Podcasts about kimmel harding nelson center

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including how an agent was fired over Twitter posts, some actual Amazon book sales data, Shopify adding sellers to its third-party marketplace, and how ElevenLabs just launched its iOS app. Then, stick around for a chat with Snowden Wright! Snowden Wright is the author of the novel American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month, selection for Barnes & Noble's “Discover Great New Writers” program, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and NPR Favorite Book of the Year. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Wright was the Visiting Writer and Prose Faculty at the 2021 Longleaf Writers Conference, and his debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, won the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars' Graywolf Prize. Recipient of the Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship from the Carson McCullers Center, he has attended writing residencies at Yaddo, Escape to Create, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tusen Takk, Monson Arts, and the Hambidge Center. Wright lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi. His third novel, The Queen City Detective Agency, is forthcoming from HarperCollins in August 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

If you're a part of the Seattle arts scene, chances are you've come across Tessa Hulls. She has a hand in many local creative communities, including Seattle Arts & Lectures (where you might have spotted her illustrations on the 2021 Summer Book Bingo Card!), the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and the Henry Art Museum. She's also the lead artist in the Wing Luke Museum exhibit “Nobody Lives Here,” which explores the impacts of how the I-5 construction ran right through the Chinatown International District in the 1960s. It's no surprise then that Hulls is passionate about mixing art and historical research, looking at how past events echo throughout daily relationships today. She explores these themes in her debut book, Feeding Ghosts, a graphic novel memoir that tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself. Sun Yi, who fled Communist China for Hong Kong, published a celebrated memoir about her persecution and survival, but then later succumbed to mental illness. Determined to face the history that shaped her family, Tessa exposes the wounds that haunt generations and the love that holds them together. Hulls is a self-proclaimed “compulsive genre-hopper,” mixing personal and political histories with travel writing and visual art. This might explain why she's so well-intertwined in Seattle's art scene, using her creativity to build community and create conversations about the impacts of our shared history. Tessa Hulls is an artist, a writer, and an adventurer. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and SPARK. She has received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and 4Culture, and she is a fellowship recipient from the Washington Artist Trust. Feeding Ghosts is her first book. Putsata Reang is a Cambodian-born author and a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, Ms., The San Jose Mercury News, and The Seattle Times, among other publications. She is an alumna of residencies at Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Mineral School, and she has received fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Jack Straw Cultural Center.   Buy the Companion Book Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir Third Place Books

Hi Everyone, I'm thrilled to host Cara Blue Adams today on the podcast. We talked about her stellar short story, "Vision," available from Joyland Magazine. I met Cara years ago at the Kenyon Writers Workshop (which I highly recommend by the way...) so it was great fun to reconnect on the podcast. Cara's work was recommended by Vincent Perrone, who is a part owner of the co-op bookstore, Book Suey, in Hamtramck, MI, so he joined us for the podcast as well. See his bio below, and please consider buying from Bookshop or even directly from Book Suey to support local bookstores! Enjoy the show and see you on April 1st! Kelly Cara Blue Adams is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press, 2021), named a New York Times Editors' Choice and awarded the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor, who calls it “a modern classic.” The collection was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. Over twenty-five of her stories appear in magazines like the Granta, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, American Short Fiction, and Electric Literature, and her nonfiction appears in Bookforum and The Believer. She has received the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review William Peden Prize, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, along with a 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writer fellowship and selection as a Pushcart Prize Notable. She has also received support from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the VCCA, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Cara earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Originally from Vermont, she has lived in Boston, Tucson, Montreal, Maine, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge. She is a former coeditor of The Southern Review. Currently, she is an associate professor in the MFA program at Temple University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Purchase Cara's book at Book Suey (link above) or Book Shop or Amazon. My co-host: Vincent James Perrone is the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic (11:11 Press, 2018), the microchap, Travelogue For The Dispossessed (Ghost City Press, 2021), and a contributor to the anthology, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press, 2020). His recent and forthcoming work can be found in Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, TIMBER, Storm Cellar, and A Common Well Journal. Vincent lives in Detroit where he teaches at Wayne State University. He reads for Conduit and is a member-owner of the co-op bookstore, Book Suey. #shortstories #creativewriting #joylandmag #kenyonreview #booksuey

Jordan Buschur is an artist, educator, and curator based in Toledo, Ohio. Her paintings focus on collections of objects ranging from stacked books to interiors of drawers, all united by a system of value based on mystery, sentimentality, and a matriarchal connection. Buschur received an M.F.A. in Painting from Brooklyn College, the City University of New York. Her work has been shown in numerous locations, including exhibitions with the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), Center for Book Arts (NYC), and Field Projects (NYC). She participated in residencies at the Wassaic Project, Chashama North, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Awards include the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and the Kimmel Foundation Artist Award. Her work has been featured in print in New American Paintings and UPPERCASE Magazine, and online with The Jealous Curator, Young Space, and BOOOOOOOM, among many others. She is a co-founder of Co-Worker Gallery and has curated exhibitions at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space (NYC), Spring/Break Art Show (NYC), and the Neon Heater (Findlay, Ohio). Buschur was the Director of the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and currently teaches drawing at the University of Toledo. "My paintings imply a human presence through depictions of accumulated collections. Contents of desk drawers, stacks of books, packed boxes, and objects on display, are united by systems of value shaped by mystery, sentimentality, and the matriarchal connection. Each painting focuses on the oscillation between personal resonance and public view, reality and invention, fixed meaning and open interpretation. I'm interested in the assignment of non-monetary significance onto objects as an inherently interior and idiosyncratic act. In this way, the paintings are portraits as I meditate on the details (both mundane and magical) of the accumulated stuff of friends and family (and my own things too). Simultaneously, the collections point towards the material weight of modern life, the anxiety of consumption, and the endgame of anonymous personal effects. Looking through the lens of inheritance, accumulations of sentimental objects can link to ancestors, while also becoming a burden of junk. A well loved thing, so deeply felt by one, shapeshifts in meaning when passed to a new owner and generation."   LINKS:  www.jordanbuschur.com   @jordanbuschur   Artist Shoutouts: Crystal Phelps Natalie Lanese Lindsay Akens Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez Charley Friedman Angeles Cossio Dana Fritz Margaret Bohls Jac Lahav Maia Cruz Palileo     I Like Your Work Links: Apply to our Winter  Exhibition Catalog: https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/submitwork   Join the Works Membership ! https://theworksmembership.com/   Watch our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ilikeyourworkpodcast   Submit Your Work Check out our Catalogs! Exhibitions Studio Visit Artist Interviews I Like Your Work Podcast Say “hi” on Instagram

Episode 181 Notes and Links to Ramona Reeves' Work       On Episode 181 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Ramona Reeves, and the two discuss, among other things, Ramona's early reading and literary likes and inspiring works and writers, her journey to MFA and her stellar collection, Mobile, Alabama's impact on her work, and issues and themes of class, old versus new, loss and trauma, racism, and regrowth in her story collection, as well as reflections on pessimism/optimism in her work. Ramona is a native of Mobile, Alabama. Her linked short story collection It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories won the 2022 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by University of Pittsburgh Press last fall.  She spent a decade in the Northeastern U.S. where she wrote freelance articles, proofread for a men's fashion weekly, and performed production roles for Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, and Esquire before moving into technical editing and writing. She eventually moved to Texas for several years before leaving to pursue her MFA in fiction. She has since returned and is nearing completion on a novel. Ramona has served as a board member for A Room of Her Own (AROHO), moderated and appeared on panels at conferences, taught college-level writing courses, and served as an associate fiction editor for Kallisto Gaia Press. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Southampton Review, Pembroke, Bayou Magazine, New South, Superstition Review, Texas Highways and other publications. She's won the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize, been a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and is a Community of Writers alum.   Buy It Falls Gently All Around   Ramona Reeves' Website   Interview for Chicago Review of Books Regarding Her Collection     At about 2:05, Ramona discusses that night's Sergio Troncoso Award she'll be receiving    At about 3:00, Ramona describes her experience working as a writer   At about 5:00, Ramona gives background on her reading life, including how her grandmother influenced her writing and literary life; she shouts out Beverly Cleary and the Bible as formative    At about 7:45, Pete wonders about Ramona's connections to Southern writers and Mobile's cultures   At about 10:05, Ramona responds to Pete's questions about any influence she received from Flannery O'Connor   At about 11:30, Ramona shouts out ZZ Packer, Jesmyn Ward, and Tim Gatreaux as current writers    At about 13:30, Ramona recounts the journey to her becoming a writer; she highlights Antonya Nelson's huge contribution in guiding her to New Mexico State; Pete shouts out Antonya Nelson's In the Land of Men, and Ramona, Female Trouble    At about 16:25, Pete asks about thematically-linked short stories and seeds for Ramona's collection, as well as if/how the book followed Ramona's life; she cites a class given by Robert Boswell   At about 19:00, Pete shouts shouts a challenging high school teacher and reading list   At about 20:15, Ramona responds to Pete's question about charting time in a short story collection and the “spaces” in between   At about 22:20, Pete outlines the first story of the collection and the two characterize Babbie and Rowan individually and in their relationship    At about 25:50, Pete lays out the plot and characters, mainly Donnie, from the collection's second story, and Ramona expands on his encounter with a physic     At about 28:35, Ramona speaks to the influences that yoga had on her writing of the book   At about 30:10, Pete and Ramona discuss ideas of lineage, class, and history that are at the heart of the book   At about 32:10, Ramona cites Mobile's history with Mardi Gras and “mystic societies”   At about 34:15, The two talk about the role race and racism play in the cultures and places described in the story collection; Ramona highlights Ramona Brown's Descendant, a documentary that comments on the previously-mentioned topics   At about 35:00, Ideas of trauma and loss and miscarriage are discussed; Pete compliments a scene from the story, moving in its depiction of multiple generations experiencing and processing loss, and Ramona responds to this by connecting class and loss   At about 38:55, Ideas of class and decorum are discussed, including Donnie's uncomfortable laughs throughout the book, and Pete and Ramona share their experiences with this type of laughing    At about 42:00, The two discuss religion and ways   At about 43:15, The two analyze an important scene and the ways in which racism was covered in the collection    At about 45:30, The two talk about themes of rebirth, recovery, and growth, and the baptismal as new birth/new life   At about 46:20, Pete cites Fay as a sympathetic character and an interesting one; Ramona talks about her writing towards happy endings   At about 48:30, Ramona gives kudos for Deesha Philyaw's work with happy endings    At about 49:05, Ramona ruminates on Pete's asking if this collection is an optimistic one   At about 50:30, Ramona discusses her exciting new novel project   At about 51:30, Pete and Ramona shout out former guest Rus Bradburd      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.   Please tune in for Episode 182 with Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, the author of What We Fed to the Manticore, which was a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2023 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.   The episode airs on May 12.

Hi there, Today I am so happy to be arts calling Monica Macansantos! About our guest: Monica Macansantos (monicamacansantos.com) is a former James A. Michener Fellow for Fiction and Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA in Writing. She also holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington, International Institute of Modern Letters. Her debut collection of stories about Filipinos at home and in the diaspora, Love and Other Rituals, is out from the University of Melbourne's Grattan Street Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Hopkins Review, Bennington Review, The Masters Review, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Katherine Mansfield and Children (Edinburgh University Press), among other places. Her work has been recognized as Notable in the Best American Essays 2022 _and the _Best American Essays 2016, and has received finalist and honorable mention citations from the _Glimmer Train _Fiction Open. Her work has also been translated into Czech (_Kuřata v hadí kleci: _Prague, Argo Press, 2020) and Spanish (_Arbolarium, Antologia Poetica de los Cinco Continentes: _Bogota, Colegio Bilingüe José Max León, 2019).  She has received fellowships and scholarships from the Michener Center for Writers, Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, Storyknife Writers Retreat, Moriumius (Japan), the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, and the International Institute of Modern Letters.  Her completed manuscripts also include a collection of essays entitled Returning to My Father's Kitchen about grief, home, and belonging, and a novel entitled People We Trust about three young people who come of age in Marcos-era Philippines. She is currently working on a second novel, entitled Marian and Anja, about two childhood friends navigating the in-betweenness of their cultural identities in '90s Philippines and 2010s Austin, as well as a second story collection about Filipinos at home, in the US, and in New Zealand. She has lived in Delaware, Texas, the Philippines, and New Zealand, and loves tango, cooking, swimming, and birds. She also loves writing about her late father, the poet Francis C. Macansantos, from whom she inherited her love of writing, laughter, and life. Love & Other RItuals, now available here: https://www.monicamacansantos.com and here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-and-other-rituals-selected-stories-monica-macansantos/18834429 Twitter: https://twitter.com/missmacansantos Thanks for taking the time to chat on the show, Monica! All the best! -- Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: please consider reviewing the podcast and sharing it with those who love the arts, or are starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference, so check out the new website artscalling.com for the latest episodes! Go make a dent: much love, j

Ep 46 DuEwa interviews poet Raina J. León about her writing life and new book, black god mother this body (Black Freighter Press. 2022). Visit www.rainaleón.com. FOLLOW/FAN/LIKE NERDACITY on IG @nerdacitypodcast on TWITTER @nerdacitypod1 on FACEBOOK @NerdacityPodcast page. SUBSCRIBE & LIKE on ALL podcast platforms (Apple, Anchor, Radio Public, iHeartRadio, Spotify) and YOUTUBE.COM/DuEwaWorld for videos of the podcast and vlogs. Support Anchor.fm/duewafrazier/support or Paypal.me/duewaworld or Cash app $duewaworld BIO Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, , profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education at Saint Mary's College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/duewafrazier/support

Anuradha Bhowmik is a Bangladeshi American poet and writer from South Jersey who currently lives and works in Philadelphia. She is a 2022 Kundiman Fellow and a 2018 AWP Intro Journals Project Winner in Poetry. Her poetry and prose have appeared in POETRY, The Sun, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Virginia Tech, and she has received awards from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Frost Place, among others. Her new book, Brown Girl Chromatography is the winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.    

Poet Katie Marya talks about the themes explored in her debut full length poetry collection “Sugar Work,” including womanhood, intimate relationships, the body, divorce and desire. Marya also talks about the experiences that have shaped her life and sense of self. As well as discussing the imagery within and the structure of her book Sugar Work, Marya reads some of her poems. Katie Marya is a writer and literary translator. Her award-winning work has appeared in numerous literary publications and she has received fellowship support from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council. Sugar Work, her first full-length book collection, was the Editor's Choice for the 2020 Alice James Book Award. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives in Nebraska where she is finishing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

EJ Baker (they/them)  and Rae Binstock (she/her) tell us about Good Energy Stories, a story consultancy for the age of climate change. Their mission is to inspire, support, and accelerate stories in scripted TV and film that reflect the world we live in now —and help us envision a better tomorrow.  They talk about the kind of stories and approaches to storytelling that move audiences to feel empathy for those suffering and an enthusiasm for solutions that make the world a better place.   Rae Binstock is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include That Heaven's Vault Should Crack (The New Group, Lark Development Center, T. Schreiber's Studios), Land of No Mercy (Landing Theatre Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, Princess Grace finalist), and WALKERS (The Shelter, O'Neill Conference semifinalist, Jerome Fellowship finalist). Her work has appeared in Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Jewish Plays Project, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, among others. Rae's pilot Homecoming was selected for the 2020 WriteHer List, and she is a two-time semifinalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab. Rae is a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a Rita Goldberg Playwrights Workshop Fellow at the Lark, and a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. She has attended numerous residencies, including the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, PLAYA Summer Lake, and the Ragdale Foundation. Rae served as the Writers' Assistant on both FX Networks' FOSSE/VERDON and Apple+'s shows Schmigadoon and IF/THEN. She is also one of the two authors of the Climate Storytelling Playbook, a writing guide for climate change stories published by Good Energy. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Black Cat. As creative director, EJ Baker talks about the unique color palette they chose for the Good Energy website. They explain why you will not find a spot of green anywhere! They are a co-founder of Maybe Ventures, an art and strategy collective focused on envisioning more just, sustainable, and beautiful new worlds. EJ's work has been featured in Fast Company, Variety, Typewolf, and Fonts in Use. Hailing from the forests of upstate New York, they now live amongst the urban cottontails and sidewalk dandelions of Somerville, MA. 

EJ Baker (they/them) and Rae Binstock (she/her) tell us about Good Energy Stories, a story consultancy for the age of climate change. Their mission is to inspire, support, and accelerate stories in scripted TV and film that reflect the world we live in now —and help us envision a better tomorrow. Learn more at www.goodenergystories.com They talk about the kind of stories and approaches to storytelling that move audiences to feel empathy for those suffering and an enthusiasm for solutions that make the world a better place. Rae Binstock is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include That Heaven's Vault Should Crack (The New Group, Lark Development Center, T. Schreiber's Studios), Land of No Mercy (Landing Theatre Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, Princess Grace finalist), and WALKERS (The Shelter, O'Neill Conference semifinalist, Jerome Fellowship finalist). Her work has appeared in Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Jewish Plays Project, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, among others. Rae's pilot Homecoming was selected for the 2020 WriteHer List, and she is a two-time semifinalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab. Rae is a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a Rita Goldberg Playwrights Workshop Fellow at the Lark, and a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. She has attended numerous residencies, including the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, PLAYA Summer Lake, and the Ragdale Foundation. Rae served as the Writers' Assistant on both FX Networks' FOSSE/VERDON and Apple+'s shows Schmigadoon and IF/THEN. She is also one of the two authors of the Climate Storytelling Playbook, a writing guide for climate change stories published by Good Energy. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Black Cat. As creative director, EJ Baker talks about the unique color palette they chose for the Good Energy website. They explain why you will not find a spot of green anywhere! They are a co-founder of Maybe Ventures, an art and strategy collective focused on envisioning more just, sustainable, and beautiful new worlds. EJ's work has been featured in Fast Company, Variety, Typewolf, and Fonts in Use. Hailing from the forests of upstate New York, they now live amongst the urban cottontails and sidewalk dandelions of Somerville, MA.

Speaking with five different guests, host, Peterson Toscano, takes a deep dive to explore how climate change and extreme weather affect lesiban, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-binary, and queer (LGBTQ+) people.  Leo Goldsmith (he/him) is one of the co-authors of Queer and Present Danger: Understanding the Disparate Impacts of Disasters on LGBTQ+ Communities. Together with Dr. Michael Mendez, Assistant Professor of Environmental Planning and Policy at the University of California, Irvine Vanessa Raditz from Out in Sustainability who is a PhD student at the University of Georgia, they researched the unique vulnerabilities of this community in disaster relief; the myth of gay affluence; how faith-based groups have a history of discriminatory practices in disaster relief; how cohesive is the LGBTQ community and how race is a problem even in LGBTQ groups. Leo also provides practical ways community members and leaders can build stronger, more resilient LGBTQ+ communities that can bounce back from extreme weather events.  Nokwanda Maseko (she/her/they) is a South African economist who identifies as a Queer Black person. As senior economist at Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies, she has written position papers about what a just transition can look like, especially for women and the large sector of the Black South African population who because of unemployment and informal employment are not often part of the conversations around just transition.  Isaias Herandez (he/him) aka Queer Brown Vegan was born in Los Angeles, California, also known as Tongva Land. As someone who grew up in a community that faced environmental injustices, Isaias developed an interest to learn about his environment. Living in Section 8 affordable housing, using food stamps growing up, and witnessing pollution affect his body. Isaias turned his anger and sadness to becoming an environmental educator. He earned a B.S. in Environmental Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He works on a variety of diversity inclusion work in environmental spaces, academic research, and creative work. Isaias' work is centered on environmental justice with a lens of localization. Isaias works as a full-time content creator and public speaker on QueerBrownVegan. The Art House EJ Baker (they/them)  and Rae Binstock (she/her) tell us about Good Energy Stories, a story consultancy for the age of climate change. Their mission is to inspire, support, and accelerate stories in scripted TV and film that reflect the world we live in now–and help us envision a better tomorrow.  They talk about the kind of stories and approaches to storytelling that move audiences to feel empathy for those suffering an enthusiasm for solutions that make the world a better place.   Rae Binstock is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include That Heaven's Vault Should Crack (The New Group, Lark Development Center, T. Schreiber's Studios), land of no mercy (Landing Theatre Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, Princess Grace finalist), and WALKERS (The Shelter, O'Neill Conference semifinalist, Jerome Fellowship finalist). Her work has appeared in Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Jewish Plays Project, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, among others. Rae's pilot Homecoming was selected for the 2020 WriteHer List, and she is a two-time semifinalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab. Rae is a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a Rita Goldberg Playwrights Workshop Fellow at the Lark, and a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. She has attended numerous residencies, including the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, PLAYA Summer Lake, and the Ragdale Foundation. Rae served as the Writers' Assistant on both FX Networks' FOSSE/VERDON and Apple+'s shows Schmigadoon and IF/THEN. She is also one of the two authors of the Climate Storytelling Playbook, a writing guide for climate change stories published by Good Energy. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Black Cat. EJ Baker (they/them) i As creative director, EJ talks about the unique color palette they chose for the Good Energy website. They explain why you will not find a spot of green anywhere! They are a co-founder of Maybe Ventures, an art and strategy collective focused on envisioning more just, sustainable, and beautiful new worlds. EJ's work has been featured in Fast Company, Variety, Typewolf and Fonts in Use. Hailing from the forests of upstate New York, they now live amongst the urban cottontails and sidewalk dandelions of Somerville, MA.  Dig Deeper Queer Communities Often Left Out of Disaster Planning, Research Shows on KQED Out 4 Sustainability #Qready 72 hour LGBTQ+ check list Climate Justice Must Include All Women from Atmos.earth Iranti is a Johannesburg-based media-advocacy organisation which advocates for the rights of LGBTI+ persons, with specific focus on lesbian, transgender (including gender non-conforming) and intersex persons in Africa. Iranti works within a human rights framework raising issues on gender identities, and sexuality, through the strategic use of multimedia storytelling, research and activism. Just transition in South Africa: the case for a gender just approach by Nokwanda Maseko (TIPS) It Doesn't Have to be This Way, an LGBTQ+ climate novel by South African author Alistair Mackay. Read the interview with the author in Scaffold Culture.  LGBTQ+ short radio plays about climate change. Bigger Love and Mentoring Session #4 Unemployment and sustainable livelihoods: Just Transition interventions in the face of inequality by Nokwanda Maseko (TIPS) “Queer and Present Danger”: The LGBTQ+ Community Adapts to Climate Change. America Adapts podcast interview with Leo Goldsmith and Dr. Michael Mendez CCR Episode 59 Tykee James and Black Birders Week Understanding Non-Binary People: How to Be Respectful and Supportive from National Center for Transgender Equality Good News Report Leo Goldsmith tells us about QReady, a new resource created by Out for Sustainability (Out4S.) Qready began as a disaster-preparedness packing list specific for the LGBTQ+ community, which you can access below. They are now planning to expand the program to provide multi-scale offerings for individuals, organizations, and disaster professionals to foster the resilience of LGBTQ+ communities, with a focus on the needs of queer and trans Black and Indigenous people of color (QTBIPOC). This program expansion was developed by Vanessa Raditz through a multi-year fellowship with Out4S and serves as the official Qready Project Director. Vanessa is also the director of Out4S' first fiscally-sponsored project: “Fire & Flood: Queer Resilience in the era of Climate Change”. The completion of this project is the first step of Out for Sustainability's expanded Qready initiative! We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, and recommendations for the show. Leave a vall our listener voicemail line: (619) 512-9646. +1 if calling from outside the USA that number again. (619) 512-9646. You can hear Citizens' Climate Radio on: iTunes Spotify SoundCloud Podbean Stitcher Radio Northern Spirit Radio PlayerFM TuneIn Radio Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens' Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.  

We get into all kinds of chapbook love with poet and educator Liz Ahl! Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017), Home Economics(Seven Kitchens Press, 2016), Talking About the Weather (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012), Luck(Pecan Grove Press, 2010), and A Thirst That's Partly Mine (winner of the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest). Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, among them Prairie Schooner, Sinister Wisdom, Measure, Nimrod, and Crab Orchard Review. Her work has also been included in several anthologies, including This Assignment is So Gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013), COVID Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems (Hobblebush Books, 2020), Show Us Your Papers (Main Street Rag, 2020), Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press, 2018) and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017), among others. She has been awarded residencies at Playa, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. She teaches writing at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire.Liz Ahl website: https://lizahl.com Liz Ahl facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Liz-Ahl-220024568036054Liz Ahl twitter:  https://twitter.com/SurlyAcresYoung Writer's Workshop/UVA: https://www.theyoungwriters.orgEthel Chapbooks: https://www.ethelzine.com/chapbooks-minibooksThank 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. Follow Bull City Press on Twitter https://twitter.com/bullcitypress Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bullcitypress/ and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bullcitypress 

Jordan talks with Jessamine Chan about the ways having a kid changed her writing, about the difficulties mothers face in America, and about the one very good day of writing that led to The School for Good Mothers. MENTIONED: "Where is Your Mother?" by Rachel Aviv (The New Yorker) Cost of Living by Emily Maloney SCOTUS draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization The Ragdale Foundation Jessamine Chan's debut novel is The School for Good Mothers, an instant New York Times bestseller. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Melanie and Dawn talk with featured writer, Jessamine Chan, about her New York Times bestselling novel The School For Good Mothers, publishing your first novel after 40, writing envy, motherhood, art and social change, “unlikeable” women in fiction, and more!Join our Patreon at the $5 Prickly Pear level for access to an upcoming bonus segment from this episode, in which Jessamine talks in more detail about her novel (with spoilers!).CW: forced parent child separationJessamine Chan's short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. Her first novel, The School for Good Mothers, is a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. LinksJessamineChan.com“Where Is Your Mother?” by Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/02/where-is-your-motherWriters to ReadChloeCooperJones.comCatherineChung.comRachelJYoder.comLearn more about Plume at PlumeforWriters.org! 

In this episode of Channel U, we celebrate National Poetry Month. Our guest is Union Institute & University alumna Lois Roma-Deeley (Ph.D. 2000). The award-winning poet, educator and current Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, Arizona will read selected poems from her books and discuss her work, her approach to writing, and her journey as a writer. Her most recent full-length book of poetry is The Short List of Certainties, winner of the Jacopone da Todi Book Prize. She is the author of three previous collections: Rules of Hunger, northSight and High Notes, which was a finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize. Her fifth book of poetry, Like Water in the Palm of My Hand, is forthcoming from Kelsey Books in 2022. Roma-Deeley's poems have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, nationally and internationally. Roma-Deeley was named the 2012-2013 U.S. Community College Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE. Roma-Deeley founded and directed the Creative Writing and Women's Studies programs at Paradise Valley Community College as well as the Creative Writing Women's Caucus of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Roma-Deeley is Associate Editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. Authors of Union features a conversation with one of our published authors. Your host is Dr. Linwood Rumney, professor in the UI&U General Education Program, poet and author. He is the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for Abandoned Earth. His poems and nonfiction essays have appeared in many publications including the North American Review and Crab Orchard Review. His translations of Aloysius Bertrand, an early practitioner of the modern prose poem in French, have appeared in Arts & Letters and Hayden's Ferry Review. His fellowships include the American Antiquarian Society, The Writers' Room of Boston, and the St. Botolph Club, as well as a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He recently completed his Ph.D. as a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellow at UC.

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Claire Stanford. Born and raised in Berkeley, Claire holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at UCLA, where she studies science fiction/speculative fiction, narrative theory, and novel theory. Claire's work has received fellowships and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences. Claire is also an avid watcher of BBC mysteries and the author of her debut novel, Happy for You.   In this episode Claire Stanford and I discuss: The meaning of happiness, its relationship with social media, and how that plays out in her novel. Why she classifies her novel as literary fiction as opposed to speculative. How she navigated writing a novel about a character who is strongly opposed to change.   Plus, her #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/405

Alex and Lindsay talk with Jessamine Chan (The School for Good Mothers) about writing and rewriting her novel, her love of experimental fiction, Lydia Kiesling as our fave parent influencer, the silent scream inside gentle parenting, being an instant bestseller, and more! Jessamine Chan's short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cara Blue Adams is the author of the debut story collection You Never Get It Back, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, available from the University of Iowa Press. Adams has published over twenty stories in leading magazines, including Granta, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, The Sun, The Missouri Review, The Mississippi Review, Story, and Narrative, which named her one of their “15 Below 30.” Stories in You Never Get It Back have been awarded the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, judged by Alice Hoffman, the Missouri Review Peden Prize, judged by Jessica Francis Kane, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, awarded by the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. A 2018 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, Cara has been awarded support by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lighthouse Works, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation on the Arts. Cara earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MFA from the University of Arizona. Originally from Vermont, she has lived in Boston, Tucson, Montreal, Maine, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge, where she co-edited The Southern Review. She is an associate professor at Seton Hall University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Authors of Union features a conversation with one of our many published authors. Today's guest is Peter Lazes, (Union Ph.D. '74) alumnus with concentrations in Clinical and Industrial Psychology. Peter's book “From the Ground Up: How Frontline Staff Can Save Americas Healthcare,” coauthored with Marie Rudden, M.D., outlines concrete steps to improve the healthcare system with research-based labor management practices that apply to all areas of work. A specialist in organizational change, leadership development, and labor-management partnerships, Dr. Lazes will discuss the importance of worker participation in decision-making that has applications in many sectors of our economy. Dr. Lazes is the founder and former director of the Healthcare Transformation Project and Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where he served for 40 years. He is now Visiting Professor and Co-Coordinator, Healthcare Partnership Initiative, School of Labor and Employment Relations, Penn State University. He has worked with labor union and management leaders in the U.S. and Europe to customize and implement strategic worker participation programs and employee-driven innovative opportunities. His recent work involves assisting hospitals and healthcare organizations to develop methods to improve patient care and reduce costs with a focus on frontline staff engagement. He has written more than 30 articles on such topics as the creation of agile work systems, new roles for unions in the 21st century, ways to create meaningful jobs, methods to increase civic participation, strategies for keeping American jobs and has produced several videotapes on topics such as creating breakthroughs in organizations. Dr. Lazes and his partner Marie Rudden, MD, plan to create a series of webinars about labor/management partnerships in the near future. Your host is Dr. Linwood Rumney, professor in the UI&U General Education Program, poet, and author. He is the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for Abandoned Earth. His poems and nonfiction essays have appeared in many publications including the North American Review and Crab Orchard Review. His translations of Aloysius Bertrand, an early practitioner of the modern prose poem in French, have appeared in Arts & Letters and Hayden's Ferry Review. His fellowships include the American Antiquarian Society, The Writers' Room of Boston, and the St. Botolph Club, as well as a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He recently completed his Ph.D. as a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellow at UC.

Authors of Union features a conversation with one of our many published authors. Today's guest is Peter Lazes, (Union Ph.D. '74) alumnus with concentrations in Clinical and Industrial Psychology. Peter's book “From the Ground Up: How Frontline Staff Can Save Americas Healthcare,” coauthored with Marie Rudden, M.D., outlines concrete steps to improve the healthcare system with research-based labor management practices that apply to all areas of work. A specialist in organizational change, leadership development, and labor-management partnerships, Dr. Lazes will discuss the importance of worker participation in decision-making that has applications in many sectors of our economy. Dr. Lazes is the founder and former director of the Healthcare Transformation Project and Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where he served for 40 years. He is now Visiting Professor and Co-Coordinator, Healthcare Partnership Initiative, School of Labor and Employment Relations, Penn State University. He has worked with labor union and management leaders in the U.S. and Europe to customize and implement strategic worker participation programs and employee-driven innovative opportunities. His recent work involves assisting hospitals and healthcare organizations to develop methods to improve patient care and reduce costs with a focus on frontline staff engagement. He has written more than 30 articles on such topics as the creation of agile work systems, new roles for unions in the 21st century, ways to create meaningful jobs, methods to increase civic participation, strategies for keeping American jobs, and has produced several videotapes on topics such as creating breakthroughs in organizations. Dr. Lazes and his partner Marie Rudden, MD, plan to create a series of webinars about labor/management partnerships in the near future. Your host is Dr. Linwood Rumney, professor in the UI&U General Education Program, poet, and author. He is the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for Abandoned Earth. His poems and nonfiction essays have appeared in many publications including the North American Review and Crab Orchard Review. His translations of Aloysius Bertrand, an early practitioner of the modern prose poem in French, have appeared in Arts & Letters and Hayden's Ferry Review. His fellowships include the American Antiquarian Society, The Writers' Room of Boston, and the St. Botolph Club, as well as a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He recently completed his Ph.D. as a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellow at UC.

In this week's episode, Kendra talks with Kyle Lucia Wu about her book, Win Me Something, which is out from Tin House. Check out our Patreon page to learn more about our book club and other Patreon-exclusive goodies. Follow along over on Instagram, join the discussion in our Goodreads group, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more new books and extra book reviews! Books MentionedWin Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu Kyle Recommends Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid Overpour by Jane Wong Ghost Forest by Pin-Shuen Fung The Atmosphereians by Alex McElroy About the AuthorKyle Lucia Wu, author of Win Me Something, has received the Asian American Writers' Workshop Margins Fellowship and residencies from Millay Arts, The Byrdcliffe Colony, Plympton's Writing Downtown Residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is the Programs & Communications Director at Kundiman and has taught creative writing at Fordham University and The New School. She lives in New York City. Website | Instagram | Twitter CONTACT Questions? Comments? Email us hello@readingwomenpodcast.com.  SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website Music by Miki Saito with Isaac Greene Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Authors of Union features a conversation with one of our published authors. Your host is Dr. Linwood Rumney, professor in the UI&U General Education Program, poet and author. He is the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for Abandoned Earth. His poems and nonfiction essays have appeared in many publications including the North American Review and Crab Orchard Review. His translations of Aloysius Bertrand, an early practitioner of the modern prose poem in French, have appeared in Arts & Letters and Hayden's Ferry Review. His fellowships include the American Antiquarian Society, The Writers' Room of Boston, and the St. Botolph Club, as well as a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He recently completed his Ph.D. as a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellow at UC. Today's conversation (part two of two) is with Union Ph.D. '99 alumnus Melvin Gravely II, author of Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships, and Our Path to Equity. Dr. Gravely eloquently accomplishes what many have undoubtedly wished to do: talk openly to someone we know about race in the United States today. He uses significant experience as a business and civic leader to express a rare balance in this timely message. The book is a forthright, collegial conversation via chapters in the form of letters, each with a combination of personal reflection and meaningful hard facts. He challenges the reader but without judgment or indictment. His depth of thought, deftness of expression, and clear, layman's terms make for an urgent call to begin to close the gap between races in America. The book presents an invitation to understand three questions at the heart of the issue: What is really going on with race in our country? Why must we care? And what can we do about it together? In the end, Dr. Gravely calls on us to ask ourselves, “What is my role in all of this?” After reading Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships, and Our Path to Equity readers will understand why their answer to his question can change everything.

Authors of Union features a conversation with one of our published authors. Your host is Dr. Linwood Rumney, professor in the UI&U General Education Program, poet and author. He is the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for Abandoned Earth. His poems and nonfiction essays have appeared in many publications including the North American Review and Crab Orchard Review. His translations of Aloysius Bertrand, an early practitioner of the modern prose poem in French, have appeared in Arts & Letters and Hayden's Ferry Review. His fellowships include the American Antiquarian Society, The Writers' Room of Boston, and the St. Botolph Club, as well as a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. He recently completed his Ph.D. as a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellow at UC. Today's conversation (part one of two) is with Union Ph.D. '99 alumnus Melvin Gravely II, author of Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships, and Our Path to Equity. Dr. Gravely eloquently accomplishes what many have undoubtedly wished to do: talk openly to someone we know about race in the United States today. He uses significant experience as a business and civic leader to express a rare balance in this timely message. The book is a forthright, collegial conversation via chapters in the form of letters, each with a combination of personal reflection and meaningful hard facts. He challenges the reader but without judgment or indictment. His depth of thought, deftness of expression, and clear, layman's terms make for an urgent call to begin to close the gap between races in America. The book presents an invitation to understand three questions at the heart of the issue: What is really going on with race in our country? Why must we care? And what can we do about it together? In the end, Dr. Gravely calls on us to ask ourselves, “What is my role in all of this?” After reading Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships, and Our Path to Equity readers will understand why their answer to his question can change everything.

Eva Nikolova is a Bulgarian‐born visual artist and long-time Inwood resident who works in drawing, painting, printmaking, hand‐drawn animation and cameraless photography. She holds a BFA in Painting/Printmaking from Southern Illinois University and MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University. Her work, which is in the permanent collections of Temple University, The Amity Art Foundation, Manhattan Graphics Center, Arkansas State University and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, has been exhibited nationally as well as in Germany, England, Canada, Scotland and India. Nikolova is the recipient of over 20 scholarships, fellowships, grants and fully‐funded residencies that you can check out at www.evanikolova.com.

Sarah E. Brook is a Brooklyn-based sculptor and installation artist from the Nevada high desert.  Brook explores the relationship between external and internal (psychic) vastness through the use of translucency, layering and color gradients to morph her architectural structures into perceptual experiments. She is particularly interested in the way perceptual experience can align (queer) identities. Brook has exhibited at Lesley Heller, Field Projects, Re:Art, the (un)Scene, NARS, Ground Floor Gallery, The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art (NY) and was included in the 2019 BRIC Biennial in Brooklyn. She has been awarded the 2019-2020 Leslie-Lohman Museum Fellowship (NY), the 2018 Media Arts Fellowship from BRIC (NY) and residencies from Marble House Projects, I-Park, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Jentel Foundation, Playa and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.  Public art sculptures include Open Shelter (Prospect Park, NY, 2016), Viewfinding, a year-long installation and collaboration with queer poets (Riverside Park, NY, 2018-2019), Align (permanent installation, Crystal Park, NY, 2019) and a forthcoming permanent work commissioned by the City of New York (2023). Here are the book mentioned in the interview - Interrupted Life and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal. JWS2, spray paint on synthetic poplin, string, rebar, photography, dimensions variable, installed in rural Wyoming, 2017. JWS2 is an example of the types of short term, low-impact installations I create in solitude in remote landscapes.

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her work has been published in POETRY, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Gulf Coast. She has received awards from MacDowell, Djerassi, The Anderson Center, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Poets House, Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at the 92nd Street Y, New York University, Fordham University, Sierra Nevada College, and the Polytechnic University at NYU. She was Sierra Nevada College’s Distinguished Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence. She serves as Executive Director at Kundiman and lives in Queens.

It’s 1937 and rural Tennessee is still recovering from the Great Depression. The construction of a huge dam brings job seekers, fortune hunters, and the promise of electricity to the area. Claire, a young mother of two, realizes her marriage is over when she wakes up with a sexually transmitted disease brought home by her husband. Nathan is an engineer with a shameful secret who changes his name to get work at the dam. Everyone in this colorful cast of dog-fighting neighbors, beer-guzzling ex-husbands, and power-hungry employers is trying to survive in the mosquito-infested heat of a southern summer. Mark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, his debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), was featured in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s fall Okra list and Deep South Magazine's Fall/Winter Reading List, and named as one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "12 Southern Books You'll Want to Read This Fall" and one of Nashville Lifestyles Magazine’s "Four Fall Reads." Mark holds undergraduate degrees from Hendrix College and University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from Texas State University. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread. 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 awesome recipes.

It’s 1937 and rural Tennessee is still recovering from the Great Depression. The construction of a huge dam brings job seekers, fortune hunters, and the promise of electricity to the area. Claire, a young mother of two, realizes her marriage is over when she wakes up with a sexually transmitted disease brought home by her husband. Nathan is an engineer with a shameful secret who changes his name to get work at the dam. Everyone in this colorful cast of dog-fighting neighbors, beer-guzzling ex-husbands, and power-hungry employers is trying to survive in the mosquito-infested heat of a southern summer. Mark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, his debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), was featured in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s fall Okra list and Deep South Magazine's Fall/Winter Reading List, and named as one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "12 Southern Books You'll Want to Read This Fall" and one of Nashville Lifestyles Magazine’s "Four Fall Reads." Mark holds undergraduate degrees from Hendrix College and University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from Texas State University. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread. 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 awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s 1937 and rural Tennessee is still recovering from the Great Depression. The construction of a huge dam brings job seekers, fortune hunters, and the promise of electricity to the area. Claire, a young mother of two, realizes her marriage is over when she wakes up with a sexually transmitted disease brought home by her husband. Nathan is an engineer with a shameful secret who changes his name to get work at the dam. Everyone in this colorful cast of dog-fighting neighbors, beer-guzzling ex-husbands, and power-hungry employers is trying to survive in the mosquito-infested heat of a southern summer. Mark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, his debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), was featured in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s fall Okra list and Deep South Magazine's Fall/Winter Reading List, and named as one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "12 Southern Books You'll Want to Read This Fall" and one of Nashville Lifestyles Magazine’s "Four Fall Reads." Mark holds undergraduate degrees from Hendrix College and University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from Texas State University. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread. 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 awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the podcast this week, recorded at BookFest Windsor 2019, we’ll hear from two fiction writers, Blair Hurley and Nadja Lubiw-Howard.Blair Hurley received her A.B. from Princeton University and her M.F.A. from NYU. Her stories are published or forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review, West Branch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Descant, Fugue, and elsewhere. She has received a 2018 Pushcart Prize and scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her debut novel, THE DEVOTED, was published in August 2018 from WW Norton & Company. the New York Times Book Review had this to say: “[An] intimate, fluid debut…The beauty of The Devoted lies in its intricate descriptions of religion’s hush and ritual… [A] novel as tender and fervent as a prayer.” Nadja Lubiw-Howard is a writer, a children’s educator, and a veterinarian. She holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Guelph and a Post Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers. Her work has been published in Understorey, Room, Canthius, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly; her first novel, The Nap-Away Motel, was published by Palimpsest Press in May 2019. She is currently working on several picture books about animals, and a second novel, Her Name Was Friday. A life-long animal-lover and long-time vegan, her writing often explores themes related to the natural world. She lives in Toronto. http://blairhurley.com/https://www.nmlhazard.com/

This episode takes us to Baguio, Philippines, where I talk to fiction writer and poet, Monica Macansantos.  We talk about her writing process, her travels, her education, influences, and publishing process as we catch her at the brink of getting her novel published. Please keep an eye out on this fabulous Filipina writer!   http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes      http://www.tayoliterarymag.com/monica-macansantos Monica Macansantos was a James A. Michener Fellow in Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA in Fiction and Poetry. She also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington, International Institute of Modern Letters. Her fiction has appeared in failbetter.com, Women's Studies Quarterly, The Masters Review Anthology, Day One, and TAYO Literary Magazine, among other places, while her nonfiction and journalism have appeared in Aotearotica, Takahe, New Naratif, ​SBS Life, and VICE, among other places. Her essay,"Becoming A Writer: The Silences We Write Against", was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2016. Her novella, "Leaving Auckland" (serialized in three parts on failbetter​), was a Top 25 Finalist in the Summer 2016 Glimmer Train Fiction Open, while her story, "Stopover", earned an Honorable Mention in the Winter 2013 Glimmer Train Fiction Open. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook (2014) and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2012 & 2019). She is currently Branches Nonfiction Editor of Rambutan Literary ​and is also working on her first novel. She is represented by Kerry D'Agostino of Curtis Brown, Ltd. in New York City.  https://www.monicamacansantos.com/publishedwork.html

 Today’s guest is Blair Hurley, who received her A.B. from Princeton University and her M.F.A. from NYU. Her stories are published or forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review, West Branch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Descant, Fugue, and elsewhere. She has received a 2018 Pushcart Prize and scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her debut novel, THE DEVOTED, was published in August 2018 from WW Norton & Company. Blair joined me today to talk about writing your own interests, even if that places your story in a quieter place, and the misconception of dismissing clarity in writing for simplistic novels. Also covered: the difficulty of breaking into the short story market and the motivations for doing so.  Support the Podcast    Links for Blair:   Website: http://blairhurley.com/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhurley   IG: https://www.instagram.com/blairlhurley/   Ad Links:   Wasted Pretty by Jamie Beth Cohen https://amzn.to/2U9gaak   Heroine by Mindy McGinnis amzn.to/2pjEWYh 

This is such a great episode mostly for the painters out there! I loved talking the David Linneweh, a painter who also runs the podcast Studio Break, about his background growing up in suburbia and how that feeds into his paintings, his experience working en plein air and photo transfers, his wonderful advice to artists and what he has learned from running a podcast.   David Linneweh received his MFA in painting at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2007 and his BFA from Illinois State University in 2002.  His work has been in solo shows including The Peoria Art Guild, Peoria, IL, (2012), The Moberly Area Community College, Moberly, MO, (2012), and Centraltrak, Dallas, TX (2008).  His work has been in numerous group exhibitions including McNamee Gallery, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO (2013), The Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL, (2012), Brooklyn Artists Gym, Brooklyn, NY, (2011), and Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, (2010).  He’s completed artist residencies at Art342, Centraltrak, Osage Arts Community, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel.  His work has been published in New American Paintings four times in (2011,2007, 2005, 2003).  He is the creator of the Contemporary Art Podcast Studio Break and is an adjunct professor in the Chicago area.    David has a two-person exhibition at Heartbreaker in Peoria, IL opening in July and will be featured in Studio Visit Magazine this Spring. He was a guest on Phil Mellen's podcast for the Mixed Media Tapes that also features yours truly!   Links: Studio Break Competition Studio Break Chautauqua Stanley Lewis The War of Art RadioLab Mixed Media Tapes  

“I believe in the liberation of the people of Palestine, and I believe in the liberation of the Jewish people. And those things are not just not mutually exclusive, they require each other.” — Dan Fishback This is a bonus episode featuring extra content from our December 4th episode on Cultural Resistance. Playwright and musician Dan Fishback explains the difference between boycott and censorship, why he uses the word "apartheid" to describe Israel-Palestine, and why he wants to start identifying as a "liberationist Jew." This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. references Letter calling on Lincoln Center to cancel Israeli government's "Brand Israel" theater performances (Adalah-NY, 2017). "5 Myths About Israel Boycotts That Every Theater Lover Should Consider"(Dan Fishback, Forward, July 21, 2017). Lincoln Center Festival page for To the End of the Land, presented July 24-27, 2017. Lincoln Center Festival page for Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, presented July 9, 2017. "PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel" (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, July 16, 2014). "Governor Cuomo Signs First-in-the-Nation Executive Order Directing Divestment of Public Funds Supporting BDS Campaign Against Israel" (Governor's Press Office, June 5, 2016). Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002), which defines the word "apartheid" in Part II, Article 7 (page 5). 

“I believe in the liberation of the people of Palestine, and I believe in the liberation of the Jewish people. And those things are not just not mutually exclusive, they require each other.” — Dan Fishback This is a bonus episode featuring extra content from our December 4th episode on Cultural Resistance. Playwright and musician Dan Fishback explains the difference between boycott and censorship, why he uses the word "apartheid" to describe Israel-Palestine, and why he wants to start identifying as a "liberationist Jew." This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. references Letter calling on Lincoln Center to cancel Israeli government's "Brand Israel" theater performances (Adalah-NY, 2017). "5 Myths About Israel Boycotts That Every Theater Lover Should Consider"(Dan Fishback, Forward, July 21, 2017). Lincoln Center Festival page for To the End of the Land, presented July 24-27, 2017. Lincoln Center Festival page for Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, presented July 9, 2017. "PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel" (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, July 16, 2014). "Governor Cuomo Signs First-in-the-Nation Executive Order Directing Divestment of Public Funds Supporting BDS Campaign Against Israel" (Governor's Press Office, June 5, 2016). Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002), which defines the word "apartheid" in Part II, Article 7 (page 5). 

“Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. And this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there’s a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It’s hard to ignore a play.” — Dan Fishback Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz performed with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in "The Siege," at the NYU Skirball Center. Meanwhile, Dan's play "Rubble Rubble" was abruptly and controversially cancelled by the American Jewish Historical Society. In this joint interview, Dan and Motaz talk about their work, and explain why culture is their weapon of choice against the injustices of the occupation. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. Motaz Malhees is a Palestinian actor born in 1992. He received his professional training in Stanislavsky, Brecht and Shakespeare at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp (Palestine), and in Commedia dell’Arte at Theatre Hotel Courage in Amsterdam (Holland). Motaz has trained with internationally acclaimed directors such as Juliano Mer-Khamis and Nabil Al-Raee (The Freedom Theatre), Di Trevis (Royal Shakespeare Company), Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne Theatre), and Katrien van Beurden (Theatre Hotel Courage). His stage credits with The Freedom Theatre include: “Alice in Wonderland” (2011), “What Else – Sho Kman?” (2011), Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (2012), “Freaky Boy” (2012), “Courage, Ouda, Courage” (2013), “Suicide Note from Palestine” (2014), “Power/Poison” (2014), and most recently “The Siege” at the NYU Skirball Center. Motaz has also acted in films, including: “Think Out of the Box” (2014, dir. Mohammad Dasoqe), which screened in Palestine, Germany and Mexico; and “Past Tense Continuous” (2014, dir. Dima Hourani). As a versatile actor, Motaz has performed in multilingual plays as well as in scripted, devised, physical, epic and fantasy theatre. Motaz also produces and performs in short films about social issues in Palestine, which have received a wide following on social media platforms. Having grown up in Palestine, and experienced the economic and political hardships of life under occupation, Motaz has been actively interested in acting since he was nine years old. He lives through theatre, and believes in the potential of art to transform people’s ideas and lives. REFERENCES "Arna's Children" (dir. Juliano Mer-Khamis, 2004) "The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis" (Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, November 2013) "Center for Jewish History Chief Comes Under Fierce Attack By Right-Wingers" (Josh Nathan-Kazis, Forward, September 6, 2017) "Jewish Center Faces Backlash After Canceling Play Criticized as Anti-Israel" (Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times_, _October 11, 2017) Program note by Oskar Eustis for "The Siege" at NYU Skirball Center (October 2017) Indiegogo campaign for Dan Fishback's "Rubble Rubble" "Return to Palestine"(The Freedom Theatre, 2016) in Arabic without subtitles Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Housing Works  "All Your Sisters" (Cheese On Bread, 2017) danfishback.com @motazmalhees thefreedomtheatre.org TRANSCRIPT DAN: So many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then.   [MUSIC: Unsettled theme by Nat Rosenzweig]   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. My name is Max Freedman, I’m one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today’s episode. Now when I’m not working on this podcast, I’m a theater artist, and I know how hard it can be to make a life in the theater and get your work out there. However hard you think it is, imagine you’re trying to tell stories about the occupied West Bank. Enter Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees. Dan and Motaz both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz was in New York performing with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in “The Siege,” a play about the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during the Second Intifada. Dan, on the other hand, made waves because of a play that didn’t happen, rather than one that did. His play, “Rubble Rubble,” was supposed to go up at the American Jewish Historical Society, but they cancelled it. I’ll let him tell you why -- and what happened next. Dan and Motaz didn’t know each other before, but I had the privilege to get them in the same room to talk about their work and as you’ll hear, they had a lot in common. In preparation for this interview, I dug through years of old journals and found my entry from the day I first met Motaz, when I was in Jenin, three summers ago. Really big and underlined a few times, I had written two words: CULTURAL RESISTANCE. So that’s our theme for today. Quick note: besides the three of us, at one point you’ll hear the voice of my co-producer Ilana Levinson. I think that’s all you need to know, so, let’s get started!   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. Uh, why don't you start by introducing yourselves? MOTAZ: Eh, first of all I am so happy to be here with you guys that's before I introduce myself. I am Motaz Malhees, so I am an actor from Palestine, I used to work with the Freedom Theatre since 2010. I do a lot of politics theatre but also the same time I do also for community, I do like for kids show. But I feel like, whatever needs, I give, like...it’s not important the type of theatre I do. But nowadays I'm freelance, and I work like with all theatres in Palestine, my country, because I don't want to be just involved with one place -- even that's I always say that the Freedom Theatre, that's my place and my home. DAN: I’m Dan Fishback, I’m a...I make performance and music and theatre in New York, I’ve been here since 2003 -- I don't know, what do you want to know? MAX: Where’d you grow up? DAN: Oh my gosh! I grew up in a pretty normal American Reform Jewish family, outside Washington, DC in Maryland. In a family that...was essentially a liberal Zionist family, although I don't think they would have necessary articulated themselves like that, they just imagine themselves being normal. And I heard growing up, “If only the Palestinians were nonviolent, then they would get what they want. Because they're asking for something reasonable, but it's because they're violent that things are problem....that that's the reason why there's a problem.” And like, the older people around me as I was growing up were always saying, “If only there was a Palestinian Gandhi” -- that was like the refrain, over and over again. And now I find myself 36 years old, going back to my communities and being like, “There’s this huge non-violent Palestinian movement! And it’s international and we can be part of it, it’s boycott, and blah blah blah.” And everyone’s like, “Oh no, no no, this makes us uncomfortable too.” I'm like, “This is what you were begging for my whole childhood! And now it’s here! Why aren’t you excited? Why aren't you as excited as I am?” That’s where I’m from. MOTAZ: That’s cool. DAN: And it’s an honor to be here with Motaz, whose performance in “The Siege” was absolutely amazing. MOTAZ: We not sure, but there is like people who really want to bring it back to the U.S. again, because it was a really successful show like for the Skirball Theatre, even like they almost sold out. MAX: Let me back you up a second, because, I want you to imagine that I have never heard of “The Siege,” have never heard of the Freedom Theatre. Can you tell me -- tell me what it was, tell me what it is. MOTAZ: “The Siege” it's a story about the invasion happened in 2002 in Palestine. There was like eh...invasion for the whole West Bank: in Jenin, in Nablus, all the cities. Like, one of them was Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem there was like a group of fighters, freedom fighters, who fight and defend back from their homeland. They have like many guns defending themselves, and they have in the other side -- the Israeli side -- there is tanks, Apache, Jeeps, all kind of guns you can imagine your life, heavy guns. And they were like around 45 fighters, 250, 245 civilian -- priests, nuns, children, women, and men, from both different religions -- who’s like stuck inside the Nativity Church for 39 days. With the like first five days they have food, after that they have no food. And they surrounded with around 60,000 soldiers from the Israeli army. They want, like, to finish it. So they, they have pressure, they don't wanna -- even the fighters, says khalas, it’s enough. Their people are suffering, their families are suffering outside because of that. So, they sent them like a paper, they have to write their names, the number of their IDs they have, and their signature. So, the fighters sign on it, and they know that's thirteen going to Europe and twenty-five are going to Gaza. They don't know even where they going. So, they sent them to exile the same day. DAN: When my friends and I were leaving the theatre, all we were talking about is, we were so curious about what their lives would be like after fifteen years of exile and we couldn’t wrap our minds around it. MOTAZ: I know one of them is personally, and he told me a lot about it. And it’s really important to bring this piece because of one reason: they didn't choose. Even they signed the paper that say they have to go to exile, but like they was under pressure, and they thought it's temporary and that they would return. And eh, I know how much they are really broken from inside. They never show this to people.But from inside, if you know them personally, they are really broken, and they just...all they want, just to see like at least their families. Some of them, they can’t. Their family, like they can't get the visa to go to visit them -- like, for example, the two guys, Rami Kamel, and Jihadi Jaara who living in Dublin, they haven't seen their families at all. One of them, like Jihadi he have a son that's his wife give birth like after one week he was sent to exile. He didn't even touch his son, he's fifteen years old, like...at least, like, okay, you don't want to send him back to Palestine. Let his family visit him! Like, this is the minimum of humanity. And eh...a really important point we have like always to say: those people was in their homeland, they was in their own city, and they fight back. They didn't went to...yeah, to Tel Aviv to fight, or to somewhere inside Israel, to fight the people over there. They was fighting the…defending themselves from the Israeli army. MAX: How did you get started with the Freedom Theatre? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Since I was like, eh…fourteen I heard about it, or thirteen -- and I was dreaming about to be in there cause I’m, since like eight, nine, I start doing acting. It's like something I really love from inside, like I really really want to be an actor. Not because like I wanted a name. Because I can hold the stories, I can share stories for all over the world, I enjoy it, it's something beautiful and strong in the same time. So when I was sixteen, I heard about the hip-hop workshop, dance hip-hop workshop in the Freedom Theatre. So I went there and I apply for it, and I get involved with the workshop, and the last few days Juliano just came and he said, “We open a new class for theatre.”   MAX: Juliano, who Motaz just mentioned, is Juliano Mer Khamis, who started what is today, the Freedom Theatre. Real quick, I want to tell you the remarkable story of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. During the First Intifada, Juliano’s mother, a Jewish Israeli Communist named Arna Mer, came to Jenin, where she helped to establish housing and educational programs for children in the refugee camp there -- and eventually a children’s theatre called The Stone. Arna died of cancer in 1995, and during the Second Intifada, the Stone Theatre was destroyed. Arna’s son Juliano returned to Jenin for the first time since his mother’s death in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin, and made an incredible film called "Arna’s Children" -- Motaz will tell you more about this in a bit, but it’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it. It was after finishing this film that Juliano returned again to Jenin to found the Freedom Theatre. In 2011, Juliano was assassinated, but the Freedom Theatre has persisted. Alright -- back to Motaz.   MOTAZ: So I get involved and I put myself in that place since 2010. And it’s been like around...now, now you could say like eight years almost. It is...hard and eh, good in the same time. It is, ‘cause you face emotion, a lot of different emotion. But I love it. It's like, it’s become my home now. I’m always there. Even if I have nothing, I go pass by drinking coffee there like, chill, see what's going on, if they need help or something, because I'm part of the family. MAX: Well we met because I went to visit the Freedom Theatre. And you were just hanging around and we sat there and talked for an hour. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. MAX: Alright, so, Dan. DAN: Yeah. MAX: Tell me about your work and particularly tell me about “Rubble Rubble” and the genesis of that project. MOTAZ: I wanna hear about it. DAN: Well I've been working for the past decade on a trilogy of plays that sort of explore the inner life of the Jewish left in the United States over the past century. And this last play, “Rubble Rubble,” which I've been developing for the past few years, starts in the West Bank in an Israeli settlement. And you find this family that I've been writing plays about -- which is a very far leftist socialist radical family -- you see that that family has split off, and there's like a right-wing side of the family that has become settlers. And the left-wing anti-Zionist member of their family travels to visit them, after they haven’t spoken in twenty years. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: And the family confronts each other over his huge chasm, where one person is like a Palestinian solidarity BDS supporter and the rest of the family are like... MOTAZ: Pro-Israel. DAN: They're like settlers! Like living on stolen land, even though, but they’re middle aged American Jews who in the sixties were like radical New Left, you know, people. I’m fascinated by how many American-Israeli Jews were like super far on the left in the United States and then became these horrible oppressors in Israel. It blows my mind that it's possible to make that transition within the course of one life. And so, and that's where the play starts, and um…and I've been developing it for a few years, I went to Israel-Palestine to research for the play, I spent two weeks with interfaith peace builders traveling all through the West Bank and meeting with different non violent Palestinian and Israeli activists. I spent a week interviewing settlers, which was extremely disturbing. Um, and then I’ve been developing this play, and it was gonna have its first public reading at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan and, um, a couple weeks ago -- I guess now around a month ago -- we went to their offices for a meeting and everything was very positive, they were very excited to have us, the staff was very supportive of the work. And we heard that there was a right-wing smear campaign against the organization's new CEO. And we were told, “This is all happening but don't let it bother you. We might have to cancel that other thing, but we're not going to cancel your play, because we, we're really excited about it.” And literally the conversation we had was about raising the budget for our play. Eight hours later, I got an email saying that the play had been canceled. MOTAZ: What? Was there any explanation about it? DAN: Well, I knew that it was... The institution itself never sent me like a formal letter or anything, but I knew that it was because of this right-wing Zionist pressure campaign that they were being pressured to fire their new CEO, and in order to try to get rid of that critique, they were just going to get rid of us. And the staff of the American Jewish Historical Society was very supportive of me, and I don't see them as my enemies at all. It was the board of directors, or at least a small group from the board, met in the middle of the night and made this decision. And this is what happens all the time in Jewish organizations: the people actually doing work are willing to make brave choices, and the people who are funding that work are not willing to let anyone make those choices. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, this happened with the same thing almost with us. DAN: Yeah, at the Public, right? MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, it's almost the same, I like, I don't know who’s stand with us or who is against us, but we had this question for Oskar, which is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, and his answer was really diplomatic answer and I respect -- no Oskar, he’s really great guy and he was one of the supporters to bring this play over here, and the most important thing, he says, that's to bring “The Siege” for the New Yorker people and we did it. It’s not about the place. DAN: Well, that was interesting about Oskar Eustis and “The Siege,” is that it was supposed to be at the Public Theater, the board canceled that choice. But Oskar, who is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, he had notes in the program for “The Siege” production at the Skirball Center. And I was like, this is so unusual that you open the program and you see notes from the director of the theatre that canceled the play! MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. But, I want to hear more about Dan play, man. DAN: Sure, yeah. MOTAZ: I would like to know what is the story? DAN: Well, I can tell you about the story of what happens in the play, but what I also want to say is that, after we were canceled, the New York theatre world became incredibly supportive of us. And people really came out of nowhere to offer support and offer help. We raised our budget that had been canceled from American Jewish Historical Society within three days. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Yeah. And we were offered resources that we couldn't have ever imagined. And to me, that was a huge sign that the people who are trying to censor dissident voices around Israel-Palestine are going to fail in humiliation. Because our work is stronger than ever after having been canceled, because people are so angry about it. People who are, who don't really know very much about it, are angry about it. And there are left-wing Zionists in my life who don't agree with me, but who are so angry that the play was canceled -- and it’s put them in a situation where they are more open to my ideas, and more open to considering the ideas of the play. So, I mean -- and we’re going to do the reading of the play, it's going happen next year, the details aren't confirmed, but it's going to be bigger and more interesting and more spectacular than it would have been if it hadn’t been canceled in the first place. Which is interesting. The play itself -- it’s funny because the people who canceled it never read it. And it's weird, like if they read it I think they'd be like, “Oh, this is weird.” It's a weird play. The first act is like a very traditional living room drama in a family. So, there's the aunt and uncle, who are middle-aged formerly left-wing radical American Jews who live in a settlement. There's their radical nephew, who shares my politics but is not a sympathetic person. He’s kind of...nasty and annoying and neurotic. And he’s there with his partner who’s Colombian and has no context for any of this. So I really wanted there to be a character who doesn't really have any stake in the game, doesn't have any history with Israel-Palestine, just comes from another part of the world entirely, but who has...a personal history of violence. Because he grew up in a part of Colombia that experienced a lot of violence. Whereas, I think a lot of white American Jews, violence, revolution, all these ideas are abstract concepts, and we don't experience them in our real lives. So he's coming at -- that character, who in a way is the central character of the play -- is coming at things from a totally different context. And I don't want to give anything away, but by the end of the first act, things go horribly wrong, and the first act ends with an enormous disaster. And the second act begins, and it's a musical, and it takes place in Moscow in 1905. And it's the same family, but a century before, and the matriarch of the family is building bombs for the socialist revolution of 1905. MOTAZ: So it’s almost flashback? DAN: It’s like a flash -- it's like an ancestral flashback. MOTAZ: That’s interesting. DAN: So you see the ancestor of the same family, and she's like a socialist revolutionary. She's building a bomb, she wants to like blow up the Tsar. And...and the ideas of the first act are sort of filtered through the music of the second act, where you see her with her socialist comrades. And what I want to ask is: How did this family go from here to there? How did it get from one place to the other? And, and the other question that I'm really interested in asking is like: Once you learn that there's an enormous injustice around you, how far are you willing to go to stop it from happening? How much violence are you willing to accept in order to stop something? Which is a huge question, I think, for anti-Zionist Jews when it comes to Palestine, like how...what are we supposed to do, knowing this horrible thing is going on? It's a huge question within Palestinian society, obviously, like what are you willing to do to stop this from happening? And it’s been a huge question throughout Jewish political history, which is full of violent resistance to injustice, and we act like were so horrified by violence, but Jewish history is full of it. So, those are the questions that I'm dealing with, and I don't think that the play offers any straightforward answers. And that's the interesting thing about the play being canceled or censored, is that the play itself is about what happens when two sides of a Jewish family can't communicate, and shun each other. And that’s what’s happened with the play, that we were being shunned just like family members are being shunned. And when I was in Israel, researching the play, and I would tell people what the play was about -- you know, it's about a Jewish family that's separated over Israel, and the Israeli side doesn't talk to the American side -- and every single person I talked to was like, “Oh, that's just like my family. That's my family, that happened to us.” And I was like, oh, right. This is bad for everybody. This destroys families, this injustice is destroying everybody involved in it. MOTAZ: Yeah, I mean like, even if it’s happened, like something like, my grandparents, whatever it takes place, I will not do the same thing in a different place. DAN: Right? This is the big Jewish catastrophe of the twentieth century, that you take one of two decisions, right? You either, you take all the trauma and you say, “This will never happen to us again, and we will do anything to protect us.” Or you say, “This will never happen to anyone again.” MOTAZ: What, like, Jewish used to live in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, many Arab countries, there was normal to see like this Muslim, Christian and a Jewish neighbor and eh, like an atheist beside him, and all of them are living in the Arab world like normally, like -- let's be honest, even though the Arab history is not clear, like there is many bad things from the Arab history also like... But eh, we used to live like together, so the thing is not religion. I don’t believe it’s religion, it’s mentality. It’s... DAN: I was talking, I was having an argument in a restaurant a couple years ago with a Zionist Jew, and we were fighting really passionately. And someone, a stranger came up to our table and said, “Guys, stop fighting about this. It's an ancient struggle that's been going on thousands of years.” And we both looked at him, both of us agreed, we were like, “No, it isn't! This is new, this is in the past like less than 200 years that this has happened, come on.” We were like, “Go sit down. Finish your lunch, hon. Get out of our faces.” There's so many lies about it. But this is...I feel like this is the work, this is the cultural work of American Jewishness right now. We've been brought up with such a distorted understanding of the world. And it's gonna take so much cultural work to undo it all. MOTAZ: Yeah, and it's gonna make a lot of enemies at the same time. DAN: Oh yeah. But I think my situation proves that it's also gonna get…it's not gonna be completely a disaster. You know, everyone -- so many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then. Okay, what’s the next question? MAX: So, for both of you, why is culture your weapon of choice? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Because eh… Dan, you go ahead. DAN: ‘Cause its more powerful! Like…violence only ever creates more violence. I think this, like, even when it's necessary, it ends up being true. Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. Um, and this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there's a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It's hard to ignore a play. And, and so many…especially, so many American Zionist Jews are under -- on an emotional level, understand that their perspective is impossible. ‘Cause if you ask most American Jews, “Do you believe that it is right for a country to privilege one ethno-religious group over others?” Most of them will say, “No, that’s wrong. That is a wrong thing.” And then you say, “Well, what about Israel?” and they'll go, “Uhhhhhh…” But the fundamental truth, the deeper truth is that none of us actually support this. It's, the the support for Israel is the more superficial belief. The deeper belief is that this is wrong. Good plays, good art, good visual art, good music, good anything about this will help strip away the sort of superficial attachment to the, to the story of Israel, and help people get to the deeper belief that supremacy is wrong. No matter who is supreme in any given situation, it will always be wrong. ILANA: Sorry, I just wanna um, in the conversation about Zionism, I’m wondering... DAN: Do you want me to define that? ILANA: Yeah, I’m wondering specifically if you think any form of Zionism involves supremacy and that kind of thing. DAN: You know, I identify as an anti-Zionist Jew, and a lot of people, a lot of people will say, “Oh, don't say that, because it’s icky, it makes us uncomfortable to say you're anti-Zionist. Because, 'cause what does that really mean.” And for me, if it was the early 1900s, maybe I would have identified as like a Cultural Zionist. But to me, the way the word Zionism functions in the world, it’s support for a Jewish state of Israel. And to me, that means that Zionism inherently requires one to believe that Jews should reign supreme in this land, and I think that that's an untenable option. MAX: I…I sort of wanna respond. DAN: You wanna get into it, Max? MAX: No, I don't -- no, I don’t wanna argue with you…that's not… I will confess that I am skeptical of people who call themselves anti-Zionists who are not Jewish and not Palestinian. I... DAN:  Yeah yeah yeah, me too. I think that part of the, part of what it means to liberate Jews in the world, is to liberate us from our trauma, and to liberate us from that pain that…that distracts us from the reality of the world. And that requires our friends to help us get through that trauma, and to help us liberate ourselves from that trauma, and that requires non-Jewish people who oppose Zionism to make sure that we are emotionally capable of, um, of joining with them and being in community with them. And to me that's always like a challenge to my non-Jewish friends and comrades to be like, if we’re gonna do this together you need to understand that we’re…we just barely made it alive into this century, and a lot of us have like legitimate fears for our lives. I mean, we’re living in the United States where there's like a Nazi problem, right? Like our fear of violence is real and legitimate and um, when people say there's like no anti-semitism on the left in the United States, to me that's like so foolish. Like obviously, there's some anti-semitism in any part of the world, in any community. MOTAZ: Of course, of course…that's true. DAN: And when we pretend it doesn't exist, then we’re...I think we make so many other Jews feel unsafe joining us in this movement, because we're saying something that's obviously untrue and they don't trust us ‘cause it sounds like we’re lying to them. From my perspective, we need to say it: yeah, there's totally some anti-semitism on the left. And we need to deal with it, and our non-Jewish comrades need to deal with it, so that we can see that this is a safe place for us to be. MOTAZ: Nobody called you before, like you are anti-semitic after all the things you did? DAN: Oh yeah. MOTAZ: And you are Jewish. DAN: Oh yeah. Motaz, I need to tell you, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in my life and it's never as aggressive as other Jews. They’re the ones that tell me I should die. What they always say is, “You should go to Palestine, where they’d kill you.” They say this all the time, and I’m like, “I’ve been to Palestine, dude!” MOTAZ: So if some of the guys gonna hear this interview, Dan, you more than welcome in my house in Jenin. Nobody gonna kill you, you gonna love it. So come back to the first question? MAX: Yes, yes, finally... MOTAZ: Why cultural... Because I'm fed up. I have seen like many people got killed in this entire world since I was born. And see blood everywhere, why it’s need to be violent? Why that question? Why don't we turn the opposite question: why we have to be violent? Because it's like, we fed up, we are like, we are human. There is many people that think, like, “Oh, they was born like this.” No, they was not born like this. There is something happen to them. Like, if you watch there is a really important and good movie, it’s called “Arna’s Children,” Little kids, he talking about this story a lot, little kids. And they was dreaming about to be a Romeo of Palestine, them want to be Juliet, one of them he want to be Al Pacino. They wanna be actors. Suddenly, in a moment in 2002, you see those people got killed. And they became a freedom fighter before. Why? One of them his mother got killed by a sniper. One of them, after they bomb a school, he went to the school and he grabbed the body of a girl and she was almost alive, while he was running through the hospital, she died. So, his...of course he was gonna have a flip in his mind, and he gonna hold the gun and fight. So those people, they didn't like came from nothing. There is a reason always to do this. Even like I'm not into like guns or things, that's why I choose also art because I believe art is more stronger than a gun. And I don’t want to see any person on earth suffer. Like death is coming anyway, like you gonna die, but why we have to kill each other? Destroying, destroying. Like, I can make art which is strong, I can bring the messages, not just from my place, from all over the world and develop it to the stage. And eh… I think it's, let's make it, let's be cultural more. Let's let the art talk. And eh, we not gonna fake history, we not gonna fake stories, we gonna bring the story as it is. DAN: And this is why they’re so afraid of theatre. MOTAZ: Yeah! DAN: Because theatre shows the reasons why a person does something, and they don't wanna look at the reasons. MOTAZ: Man, I start to believe in this thing in 2012. I was going to the theatre in a taxi and there was checkpoint, and they stop me. ‘Cause I have no ID. I told him, like “I’m late for my theatre.” And he said, “Oh, you’re going to the Freedom Theatre.” He said like, “Come on man, they killed Juliano, they could kill you too.” And I said like “Why?” He said like, “Art will not change anything man. Why you need it?” And I said, “It's fine, for you it's nothing, but for me...” And he told me, “If you don't have your ID next time, you go to prison. And I promise you.” So since that time I just realize how much art is strong, and how much they afraid from art.   MAX: Here’s Motaz in a scene from “Return to Palestine,” devised by graduates of the Freedom Theatre acting school. [Excerpt from "Return to Palestine," in Arabic]   MAX: So, the work I do here in New York City is mostly with an organization called Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. MOTAZ: Yeah, I know. MAX: Where I work with a lot of different groups of people. Right now I’m working at Housing Works, which is an organization that um…I think this is the blurb from their website, “works to end the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness.” MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Easy. MAX: Yeah, right? I’m working with a group of folks from Housing Works on a play that they created about their experiences trying to keep and get affordable housing, with housing vouchers that they have because of their status. And… that’s just one example, I’ve worked on a lot of plays, and the way that sometimes I think about what those plays are meant to do, is is kind of in two areas: there’s the sort of, I mean, the way that I talk about it with my family, which is very much in the kind of like raising awareness camp, in the sense that people come to see these plays, they don’t know anything about tenant harassment in New York City and they learn about it. And then, really what it was designed to do by the folks who came up with this stuff in Brazil in the seventies, which is to build capacity in that community. Um, these theater tools are tools for people to work together to make change. I’m wondering if that resonates with you at all, and sort of -- what do you see your work in theater doing? DAN: Obviously I like plays that do all of these things at the same time. MOTAZ: Yeah. DAN: But, as a playwright, if you go into a project with too much of a vision of like what kind of responses you want from your audience -- an audience knows when you’re trying to manipulate them, and at the end of the day, an audience knows when something is authentic. So, being a playwright is about balancing your vision for what you want to happen in the room, and your relationship to your own imagination and your own impulses. MOTAZ: And the thing is like, if you don’t believe it, the actors will never believe it, then the audience will never believe it. DAN: Yeah, totally, and a lot of political theatre gets a bad rap, because I think a lot of political theatre is only thinking about, how can we make an impact with this audience? And it feels false. MOTAZ: I’m interested to know about, Dan, like -- normally, when you write, you give solution for the people? Or you give them a question to find the solution? DAN: I don’t give solutions, no. MOTAZ: You give a question. DAN: I give the questions. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. MOTAZ: Good, yeah. DAN: If I feel like I know concretely an answer to something, then I don’t need to write the play. I will just write an essay.   [MUSIC: Cheese on Bread, “All Your Sisters”]   MAX: Motaz had to leave, and I got to talk to Dan for a little while longer about the difference between boycott and censorship, and why he wants to start identifying as a “liberationist Jew.” If you’re not already subscribed, SUBSCRIBE to Unsettled on your podcatcher of choice -- because, in a couple weeks, you’ll get a bonus episode with the rest of our conversation. In the meantime, you can find Dan’s work at his website, danfishback.com, and follow Motaz on Instagram @motazmalhees, that’s M-O-T-A-Z-M-A-L-H-E-E-S. The song you’ve been hearing is "All Your Sisters" by Dan Fishback’s band, Cheese On Bread, from their forthcoming album "The One Who Wanted More,” coming out next year. You can find the song, a full transcript of the episode and other resources at our website, unsettledpod.com. Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Yoshi Fields, Ilana Levinson, and me. This episode was edited by Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. We recorded this episode in a studio for the first time -- shout out to Cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for more show information. We want to bring you more content in more different forms, and to make that happen, we need your support! So you can become a monthly sustainer at Patreon.com/unsettled. You can like Unsettled on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled.

“Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. And this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there’s a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It’s hard to ignore a play.” — Dan Fishback Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz performed with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in "The Siege," at the NYU Skirball Center. Meanwhile, Dan's play "Rubble Rubble" was abruptly and controversially cancelled by the American Jewish Historical Society. In this joint interview, Dan and Motaz talk about their work, and explain why culture is their weapon of choice against the injustices of the occupation. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. Motaz Malhees is a Palestinian actor born in 1992. He received his professional training in Stanislavsky, Brecht and Shakespeare at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp (Palestine), and in Commedia dell’Arte at Theatre Hotel Courage in Amsterdam (Holland). Motaz has trained with internationally acclaimed directors such as Juliano Mer-Khamis and Nabil Al-Raee (The Freedom Theatre), Di Trevis (Royal Shakespeare Company), Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne Theatre), and Katrien van Beurden (Theatre Hotel Courage). His stage credits with The Freedom Theatre include: “Alice in Wonderland” (2011), “What Else – Sho Kman?” (2011), Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (2012), “Freaky Boy” (2012), “Courage, Ouda, Courage” (2013), “Suicide Note from Palestine” (2014), “Power/Poison” (2014), and most recently “The Siege” at the NYU Skirball Center. Motaz has also acted in films, including: “Think Out of the Box” (2014, dir. Mohammad Dasoqe), which screened in Palestine, Germany and Mexico; and “Past Tense Continuous” (2014, dir. Dima Hourani). As a versatile actor, Motaz has performed in multilingual plays as well as in scripted, devised, physical, epic and fantasy theatre. Motaz also produces and performs in short films about social issues in Palestine, which have received a wide following on social media platforms. Having grown up in Palestine, and experienced the economic and political hardships of life under occupation, Motaz has been actively interested in acting since he was nine years old. He lives through theatre, and believes in the potential of art to transform people’s ideas and lives. REFERENCES "Arna's Children" (dir. Juliano Mer-Khamis, 2004) "The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis" (Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, November 2013) "Center for Jewish History Chief Comes Under Fierce Attack By Right-Wingers" (Josh Nathan-Kazis, Forward, September 6, 2017) "Jewish Center Faces Backlash After Canceling Play Criticized as Anti-Israel" (Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times_, _October 11, 2017) Program note by Oskar Eustis for "The Siege" at NYU Skirball Center (October 2017) Indiegogo campaign for Dan Fishback's "Rubble Rubble" "Return to Palestine"(The Freedom Theatre, 2016) in Arabic without subtitles Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Housing Works  "All Your Sisters" (Cheese On Bread, 2017) danfishback.com @motazmalhees thefreedomtheatre.org TRANSCRIPT DAN: So many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then.   [MUSIC: Unsettled theme by Nat Rosenzweig]   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. My name is Max Freedman, I’m one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today’s episode. Now when I’m not working on this podcast, I’m a theater artist, and I know how hard it can be to make a life in the theater and get your work out there. However hard you think it is, imagine you’re trying to tell stories about the occupied West Bank. Enter Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees. Dan and Motaz both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz was in New York performing with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in “The Siege,” a play about the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during the Second Intifada. Dan, on the other hand, made waves because of a play that didn’t happen, rather than one that did. His play, “Rubble Rubble,” was supposed to go up at the American Jewish Historical Society, but they cancelled it. I’ll let him tell you why -- and what happened next. Dan and Motaz didn’t know each other before, but I had the privilege to get them in the same room to talk about their work and as you’ll hear, they had a lot in common. In preparation for this interview, I dug through years of old journals and found my entry from the day I first met Motaz, when I was in Jenin, three summers ago. Really big and underlined a few times, I had written two words: CULTURAL RESISTANCE. So that’s our theme for today. Quick note: besides the three of us, at one point you’ll hear the voice of my co-producer Ilana Levinson. I think that’s all you need to know, so, let’s get started!   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. Uh, why don't you start by introducing yourselves? MOTAZ: Eh, first of all I am so happy to be here with you guys that's before I introduce myself. I am Motaz Malhees, so I am an actor from Palestine, I used to work with the Freedom Theatre since 2010. I do a lot of politics theatre but also the same time I do also for community, I do like for kids show. But I feel like, whatever needs, I give, like...it’s not important the type of theatre I do. But nowadays I'm freelance, and I work like with all theatres in Palestine, my country, because I don't want to be just involved with one place -- even that's I always say that the Freedom Theatre, that's my place and my home. DAN: I’m Dan Fishback, I’m a...I make performance and music and theatre in New York, I’ve been here since 2003 -- I don't know, what do you want to know? MAX: Where’d you grow up? DAN: Oh my gosh! I grew up in a pretty normal American Reform Jewish family, outside Washington, DC in Maryland. In a family that...was essentially a liberal Zionist family, although I don't think they would have necessary articulated themselves like that, they just imagine themselves being normal. And I heard growing up, “If only the Palestinians were nonviolent, then they would get what they want. Because they're asking for something reasonable, but it's because they're violent that things are problem....that that's the reason why there's a problem.” And like, the older people around me as I was growing up were always saying, “If only there was a Palestinian Gandhi” -- that was like the refrain, over and over again. And now I find myself 36 years old, going back to my communities and being like, “There’s this huge non-violent Palestinian movement! And it’s international and we can be part of it, it’s boycott, and blah blah blah.” And everyone’s like, “Oh no, no no, this makes us uncomfortable too.” I'm like, “This is what you were begging for my whole childhood! And now it’s here! Why aren’t you excited? Why aren't you as excited as I am?” That’s where I’m from. MOTAZ: That’s cool. DAN: And it’s an honor to be here with Motaz, whose performance in “The Siege” was absolutely amazing. MOTAZ: We not sure, but there is like people who really want to bring it back to the U.S. again, because it was a really successful show like for the Skirball Theatre, even like they almost sold out. MAX: Let me back you up a second, because, I want you to imagine that I have never heard of “The Siege,” have never heard of the Freedom Theatre. Can you tell me -- tell me what it was, tell me what it is. MOTAZ: “The Siege” it's a story about the invasion happened in 2002 in Palestine. There was like eh...invasion for the whole West Bank: in Jenin, in Nablus, all the cities. Like, one of them was Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem there was like a group of fighters, freedom fighters, who fight and defend back from their homeland. They have like many guns defending themselves, and they have in the other side -- the Israeli side -- there is tanks, Apache, Jeeps, all kind of guns you can imagine your life, heavy guns. And they were like around 45 fighters, 250, 245 civilian -- priests, nuns, children, women, and men, from both different religions -- who’s like stuck inside the Nativity Church for 39 days. With the like first five days they have food, after that they have no food. And they surrounded with around 60,000 soldiers from the Israeli army. They want, like, to finish it. So they, they have pressure, they don't wanna -- even the fighters, says khalas, it’s enough. Their people are suffering, their families are suffering outside because of that. So, they sent them like a paper, they have to write their names, the number of their IDs they have, and their signature. So, the fighters sign on it, and they know that's thirteen going to Europe and twenty-five are going to Gaza. They don't know even where they going. So, they sent them to exile the same day. DAN: When my friends and I were leaving the theatre, all we were talking about is, we were so curious about what their lives would be like after fifteen years of exile and we couldn’t wrap our minds around it. MOTAZ: I know one of them is personally, and he told me a lot about it. And it’s really important to bring this piece because of one reason: they didn't choose. Even they signed the paper that say they have to go to exile, but like they was under pressure, and they thought it's temporary and that they would return. And eh, I know how much they are really broken from inside. They never show this to people.But from inside, if you know them personally, they are really broken, and they just...all they want, just to see like at least their families. Some of them, they can’t. Their family, like they can't get the visa to go to visit them -- like, for example, the two guys, Rami Kamel, and Jihadi Jaara who living in Dublin, they haven't seen their families at all. One of them, like Jihadi he have a son that's his wife give birth like after one week he was sent to exile. He didn't even touch his son, he's fifteen years old, like...at least, like, okay, you don't want to send him back to Palestine. Let his family visit him! Like, this is the minimum of humanity. And eh...a really important point we have like always to say: those people was in their homeland, they was in their own city, and they fight back. They didn't went to...yeah, to Tel Aviv to fight, or to somewhere inside Israel, to fight the people over there. They was fighting the…defending themselves from the Israeli army. MAX: How did you get started with the Freedom Theatre? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Since I was like, eh…fourteen I heard about it, or thirteen -- and I was dreaming about to be in there cause I’m, since like eight, nine, I start doing acting. It's like something I really love from inside, like I really really want to be an actor. Not because like I wanted a name. Because I can hold the stories, I can share stories for all over the world, I enjoy it, it's something beautiful and strong in the same time. So when I was sixteen, I heard about the hip-hop workshop, dance hip-hop workshop in the Freedom Theatre. So I went there and I apply for it, and I get involved with the workshop, and the last few days Juliano just came and he said, “We open a new class for theatre.”   MAX: Juliano, who Motaz just mentioned, is Juliano Mer Khamis, who started what is today, the Freedom Theatre. Real quick, I want to tell you the remarkable story of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. During the First Intifada, Juliano’s mother, a Jewish Israeli Communist named Arna Mer, came to Jenin, where she helped to establish housing and educational programs for children in the refugee camp there -- and eventually a children’s theatre called The Stone. Arna died of cancer in 1995, and during the Second Intifada, the Stone Theatre was destroyed. Arna’s son Juliano returned to Jenin for the first time since his mother’s death in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin, and made an incredible film called "Arna’s Children" -- Motaz will tell you more about this in a bit, but it’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it. It was after finishing this film that Juliano returned again to Jenin to found the Freedom Theatre. In 2011, Juliano was assassinated, but the Freedom Theatre has persisted. Alright -- back to Motaz.   MOTAZ: So I get involved and I put myself in that place since 2010. And it’s been like around...now, now you could say like eight years almost. It is...hard and eh, good in the same time. It is, ‘cause you face emotion, a lot of different emotion. But I love it. It's like, it’s become my home now. I’m always there. Even if I have nothing, I go pass by drinking coffee there like, chill, see what's going on, if they need help or something, because I'm part of the family. MAX: Well we met because I went to visit the Freedom Theatre. And you were just hanging around and we sat there and talked for an hour. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. MAX: Alright, so, Dan. DAN: Yeah. MAX: Tell me about your work and particularly tell me about “Rubble Rubble” and the genesis of that project. MOTAZ: I wanna hear about it. DAN: Well I've been working for the past decade on a trilogy of plays that sort of explore the inner life of the Jewish left in the United States over the past century. And this last play, “Rubble Rubble,” which I've been developing for the past few years, starts in the West Bank in an Israeli settlement. And you find this family that I've been writing plays about -- which is a very far leftist socialist radical family -- you see that that family has split off, and there's like a right-wing side of the family that has become settlers. And the left-wing anti-Zionist member of their family travels to visit them, after they haven’t spoken in twenty years. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: And the family confronts each other over his huge chasm, where one person is like a Palestinian solidarity BDS supporter and the rest of the family are like... MOTAZ: Pro-Israel. DAN: They're like settlers! Like living on stolen land, even though, but they’re middle aged American Jews who in the sixties were like radical New Left, you know, people. I’m fascinated by how many American-Israeli Jews were like super far on the left in the United States and then became these horrible oppressors in Israel. It blows my mind that it's possible to make that transition within the course of one life. And so, and that's where the play starts, and um…and I've been developing it for a few years, I went to Israel-Palestine to research for the play, I spent two weeks with interfaith peace builders traveling all through the West Bank and meeting with different non violent Palestinian and Israeli activists. I spent a week interviewing settlers, which was extremely disturbing. Um, and then I’ve been developing this play, and it was gonna have its first public reading at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan and, um, a couple weeks ago -- I guess now around a month ago -- we went to their offices for a meeting and everything was very positive, they were very excited to have us, the staff was very supportive of the work. And we heard that there was a right-wing smear campaign against the organization's new CEO. And we were told, “This is all happening but don't let it bother you. We might have to cancel that other thing, but we're not going to cancel your play, because we, we're really excited about it.” And literally the conversation we had was about raising the budget for our play. Eight hours later, I got an email saying that the play had been canceled. MOTAZ: What? Was there any explanation about it? DAN: Well, I knew that it was... The institution itself never sent me like a formal letter or anything, but I knew that it was because of this right-wing Zionist pressure campaign that they were being pressured to fire their new CEO, and in order to try to get rid of that critique, they were just going to get rid of us. And the staff of the American Jewish Historical Society was very supportive of me, and I don't see them as my enemies at all. It was the board of directors, or at least a small group from the board, met in the middle of the night and made this decision. And this is what happens all the time in Jewish organizations: the people actually doing work are willing to make brave choices, and the people who are funding that work are not willing to let anyone make those choices. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, this happened with the same thing almost with us. DAN: Yeah, at the Public, right? MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, it's almost the same, I like, I don't know who’s stand with us or who is against us, but we had this question for Oskar, which is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, and his answer was really diplomatic answer and I respect -- no Oskar, he’s really great guy and he was one of the supporters to bring this play over here, and the most important thing, he says, that's to bring “The Siege” for the New Yorker people and we did it. It’s not about the place. DAN: Well, that was interesting about Oskar Eustis and “The Siege,” is that it was supposed to be at the Public Theater, the board canceled that choice. But Oskar, who is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, he had notes in the program for “The Siege” production at the Skirball Center. And I was like, this is so unusual that you open the program and you see notes from the director of the theatre that canceled the play! MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. But, I want to hear more about Dan play, man. DAN: Sure, yeah. MOTAZ: I would like to know what is the story? DAN: Well, I can tell you about the story of what happens in the play, but what I also want to say is that, after we were canceled, the New York theatre world became incredibly supportive of us. And people really came out of nowhere to offer support and offer help. We raised our budget that had been canceled from American Jewish Historical Society within three days. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Yeah. And we were offered resources that we couldn't have ever imagined. And to me, that was a huge sign that the people who are trying to censor dissident voices around Israel-Palestine are going to fail in humiliation. Because our work is stronger than ever after having been canceled, because people are so angry about it. People who are, who don't really know very much about it, are angry about it. And there are left-wing Zionists in my life who don't agree with me, but who are so angry that the play was canceled -- and it’s put them in a situation where they are more open to my ideas, and more open to considering the ideas of the play. So, I mean -- and we’re going to do the reading of the play, it's going happen next year, the details aren't confirmed, but it's going to be bigger and more interesting and more spectacular than it would have been if it hadn’t been canceled in the first place. Which is interesting. The play itself -- it’s funny because the people who canceled it never read it. And it's weird, like if they read it I think they'd be like, “Oh, this is weird.” It's a weird play. The first act is like a very traditional living room drama in a family. So, there's the aunt and uncle, who are middle-aged formerly left-wing radical American Jews who live in a settlement. There's their radical nephew, who shares my politics but is not a sympathetic person. He’s kind of...nasty and annoying and neurotic. And he’s there with his partner who’s Colombian and has no context for any of this. So I really wanted there to be a character who doesn't really have any stake in the game, doesn't have any history with Israel-Palestine, just comes from another part of the world entirely, but who has...a personal history of violence. Because he grew up in a part of Colombia that experienced a lot of violence. Whereas, I think a lot of white American Jews, violence, revolution, all these ideas are abstract concepts, and we don't experience them in our real lives. So he's coming at -- that character, who in a way is the central character of the play -- is coming at things from a totally different context. And I don't want to give anything away, but by the end of the first act, things go horribly wrong, and the first act ends with an enormous disaster. And the second act begins, and it's a musical, and it takes place in Moscow in 1905. And it's the same family, but a century before, and the matriarch of the family is building bombs for the socialist revolution of 1905. MOTAZ: So it’s almost flashback? DAN: It’s like a flash -- it's like an ancestral flashback. MOTAZ: That’s interesting. DAN: So you see the ancestor of the same family, and she's like a socialist revolutionary. She's building a bomb, she wants to like blow up the Tsar. And...and the ideas of the first act are sort of filtered through the music of the second act, where you see her with her socialist comrades. And what I want to ask is: How did this family go from here to there? How did it get from one place to the other? And, and the other question that I'm really interested in asking is like: Once you learn that there's an enormous injustice around you, how far are you willing to go to stop it from happening? How much violence are you willing to accept in order to stop something? Which is a huge question, I think, for anti-Zionist Jews when it comes to Palestine, like how...what are we supposed to do, knowing this horrible thing is going on? It's a huge question within Palestinian society, obviously, like what are you willing to do to stop this from happening? And it’s been a huge question throughout Jewish political history, which is full of violent resistance to injustice, and we act like were so horrified by violence, but Jewish history is full of it. So, those are the questions that I'm dealing with, and I don't think that the play offers any straightforward answers. And that's the interesting thing about the play being canceled or censored, is that the play itself is about what happens when two sides of a Jewish family can't communicate, and shun each other. And that’s what’s happened with the play, that we were being shunned just like family members are being shunned. And when I was in Israel, researching the play, and I would tell people what the play was about -- you know, it's about a Jewish family that's separated over Israel, and the Israeli side doesn't talk to the American side -- and every single person I talked to was like, “Oh, that's just like my family. That's my family, that happened to us.” And I was like, oh, right. This is bad for everybody. This destroys families, this injustice is destroying everybody involved in it. MOTAZ: Yeah, I mean like, even if it’s happened, like something like, my grandparents, whatever it takes place, I will not do the same thing in a different place. DAN: Right? This is the big Jewish catastrophe of the twentieth century, that you take one of two decisions, right? You either, you take all the trauma and you say, “This will never happen to us again, and we will do anything to protect us.” Or you say, “This will never happen to anyone again.” MOTAZ: What, like, Jewish used to live in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, many Arab countries, there was normal to see like this Muslim, Christian and a Jewish neighbor and eh, like an atheist beside him, and all of them are living in the Arab world like normally, like -- let's be honest, even though the Arab history is not clear, like there is many bad things from the Arab history also like... But eh, we used to live like together, so the thing is not religion. I don’t believe it’s religion, it’s mentality. It’s... DAN: I was talking, I was having an argument in a restaurant a couple years ago with a Zionist Jew, and we were fighting really passionately. And someone, a stranger came up to our table and said, “Guys, stop fighting about this. It's an ancient struggle that's been going on thousands of years.” And we both looked at him, both of us agreed, we were like, “No, it isn't! This is new, this is in the past like less than 200 years that this has happened, come on.” We were like, “Go sit down. Finish your lunch, hon. Get out of our faces.” There's so many lies about it. But this is...I feel like this is the work, this is the cultural work of American Jewishness right now. We've been brought up with such a distorted understanding of the world. And it's gonna take so much cultural work to undo it all. MOTAZ: Yeah, and it's gonna make a lot of enemies at the same time. DAN: Oh yeah. But I think my situation proves that it's also gonna get…it's not gonna be completely a disaster. You know, everyone -- so many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then. Okay, what’s the next question? MAX: So, for both of you, why is culture your weapon of choice? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Because eh… Dan, you go ahead. DAN: ‘Cause its more powerful! Like…violence only ever creates more violence. I think this, like, even when it's necessary, it ends up being true. Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. Um, and this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there's a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It's hard to ignore a play. And, and so many…especially, so many American Zionist Jews are under -- on an emotional level, understand that their perspective is impossible. ‘Cause if you ask most American Jews, “Do you believe that it is right for a country to privilege one ethno-religious group over others?” Most of them will say, “No, that’s wrong. That is a wrong thing.” And then you say, “Well, what about Israel?” and they'll go, “Uhhhhhh…” But the fundamental truth, the deeper truth is that none of us actually support this. It's, the the support for Israel is the more superficial belief. The deeper belief is that this is wrong. Good plays, good art, good visual art, good music, good anything about this will help strip away the sort of superficial attachment to the, to the story of Israel, and help people get to the deeper belief that supremacy is wrong. No matter who is supreme in any given situation, it will always be wrong. ILANA: Sorry, I just wanna um, in the conversation about Zionism, I’m wondering... DAN: Do you want me to define that? ILANA: Yeah, I’m wondering specifically if you think any form of Zionism involves supremacy and that kind of thing. DAN: You know, I identify as an anti-Zionist Jew, and a lot of people, a lot of people will say, “Oh, don't say that, because it’s icky, it makes us uncomfortable to say you're anti-Zionist. Because, 'cause what does that really mean.” And for me, if it was the early 1900s, maybe I would have identified as like a Cultural Zionist. But to me, the way the word Zionism functions in the world, it’s support for a Jewish state of Israel. And to me, that means that Zionism inherently requires one to believe that Jews should reign supreme in this land, and I think that that's an untenable option. MAX: I…I sort of wanna respond. DAN: You wanna get into it, Max? MAX: No, I don't -- no, I don’t wanna argue with you…that's not… I will confess that I am skeptical of people who call themselves anti-Zionists who are not Jewish and not Palestinian. I... DAN:  Yeah yeah yeah, me too. I think that part of the, part of what it means to liberate Jews in the world, is to liberate us from our trauma, and to liberate us from that pain that…that distracts us from the reality of the world. And that requires our friends to help us get through that trauma, and to help us liberate ourselves from that trauma, and that requires non-Jewish people who oppose Zionism to make sure that we are emotionally capable of, um, of joining with them and being in community with them. And to me that's always like a challenge to my non-Jewish friends and comrades to be like, if we’re gonna do this together you need to understand that we’re…we just barely made it alive into this century, and a lot of us have like legitimate fears for our lives. I mean, we’re living in the United States where there's like a Nazi problem, right? Like our fear of violence is real and legitimate and um, when people say there's like no anti-semitism on the left in the United States, to me that's like so foolish. Like obviously, there's some anti-semitism in any part of the world, in any community. MOTAZ: Of course, of course…that's true. DAN: And when we pretend it doesn't exist, then we’re...I think we make so many other Jews feel unsafe joining us in this movement, because we're saying something that's obviously untrue and they don't trust us ‘cause it sounds like we’re lying to them. From my perspective, we need to say it: yeah, there's totally some anti-semitism on the left. And we need to deal with it, and our non-Jewish comrades need to deal with it, so that we can see that this is a safe place for us to be. MOTAZ: Nobody called you before, like you are anti-semitic after all the things you did? DAN: Oh yeah. MOTAZ: And you are Jewish. DAN: Oh yeah. Motaz, I need to tell you, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in my life and it's never as aggressive as other Jews. They’re the ones that tell me I should die. What they always say is, “You should go to Palestine, where they’d kill you.” They say this all the time, and I’m like, “I’ve been to Palestine, dude!” MOTAZ: So if some of the guys gonna hear this interview, Dan, you more than welcome in my house in Jenin. Nobody gonna kill you, you gonna love it. So come back to the first question? MAX: Yes, yes, finally... MOTAZ: Why cultural... Because I'm fed up. I have seen like many people got killed in this entire world since I was born. And see blood everywhere, why it’s need to be violent? Why that question? Why don't we turn the opposite question: why we have to be violent? Because it's like, we fed up, we are like, we are human. There is many people that think, like, “Oh, they was born like this.” No, they was not born like this. There is something happen to them. Like, if you watch there is a really important and good movie, it’s called “Arna’s Children,” Little kids, he talking about this story a lot, little kids. And they was dreaming about to be a Romeo of Palestine, them want to be Juliet, one of them he want to be Al Pacino. They wanna be actors. Suddenly, in a moment in 2002, you see those people got killed. And they became a freedom fighter before. Why? One of them his mother got killed by a sniper. One of them, after they bomb a school, he went to the school and he grabbed the body of a girl and she was almost alive, while he was running through the hospital, she died. So, his...of course he was gonna have a flip in his mind, and he gonna hold the gun and fight. So those people, they didn't like came from nothing. There is a reason always to do this. Even like I'm not into like guns or things, that's why I choose also art because I believe art is more stronger than a gun. And I don’t want to see any person on earth suffer. Like death is coming anyway, like you gonna die, but why we have to kill each other? Destroying, destroying. Like, I can make art which is strong, I can bring the messages, not just from my place, from all over the world and develop it to the stage. And eh… I think it's, let's make it, let's be cultural more. Let's let the art talk. And eh, we not gonna fake history, we not gonna fake stories, we gonna bring the story as it is. DAN: And this is why they’re so afraid of theatre. MOTAZ: Yeah! DAN: Because theatre shows the reasons why a person does something, and they don't wanna look at the reasons. MOTAZ: Man, I start to believe in this thing in 2012. I was going to the theatre in a taxi and there was checkpoint, and they stop me. ‘Cause I have no ID. I told him, like “I’m late for my theatre.” And he said, “Oh, you’re going to the Freedom Theatre.” He said like, “Come on man, they killed Juliano, they could kill you too.” And I said like “Why?” He said like, “Art will not change anything man. Why you need it?” And I said, “It's fine, for you it's nothing, but for me...” And he told me, “If you don't have your ID next time, you go to prison. And I promise you.” So since that time I just realize how much art is strong, and how much they afraid from art.   MAX: Here’s Motaz in a scene from “Return to Palestine,” devised by graduates of the Freedom Theatre acting school. [Excerpt from "Return to Palestine," in Arabic]   MAX: So, the work I do here in New York City is mostly with an organization called Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. MOTAZ: Yeah, I know. MAX: Where I work with a lot of different groups of people. Right now I’m working at Housing Works, which is an organization that um…I think this is the blurb from their website, “works to end the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness.” MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Easy. MAX: Yeah, right? I’m working with a group of folks from Housing Works on a play that they created about their experiences trying to keep and get affordable housing, with housing vouchers that they have because of their status. And… that’s just one example, I’ve worked on a lot of plays, and the way that sometimes I think about what those plays are meant to do, is is kind of in two areas: there’s the sort of, I mean, the way that I talk about it with my family, which is very much in the kind of like raising awareness camp, in the sense that people come to see these plays, they don’t know anything about tenant harassment in New York City and they learn about it. And then, really what it was designed to do by the folks who came up with this stuff in Brazil in the seventies, which is to build capacity in that community. Um, these theater tools are tools for people to work together to make change. I’m wondering if that resonates with you at all, and sort of -- what do you see your work in theater doing? DAN: Obviously I like plays that do all of these things at the same time. MOTAZ: Yeah. DAN: But, as a playwright, if you go into a project with too much of a vision of like what kind of responses you want from your audience -- an audience knows when you’re trying to manipulate them, and at the end of the day, an audience knows when something is authentic. So, being a playwright is about balancing your vision for what you want to happen in the room, and your relationship to your own imagination and your own impulses. MOTAZ: And the thing is like, if you don’t believe it, the actors will never believe it, then the audience will never believe it. DAN: Yeah, totally, and a lot of political theatre gets a bad rap, because I think a lot of political theatre is only thinking about, how can we make an impact with this audience? And it feels false. MOTAZ: I’m interested to know about, Dan, like -- normally, when you write, you give solution for the people? Or you give them a question to find the solution? DAN: I don’t give solutions, no. MOTAZ: You give a question. DAN: I give the questions. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. MOTAZ: Good, yeah. DAN: If I feel like I know concretely an answer to something, then I don’t need to write the play. I will just write an essay.   [MUSIC: Cheese on Bread, “All Your Sisters”]   MAX: Motaz had to leave, and I got to talk to Dan for a little while longer about the difference between boycott and censorship, and why he wants to start identifying as a “liberationist Jew.” If you’re not already subscribed, SUBSCRIBE to Unsettled on your podcatcher of choice -- because, in a couple weeks, you’ll get a bonus episode with the rest of our conversation. In the meantime, you can find Dan’s work at his website, danfishback.com, and follow Motaz on Instagram @motazmalhees, that’s M-O-T-A-Z-M-A-L-H-E-E-S. The song you’ve been hearing is "All Your Sisters" by Dan Fishback’s band, Cheese On Bread, from their forthcoming album "The One Who Wanted More,” coming out next year. You can find the song, a full transcript of the episode and other resources at our website, unsettledpod.com. Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Yoshi Fields, Ilana Levinson, and me. This episode was edited by Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. We recorded this episode in a studio for the first time -- shout out to Cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for more show information. We want to bring you more content in more different forms, and to make that happen, we need your support! So you can become a monthly sustainer at Patreon.com/unsettled. You can like Unsettled on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled.

Amy Bernhard talks about finding the new joy in the process of writing and about putting ourselves in situations in which we feel a little uncomfortable, in order to have something new to write about. Amy is a writer whose essays appear in The Rumpus, VICE Magazine, Redivider, upstreet, The Toast, Ninth Letter, The Iowa Review, and The Colorado Review, among others. She presently teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Texas-Arlington and The University of Iowa.  She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program, and her work has been awarded grants from The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Arts. She is currently working on a book about the prison town of Huntsville, Texas. How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you'll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, a novel which won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and will be published by Algonquin Books in May 2017. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The New York Times, Apogee Journal, Narrative, O. Magazine, Copper Nickel, Storychord, One Teen Story, Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Hyphen and a fiction editor at Drunken Boat, Lisa has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Writers OMI at Ledig House, the Jerome Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, the Van Lier Foundation, Hawthornden Castle, the I-Park Foundation, the Anderson Center, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.

In episode 3 of In-Residence, a podcast of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, we will hear from poet Erin Malone and artist Sophie Barbasch.

In episode 2 of In-Residence, a podcast of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, we will hear from cellist and composer Fjola Evans, and photographer Elise Kirk.

Isaac Anderson is a teaching pastor at Jacob’s Well Church in Kansas City, Missouri, where he also oversees the church’s justice initiatives. Isaac holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State, and has been a writer-in-residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University, Western Theological Seminary, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Economy of Love... Read more » The post 68: Isaac Anderson appeared first on Sermonsmith.

In episode 1 of In Residence, a podcast of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, we will hear from writer Dawn Dorland, interdisciplinary artist Rob Macinnis, and composer Thomas Dempster.

This week: The return of the The Amanda Browder Show! we talk with artist Katya Grokhovsky from her exhibition/residency at Soho20 in NYC. We talk about her work, performance as a medium, artist as curator and her discussion panels surrounding feminism, and the contemporary art world.    www.katyagrokhovsky.nethttp://katyagrokhovsky.tumblr.com/http://feministurgent.tumblr.com/http://soho20gallery.com/opportunities/artist-in-residence-studio-program/ Katya Grokhovsky is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator and organizer, whose work deals with issues of alienation, gender politics and migration. Grokhovsky holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011), a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts, Australia (2007) and is a recipient of numerous fellowships, residencies and awards including SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery Residency (2015), BRIC Media Arts Fellowship (2015), VOX Populi AUX Curatorial Fellowship in Performance, Philadelphia (2015), New York Studio Residency Program Visiting Artist (2015), Residency Unlimited (2014), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, (2014), Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2013), NARS Residency (2013), Santa Fe Art Institute Residency (2012), Watermill Center Summer Residency (2011), Dame Joan Sutherland Fund Grant (2013), Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant (2013), NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists (2012), Chashama space to create grant (2012). Her work has been exhibited in venues such as Lesley Heller Workspace (2015), Judith Charles Gallery (2015), Dixon Place (2015), Spring Break Art /Show (2015), EFA Project Space (2014), HERE Arts Center (2014), Art in Odd Places NYC (2014), SAW - Storefront Art Walk Bay Ridge (2014), Gateway Project (2014), A.I.R Gallery Projects, Governor's Island (2014), Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College (2014), Panoply Performance Lab (2014), New York City Center Lobby Projects (2013), Galerie Protege NYC (2013/14), IDEAS City, New Museum (2013), Gallery Affero (2013), Movement Research Festival (2012), Chashama (2012), Ukrainian Institute of America (2012), Grace Exhibition Space (2012-14), The Franklin (2013), Antena gallery (2013), Defibrillator gallery (2011/13), Bus Projects (2012), Heaven gallery (2010), amongst many others.     Details for image: Katya Grokhovsky, One Fine Day, 2014. photo Yan Gi Cheng