock-and-roll musicians in Mystery Train (1990). He is also celebrated for the emotional resonance of his poetry—the ability to, in the words of poet Jean Valentine, “follow … tragedy to its grave depths, with dignity and unsparingness, and egolessness.”In addition to his books of poetry, Wojahn is the author of From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry (2015) and Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. He coedited A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry (1991), and edited a posthumous collection of his wife Lynda Hull's poetry, The Only World (1995).Wojahn has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He teaches poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.-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

Music lovers, mark your calendars for Saturday, May 31, 2025, as the Doodle Folk Music Festival returns to Bishop Hill, Illinois. The village park will be alive with folk sounds from some of the state's most celebrated artists, including Barry Cloyd, Buck Halker, Chris Vallillo, and the Bucktown Americana Music Show. A special exhibit on Bishop Hill's own Jonas "Doodle" Danielson will be featured in the park gazebo. Admission is free, and guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. Evening festivities continue at P.L. Johnson's with a dinner party, available by reservation. More information can be found at bishophillheritage.org. P.L. Johnson's is hosting a special dinner party this evening, open exclusively to guests with reservations from 4 to 8 PM. Highlights from the menu include hearty beef bourguignon, flavorful Swedish meatballs, cheese tortellini, and Oskar chicken. Dessert options are sure to tempt guests with choices like pavlova and rich chocolate lava cake. Those interested in securing a table are encouraged to call 309-927-3885 to reserve a spot. With a menu offering a variety of savory and sweet dishes, this event promises an indulgent experience for diners in the area tonight. The event kicks off at 10 AM with Barry Cloyd performing songs from his ten albums. At 11:30, Buck Halker brings American Coal Miner songs to the stage, covering more than seven decades of music history. After lunch, Chris Vallillo's afternoon set promises a blend of Midwest tales and masterful bottleneck slide guitar. At 3 PM, the Bucktown Americana Music Show closes out the festival, offering a lively mix of bluegrass, folk, and more. This free event is funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council, Illinois Humanities Council, Galesburg Community Foundation, and the Geneseo Foundation. For more details, you can call 309-927-3899 or email bhha@mymctc.net. Information about this festival is also posted on www.bishophillheritage.org and the Bishop Hill Heritage Association Facebook page.

Join Julie Murphy and Chicago poet, Christy Prahl, as they read and discuss Kwame Dawes' poem Sea and Rain from his book Nebraska. Then they dive into Christy's We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press), a gorgeous collection of midwest poems that take a daring look into relationships, identity, pleasure, loss, and more. Sprinkled though the conversation is bits of craft, stories and laughter. The show concludes with an imaginative poem from Christy's new manuscript. Christy Prahl is an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and the author of the poetry collections We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023), With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, forthcoming fall 2025), and Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming fall 2026). A Best of the Net and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in Poetry Daily as well as many national and international journals, including the Asheville Poetry Review, CALYX, Louisville Review, Penn Review, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tar River Poetry, and others. She splits her time between a small workers' cottage in Chicago and refurbished Quonset hut in rural southwest Michigan.  

Head to Bishop Hill, Illinois, for the annual Julmarknad, or Christmas Market, starting November 29. This festive event features Swedish traditions, crafts, and music. Attractions include Swedish folk characters, traditional decorations, and holiday music. Don't miss the unique craft activities and the artisanal gifts available for purchase. Todd DeDecker joined Wake Up Tri-Counties to talk about the 2024 Julmarknad in Bishop Hill over the next two weekends, followed by Lucia Nights. For more information about Julmarknad activities, please view www.visitbishophill.com or call 309-927-3899. Julmarknad events are financed by the Bishop Hill Arts Council, Community State Bank, Illinois Arts Council, Bill and Susan Sherrard Foundation, Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, and SWEA-Chicago. Regional Media is our major media sponsor.

It's 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago's great universities and living a busy life when she's gobsmacked by a sudden cancer diagnosis. In small but powerful journal entries, she bemoans friends who've died, expresses disdain for her body, worries about her future, recalls previous adventures, and jokes about the seriousness of her illness. She doesn't let the fear and discomfort stop her from throwing her left breast a farewell party. Now, fifteen years later, SL Wisenberg's journey of self-acceptance, Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Tortoise Books, 2024) has been reissued without page numbers, but with additional entries, notes about her life, and updates about cancer. S. L. Wisenberg was born in Texas and has lived in Chicago, more or less, since she was 18. She is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collections Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions and The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home. In 2009 she published a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, about her breast cancer from diagnosis to post-chemo. On October 15, the book is being re-released as a paperback, revised and updated. She is still cancer free, except for a rare chronic blood cancer, so she remains the Cancer Bitch. Wisenberg has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely, from San Francisco to Sofia, Bulgaria. Wisenberg edits Another Chicago Magazine, an international online literary journal. In the summer she raises Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. Year round she walks through Chicago and hypnotizes wild rabbits. She also pulls weeds in public areas and leaves markers proclaiming, The Mad Weeder Strikes Again. 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

It's 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago's great universities and living a busy life when she's gobsmacked by a sudden cancer diagnosis. In small but powerful journal entries, she bemoans friends who've died, expresses disdain for her body, worries about her future, recalls previous adventures, and jokes about the seriousness of her illness. She doesn't let the fear and discomfort stop her from throwing her left breast a farewell party. Now, fifteen years later, SL Wisenberg's journey of self-acceptance, Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Tortoise Books, 2024) has been reissued without page numbers, but with additional entries, notes about her life, and updates about cancer. S. L. Wisenberg was born in Texas and has lived in Chicago, more or less, since she was 18. She is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collections Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions and The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home. In 2009 she published a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, about her breast cancer from diagnosis to post-chemo. On October 15, the book is being re-released as a paperback, revised and updated. She is still cancer free, except for a rare chronic blood cancer, so she remains the Cancer Bitch. Wisenberg has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely, from San Francisco to Sofia, Bulgaria. Wisenberg edits Another Chicago Magazine, an international online literary journal. In the summer she raises Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. Year round she walks through Chicago and hypnotizes wild rabbits. She also pulls weeds in public areas and leaves markers proclaiming, The Mad Weeder Strikes Again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It's 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago's great universities and living a busy life when she's gobsmacked by a sudden cancer diagnosis. In small but powerful journal entries, she bemoans friends who've died, expresses disdain for her body, worries about her future, recalls previous adventures, and jokes about the seriousness of her illness. She doesn't let the fear and discomfort stop her from throwing her left breast a farewell party. Now, fifteen years later, SL Wisenberg's journey of self-acceptance, Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Tortoise Books, 2024) has been reissued without page numbers, but with additional entries, notes about her life, and updates about cancer. S. L. Wisenberg was born in Texas and has lived in Chicago, more or less, since she was 18. She is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collections Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions and The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home. In 2009 she published a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, about her breast cancer from diagnosis to post-chemo. On October 15, the book is being re-released as a paperback, revised and updated. She is still cancer free, except for a rare chronic blood cancer, so she remains the Cancer Bitch. Wisenberg has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely, from San Francisco to Sofia, Bulgaria. Wisenberg edits Another Chicago Magazine, an international online literary journal. In the summer she raises Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. Year round she walks through Chicago and hypnotizes wild rabbits. She also pulls weeds in public areas and leaves markers proclaiming, The Mad Weeder Strikes Again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

It's 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago's great universities and living a busy life when she's gobsmacked by a sudden cancer diagnosis. In small but powerful journal entries, she bemoans friends who've died, expresses disdain for her body, worries about her future, recalls previous adventures, and jokes about the seriousness of her illness. She doesn't let the fear and discomfort stop her from throwing her left breast a farewell party. Now, fifteen years later, SL Wisenberg's journey of self-acceptance, Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Tortoise Books, 2024) has been reissued without page numbers, but with additional entries, notes about her life, and updates about cancer. S. L. Wisenberg was born in Texas and has lived in Chicago, more or less, since she was 18. She is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collections Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions and The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home. In 2009 she published a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, about her breast cancer from diagnosis to post-chemo. On October 15, the book is being re-released as a paperback, revised and updated. She is still cancer free, except for a rare chronic blood cancer, so she remains the Cancer Bitch. Wisenberg has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely, from San Francisco to Sofia, Bulgaria. Wisenberg edits Another Chicago Magazine, an international online literary journal. In the summer she raises Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. Year round she walks through Chicago and hypnotizes wild rabbits. She also pulls weeds in public areas and leaves markers proclaiming, The Mad Weeder Strikes Again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

I visited Mark Alice Durant at his home in Maryland to talk about his book, Summer of the White Fox, and After, published by Saint Lucy Books. We talk about how Mark came to photography and why he started his own publishing imprint. Summer of the White Fox, and After is a memoir and a monograph, with a touch of history and philosophy weaved into the essay. It is a recounting of grief and loss that enveloped Mark and his family through distinct events and all during the pandemic. It is also a story about experiencing love and care in ways that were, perhaps, unforseeable before all of the tragedies struck Mark's family. https://www.saintlucybooks.com/shop/p/summer-of-the-white-fox-and-after | https://www.instagram.com/saint_lucy_books/ This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Begin Building your dream photobook library today at https://charcoalbookclub.com Mark Alice Durant is a photographer whose photographs, installations, and performances have been presented internationally including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Artist's Space in New York. In 1991, he co-founded the performance duo ‘men of the world' that for 10 years performed on the streets of Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities. He has written extensively on the nexus of photography, performance and cultural phenomena with essays appearing in such journals as Art in America, Art on Paper, ArtUS, Art Journal, Afterimage, Dear Dave, Exposure, New Art Examiner, and PLUK. Durant is the editor of the online journal Saint Lucy which is devoted to writing about photography, contemporary art and the lovely people of Baltimore. He has contributed to numerous catalogs, monographs and anthologies including The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire, The Gothic, Jimmie Durham and Marco Breuer: Early Recordings. He is author of McDermott and McGough: A History of Photography, Robert Heinecken: A Material History and co-author of Vik Muniz: Seeing is Believing and Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costume and Masquerade. In 2005, Durant co-curated and co-authored Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal. Durant was co-curator of Some Assembly Required: Collage Culture in Post-War America in 2002 and in 2008, he curated Notes on Monumentality at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He has served on the faculties of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA, the University of New Mexico, Syracuse University, and the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Center for Creative Photography, the Illinois Arts Council, and the MacDowell Colony. Professor Durant received his B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art and M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

Garnett Kilberg Cohen's fourth short story collection, Cravings (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024), contains twelve beautifully-written tales. They each start simply before delving into universal human struggles of love, aging, repercussions, and community. Characters mull over or confront decisions and recognize or bemoan past mistakes. A little girl's life changes while she's sneaking olives from the pantry, a woman is plunged back in time while attending the book release of her ex, parents of a disabled child struggle as their marriage frays, the daughter of an ex appears on television, and a woman destroys the reputation of her only friend. The collection is about cravings of one kind or another, but also covers a range of complex emotions that arise over the course of a lifetime. Garnett Kilberg Cohen was born and raised in Ohio and feels a strong connection to the Midwest, a place in her memory that is replete with farms, small towns, car factories and fields of corn and purple clover. As a child, she was paid one cent for every five dandelions she ripped by the roots from her family's yard. Her favorite drink was a cherry phosphate sipped while twirling on a stool at the marble counter of the village drug store. Yet, she was aware of the secrets and trauma often just below the surface. Cravings is Cohen's fourth collection of short stories. She has also published a poetry chapbook, Passion Tour and multiple essays in such places as Rumpus, Antioch Review, The New Yorker online and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her honors include The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, four awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and two Notable Essay citations from Best American Essays. In addition to writing and reading, she enjoys drawing, taking long walks, theater, museums and travel. In recent years, she has been fortunate to travel to far-flung places such as Taiwan, Australia, Laos, Tanzania, Iceland and Mexico. She believes that observation is often the key to understanding and inspiration for writing—even if the travel is just to a new neighborhood in the city where she now lives, Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well. We are on to the second episode of this fall season, this time with Noelle Garcia. Based in the Chicago area, Noelle is an artist and educator who focuses on themes of identity, family history, and recovered narratives in her work. She is an indigenous artist from the Klamath and Paiute tribes. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Noelle has earned awards and fellowships at various institutions such as the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Nevada Arts Council, the Illinois Arts Council, and the American Indian Graduate Center. I had a good time re-listening to our conversation as we discussed how motherhood informed Noelle's beadwork, the ownership of stories, and deciding who to sell one's trauma to. As usual, relax and I hope you enjoy this.Links Mentioned:Noelle's WebsiteNoelle's InstagramEdgar Heap of BirdsTrail of TearsMaternal Perspectives ExhibitionTending Tender ExhibitionCenter For Native Futures and Indigenous ResearchFollow Seeing Color:Seeing Color WebsiteSubscribe on Apple PodcastsFacebookTwitterInstagram

Today, S.L. Wisenberg discusses her Juniper Prize winning essay collection, The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, as well as inspiration, encountering herself when revisiting and revising her work, finishing, locating her fear as a prompt, and more!  S. L. Wisenberg is editor of Another Chicago Magazine and author of the fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In, and two nonfiction books, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, and Other Obsessions and The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Holocaust Education Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council, Wisenberg works as a writing coach, editor, and creative writing instructor in Chicago. Her new book is The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, which was the recipient of the Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to S. L. Wisenberg about her book The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home (U Massachusetts Press, 2023). As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. In this remarkable collection of essays, she recalls chasing popularity, taking a Neiman Marcus sponsored class about fashion at age eleven. She tells funny but poignant stories about her travels in Paris, Vienna, and Poland, including a numbing visit to Auschwitz. In one essay Wisenberg searches through family records and history books and conducts interviews to learn more about Selma, Alabama, where her great grandparents ended up after leaving Lithuania. In another she describes going through sorority rush when she's twenty-nine and teaching at the university. This is a moving, sometimes hilarious exploration of love, life, history. As the reviewer in the Southern Review of Books wrote,” This luxe tapestry of stories and ideas creates a vivid image of Wisenberg as a woman, as Jewish, and as a thinker in the world…. This book is at once intellectual, deeply personal, and delightful.” S.L. Wisenberg is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collection Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions; and a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely. Wisenberg lives in Chicago, where she edits Another Chicago Magazine. When she's not writing, she's walking through her Chicago neighborhood, fixing a stir-fry, or collecting grocery lists that people leave behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I talked to S. L. Wisenberg about her book The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home (U Massachusetts Press, 2023). As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. In this remarkable collection of essays, she recalls chasing popularity, taking a Neiman Marcus sponsored class about fashion at age eleven. She tells funny but poignant stories about her travels in Paris, Vienna, and Poland, including a numbing visit to Auschwitz. In one essay Wisenberg searches through family records and history books and conducts interviews to learn more about Selma, Alabama, where her great grandparents ended up after leaving Lithuania. In another she describes going through sorority rush when she's twenty-nine and teaching at the university. This is a moving, sometimes hilarious exploration of love, life, history. As the reviewer in the Southern Review of Books wrote,” This luxe tapestry of stories and ideas creates a vivid image of Wisenberg as a woman, as Jewish, and as a thinker in the world…. This book is at once intellectual, deeply personal, and delightful.” S.L. Wisenberg is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collection Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions; and a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely. Wisenberg lives in Chicago, where she edits Another Chicago Magazine. When she's not writing, she's walking through her Chicago neighborhood, fixing a stir-fry, or collecting grocery lists that people leave behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Today I talked to S. L. Wisenberg about her book The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home (U Massachusetts Press, 2023). As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. In this remarkable collection of essays, she recalls chasing popularity, taking a Neiman Marcus sponsored class about fashion at age eleven. She tells funny but poignant stories about her travels in Paris, Vienna, and Poland, including a numbing visit to Auschwitz. In one essay Wisenberg searches through family records and history books and conducts interviews to learn more about Selma, Alabama, where her great grandparents ended up after leaving Lithuania. In another she describes going through sorority rush when she's twenty-nine and teaching at the university. This is a moving, sometimes hilarious exploration of love, life, history. As the reviewer in the Southern Review of Books wrote,” This luxe tapestry of stories and ideas creates a vivid image of Wisenberg as a woman, as Jewish, and as a thinker in the world…. This book is at once intellectual, deeply personal, and delightful.” S.L. Wisenberg is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collection Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions; and a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely. Wisenberg lives in Chicago, where she edits Another Chicago Magazine. When she's not writing, she's walking through her Chicago neighborhood, fixing a stir-fry, or collecting grocery lists that people leave behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Sandi Wisenberg joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding home, the structure our books need, her career as a journalist, negotiating a legacy of woman shame and Jewish shame, writing what you have to, and her new collection of memoiristic essays, The Wandering Womb.   Also in this episode: -looking for home -not wrapping our writing up too neatly -a closer look at “the wandering Jew” trope   Further reading about The Wandering Jew trope from rootsmetals.com: https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/the-wandering-jew-trope   Books mentioned in this episode: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy A Chorus of Stones by Susan Griffin Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin Books by Phillip Lopate   S.L. Wisenberg is the author of the forthcoming book, The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, winner of the Juniper Prize in creative nonfiction. It will be published March 31, 2023, by the University of Massachusetts Press. She's also the author of a short-story collection, The Sweetheart Is In; an essay collection, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, & Other Obsessions; and a nonfiction chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She is a fourth-generation native Texan who lives in Chicago and edits Another Chicago Magazine. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a BSJ from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She was a feature writer for the Miami Herald and has published prose and poetry in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, and many other places. Her anthologized work is in Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, Creating Nonfiction: A Guide and Anthology, Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, Life is Short--Art is Shorter, and a number of other books. For ten years she was co-director of Northwestern's then-MA/MFA in Creative Writing program and was a graduate faculty recipient of a Distinguished Teacher Award. She has been the literary editor of TriQuarterly, the creative nonfiction editor of Another Chicago Magazine. and is now the editor of ACM. She's received a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She was the Coal Royalty Chair for a semester at the University of Alabama, teaching in the MFA program. Wisenberg has read her work and lectured at many universities and colleges, including Brown, Creighton, Minnesota State, Texas A&M, University of Tampa, Ripon, and Lafayette. Besides Northwestern, she has taught at DePaul, Roosevelt, Western Michigan, North Park University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is working on a collection of short stories that are pre- and post-Holocaust and have a connection to old movies and Houston. One of these was runner-up in Narrative Magazine's Fall 2021 contest, and another won Narrative's Spring 22 contest.    Connect with Sandi: https://www.facebook.com/sandi.wisenberg Sandi Wisenberg @SLWisenberg slwisenberg.com Sandi's first three books: https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=wisenberg Sandi's forthcoming book:  https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781625347350 or Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wandering-womb-s-l-wisenberg/1142599024?ean=9781625347350 -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer's Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa 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 a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.   More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/ Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank   Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

In today's deep dive, we'll hear a conversation with the executive director of the Illinois Arts Council Agency about the goals of their statewide listening tour.

Just Like That was published as part of the short story collection So Different Now, which was released by CCLaP in 2011. The collection represents Part Two of the linked short story collection UPSTATE re-released in 2020 by Tortoise Books (and originally released under the title The New York Stories by CCLaP in 2015). Just Like That is read by Giano Cromley (BIO below). INTRO/OUTRO music is Drinking of Me and was generously provided by Monkey Wrench. READER BIO Giano Cromley's latest novel is The Prince of Infinite Space. He's twice been a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. He is the recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and recently completed a BookEnds Fellowship with Stony Brook University. He's an English professor at Kennedy-King College in Chicago, where he is chair of the Communications Department, and sits on the committee for the Center of Equity for Creative Arts. https://www.tanzerben.com/blog/upstate-the-podcast

Sue Greenberg, Executive Director for VLAA, stopped by to talk about the organization and its works. St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts (VLAA) supports the creative community by providing free legal and accounting assistance and a wide variety of affordable educational programs. They serve artists of every discipline and career level, nonprofit cultural organizations and small arts-related businesses. Their organization enhances the region's cultural fabric and offers volunteer opportunities. ---- About VLAA: Their volunteer accountants and lawyers donate their time and expertise to help their appreciative clients navigate the complicated world of finance and law. VLAA also provides information and skills training designed to help the creative community develop sound business practices and protect their rights. ----- Founded in 1982 by St. Louis University School of Law and the city's Arts and Humanities Commission, VLAA is housed in the High Low in Grand Center. Our primary service area is greater St. Louis, which includes St. Louis City, St. Charles, St. Louis, and Jefferson counties in Missouri and Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois. They also serve Columbia and Eastern Missouri. ------  This nonprofit, tax-exempt organization is supported by the Regional Arts Commission with additional funds provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; foundations; law and accounting firms; corporations and individuals. -----   

In this episode, we welcome poet Angela Narciso Torres to discuss her collection TO THE BONE (Sundress).Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books 2021) Blood Orange, winner of the 2013 Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry, and the chapbook, To the Bone (Sundress Publications 2020). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Cortland Review, and Poetry Northwest. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She received First Prize in the Yeats Poetry Prize (W.B. Yeats Society of New York). New City magazine named her one of Chicago's Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in San Diego. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry.Twitter: https://twitter.com/angela_n_torresAuthor site:  https://www.angelanarcisotorres.comTo The Bone (Sundress): http://www.sundresspublications.com/e-chaps/totheboneWe All Face the Tremendous Meat on the Teppan by Naoko Fujimoto | author website: https://www.naokofujimoto.com Terrance Hayes: https://terrancehayes.com/about/Thank you for listening to The Chapbook!Noah Stetzer is on Twitter @dcNoahRoss White is on Twitter @rosswhite You can find all our episodes and contact us with your chapbook questions and suggestions here: https://bullcitypress.com/the-chapbook/Bull City Press website https://bullcitypress.comBull City Press on Twitter https://twitter.com/bullcitypress Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bullcitypress/ and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bullcitypress 

This docu-story looks at the transformation of an abandoned, Gilded Age mansion as it evolves from limbo into a literary arts center on the lakeshore of Evanston, IL. The "revivification" endeavor, spearheaded by author and artist Audrey Niffenegger, captivates host Suzanne Clores who digs deeper into the mansion's past. Made possible by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. 

Rowen Schussheim-Anderson, professor at Augustana College, has also taught at The Figge Art Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, National Endowment for the Arts' Artists-in-Education program, Maricopa Community College and Arizona State University where she earned an MFA. She has served as a panelist for the Illinois Arts Council.

Self-Portrait Ian Weaver is an Artist and Professor at Saint Mary's College, South Bend, IN. His M.F.A. is from Washington University in St Louis (2008). He has exhibited at the South Bend Museum of Art; The Chicago Cultural Center; the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; and Saint Louis Art Museum. His residencies include Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts; Ox-Bow; the ISCP Residency, New York; and Yaddo and the Millay Colony, both in upstate NY. Awards include the Stone and DeGuire Contemporary Art Award; Artadia and the Joan Mitchell Foundation, both based in NY; and the Illinois Arts Council.

Mandy Morrison, Ridgewood, Queens, NY 2021 Mandy Morrison's process explores how the body projects itself in varying contexts.  Her  particular  focus is on physicality; its expression, and how it's capacity for agency and mobilization is affected by colonized or corporatized structures. With a practice that straddles between Baltimore and New York, she generates projects that link capital and control with the politics of movement. Her interest derives from a body's meaning, in having different forms of entitlement to public, private and mediated space. Over the years, her collaborative efforts with video and performance engage with architectural environments and include, dancers, youth groups, and local community participants. Her works have been performed, exhibited and screened internationally at festivals, galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Dixon Place (NYC), the Kunstlerhaus e.V., Hamburg, CINESONIKA in Vancouver, and the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore. Grants, fellowships and residencies include the Illinois Arts Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil. A distinguished educator she has been faculty at Pratt Institute and Rutgers University, and a visiting artist at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston, and SUNY Oswego. In the summer of 2021 she is performing with other artists in the work of Maja Bekan (Netherlands/Slovenia) in “Hold It Together (We Have Each Other)” at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY developed over 2020 during Covid. She is a 2021 recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Tree of Life Foundation. The book mentioned in the interview is Underland: A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane. Housekeeping (Video Still) 2018 Single-channel video installation with audio Dimensions: 9'5” x 16′ Duration: 01:46 (loop) Spirits of Promise and Loss, 2020 (Installation view) Six-channel video installation with audio Dimensions: 4' x 40' Duration: 02:31 (loop)

A Camera Obscura (Red Hen Press, 2021) by Carl Marcum is a lyrical exploration of external and internal worlds. The heavens described in these poems could be the stars glittering above our heads, the pathways of faith, or the connection between human beings. Playing with scientific understandings of the world, along with the linguistic conventions of the poetic form, A Camera Obscura is a compelling journey that simultaneously drifts through the cosmos while being rooted to the ground beneath our feet. “When the sun rose it was smaller than in my dream. I had been asleep for what felt a long time, and woke confused and claustrophobic. The texture of the sky still magnetized me, a desert bright day. But the light is streaked like too much everything pulled to the edges of a window in storm.” — from “A Science Fiction” Carl Marcum is a Chicano poet from Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the collection Cue Lazarus, and his poems have appeared in the anthologies The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry and Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction & Fantasy. Carl has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Taos Writers Conference. And he has also served as a Canto Mundo Fellow from 2011 to 2015. Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. 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

A Camera Obscura (Red Hen Press, 2021) by Carl Marcum is a lyrical exploration of external and internal worlds. The heavens described in these poems could be the stars glittering above our heads, the pathways of faith, or the connection between human beings. Playing with scientific understandings of the world, along with the linguistic conventions of the poetic form, A Camera Obscura is a compelling journey that simultaneously drifts through the cosmos while being rooted to the ground beneath our feet. “When the sun rose it was smaller than in my dream. I had been asleep for what felt a long time, and woke confused and claustrophobic. The texture of the sky still magnetized me, a desert bright day. But the light is streaked like too much everything pulled to the edges of a window in storm.” — from “A Science Fiction” Carl Marcum is a Chicano poet from Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the collection Cue Lazarus, and his poems have appeared in the anthologies The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry and Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction & Fantasy. Carl has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Taos Writers Conference. And he has also served as a Canto Mundo Fellow from 2011 to 2015. Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

A Camera Obscura (Red Hen Press, 2021) by Carl Marcum is a lyrical exploration of external and internal worlds. The heavens described in these poems could be the stars glittering above our heads, the pathways of faith, or the connection between human beings. Playing with scientific understandings of the world, along with the linguistic conventions of the poetic form, A Camera Obscura is a compelling journey that simultaneously drifts through the cosmos while being rooted to the ground beneath our feet. “When the sun rose it was smaller than in my dream. I had been asleep for what felt a long time, and woke confused and claustrophobic. The texture of the sky still magnetized me, a desert bright day. But the light is streaked like too much everything pulled to the edges of a window in storm.” — from “A Science Fiction” Carl Marcum is a Chicano poet from Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the collection Cue Lazarus, and his poems have appeared in the anthologies The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry and Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction & Fantasy. Carl has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Taos Writers Conference. And he has also served as a Canto Mundo Fellow from 2011 to 2015. Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Chris Sullivan is a filmmaker and performance artist. Working in long form alternative narrative, his features include 'Consuming Spirits' and 'The Orbit of Minor Satellites'. He advises with an open mind to students' direction and desires, his goal being to help them make strong work that has unique vision. He works well with writing, visuals, sound design, animation, comics, sculpture, painting, and drawing. He focuses on the reception of the work to the viewer, audience, or reader and how to make what is important to you visible in complicated ways. Chris is a Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation (1989). BFA, 1983, Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Screenings: Film Forum, NY; Cinefamily, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Biennial, NY; Boston Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Houston Fine Arts Museum; Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago. Film Festivals: Tribeca, NY; Annecy International Animated Film Festival, France; Zagreb Film Festival, Croatia; Festiwal Animator, Puznam Poland (1st Prize); Cork Film Festival, Ireland; Istanbul, Luxembourg City Film Festival; Fantoche International Animation Film Festival, Switzerland; Animatou, Geneva; Holland Animation Film Festival, Utrecht; Melbourne International Animation Festival, Australia. Awards: John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship; Bush Foundation Fellowship; Illinois Arts Council; NEA Regional fellowships; Creative Capital Film Grant. I am presently in the final stages of my new feature film, The Orbit of Minor Satellites.

“The more we keep discovering, the more it keeps us alive and vibrant.” — Dianne A. Allen You cannot see, taste, or touch music. But you can hear it, and you can most certainly feel it. Music can help relieve the stress, burden and bring you to a more peaceful place. It keeps us alive and vibrant. In this week’s episode, we are joined by Rich Daniels. Part One of ‘Rich Daniels Advice on Precision and Vision’ Music was always a passion for Daniels as he realized at a very young age that it was possible to captivate an audience with a live performance while touching their hearts and minds in an indelible way.  Rich Daniels has been creating and conducting memorable musical concerts and events since 1974 when he began his professional journey as a high school freshman on the great south side of Chicago. He views the opportunity he has been given to have a career in music as a measure of service to others. “When music resonates with our hearts, it can heal and touch us in many ways.” – Dianne A. Allen  Rich is also traveling the country conducting regional orchestras (i.e., Baltimore Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Richmond Philharmonic, Hartford Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Nashville Symphony, etc.) for the estate of Jerry Garcia performing a “Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration” with legendary guitarist/vocalist Warren Haynes. Through the vehicle of The City Lights Orchestra, he has been given a chance to participate in thousands of programs nationwide for associations, corporations and non-profit organizations. Additionally, Rich and his colleagues have had the chance to take the stage and perform in concert with some of the greatest musical artists of the past half-century.  Wherever the need and whatever the medium, Daniels and his musicians have proven they are up to the task of making great music a part of every performance and assignment they have been given. Part Two of ‘Rich Daniels Advice on Precision and Vision’ Artists as diverse as Ray Charles, Mel Torme, Garth Brooks, Rosemary Clooney, Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, Michael Buble, and David Foster have all relied upon the ability of Rich Daniels and his orchestra to collaborate with them to create their special brand of magic in performance.  In recent years Daniels has also been busy in the studio composing and producing recordings for a wide range of projects. As the television and film industry has once again discovered Chicago as a great place to work, Daniels was recently tapped to be the musical supervisor for three different television series and allowed to compose music for the pilot of the Emmy-award winning show “Boss” starring Kelsey Grammer and filmed in Chicago. “Music shouldn't be viewed as something that requires someone to be better than somebody else.” – Rich Daniels Rich and the orchestra were also featured in a concert on PBS this past Fall for the Horatio Alger Society of Distinguished Americans. These TV duties have also included being the on-camera music director for five seasons for the hit show on FOX, EMPIRE starring Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, and Jussie Smollett. Rich has recently music directed for Jussie & Terrence on a PBS concert filmed at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago and most recently with Jussie and Renee Fleming at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with the National Symphony Orchestra.   Live music is meant to be a joyous experience that should entertain and inspire the listener while taking the audience on an emotional journey that allows them to be empowered by the spirit of this non-tangible entity. About Rich Daniels  Rich is most proud of the various charitable organizations his career has allowed him to serve and promote, especially The Mercy Home for Boys & Girls in Chicago (former board chairman), the DePaul University School of Music (current board chairman) and the Archdiocese Office of Human Dignity & Solidarity (chairman).  Rich was appointed by Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn to the board of the Illinois Arts Council in 2013. He is also the senior board member at the Chicago Federation of Musicians and a delegate to the Chicago Federation of Labor. Rich and his lovely wife Kathy have been married for 32 years and have 4 beautiful children: Rich (30), Mary Kate (29), Emily (26) and Maggie (24). Son Rich was recently married to Maggie Black in July of 2017! Rich Daniels knows that he’s a very lucky guy.  And that through hard work, perseverance and tenacity, together with a strong sense of faith, all things are possible.      JAZZ/POP ADDENDUM During the 1980’s and 1990’s Rich toured extensively with former Tonight Show drummer Ed Shaughnessy. Additionally, Rich also was asked by the estate of Woody Herman to take the band out in 1991 for several tours around the country.  During this same period of time, Rich played for or conducted for Louis Bellson, Ray Charles, Mel Torme, Buddy DeFranco, Phil Wilson and many “pop” personalities including Garth Brooks, Dennis DeYoung, Michael Buble and David Foster.  Rich was also a featured soloist with Laurel Masse’ both in concert and on several of her recordings.  BOARD AFFILIATIONS Former Chairman, Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (current member of the Board of Regents & Board of Directors). Chairman, DePaul University School of Music.  Chairman, Archdiocese Office for Human Dignity & Solidarity.  Board Member, Irish American Labor Council.  Board Member, Illinois Arts Council (Appointed by Governor Pat Quinn in 2013).  Senior Board Member, Chicago Federation of Musicians (elected position since 1992).  Delegate to the Chicago Federation of Labor.  Delegate to the American Federation of Musicians.  Leader Council Member, The Kennedy Forum.  The City Lights Foundation (Founder). HONORS & AWARDS Distinguished Alumni, DePaul University (2004) Immigrant Awareness Award, Chicago Catholic Archdiocese (2012) Heart of Harmony, Hope & Healing Honoree (2016) Irish American Labor Council, Labor Honoree (2016)  Bishop Quarter Award, Chicago Catholic Archdiocese (2016) How to Connect with Dianne A. Allen You have a vision inside to create something bigger than you. What you need are a community and a mentor. The 6-month Visionary Leader Program will move you forward. You will grow, transform and connect. http://bit.ly/DianneAAllen Join our Facebook Group Someone Gets Me Follow our Dianne’s Facebook Page: Dianne A. Allen Email contact: dianne@visionsapplied.com Dianne’s Mentoring Services: msdianneallen.com Website: www.visionsapplied.com Be sure to take a second and subscribe to the show and share it with anyone you think will benefit. Until next time, remember the world needs your special gift, so let your light shine!

We are so excited to talk to Elizabeth Wetmore today, the author of the novel Valentine, which we loved. We also love her story about working on a book as long as it needs, and how she's balanced many jobs while believing in her writing all along, even when she's been, in her own words, "late to the game in every possible way." So this episode features a fantastic practical discussion about making all of that work, from being led by your love for characters and place to asking for help. We also discuss the responsibility she felt in writing a diverse cast of characters in a West Texas setting, how she got the place right, and about writing about a place you deliberately left. Before devoting herself to writing, Elizabeth variously tended bar, taught English, drove a cab, edited psychology dissertations, and painted silos and cooling towers at a petrochemical plant. For a time, she lived in a one-room cabin in the woods outside of Flagstaff, Arizona while she worked as a classical music announcer. A native of West Texas, she is most at home in the desert, near the sea, or on the side of a mountain. She now lives in Chicago. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, and numerous other residencies and awards.  As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá.  Have a question you'd like us to try to answer, or a topic you'd love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here.  Thanks for listening, and get to work! If you like Marginally, you should check out #amwriting, with Jess and KJ, where two much more experienced writers talk through their processes with each other and celebrated guests.

Introduction: Hey everybody, Welcome to Tellers of the Untold the podcast. We have not been present for a few weeks because we were completing or completing the documentary Sankofa Chicago. I’m so excited for you guys to hear about it for you to screen it sometime soon, and thanks to the Illinois Arts Council for […] The post Chicago-Past and Present appeared first on .

Introduction: Hey everybody, Welcome to Tellers of the Untold the podcast. We have not been present for a few weeks because we were completing or completing the documentary Sankofa Chicago. I'm so excited for you guys to hear about it for you to screen it sometime soon, and thanks to the Illinois Arts Council for […] The post Chicago-Past and Present appeared first on .

Congrats! You, us, we have made it through two whole seasons of this wacky little experiment to get poets to talk to us about poems. Can't think of more lovely way to close us out than with this conversation with the one and only Justin Phillip Reed on Reginald Shepherd's "Occurrences across the Chromatic Scale". Listen to us astonish, awe, swell, delight, and learn from, over, below this poem. Then be sure to go back and re-listen the very first episode. It's a treat! JUSTIN PHILLIP REED is an American poet, essayist, and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. He participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures. He was born and raised in South Carolina and enjoys smelling like outside REGINALD SHEPHERD was born on April 10, 1963, in New York City and raised in tenements and housing projects in the Bronx. He received his BA from Bennington College in 1988 and MFA degrees from Brown University and the University of Iowa. His first collection, Some Are Drowning (1994), was chosen by Carolyn Forché for the Associated Writing Programs' Award in Poetry. His other collections are Fata Morgana (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards; Otherhood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Wrong (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); and Angel, Interrupted (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press, 2007) and the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). His work has been widely anthologized, and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. His honors and awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lived in Pensacola, Florida. Shepherd died on September 10, 2008.

During the first few stories, we think the book centers on Manfred, an Austrian Holocaust survivor whose parents converted out of Judaism to save him from centuries of oppression. He and his third wife, Greta, are forced to mourn the accidental death of their youngest child, a trauma that affects them deeply but differently. Only after several stories focused on Manfred’s upbringing and young adulthood do we realize that the protagonist is his wife and then widow, Greta. Starting in Mexico, the stories shift back and forth in time and place, from Europe to Chicago to Door County, Wisconsin. We follow Greta’s emotional journey, spiritual longings, and religious awakening as she survives the complexities of a full life. Today I talked to Maggie Kast about her new book Side by Side but Never Face to Face: A Novella and Stories (Orison Books, 2020) Kast received an M.F.A. in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published fiction in The Sun, Nimrod, Rosebud, Paper Street and others. A chapter of her memoir, published in ACM/Another Chicago Magazine, won a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council. Her essays have appeared in America, Image, Writer’s Chronicle, and Superstition Review and have been anthologized in Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs (Beacon Press) and Gravity Pulls You In: Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum (Woodbine House). Kast is a Board Member of Links Hall, an incubator and presenter of dance and performance art in Chicago. When not writing, Maggie loves cooking, and although she loves traditional midwestern food, also specialized in Viennese cuisine. If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/join G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her healthy, awesome recipes.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a new episode of Teachers’ Lounge, roots musician, jazz guitarist & music teacher: Jim Kanas. He’s retiring from DeKalb Public Schools this year and has been an artist-in-residence with the Illinois Arts Council at schools across the state. Jim talked to host Peter Medlin about e-learning, being an artist outside of the big city, his passion for American music and, obviously, we didn’t have him on without making him play a little something. Also, Jim was featured on an episode of Sessions from Studio A! Listen to his performance right here. In the meantime, we want you to be a part of the show. We want to hear from you: students, parents, teachers. Send us an email at teacherslounge@niu.edu and tell us what it’s been like learning or teaching from home. And, if you want, record your thoughts & feelings into your phone with your voice memos app and then send the voice file to teacherslounge@niu.edu and we’ll have it on the show. SHOW NOTES Educator(s) in this episode: Jim

Edra Soto is a Puerto Rico born, Chicago based, interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator whose architectural projects connect with communities. Soto's temporary modular SCREENHOUSE pavilions are evocative symbols of her cultural assimilation that we can enter and share. Each free-standing structure functions as both sculptural object and social gathering place. Couched in beauty, her ongoing OPEN 24 HOURS project offers a different visceral encounter — with evidence of displacement and want. The aesthetic display of cast-off liquor bottles culled from steadily accumulating detritus in the historically Black neighborhood she now calls home suggests that we consider the personal and communal impact of poverty and racism. During a studio visit with the artist in Northwest Chicago, we talk about recent iterations of these projects. In concert with the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Millennium Park Foundation commissioned the artist to produce a temporary gathering place in one of the park’s outdoor galleries. Only steps from Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, she worked with a team to construct SCREENHOUSE. The 10-foot high pavilion made of 400 charcoal-hued, 12-inch cast concrete blocks is part of an ongoing project, an architectural series inspired by iron grills and decorative concrete screen blocks found throughout the Caribbean and the American South. New versions of OPEN 24 HOURS are on view in two 2020 exhibitions. One appears in Open House: Domestic Thresholds at the Albright-Knox Museum, in Buffalo, New York. Cognac bottles carefully arranged on shelves with decorative panels reveal the artist’s connection to two places she calls home. More liquor bottles command attention in the three-part installation she designed for State of the Art 2020. Featuring work by artists from across the United States, the exhibition celebrates the opening of The Momentary, a new contemporary art space at the Crystal Bridges Museum, in Bentonville, Arkansas. Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio  Related Episodes and Photo Features: Architecture with a Sense of Place, Views—Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, Fresh VUE: Chicago Art and Architecture 2017 Related Links: Edra Soto, The Momentary, State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Knox-Albright Museum, Millennium Park, Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019 About Edra Soto: Born in Puerto Rico and based in Chicago, Edra Soto is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, curator, and co-director of the outdoor project space THE FRANKLIN. She is invested in creating and providing visual and educational models propelled by empathy and generosity. Her recent projects, which are motivated by civic and social actions, focus on fostering relationships with a wide range of communities.  Recent venues presenting Soto’s work include Chicago Cultural Center (IL), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Pérez Art Museum Miami (FL), Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (PR), Hunter EastHarlem Gallery (NY), UIC Gallery 400 (IL), Smart Museum (IL), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (NE), DePaul Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (IL). Soto was awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the DCASE for Individual Artist Grant from the City of Chicago, the 3Arts Make A Wave award, and 3Arts Projects grants, and the Illinois Arts Council grant.  Soto holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Bachelor of Arts from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico. She teaches Introduction to Social Engagement at University of Illinois in Chicago and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  About SCREENHOUSE: Decorative screens, known as rejas and quiebrasoles, are ubiquitous in Soto’s birthplace in Puerto Rico. In her SCREENHOUSE series, Soto transforms the quiebrasol form from a planar screen that divides public from private into a nearly fully enclosed, free-standing structure that functions as both sculptural object and social gathering place. About OPEN 24 HOURS: Witnessing the excessive accumulation of litter and detritus in the historic African American neighborhood of East Garfield Park where she lives motivated Edra Soto to initiate this ongoing project. Since December 2016, Soto has been collecting, cleaning and classifying cast-off liquor bottles to create installations that display the impact of racism and poverty on this marginalized community in Chicago. Bourbon Empire, the book quoted below, recounts the historic connection between African Americans and cognac from its genesis in the 1930s to contemporary repercussions instigated by hip-hop and rap culture. “Cognac’s relationship with African American consumers started later, when black soldiers stationed in southwest France were introduced to it during both world wars. The connection between cognac producers and black consumers was likely bolstered by the arrival of black artists and musicians... France appreciated these distinctive art forms before the U.S. did, continuing a French tradition dating back to Alexis de Tocqueville of understanding aspects of American culture better than Americans did. For African Americans, the elegant cognac of a country that celebrated their culture instead of marginalizing it must have tasted sweet ... During the 1990s, cognac sales were slow, and the industry was battling an image populated by fusty geriatrics. Then references to cognac began surfacing in rap lyrics, a phenomenon that peaked in 2001 with Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy’s hit “Pass the Courvoisier,” causing sales of the brand to jump 30 percent. During the next five years, other rappers teamed up with brands, and increased overall sales of cognac in the U.S. by a similar percentage, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.” —Reid Mitenbuler, author of Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey

Street artist David Stocker includes everyone in his Global Climate Strike performance on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. As young people around the world organized their communities Friday for climate change awareness strikes, a couple dozen Rockfordians staged David Stocker’s public theater protest on State Street. The world-wide protests demanding action against climate change preceded a weekend of United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in New York where world leaders, from government, business and civil society address the global climate emergency. This is a special episode of “Meet the Artist” where we get to hear the confluence of art and activism through Stocker’s street theater. From Market Street to State Street, protesters carried an 80-foot-long black tube that was topped with a two-headed snake figure. Stocker calls his creation the “black snake of death” - a symbol of corporate greed and environmental abuse. Other protesters carried signs and chanted “Climate justice now” over a rhythm section of drums and a tambourine. The street performance was the most recent of Stocker’s lifetime of creating free art that anybody can consume and participate in. “I’m a public artist. I believe in the science, but I’m not a scientist. So, what can I do? I thought that bringing artwork into resistance and movements and social activism...I thought that’d be a good thing,” said Stocker. “Some people say the arts shouldn’t have politics in it, but I really don’t think it’s about politics. I think it’s about the human experience.” Stocker, a 30-year Rockford resident, has used music, theater and activism to influence social change for 25 years. He was born in Philadelphia, grew up in England, earned a masters degree in theater at Yale, then came to the midwest, and Rockford specifically, for the residency at the Illinois Arts Council in the late 1980s. His environmental activism started when he participated as a kid in the first Earth Day. He’s a member of “One Drum” a multicultural ensemble that toured the midwest hosting educational music workshops. Stocker knows that the performing arts won’t win wars, but the interpersonal engagement it fosters can be a powerful experience. “In an age of moving so fast we need to have real conversations with people,” he said in a recent phone interview. Listen to the podcast online at rrstar.com, and subscribe to "From the Newsroom: Rockford Register Star" wherever you find your podcasts. More information Rockford Register Star: www.rrstar.com Host: Scott P. Yates; 815-987-1348; syates@rrstar.com; @scottpyates Article: Protests in Rockford and across the world urge climate action Sound: Scott P. Yates, various field recordings from the Global Climate Strike march in Rockford, Illinois, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019.

Michelle Bolinger received her MFA from the University of Washington in 2005, and her BFA from Indiana University in 2003. She has had solo shows at Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle, WA as well as Roman Susan Gallery, The Presidents Gallery and DIG all located in Chicago, IL. Recent group exhibitions include Soak. Stroke. Scratchat Melanee Cooper Gallery, Chicago, and New American Paintings: Midwest Editionat the Elmhurst Art Museum. She has taught at Northwestern University, Loyola University, Lake Forest College and Harold Washington College. In 2012 she was a Visiting Professor & Artist in Residence at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has been awarded multiple grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Chicago Artists Assistance Program. The books mentioned in the interview are Becoming, by Michelle Obama and The Gruffalo. Light Tuck, 2018, Oil on canvas, 17"x14" Crescents, 2018, Oil and graphite on board, 15"x14"

ERIC TRULES is an Associate Professor of Practice at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts, a multi-disciplinary artist, and was recently a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Studies (2008-13). He is a native of New York City and has been a professional in the performing, literary, and filmic arts for over 45years. He began his professional artistic career as a modern dancer with Shirley Mordine’s Dance Troupe in residence at Columbia College Chicago in 1970, and then co-founded Mo Ming, the nationally renowned Dance-Theater in Chicago. Trules was one of the first federally funded CETA grant recipients in America for his dance work, which also received support from the Illinois Arts Council and the NEA.   CONNECT with Eric HERE LISTEN to Eric's TEDx talk HERE   BeTheTalk is a 7 day a week podcast where Nathan Eckel chats with talkers from TEDx & branded events. Tips tools and techniques that can help you give the talk to change the world at BeTheTalk.com !

ERIC TRULES is an Associate Professor of Practice at USC's School of Dramatic Arts, a multi-disciplinary artist, and was recently a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Studies (2008-13). He is a native of New York City and has been a professional in the performing, literary, and filmic arts for over 45years. He began his professional artistic career as a modern dancer with Shirley Mordine's Dance Troupe in residence at Columbia College Chicago in 1970, and then co-founded Mo Ming, the nationally renowned Dance-Theater in Chicago. Trules was one of the first federally funded CETA grant recipients in America for his dance work, which also received support from the Illinois Arts Council and the NEA.   CONNECT with Eric HERE LISTEN to Eric's TEDx talk HERE   BeTheTalk is a 7 day a week podcast where Nathan Eckel chats with talkers from TEDx & branded events. Tips tools and techniques that can help you give the talk to change the world at BeTheTalk.com !

Naomi Ashley grew up on a farm outside the small town of Moville, Iowa and has been a part of the Chicago music scene for over 17 years. As a singer-songwriter, she draws from American folk, roots and country traditions to create a body of work ranging from witty and satirical to poetic and heartfelt. Her 2007 album, Another Year Or So, was funded by a grant from the Chicago Artist Assistance Program. Her most recent album, Trying to Fly, was partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council

Chicago artist Victoria Fuller has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and fellowship awards from the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities, and the Illinois Arts Council. She also received an Illinois Arts Council CAAP Grant, and was a resident artist at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY and Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL. Her large-scale public sculpture “Shoe of Shoes” is in the collection of Caleres Shoes in St. Louis. Sound Transit in Seattle commissioned another large-scale sculpture, “Global Garden Shovel,” and she was commissioned by Comed to create a the sculpture, Peas and Quiet.” In 2016 she was featured in Sculpture Magazine's May issue, as part of the show “Disruption” at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. Her most recent large-scale public sculpture, titled ”Canoe Fan,” is installed along the Huron River in Ann Arbor, MI.  “Domestic Disturbances” Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago August 4 - October 1, 2017 Alberto Aguilar, Robert Burnier, Lily Dithrich, Victoria Fuller, Alyssa Miserendino and Alison Ruttan, curated by Victoria Fuller Opening Reception: Friday, August 4, 2017, 6-9pm Artist Talk & Performance: Sunday, September 24, 2017 at 2pm “Domestic Disturbances” is an exhibition of work relating to the home, the human condition, and how our lives are reflected in what we call home. Issues represented in the work of Alberto Aguilar, Robert Burnier, Lily Dithrich, Victoria Fuller, Alyssa Miserendino and Alison Ruttan deal with what constitutes a home, and how homes reflect our selves, outwardly and psychologically. In this exhibition, Robert Burnier's suspended tent installation suggests the impermanence of home, whether in the urban environment, or in war-torn countries. So too does Alison Ruttan find urgent subject matter in the displacement of people, with ceramic sculptures of bombed buildings in Syria. In his photographs and installations, Alberto Aguilar explores formal and personal connections to objects from his own home, and from the homes of local Ukrainian Village residents. Lily Dithrich and Victoria Fuller also draw from everyday domestic objects; the former finds hidden meaning through the manipulation of furniture, and the latter manifests ordinary household items in extraordinary ways. Alyssa Miserendino re-photographs the photographs made by her father, who coped with a personality disorder by using a camera to connect with his family and home life. Homes have such a deep connection to our identity and it is where our most intimate moments play out, for better and for worse. The loss of home by war, disaster, or economic hardship can be devastating. Objects we collect are both personal and impersonal – some have a personal history, and connect to our personal identity, and others are of throwaway value or simply utilitarian. The artists in “Domestic Disturbances” approach the subject of home through psychological and symbolic perspectives, as well as situational ones.  

Angela Narciso Torres’s poetry collection, Blood Orange, won the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry. Her work appears in Spoon River Poetry Review, Nimrod, Colorado Review, CimarrOn Review, Drunken Boat, and others. She is a graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. New City magazine named her one of Chicago’s Lit 50 in 2016. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she is a senior poetry editor for RHINO and a reader for New England Review. For more information, please visit: www.angelanarcisotorres.com

Bad at Sports Center Episode 4 from the studios of WLPN Radio! Rebecca Keller! http://rebeccakeller.net/home.html Rebecca Keller's numerous awards include two Fulbrights, an American Association of Museum International Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council. She has exhibited widely, including exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center; the International Waldkunst Biennial; the Estonian National Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum; the International Museum of Surgical Science; the Tartu Art Museum; Elmhurst Art Museum and many others. In recent years her work has focused on history as a category and engine for art-making: her Excavating History projects use art and writing to expand and complicate the established narratives of historic sites. These "site-complicit' interventions have occurred nationally and internationally, in locations as diverse an anatomy theater in Estonia to the Jane Addams Hull House Museum in Chicago. Her book about this work:  Excavating History; When Artists Take on Historic Sites was published in 2012 by Stepsister Press. A second edition came out in 2015. Keller was cofounder of YoYoMagazine.org, an online journal of art, writing and creativity. She also writes fiction, and was a finalist for the Chicago Literary Guild’s 2013 prose award, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. We also tackle "Hegemony," Dana gives us a heads up on the "T," and mention 5 things you could have seen this week.  

This week on Bad at Sports, NYC/BAS: Amanda Browder and Caroline Burghardt return to the airwaves with an interview with New York based artist Caroline Wells Chandler. Our interview was done a few months after his installation at Spring Break art fair 2016 / Field Projects in NYC. The quote below is from the statement for this exhibition.  "Chandler pulls inspiration from the story of Hermaphroditus and his merging with the water nymph Salmacis. Melding this ancient Greek myth with contemporary references and creations, from transgender Santa Claus to beach bums and cowbois, the artist playfully immerses the audience in an exploration of transgender identity. Contemporary identities morph and fluctuate, pushed forward by radical practices of self-creation and influenced by biological impulses and desires. While the shaping and reshaping, identifying and unidentifying, copying and pasting may seem fanciful at first glance, the stakes for trans and lgbtq-identified people are deep and pressing. Chandler’s work acknowledges the deep stakes at hand, while embracing a joyful, celebratory aesthetic, combining playful colors and forms with a confident embrace of sexuality. "  For all in Chicago in 2017 look out for his solo exhibition at Andrew Rafacz Gallery.  Link to Field Projects and Caroline Wells Chandler's site :  http://www.fieldprojectsgallery.com/springbreak2016/   Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Caroline Wells Chandler currently lives and works in New York. He completed his foundation studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and received his BFA cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 2007. He has shown at numerous institutions including: Zurcher Studio (NY), Anna Kustera (NY), Field Projects (NY), Vox Populi (PA), Sanctuary (PA), N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art (MI), Open Gallery (TN), The Bascom (NC), Arlington Arts Center (VA), and the Stieglitz Museum (‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) among others. Chandler is a 2011 MFA recipient in painting at the Yale School of Art where he was awarded the Ralph Mayer Prize for proficiency in materials and techniques. He lives and works in New York. Queering the Lines will mark the third solo show within a year for the artist. Amanda Browder www.amandabrowder.com   ALSO: Go see Richard's show! OPENS SUNDAY DECEMBER 4th! 3-6PM Riverside Arts Center 32 East Quincy St Riverside, IL  60302 www.riversideartscenter.com Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 1-5pm    Good Machines Artists: Taylor Hokanson in collaboration with J. Stephen Lee, Richard Holland, Niki Passath, Jesse Seay, and Philip von Zweck Curated by: Natalie Jacobson Opening reception: December 4th, 3-6, with artist talk from 5-6pm. Family Day event: December 10th, 2-4 "This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and sponsorship from the Riverside Township.” Here’s a brief blurb about the show: How can we use technology to better connect to others and create new experiences for ourselves? This group exhibition explores this question through works that exploit machine and technology and use interactivity as a form of performance, while looking at the role that potentiality and destruction play within those experiences. Artists whose work often uses technology as a medium are invited to create machines that will generate a gesture, a kind of “drawing” in the form of a mark, sound, light, object, or movement. Due to direct or indirect public interaction with the machines, and within the confines of the gallery space, these drawings will change over time, and possibly be destroyed in the process. Come join in!   Here’s the page link on the RAC website, it has artist bios and such: http://www.riversideartscenter.com/good-machines/  

Please join Melissa Studdard and Tiferet Journal on 5/21/15 at 7PM EST for a conversation with writers and editors, Jon Tribble and Allison Joseph. Jon Tribble is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by Southern Illinois University Press. He is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship Award in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council, and his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology. His work was selected as a winner of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College.  He teaches creative writing and literature, and directs undergraduate and graduate students in internships and independent study in editing and literary publishing for the Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  His first collection of poems, Natural State, will be published by Glass Lyre Press in 2016. Allison Joseph is the author of the books What Keeps Us Here, Soul Train, In Every Seam Imitation of Life, and Worldly Pleasures. Her honors include the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review and director of the Young Writers Workshop; an annual summer residential creative writing workshop for high school writers. She holds the Judge Williams Holmes Cook Endowed Professorship. As Director of the SIUC MFA Program in Creative Writing, Professor Joseph maintains a blog about the graduate creative writing program at: http://mfacarbondale.blogspot.com. Tiferet Journal is pleased to offer our multiple award winning “Tiferet Talk Interviews” book. Print and Kindle formats on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/bu8m2zs  

As a jazz advocate and promoter, Alyce Claerbaut served as the president of the Northeastern Illinois University Jazz Society and was co-founder of the Skokie Valley Jazz Ensemble in the 1980s. She has been involved in the arts scene primarily in Chicago with membership on grants panels for the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and as a panel member for the Illinois Arts Council. She served the Chicago Jazz Orchestra from 2003–2010, two years as Director of Public Relations and five years as Executive Director. Ms. Claerbaut's formal music training includes concentration in applied voice. She has sung professionally in many types of settings—jazz, classical, art song and popular song—with a specialty in choral repertoire. She is the niece of the famed Billy Strayhorn—contemporary to Duke Ellington—and is currently the president of Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc., a family-owned music publishing company. In this role she interacts with music publishers, producers and educators, particularly in jazz. Ms. Claerbaut is a Calvin alumna and was instrumental in helping to bring Duke Ellington to perform in the Calvin Fieldhouse in 1967. Billy Strayhorn's only solo recording during the Ellington years was a record called “The Peaceful Side” which features him on the piano playing the titles that he considered his favorites. Calvin welcomes Ms. Claerbaut back to campus as she helps us explore Strayhorn's life through those songs as his expression of who he was.

Who gets into almost all of the top shows and can win Best of Show? Meet Jody dePew McLeane (pastel drawings) and Ted Gall (sculptor), involved in the art fair business for over 30 years and consistently exhibiting at the "dream shows." The essence of this show will be: how to build a long term career selling at art fairs sustaining a body of work that continues to grow and yield creative fulfillment adapting to changing economic conditions art fair vs gallery sales lessons learned tips for someone starting out today Jody is a member of the Pastel Society of America in New York and was elected as a master panelist by the Society. Her works have been featured in four books including "The Best of Pastel II" and her work is in many public collections. Ted has served consultant to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Arts Council.  He has taught art classes in Illinois and in California.  His corporate collections include The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, Walt Disney, Bell & Howell, Standard Oil and others.

Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a coming of age story set during the city's infamous child murders of 1979-81. Jones herself was in the fifth grade when thirty African American children were murdered from the neighborhoods near her home and school.  Leaving Atlanta received many awards and accolades including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction. It was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine, “Best Southern Novel of the Year,” by Creative Loafing Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Washington Post both listed it as one of the best of 2002. She has received fellowships from organizations including Illinois Arts Council, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Corporation of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Arizona Commission on the Arts and Le Chateau de Lavigny.  Her second novel, The Untelling, published in 2005, is the story of a family struggling to overcome the aftermath of a fatal car accident.  Upon the publication of The Untelling, Essence magazine called Jones, "a writer to watch." In 2005, The Southern Regional council and the University of Georgia Libraries awarded The Untelling with the Lillian C. Smith Award for New Voices. Tayari Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, The University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University. Silver Sparrow is her third novel. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families—the public one and the secret one.

This week: Richard talks to Terry Scrogum, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Council about the state of the budget, their programs and more! Next, Kathryn Born talks to Theaster Gates. Theaster Gates is a Chicago artist and University of Chicago faculty member who works with everything from executing ideas in urban planning, to Japanese sculpture, to performance art. He recently did "Temple Exercises" in the 12 X 12 space at the MCA, and among his upcoming projects is the possibility of buying an entire block on the south side. This project may someday include, among other things, a Soul Food-Japanese fusion restaurant which serves honey dipped, crunchy fried mac-and-cheese unagi rolls and Saki Kool-aid.

Internationally renowned as a performance poet, Patricia Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular poetry slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. She is also regarded as one of the few performance poets whose work translates effortlessly to the page. Indeed, the Small Press Review declares, "Smith writes the way Tina Turner sings." Smith's most recent collection, Teahouse of the Almighty , was chosen by Ed Sanders for the 2005 National Poetry Series, and was published by Coffee House Press in 2006. Her three previous books of poetry are, Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books), and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). She has won the prestigious Carl Sandburg Award, as well as a literary award from the Illinois Arts Council and an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 2006, she was inducted into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, putting her in the company of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and others. She was featured in the nationally-released film "Slamnation", and was a featured poet on the award-winning HBO series "Def Poetry Jam." Smith has shared the stage with Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsburg, Walter Mosley, Ntozake Shange, Gwendolyn Brooks, Galway Kinnell and Viggo Morgensen. An author of prose as well poetry, Smith wrote Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a chronicle of slavery in this country and the companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS series.