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“Practice teaches us to have faith in the process,” says Andrea Barrett, National Book Award winning author. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with her about her newest book, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction. It's one of the most metaphor-rich, process-curious shows we've had yet. We explore the joys of rabbit holes, the importance of not knowing what we are looking for, the inevitability of false starts (and how to let go of the work we've done), why we shouldn't worry about writing unreadable first drafts, how to develop the muscle of intuition, and the questionable wisdom of how we teach creative writing.Andrea Barrett is the author of the National Book Award-winning Ship Fever, Voyage of the Narwhal, Servants of the Map, Natural History, and other works of fiction. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NEA Fellowship, and the Rea Award for the Short Story, and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in the Adirondacks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Notes and Links to Alexander Chee's Work          Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays. He was guest-editor for The Best American Essays of 2022.    He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.    He is a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Buy How To Write an Autobiographical Novel   Alexander's Website   Book Review for How To Write an Autobiographical Novel from The New York Times   At about 2:00, Alexander details his Amtrak residency, later written about in The New Yorker At about 6:00, Alexander outlines some interesting characters that he met during his Amtrak residency  At about 12:00, Alexander reflects on a book project inspired by an interesting encounter with a former detective and British and American sensibilities  At about 16:30, Pete shares his own Amtrak story, possible fodder for essays and short stories, as Alexander remarks on “immediate friendship”  At about 18:50, Alexander talks about upcoming novel and short story projects and the process of picking a title; he recounts how he arrived at his essay collection's title, through a Buzzfeed publication  At about 26:30, Alexander highlights Kirkus Review naming How to Write an Autobiographical Novel one  At about 27:35, Alexander gives background on his essay collection's cover photo At about 34:10, Alexander talks about the composition of the previous essay collection and his upcoming one, with regards to placement and focuses on his “rose garden”- “The Rosary”-essay's development At about 39:00, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about the order of the essays in the collections and any throughlines-Garnette Cadogan and Naomi Gibbs are shouted out At about 43:40, Alexander talks about a manuscript that he has been working At about 44:45, Pete is complimentary of Alexander's “The Rosary” essay, and Alexander tells a story of an interested and poignant conversation with   At about 48:00, Pete shouts  At about 49:00, Pete and Alexander talk about the essay collection's first piece, and Alexander talks about being “Alejandro from Oaxaca” for a short time-he references Yiyun Li's powerful essay, “To Speak is to Blunder” At about 55:10, Pete compliments Alexander's powerful advocacy work and asks him about perspective and time, and how Alexander looks back at the essays from the collection so many years later (for some of the essays) At about 1:02:00, In talking about modern protest and activist culture, mutual aid, etc., Alexander shouts out Sarah Thankam Mathews' powerful All This Could Be Different At about 1:04:30, Alexander discusses a dynamic class that he has mentored at Dartmouth At about 1:05:30, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about what fiction allows him to do with his writing At about 1:06:30, Alexander reflects on ideas of catharsis in his writing      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 Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website this week. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     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 Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's 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 282 with Emely Rumble, a licensed clinical social worker, school social worker, and seasoned biblio/psychotherapist who specializes in bibliotherapy, the use of literature and expressive writing to heal. Pub Day and episode air day are April 29 for her wonderful book, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx.

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, as well as the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at University of Southern Maine. Marquart serves as Iowa's Poet Laureate and the Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment. The author of seven books―including The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and Small Buried Things: Poems―Marquart has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors' Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine's Elle Lettres Award. In 2021, Marquart was awarded a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book is Gratitude with Dogs: New and Collected. For more information: debramarquart.com Review the Rattlecast on iTunes! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rattle-poetry/id1477377214 As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem that includes multiple lists. Next Week's Prompt: Look at an old family photograph, and find an object in the background that you hadn't noticed before. Write a poem about it. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Recorded November 21, 2023. Literature & Resistance: Poetry Reading with Éireann Lorsung, Majed Mujed, and Hua Xi Hosted by the Centre for Resistance Studies and Poetry Ireland Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, Tuesday 21 November, 6pm The Centre for Resistance Studies is delighted to be partnering again with Poetry Ireland to welcome three acclaimed poets for a special reading in our ongoing series on Literature & Resistance. Éireann Lorsung, Majed Mujed, and Hua Xi will join us to read from and discuss their work. They will explore the nature of resistance in poetry, and how it informs their relationships with language, form, and translation, and reflect on their broader experiences with writing and poetry, which encompass journalism, teaching, and publishing, in the US, Iraq, and Ireland. Please join us for an evening of beautiful poetry and stimulating conversation on the politics and power of the written word. *** Éireann Lorsung will walk or take the bus or ride a bicycle; will crouch to look at the ground beneath her feet; will spend an hour thinking with you on how a poem works and come back tomorrow to ask again; will watch the light change and the small plants arrive. She loves to make things with other people in the “location of possibility” that the classroom is. She teaches writing at University College Dublin, and is learning about fruit cultivation, gull behavior, the wild and domestic plants of Ireland, and climate change alongside others in the city. A 2016 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, her most recent collection is The Century (Milkweed, 2020). Majed Mujed was born in Iraq in 1971 and has lived in Ireland since 2015. One of the founders of the Iraqi House of Poetry, he worked as a journalist and publisher in the Iraqi cultural press for twenty years. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic and has garnered awards for his work from the Al Mada Cultural Foundation, Iraqi House of Wisdom and Iraqi Intellectuals Conference. In 2021, he was one of the inaugural recipients of a Play It Forward Fellowship from the Arts Council of Ireland. His collection The Book of Trivialities, originally written in his native Arabic, was translated into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and published by Skein Press in 2023. It was selected by the Arts Council for the #ReadMór project for Culture Night 2023. Majed will be joined by the translator and interpreter Mustafa Keshkeia, who is currently working on a PhD on crisis translation at DCU. Hua Xi (she/they) is the Poetry Ireland Eavan Boland Emerging Artist Awardee for 2023. A writer and artist, their work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. They previously won the Boston Review Poetry Contest, were named the 2022 Poet-to-Come Scholar by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, and received a 2023 NEA Fellowship in Poetry. They help edit interviews at Guernica and read poetry for The Drift.

Welcome to the fourth meditation of our Grief, Collected series, which come out every Friday.Today is a literary meditation with the esteemed author Alexander Chee. Alexander is the bestselling author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and a beautiful essayist making meaning of the world around us and helping us imagine new ones. In today's episode he is reading his 2018 essay, “Why Grieve Is The Word Of The Year,” which walks us through all of our many griefs, and how we can find ourselves in them.More about Alexander Chee and his work here and find him on Twitter at @alexanderchee and on Instagram at @cheemobile.You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com More about Alexander Chee - Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewaneee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays.He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Author Maggie Nelson discusses her book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, with writer Eula Biss. Maggie Nelson is a writer working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, history, aesthetic theory, philosophy, scholarship, and poetry. Nelson received a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant. Nelson has written several acclaimed books of poetry and prose, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts. She currently teaches at the University of Southern California. Eula Biss is the author of four books and has been recognized with a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. Biss' books have been translated into a dozen languages. As a 2023 National Fellow at New America, she is at work on a collection of essays about how private property has shaped our world. She currently teaches nonfiction for the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Andrea Barrett is the author of nine previous works of fiction, including the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever and Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the Story Prize and a recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Having lived in Rochester, New York, and western Massachusetts, Barrett now resides in the Adirondacks. Her new short story collection is Natural History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy MFA application season to all who observe! As you craft and revise your applications, here's last year's annual MFA application episode from a faculty member's perspective. We hope it provides you with insight, solace, and direction. The new (third annual) MFA application episode will be in your feed in two weeks. The annual MFA application episode is back! This year, Jared is joined by Gregory Spatz, Professor and Program Director of the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, who explains what the application process looks like from a faculty member's point of view. Answering listener questions, they discuss what to include (and avoid) in your personal statement, what makes a writing sample stand out, why to bother with an MFA at all, and more. Gregory Spatz is the author of the collection of linked stories and novellas, What Could Be Saved, and of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler's Dream and No One But Us, and the short story collections Half As Happy and Wonderful Tricks. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train Stories, Shenandoah, Epoch, Kenyon Review and New England Review. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and an NEA Fellowship in literature, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds. Find him at his website gregoryspatz.com. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. — Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. — Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Bill welcomes National Book Award winner Andrea Barrett to the show. Andrea is the author of ten works of fiction, including the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever and Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map, and her most recent, Natural History. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the Story Prize and a recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Having lived in Rochester, New York, and western Massachusetts, Barrett now resides in the Adirondacks.

Ellen Bass - A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ellen Bass's most recent book is Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, and The Lambda Literary Award. Bass founded workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and teaches in at Pacific University's MFA program. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ellen Bass's most recent book is Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, and The Lambda Literary Award. She coedited the first major anthology of women's poetry, No More Masks! (Doubleday, 1973) and coauthored The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988). Bass founded workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and teaches in at Pacific University's MFA program. Follow me online: Ellenbass.com Twitter: @PoetEllenBass Facebook: @PoetEllenBass Instagram: @poetellenbass Marc Jolley (Ph.D., 1993) is the director of Mercer University Press and has been in publishing for more than 30 years. In his time at Mercer University Press, he has published more than 1,100 books. He is also senior lecturer at Mercer University teaching Philosophy and Great Books. He has been married for almost ten years to a woman whom he met on the first day of high school in 1973. He is the father of two adult sons.” www.mupress.org https://liberalarts.mercer.edu/faculty-and-staff/marc-jolley/ Mr. Classic is the CEO and designer of Mr. Classic's Haberdashery at Thee Manor in Atlanta Georgia. A one-stop shop for all things in custom made and classic menswear. From hats all the way down to shoes. His focus, mainly being to help individuals develop their personal style. Through the education of fashion and in custom garment designs, he has become the go-to designer for the elegant and high class. Instagram: therealmrclassic_ Website: https://theemanor.org/mr-classic-haberdashery YouTube: Conversations at Thee Manor https://youtube.com/channel/UC4zt1ky4SleVwvPqgV8XZYw All music features stems from the genius of Rising Appalachia: https://www.risingappalachia.com Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3I6e2ZqqoxQhXc9z7Tp5ci?si=obSHiukXSo6FaB4tL08VaA The host, Clifford Brooks works The Draw Of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics and Athena Departs are available everywhere that books are sold. His chapbook, Exiles Of Eden, is only available through his website. To find them all, please reach out to him at: CliffordBrooks@SouthernCollectiveExperience.com Check out his Teachable courses on thriving with autism and creative writing as a profession here: www.brooks-sessions.teachable.com.

The annual MFA application episode is back! This year, Jared is joined by Gregory Spatz, Professor and Program Director of the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, who explains what the application process looks like from a faculty member's point of view. Answering listener questions, they discuss what to include (and avoid) in your personal statement, what makes a writing sample stand out, why to bother with an MFA at all, and more. Gregory Spatz is the author of the collection of linked stories and novellas, What Could Be Saved, and of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler's Dream and No One But Us, and the short story collections Half As Happy and Wonderful Tricks. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train Stories, Shenandoah, Epoch, Kenyon Review and New England Review. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and an NEA Fellowship in literature, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds. Find him at his website gregoryspatz.com. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or Podcast Addict. — Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Panelists:Allison Moorer is a singer/songwriter, producer, and author who has released ten critically acclaimed albums. Her first memoir, Blood, was released in October 2019 to high praise and received starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. She has been nominated for Academy, Grammy, Americana Music Association, and Academy of Country Music Awards. Allison holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School; her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, American Songwriter, Guernica, No Depression, Literary Hub, and The Bitter Southerner. She received the Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing in 2020. Her second memoir will be released in October 2021. She lives in Nashville.BRIAN BROOME is an award-winning writer, poet, and screenwriter, and K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is pursuing an MFA. He has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University's Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He lives in Pittsburgh.ELIZABETH MIKI BRINA is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Bread Loaf Scholarship and a New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. She currently lives and teaches in New Orleans.Margaret McMullan is the author of nine award-winning books including the novel, In My Mother's House, the story collection Aftermath Lounge, and the anthology, Every Father's Daughter. Her young adult novels How I Found the Strong, When I Crossed No-Bob, and Sources of Light have received best book awards from Parents' Choice, School Library Journal, the American Library Association, and Booklist among other educational organizations. Margaret received an NEA Fellowship and a Fulbright professorship in Hungary to research her memoir Where the Angels Lived.Margaret's work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Herald, Glamour, The Millions, The Morning Consult, Teachers & Writers Magazine, National Geographic for Kids, Southern Accents, Ploughshares, StorySouth, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Other Voices, Boulevard, The Arkansas Review, Southern California Anthology, and The Sun among others. She served on the faculty at Stony Brook Southampton's MFA Program in New York and she was the Melvin Peterson Endowed Chair in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Evansville in Indiana. She writes full time in Pass Christian, Mississippi. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher are joined by Maggie Nelson to discuss her latest book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. In 2015, Nelson's bestselling, genre-defying The Argonauts won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her other works of criticism, memoir, and poetry include The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning; Women, The New York School, and Other True Abstractions; Bluets; Jane: A Murder; and The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and a Warhol Creative Capitol Arts Writing Grant, among other awards. Currently she is a professor of English at USC. Written in the wake of the 2016 election, On Freedom is an ambitious consideration of the complex knots of “sovereignty and self abandon, subjectivity and subjection, autonomy and dependency” that form under the blanket of liberation. Focusing on four topics — art, sex, drugs, and the climate crisis — the book challenges the notion of freedom as a utopian state toward which we might move untethered from our responsibilities to the planet and to one another. At the same time, Nelson carves out a notable amount of space within realms many would be quick to deem as uniquely unfree: caretaking, addiction, conflict, and negative affect, even the ticking time bomb of global warming that leaves so many of us feeling helpless. Here, we're asked to consider what feeling free might have to do with feeling good — and what could be a better question than that? Also, Rachel Greenwald Smith, author of On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal, returns to recommend Heather Berg's Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism.

Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher are joined by Maggie Nelson to discuss her latest book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. In 2015, Nelson's bestselling, genre-defying The Argonauts won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her other works of criticism, memoir, and poetry include The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning; Women, The New York School, and Other True Abstractions; Bluets; Jane: A Murder; and The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and a Warhol Creative Capitol Arts Writing Grant, among other awards. Currently she is a professor of English at USC. Written in the wake of the 2016 election, On Freedom is an ambitious consideration of the complex knots of “sovereignty and self abandon, subjectivity and subjection, autonomy and dependency” that form under the blanket of liberation. Focusing on four topics — art, sex, drugs, and the climate crisis — the book challenges the notion of freedom as a utopian state toward which we might move untethered from our responsibilities to the planet and to one another. At the same time, Nelson carves out a notable amount of space within realms many would be quick to deem as uniquely unfree: caretaking, addiction, conflict, and negative affect, even the ticking time bomb of global warming that leaves so many of us feeling helpless. Here, we're asked to consider what feeling free might have to do with feeling good — and what could be a better question than that? Also, Rachel Greenwald Smith, author of On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal, returns to recommend Heather Berg's Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism.

Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a NEA Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, New England Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University's low-residency MFA program. She lives in Pittsburgh. jennyjohnsonpoet.com "The Lone Palm" was previously published in the Harvard Review. Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for our series is from Excursions Op. 20, Movement 1, by Samuel Barber, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by a generous donation from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

CityLit Project joins the Enoch Pratt Free Library in presenting the CityLit Festival - Reimagined: a virtual celebration of the literary arts In an exhilarating tale of colliding worlds, Emily St. John’s The Glass Hotel paints a breathtaking portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives. In Jenny Offill’s funny and urgent Weather, the foreboding sense of doom commands a family and presents a nation in crisis, and how we weather it. The authors will be in a conversation moderated by Marion Winik, author of The Big Book of the Dead. Jenny Offill is the author of the novels Last Things (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the L.A. Times First Book Award); Dept. of Speculation, which was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Pen Faulkner Award and the International Dublin Award; and most recently Weather, an instant New York Times Bestseller. She lives in upstate New York and teaches at Syracuse University and in the low residency program at Queens University. Emily St. John Mandel's five novels include The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and has been translated into thirty-two languages. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. University of Baltimore professor Marion Winik is the author of The Big Book of the Dead and winner of the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature. Among her ten other books are First Comes Love and Above Us Only Sky. Her award-winning Bohemian Rhapsody column appears monthly at Baltimore Fishbowl, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere. A board member of the National Book Critics Circle, she writes book reviews for People, Newsday, The Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews; she hosts The Weekly Reader podcast at WYPR. She was a commentator on NPR for fifteen years; her honors include an NEA Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction. More info at marionwinik.com. The Writer's Room is a new Festival highlight designed to engage festival attendees, who are also writers, in an informal conversation with the featured guest authors. Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. Recorded On: Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a NEA Fellowship. She has also received awards and scholarships from the Blue Mountain Center, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, New England Review, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. After earning a BA/MT in English Education from the University of Virginia, she taught public school for several years in San Francisco, and she spent ten summers on the staff of the UVA Young Writer’s Workshop. She earned an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program. For more about Jenny, please visit her website: https://www.jennyjohnsonpoet.com/

Announcements. Bay Area Book Festival. A conversation between poets Jericho Brown and Nikky Finney, The Witness We Bear, in conversation with Ismael Muhammed, recorded Friday, June 5, 2020, streaming on the Bay Area Book Festival You Tube channel. The Booksmith lists its entire June on-line schedule of interviews and readings on their website, which includes Lockdown Lit every Tuesday at 11 am. Book Passage author interviews: Janine Urbaniak Reid in conversation with Anne Lamott on Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 4 pm, and Julie Lithcott Haynes in conversation with Paula Farma on Sunday, June 14, 2020 at 4 pm. You can register on the Book Passage website. Theatre Rhino Thursday play at 8 pm June 11, 2020 on Facebook Live is the Doodler Finale, the Castro Murders, Part Two with John Fisher., and Lavender Scare can be streamed through the KALW website.   California Shakespeare Theatre, Friday June 12th, from 5 to 6:30 pm, Direct Address, a panel discussion on anti-racist practices and allyship. Moderated by Lauren Spencer (actor and educator). Panelists: Meredith Smith (People's Institute for Survival and Beyond), Fresh “Lev” White (Affirmative Acts Consulting), Michael Robertson (artEquity), and Jasmin Hoo (Asians4BlackLives, API Equality- Northern California). Registration page. Shotgun Players. Streaming: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, 2018 production. The Claim, workshop production. June 20, 2020, 5 pm via Zoom, podcast. San Francisco Playhouse. Zoomlets: Short play Table Read, Mondays at 7 pm National Theater At Home on You Tube: The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett. This program features two recent interviews that resonate with the week's protests and with the push toward fascism in Washington. Bookwaves Tayari Jones, whose latest novel is “An American Marriage,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and her latest, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo.  A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. “An American Marriage” deals with a African American spouses torn apart by the unjust arrest and imprisonment of the husband after an accusation by a white woman at a motel, and how both husband and wife deal with the following few years. Tayari Jones website. Extended Radio Wolinsky podcast.   Art-Waves Richard Wolinsky & Frank Galati. Frank Galati, director of “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco, which ran last June at ACT's Geary Theatre in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky. Frank Galati is a long-time member of the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, and has taught at Northwestern University. The winner of Tony Awards for the adaptation and direction of The Grapes of Wrath in 1990, was nominated for an Oscar for co-adapting The Accidental Tourist for the screen, and was the director of Ragtime and The Pirate Queen on Broadway Frank Galati is also known for adapting several other works for stage and screen. “Rhinoceros” is considered to be one of the greatest works of political theatre of the absurd. Originally produced in the late 1950s, the play hearkens back to the origins of fascism and how propaganda infects the minds of citizens. Extended 41-minute Bay Area Theatre podcast.                                   The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – June 11, 2020: Tayari Jones – Frank Galati appeared first on KPFA.

Tayari Jones, whose latest novel is “An American Marriage,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and her latest, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo.  A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. “An American Marriage” deals with a African American spouses torn apart by the unjust arrest and imprisonment of the husband after an accusation by a white woman at a motel, and how both husband and wife deal with the following few years. Tayari Jones website The post Encore Podcast: Tayari Jones appeared first on KPFA.

Well before we found ourselves in the COVID 19 pandemic, we had the sniffles on this episode, slushies. But neither head colds nor hangovers will keep us from the great pleasure of discussing Daryl Jones’ “Not Your Ordinary Doppleganger.” The poem’s gentle humor and delightful details have us in stitches:  the poem puts the “P” in poetry, the “P” in PBQ. (There is a badly delivered dad joke buried in that sentence, slushies, apologies-- trust us, the poem does it better). Listen in as: Jason reveals his mother was actively trying to gaslight him when he was 5; Samantha reveals the science of scent and stepmothers; and we trade Shakespearean puns and tips on slankets. All of which made us think about father and fatherhood, those we’ve had and those we miss.  Daryl Jones recently retired from a career in academic administration and rediscovered the passion for writing that he had set aside more than twenty-five years ago, after receiving an NEA Fellowship, serving as Idaho Writer-in-Residence, and winning the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for his book Someone Going Home Late. Since courting the muse again, he has published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, and Guernica, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Hosted by Jordan Kisner. Produced by Justin Alvarez and Drew Broussard. Music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Art by Kirstin Huber. Presented by Lit Hub Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode #31 welcomes Rachel Custer to the Rattlecast. Rachel has appeared in three issues of Rattle and three times in Poets Respond, including with "How I Am Like Donald Trump," perhaps the most-read and most-discussed poem in the entire series. Rachel Custer is the author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and the recipient of a 2019 NEA Fellowship in Poetry. She has previously published poetry, personal essays, and flash fiction in many literary journals. She lives in Indiana, and her work is constantly informed by and wrestles with the values and struggles of the rural Rust Belt. Her Christian faith is vital to her understanding of the world and her art. For more information, visit: https://rachelcuster.wordpress.com/ Prologue: "Siege Machinery" by Craig van Rooyen This Week’s Prompt: President Trump goes to the arcade. Bonus suggestion: Villanelle. Prompt poems by: Tim Megan Shaun Hines Kathy Gibbons Corinne O'Reilly Next Week’s Prompt: An addiction to soap operas. Suggestion: Epigram (short and witty).

What’s in your junk drawer? For writer Alexander Chee, answering that question resulted in a critically-acclaimed collection of essays called “How To Write An Autobiographical Novel.”  Alex sits down with host Amanda Stern to talk about personal growth, what we can learn from roses, fair pay in the workplace, and divining the mysteries of the universe through tarot. About the Author:Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, and Guernica, among others.He is the winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.  Chee is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Episode Credits:This episode was produced, mixed, and sound-designed by Andrew Dunn, with editorial help from Beau Friedlander.  Our host and co-producer is Amanda Stern.  Music:“Rufus Canis” by Rufus Canis, “Timeless Love” by Joonie, “The Finch” by Rufus Canis, “Bloom” by Brian Sussman, “Anti Atlas” by Angele David Guillou, “Better” by Jackie Hill Perry,, “Uni Swing Vox” by Rufus Canis, “Grin” by JPoetic.

A mother never wants to hear an explosion inside the house. Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poem, and a short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation. She is Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, and teaches in ISU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. “Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.

A speeding car can bring a greater death any day. Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. A singer/songwriter, she continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project, The Bone People, with whom she has recorded two CDs.  Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021.

On September 24, 2019, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets Ilya Kaminsky and John James. Introduced by Aminatta Forna. Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo, 2004). He has also co-edited and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Foundation’s Fellowship and the NEA Fellowship. Currently, he holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta.John James is the author of The Milk Hours, selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and published in 2019 by Milkweed Editions. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry 2017, and elsewhere, and his work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and Georgetown’s Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Berkeley.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

In this episode, Clifford Brooks and Michael Amidei interview poet, playwright, musician, and professor Cornelius Eady. Music featured in this episode: "The Pickle King" by The Cornelius Eady Trio "Bree" by The Cornelius Eady Trio Cornelius Eady is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze,winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, The Gathering of My Name,which was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent collection The War Against the Obvious. With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award. You can find him at: https://blueflowerarts.com/artist/cornelius-eady/

Barbara Duffey, NEA Fellowship winner and author of Simple Machines

In March, we co-presented a series of conversations with DVAN, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. For this podcast we’ll be listening to an introduction by DVAN founder and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer Viet Than Nguyen. Following this is a conversation around the concept of Vietnamese ghost stories moderated by Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis and featuring authors Violet Kupersmith, Thanhha Lai, & Vu Tran. The order they’re listed here is the same order they answer the first question. Together, they dissect the concept of the ghost story, as a metaphor for the immigrant, a reflection of the self and one’s deepest fears and insecurities, and then broaden the conversation to talk about community and what a Vietnamese diasporic literary community looks like to them. Violet Kupersmith is the author of The Frangipani Hotel, a collection of supernatural short stories about the legacy of the Vietnam War. She is writing a forthcoming novel about ghosts and American expats in modern-day Saigon. Thanhha Lai is the author of the National Book Award-winning novel Inside Out & Back Again and the novel Listen, Slowly.  Her third novel, Butterfly Yellow, will be published this fall. Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish, which was a NY Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship. Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis is curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. He is also founding Director of the Washington, DC-based arts nonprofit The Asian American Literary Review. Co-sponsored by the APA Institute at NYU.

Mandolin player and composer Andy Statman’s live performances defy all attempts at categorization. A Grammy nominee and recipient of grants from the NEA Fellowship and NY Council of the Arts, Andy has been the subject of features in The New York Times, NY Post, NY Daily News, Billboard, Rolling Stone, NPR, BBC, CNN, CBS, Village Voice and DownBeat and has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Town Hall, Lincoln Center, and The Met, as well as at major concert halls and festivals throughout the US, Europe, Canada, Japan and Israel. Percussionist Larry Eagle is a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s Sessions Band. Their album “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” received a 2007 Grammy Award in the category of traditional folk music. He has also recorded with Odetta and John Legend. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Andy Statman and Larry Eagle perform some material live from their recent release “Monroe Bus,” paying homage to bluegrass legend Bill Monroe.

Brad Listi talks with Maggie Nelson, author of the poetry collection SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES (Soft Skull Press). Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, The Red Parts, and Jane: A Murder. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and in 2016 was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tayari Jones, whose latest novel is “An American Marriage,” is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky. Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and her latest, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo.  A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. “An American Marriage” deals with a marriage torn apart by the unjust arrest and imprisonment of the husband after an accusation by a white woman at a motel, and how both spouses deal with the following few years. “An American Marriage” is a 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection. Tayari Jones website The post Tayari Jones: An American Marriage appeared first on KPFA.

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla.Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions, and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Marisa Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity.Praise for Little Nothing“Silver has created a gorgeously rendered, imaginative, magical yarn.” —Booklist“Pavla serves to remind readers of the moral of the story, that a good soul can find transcendence in the face of unbearable odds. And in Danilo readers will recognize their own longing for transcendence and meaning as he transforms himself through pain and sorrow into a man of courage and ingenuity." —Publishers Weekly“In Little Nothing, the wizardly Marisa Silver conjures a pitch-dark tale with empathy and humor. An emotionally suspenseful allegory, the novel reveals how the world's expectations can torque a woman's identity and leave a ferocious ache behind. The novel twisted me up inside. I loved it.” —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies, a National Book Award Finalist"Little Nothing is a magnificent something, an inventive, unexpected story that seamlessly blends fable and folklore into the lives of characters who remain heart-wrenchingly real. That Silver wrestles with nearly unanswerable questions – What does it mean to occupy a body? What does it mean to be human? How transformative is love? – and still produces an exhilarating page-turner is a testament to her biting, beautiful prose. In addition to being a joy to read, this book challenged and changed me, and I can’t imagine what else anyone would want from a work of art." —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The NestMarisa Silver is the author of the novel Mary Coin, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Southern California Independent Bookseller’s Award. She is also the author of The God of War (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist); No Direction Home; and two story collections, Alone with You and Babe in Paradise (a New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year). Silver’s fiction has won the O. Henry Award and been included in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and other anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles.Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by the New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Cherríe Moraga is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, playwright-director and educator. She has received an NEA Fellowship for Playwriting, Two Fund for New American Plays Awards, a Rockefeller Fellowship in Literature among many other honors. Cherrie is currently Artist in Residence in the Department of Drama at Stanford University and also shares a joint appointment with Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. Cherrie is a legend, has seen it all, and she is still keeping it real as a G - evidenced by her willingness to stop by the Desmadre garage and shoot the breeze with Jesus. Join us in this conversation about her life growing up in LA and how she came to be an activist artist during the feminist movement.

Beneath the Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil Press) Please join us this afternoon for the official launch of local author William Luvaas's exciting new novel Beneath the Coyote Hills! “They say you never get more than you can handle. So how do we explain suicide, then, or divorce, or crimes of passion, or parents who murder their children, or fall to pieces after having them? How do we explain people like me?” So begins the story of Tommy Aristophanos, a luckless man, homeless freegan, fiction writer, and epileptic, who lives alone in an olive grove outside the town of Hamlet in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains in the Southern California desert. Tommy survives on his wits and society’s leavings, while the main character of his novel, Voltaire Cambridge Hoffstatter (Volt), is successful in all he undertakes. Their lives unexpectedly intertwine when Volt emerges from the pages of Tommy’s novel to harass him.  Volt believes character is fate, while Tommy’s many reversals and fickle spells teach him that we control far less than we imagine. In the final showdown between the two, we are left wondering who is the true Pygmalion–Tommy or Volt?  A master of timing and entertaining dialogue, William Luvaas peoples Tommy’s world with characters that are as outrageous as they are real: Tommy’s depressed mother who never gets out of bed; Crash, a tattooed, motorcycle-riding Jesus freak; Berkeley Don, hairy, kurta-wearing Buddha of the high desert; and changeling Lizard Man who haunts Tommy in his spells, as he takes readers on an unforgettable ride into the illusory world of success and failure and of reality itself. Where do we draw the line between reality and fantasy? To what extent do we write our own destiny, to what extent is it written for us?  Part satire, part picaresque romp, part speculative adventure, Beneath The Coyote Hills unfolds as a multi-layered allegory that will stay with readers long after the last page. Praise for William Luvaas “Beneath the Coyote Hills has cost me a sleepless night that I can scarcely afford, and has left me cold with awe at the unwavering skill and subtlety of the narrative. The sheer scope of the author's imagination, and the almost impossibly delicate poetic weight of his prose, has made the discovery of William Luvaas' writing one of the genuine joys of my reading-year. He is a remarkable writer, comfortably among the finest at work in America today, and this novel is a towering and maybe career-defining achievement, art of the highest order.”–Billy O'Callaghan, Irish Book Award-winning author of The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind “Luvaas weaves elements of other genres into the narrative, such as slipstream and poetry and even the sci-fi trope of a boy and his dog, revealing this work in the final analysis as a complex bricolage, a marvelous literary stew which illustrates perfectly how the artist ‘shapes the beautiful and the useful out of the dump heap of human life.’”–Clare MacQueen, Publisher of KYSO Flash and editor at Serving House Journal “Heat, flies, wind and even ghosts form the eerie landscape of Luvaas’s extraordinary collection about love, hope and the stubborn resistance of humans even in the face of doom. Jaw-droppingly brilliant and downright transcendent.”–Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You “While comparisons to Cormac McCarthy’s powerful The Road novel seem inevitable, William Luvaas’s brilliant new collection of short stories, Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle, is a wildly inventive and epic comedy of prophetic visions, and a masterpiece of fiction for our own modern times.”–Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post “Book of the Year” “The Style and mixture of voices used throughout these ten tightly linked offerings suggests Flannery O’Connor’s eccentrics channeling the apocalyptic visions of Cormac McCarthy.”–Duff Brenna, Los Angeles Review of Books "In his second novel, Luvaas skillfully peels away the layers of deception in the Tillotson family to reveal three generations of trauma and abuse. A surreal and frightening air prevails, as guilt, aggression and madness escalate in this powerful evocation of family members coming to grips with their crimes against one another."–Publishers Weekly "A mother drowning in alcohol drags her whole family down in William Luvaas’s powerful novel."–New York Times Book Review "The Seductions of Natalie Bach is one of the best works of fiction about that pregnant decade [the sixties], comparable to Marge Piercy’s Small Changes and Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks. Luvaas recaptures the excitement of coming of age against a background of assassination, political activism, sexual experimentation, intellectual arrogance and generational conflict."–Newsday William Luvaas has published two novels, The Seductions of Natalie Bach, Going Under, and two story collections, A Working Man’s Apocrypha and most recently, Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle, which was a Huffington Post’s Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. William Luvaas’s essays, articles and short stories have appeared in many publications, including The American Fiction Anthology, Antioch Review, Confrontation, Epiphany, Glimmer Train, Grain Mag, North American Review, Short Story, Stand Mag, The Sun, Texas Review, The Village Voice and The Washington Post Book World. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Fiction and has taught creative writing at San Diego State University, The Univ. of California, Riverside and The Writer’s Voice in New York, and The UCLA Writing Program.

The Writing Practice with Heather Sellers. Hear her story of face blindness, learn about the structure of braiding, and the value of slowing down to see what's really there. Direct download: Tranquility du Jour #369: The Writing Practice   Featured Guest: Heather Sellers’ award-winning memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, has been featured by O, the Oprah Magazine, where it was a book of the month pick, Good Morning America, Rachel Ray, NPR, The New York Times, Dick Gordon’s The Story, Good Housekeeping, More, Elle, and many others. Heather Sellers was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. Her PhD in English/Creative Writing is from Florida State University. A professor of English at the University of South Florida in the creative writing program, she teaches poetry, nonfiction, and writing for children. Awarded an NEA Fellowship for fiction, she published a short story collection, Georgia Under Water, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. She’s published a children’s book, Spike and Cubby’s Ice Cream Island Adventure, three volumes of poetry, and three books on the craft of writing. Her popular textbook for writers in any genre, The Practice of Creative Writing, is out in its second edition from Bedford/St. Martins. She’s taught at the University of Texas—San Antonio and St. Lawrence University, and, for 18 years, at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.  She’s currently at work on a novel for young readers, essays, and a new memoir. Savvy Sources HeatherSellers.com August Creative Writing Sampler retreat at Kripalu Heather's books "Cat in the Rain" by Hemingway Bloom into Spring Tranquility du Jour Live My Latest Book: 52 Weeks of Tranquility Journal Sign up for Love Notes and access Tranquil Treasures Podcast app: Tranquility du Jour iPhone and Android Upcoming Events Art + Yoga in West Virginia: May 13-15 {1 spot} Penning in Paris: June 6-10 {2 spots} TDJ Live {Seasonal Podcast}: June 16 at 8pmET Yoga and the Animals at Burleigh Manor Animal Sanctuary: June 18 Tranquility Virtual Retreat: July 9 Tranquility in Tuscany: October 8-15 {5 spots} Writing in the Woods: October 28-30 {6 spots}   Stay Connected New to Tranquility du Jour? Peruse my FAQs. Tranquility University E-courses. Broadcasts on Periscope. Connect on Facebook. Shop locally-sewn, eco-friendly TranquiliT. Eye candy on Instagram. Pin along on Pinterest. Follow on Twitter. Read along on Goodreads. Browse my books. Read about my passion for animals. Pen a review on iTunes. Techy To listen, click on the player at the top of the post or click here to listen to older episodes. New to podcasting? Get more info at Podcast 411. Do you have iTunes? Click here and subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode as released. Get the Tranquility du Jour apps to get the podcast automagically on iOS or Android.

Judson Mitcham’s work has been widely published in literary journals, including Poetry, Harper’s, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, and Southern Review. He has been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as a Pushcart Prize. He is the only writer to win the Townsend Prize for Fiction twice–for his novels The Sweet Everlasting and Sabbath Creek. His most recent book is A Little Salvation: Poems Old and New, published by the University of Georgia Press. Mitcham is the current poet laureate of Georgia. In 2013 he was inducted into the Georgia Writers’ Hall of Fame. He will respond to a (re)reading of Wise Blood and will read from his own fiction.

Anthony Doerr is the author of The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome, Memory Wall, and the new novel All the Light We Cannot See. Doerr's fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, three Pushcart Prizes, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, three Ohioana Book Awards, the 2010 Story Prize, which is considered the most prestigious prize in the U.S. for a collection of short stories, and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, which is the largest prize in the world for a single short story.  His books have twice been a New York Times Notable Book, an American Library Association Book of the Year, and made lots of other year end “Best Of” lists. In 2007, the British literary magazine Granta placed Doerr on its list of 21 Best Young American novelists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monday Reading Series Rosa Alcalá is the author of two books of poetry, Undocumentaries (2010) and The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (2012), both from Shearsman Books. Her poems are also included in two recent anthologies: Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing (Counterpath, 2014) and The Volta Book of Poets (Sidebrow Books, 2015). Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), edited and translated by Alcalá, was runner-up for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She is also the recipient of a 2015 NEA Fellowship in Translation. She lives and teaches in El Paso, TX. Jennifer Tamayo is a writer and performer. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She is the author of the collection of poems and art work, Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes (Switchback, 2011) and the limited edition chapbook POEMS ARE THE ONLY REAL BODIES (Bloof Books, 2013). Her second full collection of poems and artwork, YOU DA ONE, was published in the fall of 2014. Since 2010, JT has served as the Managing Editor for Futurepoem an independent NYC press publishing contemporary poetry and prose. She lives and works in New York City.

On today's show we talk to author Ben Marcus. An Associate Professor at Columbia, Ben's work has appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and many other publications, and he's won numerous awards including an NEA Fellowship. Ben's also penned four fantastic books: The Father Costume, The Age of Wire and String, Notable American Women, and his latest, The Flame Alphabet, which was just released last year by Alfred A. Knopf.Last week, Ben was nice enough to come to the Wrestling Team apartment and have a wonderfully fun discussion about shaming yourself into making art, woodworking and parental failures. It was a delight!Subscribe on iTunes and follow Andy and Mark on Twitter! See a live episode on March 5th at UCB East at 8pm with author/performer Dave Hill, Ilana Glazer (and maybe Abbi Jacobson) of Broad City and more!

Terrance Hayes is the author of three books of poetry: Muscular Music, Hip Logic, and Wind in A Box. He has received a Whiting Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series Award, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Fellowship; he has also been selected for the Best American Poetry anthology. He lives in Pittsburgh, where he teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.Hayes read from his work on October 30, 2008, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.