Podcasts about northern california book award

Page One, produced and hosted by author Holly Lynn Payne, celebrates the craft that goes into writing the first sentence, first paragraph and first page of your favorite books. The first page is often the most rewritten page of any book because it has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. We interview master storytellers on the struggles and stories behind the first page of their books.About the hosts:Holly Lynn Payne is an award-winning novelist and writing coach, and the former CEO and founder of Booxby, a startup built to help authors succeed. She is an internationally published author of four historical fiction novels. Her debut, The Virgin's Knot, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. As an author and writing coach, she knows that the first page of any book has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. So she thought to ask your favorite master storytellers how they do their magic to hook you. Holly lives in Marin County with her family and two Labrador retrievers, and enjoys mountain biking, hiking, swimming and pretending to surf. To learn more about her books and writing coaching services, please follow her on IG + X @hollylynnpayne or visit hollylynnpayne.com.Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. Her novel, Afterword, won the 2024 PenCraft Book of the Year in Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, and the PenCraft Spring Seasonal Book Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Her novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. Her novel, The Painting, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her short stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. The first edition of How to Write Stunning Sentences was a Small Press Distribution bestseller. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies, the independent bookstore, Book Passage, and she runs the popular Stunning Sentences Substack.Tune in and reach out:If you're an aspiring writer or a book lover, this episode of Page One offers a treasure trove of inspiration and practical advice. I offer these conversations as a testament to the magic that happens when master storytellers share their secrets and experiences. We hope you are inspired to tune into the full episode for more insights. Keep writing, keep reading, and remember—the world needs your stories. If I can help you tell your own story, or help improve your first page, please reach out @hollylynnpayne or visit hollylynnpayne.com.You can listen to Page One on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher and all your favorite podcast players. Hear past episodes. If you're interested in getting writing tips and the latest podcast episode updates with the world's beloved master storytellers, please sign up for my new Substack newsletter, Power of Page One. You can also learn more about me at hollylynnpayne.com and follow me @hollylynnpayne on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook. Your email address is always private and you can always unsubscribe anytime! The Page One Podcast is created on a houseboat in Sausalito, California and is a labor of love in service to writers and book lovers. My intention is to inspire, educate and celebrate. Be well and keep reading, and please join us at POP1, The Power of Page One.  Thank you for being a part of my creative community on Substack! In service,Holly Thank you for listening to the Page One Podcast! I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I loved hosting, producing, and editing it. If you liked it too, here are three ways to share the love:Please share it on social and tag @hollylynnpayne.Leave a review on your favorite podcast players. Tell your friends. Please keep in touch by signing up to receive my Substack newsletter with the latest episodes each month. Delivered to your inbox with a smile. You can contact me at @hollylynnpayne on IG or send me a message on my website, hollylynnpayne.com.For the love of books and writers,Holly Lynn Payne@hollylynnpaynehost, author, writing coachwww.hollylynnpayne.com

“I turn to the poem, I turn to the page for a sense of hope, how to move through life, how to get through a day,” says Danusha Laméris. “I have come to a place where I trust the poem more than I trust myself.” In our second conversation with the award-winning poet, (We also interviewed her in Episode 29 on “the understory”), she shares from her newest collection, Blade by Blade, and we talk about how a writing practice grows us, how it allows us to “salvage time,” and how it helps us see how connected we other with the past and with others.Danusha Laméris' first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. A Pushcart Prize recipient, some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was selected for the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. She is on the faculty of Pacific University's Low Residency MFA program. 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

Wellness expert and author Heather Grzych interviews Nina Schuyler, acclaimed author of the short story collection In This Ravishing World. Nina discusses her exploration of nature's voice in her latest work, delving into the idea of moving beyond a human-centric world to one where humans coexist with other-than-human beings. Nina reflects on the challenges and beauty of giving nature a more nuanced, deep-time voice, inspired by everything from the songs of humpback whales to the language of bats. She also shares insights into her creative process, the importance of fiction in moving people, and how stories can foster deeper connection and sustainability in the face of the climate crisis. With her impressive literary background, including novels like The Translator and Afterword, Nina offers a thought-provoking perspective on the power of words and storytelling in shaping our cultural and environmental future.    Heather Grzych, AD is an American author and expert in Ayurvedic medicine who was formerly the head of product development for a multi-billion-dollar health insurance company. She currently serves as the president of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and is part of the faculty at Mount Madonna Institute College of Ayurveda. Heather's first book, The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility, has sold thousands of copies worldwide, and her writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Yoga Journal, and the Sunday Independent. Her podcast, Wisdom of the Body, holds an average rating of 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and is in the top 3% of podcasts globally. www.heathergrzych.com   Nina Schyuler is the author of 6 books – novels and books about craft. Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. Her novel, Afterword, won the 2024 PenCraft Book of the Year in Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, and the PenCraft Spring Seasonal Book Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Her novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. Her novel, The Painting, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal are bestsellers. Her short stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fugue, Nashville Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies, The Writing Salon, and Book Passage. www.Ninaschuyler.com     Connect with Heather: Learn more at www.heathergrzych.com   Instagram.com/heathergrzych Facebook.com/grzychheather   Read the first six pages of The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility for FREE: https://www.heathergrzych.com Connect with Heather to balance your health with Ayurveda: https://www.heathergrzych.com/book-online

A new Craftwork episode featuring a conversation with Joshua Mohr, author of a new trilogy of novels, the first of which is called Saint the Terrifying, available from Unnamed Press. Mohr is the author of eight books, including Model Citizen and Damascus, which the New York Times called "Beat-poet cool." He's also written Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine's 10 Terrific reads, and All This Life, winner of the Northern California Book Award. Termite Parade was an editors' choice on the New York Times Best Seller List. In his Hollywood life, he's sold projects to AMC, ITV, and Amblin Entertainment. He lives in Seattle. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Words: They give and give and give." Cintia Santana joins the Hive to read from her Northern California Book Award-winning poetry debut, The Disordered Alphabet. Hear several poems and a conversation with Farnaz Fatemi about Cintia's views on words as magic, the paying attention, ekphrasis and more. Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanford University. Santana's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020, 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, among many others! Her debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet published by Four Way Books in 2023) was short-listed for the 2023 California Independent Booksellers Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award, received the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, the 2023 North American Book Award's Silver Medal, and just this fall won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry.   https://www.cintiasantana.com

Notes and Links to Lauren Markham's Work       Lauren Markham is a writer based in northern California. She is the author of the recent A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (Riverhead, 2024) which The New Yorker listed as one of “The Best Books We've Read in 2024 So Far” and which Kirkus reviews called “a remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis.” A fiction writer, essayist and journalist, her work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California. Markham's first book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (Crown, 2017) was the winner of the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, and a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a New York Times Book Critics' Top Book of 2017, and was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography.  Markham has reported from the border regions of Greece and Mexico and Thailand and Texas; from arctic Norway; from gang-controlled regions of El Salvador; from depopulating towns in rural Sardinia and rural Guatemala, too; from home school havens in southern California; from imperiled forests in Oregon and Washington; from the offices of overwhelmed immigration attorneys in L.A. and Tijuana; from the upscale haunts of women scammed on the Upper East Side.  Her writing has appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is a contributing editor), Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Guernica, Freeman's, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lit Hub, California Sunday, Zyzzyva, The Georgia Review, The Best American Travel Writing 2019, and on This American Life. She has been awarded fellowships from The Mesa Refuge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, the McGraw Center, the French American Foundation, the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Silvers Prize, the de Groot Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.  In addition to writing, Markham has spent fifteen years working at the intersection of education and immigration. She regularly teaches writing in various community writing centers as well as at the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program, the University of San Francisco and St. Mary's MFA in Writing Program. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025.       Buy A Map of Future Ruins   Lauren's Website   Los Angeles Review of Books' Review of A Map of Future Ruins   At about 4:00, Lauren makes the case that not all young reading has to be high-brow as she discusses formative works as a kid and adolescent, which included Nancy Drew and Milan Kundera At about 6:50, Lauren responds to Pete's question about how she thinks and writes in diverse genres, and how her reading of varied writers informs her own work At about 10:40, Lauren shouts out Vauhini Vara, Hernan Diaz, Nathan Heller, Jia Tolentino, and other treasured contemporary writers At about 12:45, Lauren talks about how writing informs her teaching, and vice versa At about 15:25, Pete asks Lauren about seeds for A Map of Future Ruins and how her work with many undocumented and refugee students has affected her writing At about 19:00, Lauren and Pete discuss ideas of belonging and exclusion and pride and heritage in connection to Lauren's Greek heritage and reporting trips there At about 23:10, Ideas of “insiders” and “outsiders” and the challenges of immigration paperwork are discussed At about 26:05, Pete and Lauren reflect on a powerful quote from Warsan Shire regarding people being impelled to emigrate At about 26:55, Lauren gives background on the conditions that made Moria on the Greek slang of Lesbos a “purgatory” At about 31:20, Demetrios, a representative Greek from the book, and his views on immigration and “speak[ing] bird” is discussed  At about 36:05, Lauren expands upon how Greece as the “starting point of democracy” has been corrupted and co-opted and points to a stellar expose on truth from Kwame Anthony Appiah At about 41:50, The two discuss the arbitrary nature of “The West” and Greece and its ideals and ideas of a “Western lineage At about 43:55, Lauren expands upon the ideas of “proximity to Whiteness” with particular historical relevance for Greeks, Italians, and Southern Europeans At about 44:55, Pete and Lauren reference the horrific images of the Syrian refugee whose death galvanized support, as well as Ali Sayed's story, traced in her book At about 46:40, Lauren explains terminology and methods of doing business by Turkish and other smugglers At about 48:10, Turkish and Greek relations and how they affected the lack of patrols is highlighted  At about 49:20, “The Moria Six” and Ali's story and trials are discussed in relation to the fire referenced at the beginning of the book At about 52:00, The impositions of maps and Empire are reflected upon  At about 53:05, “Whiteness” and its imposition on “classical form” and racist science are explored, as written about in the book At about 54:55, The two trace the initial and later welcome for refugees to Greek islands and ideas of the original meaning of “asylum”; Lauren also highlights many incredible people helping refugees to this day, as well as ideas of “invaders” and scapegoats At about 58:40, Discussion of Greek austerity and true issues of difficulty for are referenced  At about 59:50, The two discuss Lauren's section in the book regarding Darien Gap and connections to Lauren's family's own emigration/immigration story At about 1:02:00, The two highlight ideas of community among refugees, and Pete asks Lauren about pessimism and optimism and the book's title At about 1:03:25, Ali's unfinished story is referenced  At about 1:04:05-Laser Round Questions! East Bay Booksellers, Point Reyes Books and Green Apple are shouted out as good places to buy her books At about 1:05:05, Immemorial, Lauren's 2025 release, is described  What a pleasure it has been to speak with Lauren. Continued good luck to her with her future writing and important work. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Chills at Will Podcast.    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 this and 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.       I am 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. 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 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! This month's Patreon bonus episode features segments from conversations with Jeff Pearlman, F. Douglas Brown, Matt Bell, Rachel Yoder, Jorge Lacera, and more, as they reflect on chill-inducing writing and writers that have inspired their own work.    I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    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 261 with Greg Mania, who is a writer, comedian, and award-winning screenwriter. He's also author of the debut memoir, Born to Be Public, which was an NPR Best Book of 2020 and an O, Oprah Magazine Best LGBTQ Book of 2020. Greg's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms. This episode will air on November 12. Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.      

Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University's low residency MFA program. Her third book, Blade by Blade, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

Page One, produced and hosted by author Holly Lynn Payne, celebrates the craft that goes into writing the first sentence, first paragraph and first page of your favorite books. The first page is often the most rewritten page of any book because it has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. We interview master storytellers on the struggles and stories behind the first page of their books.About the guest author:Nina Schuyler is an award winning author and esteemed professor of writing. Her latest book, a short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her last novel, Afterword, was published by Clash Books and illuminates the power and dangers of AI. She is also the author of The Translator, which won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller, and her new craft book, Stunning Sentences: The Creative Writing Journal with 80 New Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style, was published by Fiction Advocate in November 2022. Nina teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Stanford Continuing Studies, and offers classes at the independent  bookstore, Book Passage, and The Writing Room. She writes a column about prose style for Fiction Advocate and reviews books for The Millions. She lives with her husband and two sons in Northern California where she is an outdoor enthusiast. You can find her at ninaschuyler.com and follow her on IG @ninaschuler.About the host:Holly Lynn Payne is an award-winning novelist and writing coach, and the former CEO and founder of Booxby, a startup built to help authors succeed. She is an internationally published author of four historical fiction novels. Her debut, The Virgin's Knot, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. She recently finished her first YA crossover novel inspired by her nephew with Down syndrome. She lives in Marin County with her daughter and enjoys mountain biking, surfing and hiking with her dog. To learn more about her books and private writing coaching services, please visit hollylynnpayne.com or find her at Instagram and Twitter @hollylynnpayne.As an author and writing coach, I know that the first page of any book has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. So I thought to ask your favorite master storytellers how they do their magic to hook YOU. Page One exists to inspire, celebrate and promote the work of both well-known and unknown creative talent.  You can listen to Page One on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher and all your favorite podcast players.  Hear past episodes. You can follow me @hollylynnpayne on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook. Your email address is always private and you can always unsubscribe anytime. The Page One Podcast is created at the foot of a mountain in Marin County, California, and is a labor of love in service to writers and book lovers. My intention is to inspire, educate and celebrate. Thank you for being a part of my creative community.If you're interested in a book about female resilience, click here to get a FREE E-BOOK of my latest novel, Rose Girl! And if you have read the book, please leave a review! Thank you for your support! Be well and keep reading. ~Holly~ Thank you for listening to the Page One Podcast, where master storytellers discuss the stories and struggles behind the critical first page of their books. If you liked this episode, please share it on social, leave a review on your favorite podcast players and tell your friends! I hope you enjoy this labor of love as much as I love hosting, producing, and editing it. Please keep in touch by signing up to receive my newsletter at www.hollylynnpayne.com with the latest episodes each month. Delivered to your inbox with a smile. For the love of books and writers,Holly Lynn Payne@hollylynnpaynewww.hollylynnpayne.com

Lee Herrick⁠ in conversation with Farnaz Fatemi. Lee Herrick⁠  is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant, Herrick lives with his family in Fresno, California. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017 and teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.    As mentioned in this episode, Lee Herrick's signature project as California Poet Laureate is "Our California," with more information here.

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret's made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes's death.Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life's most difficult moments.Claire Oshetsky is the author of Chouette, which was a PEN Faulkner Nominee, the winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Barbellion Prize.Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - ​https://www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9780063327665

Tracing ancestry through the motherline, this week's guest Sylvia V. Linsteadt introduces listeners to the world of matrilineal myth and wisdom. For Sylvia, story and myth are very much alive and can offer valuable insight especially as we consider what it means to inhabit a place. From stories of female monks, to the practical wisdom of weaving, to the veneration of The Virgin Mary, Sylvia reminds us of what it means to value the feminine. Throughout the episode, Sylvia and Ayana consider questions at the very foundation of our cultures. Winding through questions of patriarchy, religion, and violence, Ayana and Sylvia do not find singular answers, but rather a wisdom that arises from questioning the things that are deeply enmeshed in our culture. As we reckon with a violent and troubling world, how can we turn to stories that guide us to liberation? Sylvia Linsteadt is a writer and certified wildlife tracker from northern California, ancestral Coast Miwok territory. She currently lives in Devon, England. Her work—both fiction and non-fiction—is rooted in myth, ecology, ancient history, feminism & bioregionalism, and is devoted to broadening our human stories to include the voices of the living land. She is the author of the collections The Venus Year and Our Lady of the Dark Country, two novels for young readers, The Wild Folk and The Wild Folk Rising, and the post-apocalyptic folktale cycle Tatterdemalion with painter Rima Staines. Her nonfiction books include The Wonderments of the East Bay, and Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area, which won the 2018 Northern California Book Award for best general nonfiction. She is currently finishing a novel set in Bronze Age Crete, where she has lived and researched extensively. Sylvia also teaches occasional myth-oriented creative writing workshops, and shares her work out loud on her podcast Kalliope's Sanctum.Music by The New Runes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley.  Margaret practiced as a lawyer until she made the decision to change careers and become an author. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.  Margaret's new  novel, On the Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese's Book Club Pick.On The RooftopVivian's three daughters have been singing in harmony since before they could speak. Together they are The Salvations, the hottest jazz band in San Francisco. But Vivian wants more for her girls, and she won't stop until they've got their big break. When The Salvations receive a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a renowned talent manager, Vivian knows this is exactly what she's been praying for. But somewhere between the grind of endless rehearsals on the rooftop and the glamour of weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, Ruth, Esther and Chloe grow up and start to imagine a life beyond their mother's reach. Dancing to the rhythm of Jazz Era San Fransisco, On the Rooftop is a stunning story of ambition, success, and three sisters determined to define their own future. Follow Margaret Wilkerson SextonPatreon - Support The Showpatreon.com/theconversationwithnadinemathesonpodcastThank you for joining me. Don't forget to subscribe, download and review.Pre-Order The Kill List (Inspector Henley - Book 3) Follow Me:www.nadinematheson.com Threads: @nadinematheson Facebook: nadinemathesonbooksInstagram: @queennadsTikTok: @writer_nadinemathesonBlueSky: @nadinematheson.bsky.social

Ever wonder how an economist turned lawyer found her true calling in the world of creative writing? We embark on a fascinating exploration of Nina Schuyler's journey, her love for incorporating Japanese culture in her novels and the intriguing blend of mathematics and Japanese culture that blossoms in her latest novel, AFTERWORD.Does beauty have the power to transcend suffering? We engage in an in-depth discussion about Schuyler's characters Haru and Virginia in AFTERWORD. Their journey unveils how their intellectual bond empowers Virginia to overcome societal barriers and kindle her love for math. We also touch upon the themes of loneliness, grief, identity, and longing that are woven throughout their story. In an age of technological reliance, we also explore the intricate relationships between humans and machines that Schuyler beautifully crafts in her narrative.Are we ready for a future governed by artificial intelligence? Schuyler's fascination with AI and its implications on language forms a captivating part of our conversation. We uncover the power of opening paragraphs in a novel, exploring the emotional engagement of readers, the lure of precise imprecision, and the enormous impact artificial intelligence can have on language. We also delve into Schuyler's teaching experiences, her current reading list, and her unique substack where she dissects mesmerizing sentences from published works. Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature, and will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2024. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller, and her new craft book, Stunning Sentences: The Creative Writing Journal with 80 New Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style, was published by Fiction Advocate in November 2022.She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Stanford Continuing Studies, and for the independent bookstore, Book Passage, and The Writing Room. She writes a column about prose style for Fiction Advocate and reviews books for The Millions. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two sons, where she hikes, bodysurfs, and writes in a small room, looking out at a tall palm tree.Nina SchuylerAFTERWORD, Nina SchuylerThe Painting, Nina SchuylerHow to Write Stunning Sentences, Nina SchuylerIn This Ravishing World, Nina SchuylerThe Translator, Nina SchuylerBook Passage and Elaine Petrocelli on The Bookshop PodcastThe Face of Another, Kobo AbeHow to Read Lacan, Slavoj ZizekSupport the showThe Bookshop PodcastMandy Jackson-BeverlySocial Media Links

Roxi Power talks with Brenda Hillman, winner this month of the Northern California Book Reviewers' Fred Cody Award  for Lifetime Achievement, about her 11th book of poetry with Wesleyan University Press, In a Few Minutes Before Later.   We discuss her new trans-genre tetralogy about time: how to find calm during the Anthropocene by being in time in multiple ways: sinking into the micro-minutes; performing micro-activism; and celebrating the microbiome. We explore her influences–from Blake to Bergson, Clare to Baudelaire, as well as the less celebrated moss, owls, and wood rats that appear frequently in her eco-poetry.  Alive with humor, witness, creative design and punctuation–what Forrest Gander calls “typographical expressionism”--Hillman's poetry teaches us how to abide in crisis from Covid to California fires, living in paradox as a way to transcend despair. Brenda Hillman shares the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award with with Isabel Allende, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Pollan, Ishmael Reed, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Alice Walker and others. Winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the International Griffin Poetry Prize (for Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, 2013), the Northern California Book Award (for Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, 2018) and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona and has been an active part of the Bay Area literary community since 1975.   She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems for Shambhala Press, and co-edited and co-translated several books.  She is director of the Poetry Program at the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley and is on the regular poetry staff ad Napa Valley Writers Conference. Hillman just retired from teaching in the MFA Program at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA.  She has worked as an activist for social and environmental justice. She is a mother, grandmother, and is married to poet, Robert Hass.  Photograph by Robert Hass.

Hi Everyone! I'm thrilled to welcome Caroline Kim on the podcast today! We will be reviewing her story "Motherhood" which is available for free from August 1st-31st on the Story Magazine website. Thank you, Michael Nye! Please see my website to access the story: https://kellyfordon.com/lets-deconstruct-a-story/ CAROLINE KIM is the author of a collection of short stories about the Korean diaspora, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, which won the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, the Janet Heidinger Award for Fiction, and was long listed for both the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and The Story Prize. She has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan where she was a recipient of a Hopwood Award and an MA in Fiction from UT Austin where she was a Michener Fellow. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Georgia Review, New England Review, Story, TriQuarterly, Lithub, The Rumpus, The Millions, Pleiades, Porter House Review, MANOA, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Spinning Jenny, Meridian, Faultline, Pidgeonholes, The Bare Life Review, Santa Monica Review, and elsewhere. She has lived on the East Coast, Midwest, and Texas but now makes her home in Northern California with her family. ​ Host: Kelly Fordon's latest short story collection I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020) was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind, (WSUP), was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist and was adapted into a play, written by Robin Martin, which was published in The Kenyon Review Online. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and has received a Best of the Net Award and Pushcart Prize nominations in three different genres. She teaches at Springfed Arts and The InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit, as well as online, where she also runs a monthly poetry and fiction blog. www.kellyfordon.com

Alta Ifland discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Speaking to No. 4, how she arranged the novel around six conversations that characterized her protagonist, bending our usual ideas about dialog to create scenes inside of scenes, and what it was like to publish a book ten years after she'd written it.Ifland's first pages can be found here.Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.Alta Ifland was born and grew up in Communist Romania. She came to the US as a political refugee in 1991, has a PhD in French language and literature, and translates from/into Romanian, French and English. She is the author of four books of short fiction, including Elegy for a Fabulous World (2010 finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Fiction) and Death-in-a-Box (2011 Subito Press Prize). Her collection of prose poems, Voix de glace/Voice of ice, which she has translated from French, won the 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize (a French prize), and her novel, The Wife Who Wasn't, a satirical comedy about Moldovans versus Californians in a post-Communist world, came out in 2021. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Randall Mann reads a poem by Karl Tierney and ""Wi-Fi" from Randall Mann's new book Deal: New and Selected Poems (2023, Copper Canyon Press). Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. A queer poet, critic, and medical writer, Randall Mann is the author of five poetry collections: Deal: New and Selected Poems (2023, Copper Canyon Press), Complaint in the Garden, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, Straight Razor, Proprietary, and A Better Life. He is also the author of a book of criticism, essays, and interviews, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry. His writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Lit Hub, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry and the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry, and his books have been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, and Northern California Book Award. Mann lives in San Francisco. Text of today's original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.  Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.  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 this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. 

In this episode of the Thriving Authors Podcast, it was such a treat to talk with Nina Schuyler, author of the new book Afterword – a stunning novel with powerful echoes of our current state with Artificial Intelligence.  I loved the book and was especially impressed by these characters she created who were profoundly intelligent in the world of science and AI and math. It was so interesting to talk to her about how this story germinated inside of her, how she researched technology and really followed her curiosity while creating these characters and this love story. I think you'll enjoy our conversation where Nina shared: How she was able to characterize a non-human since she needed to eliminate gestures and facial expressions. The way she used the concept of tunneling to structure the novel. Her desire to bring attention to women in math and the sciences. And SO much more! I just loved Nina's energy and I can't wait to hear what gems you take away from our conversation! About Nina: Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature, will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2024. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller, and her new craft book, Stunning Sentences: The Creative Writing Journal with 80 New Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style, was published by Fiction Advocate in November 2022. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Stanford Continuing Studies, and for the independent bookstore, Book Passage, and The Writing Room. She writes a column about prose style for Fiction Advocate and reviews books for The Millions. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two sons, where she hikes, bodysurfs, and writes in a small room, looking out at a tall palm tree. Find her at ninaschuyler.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dallas-woodburn/support

City Lights presents Gillian Conoley in conversation with Norma Cole, celebrating the publication of "Notes from the Passenger" by Gillian Conoley, published by Nightboat Books. This live event was held in the Poetry room and simultaneously broadcasted via Zoom. This event was hosted by Peter Maravelis of City Lights. You can purchase copies of "Notes from the Passenger" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/notes-from-the-passenger/ Gillian Conoley is a poet, editor, and translator. Her collection, A LITTLE MORE RED SUN ON THE HUMAN: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, with Nightboat Books, won the 39th annual Northern California Book Award in 2020. Conoley received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was also awarded the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. Conoley's translations of three books by Henri Michaux, THOUSAND TIMES BROKEN, is with City Lights. Conoley has taught as a Visiting Poet at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Denver, Vermont College, and Tulane University. A long–time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Conoley is currently Professor of English and Poet–in–Residence at Sonoma State University where she edits VOLT. Conoley has collaborated with installation artist Jenny Holzer, composer Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Buhto dancer Judith Kajuwara. Norma Cole is a member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan in the '80s, and a fellow traveler of San Francisco's language poets, Cole is also allied with contemporary French poets like Jacques Roubaud, Claude Royet-Journoud, and Emmanuel Hocquard. Her translations from the French include Hocquard's "This Story Is Mine" (Instress, 1999), "Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France" (Burning Deck, 2000), Danielle Collobert's Notebooks 1956-1978 (Litmus, 2003), and Fouad Gabriel Naffah's "The Spirit God and the Properties of Nitrogen" (Post-Apollo, 2004). She has taught at many schools, including the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State. During winter 2004/05, Cole could be seen inhabiting a 1950s living room as part of the California Historical Society's Collective Memory installation series. More recently, she curated a show by Marina Adams at the Cue Arts Foundation in NYC. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Page One, produced and hosted by author Holly Lynn Payne, celebrates the craft that goes into writing the first sentence, first paragraph and first page of your favorite books. The first page is often the most rewritten page of any book because it has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. We interview master storytellers on the struggles and stories behind the first page of their books.About the guest author:Nina Schuyler is an award winning author and esteemed professor of writing. Her new novel, Afterword, was published by Clash Books. She is also the author of The Translator, which won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller, and her new craft book, Stunning Sentences: The Creative Writing Journal with 80 New Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style, was published by Fiction Advocate in November 2022. Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature, and will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2024.Nina teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco, Stanford Continuing Studies, and offers classes at the independent  bookstore, Book Passage, and The Writing Room. She writes a column about prose style for Fiction Advocate and reviews books for The Millions. She lives with her husband and two sons in Northern California where she is an outdoor enthusiast. You can find her at ninaschuyler.com and follow her on IG @ninaschuler.About the host:Holly Lynn Payne is an award-winning novelist and writing coach, and the former CEO and founder of Booxby, a startup built to help authors succeed. She is an internationally published author of four historical fiction novels. Her debut, The Virgin's Knot, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. She recently finished her first YA crossover novel inspired by her nephew with Down syndrome. She lives in Marin County with her daughter and enjoys mountain biking, surfing and hiking with her dog. To learn more about her books and private writing coaching services, please visit hollylynnpayne.com or find her at Instagram and Twitter @hollylynnpayne.As an author and writing coach, I know that the first page of any book has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. So I thought to ask your favorite master storytellers how they do their magic to hook YOU. Page One exists to inspire, celebrate and promote the work of both well-known and unknown creative talent.  You can listen to Page One on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher and all your favorite podcast players.  Hear past episodes.If you're interested in getting writing tips and the latest podcast episode updates with the world's beloved master storytellers, please sign up for my very short monthly newsletter at hollylynnpayne.com and get a copy of my new book Rose Girl for FREE! You can follow me @hollylynnpayne on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook. Your email address is always private and you can always unsubscribe anytime. The Page One Podcast is created at the foot of a mountain in Marin County, California, and is a labor of love in service to writers and book lovers. My intention is to inspire, educate and celebrate. Thank you for being a part of my creative community! And remember to get your FREE COPY of my new book, Rose Girl! Be well and keep reading. ~Holly~

A social worker holds a group for teenagers at a school. They only half pay attention to him. Then something happens, and they pay attention to each other.Benjamin Gucciardi was born and raised in San Francisco, California. His first book, West Portal (University of Utah Press, 2021), was selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry and was named a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Julie Suk Award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Timeless Tips for Simple Sabotage (Quarterly West, 2021), chosen by Elena Passarello as the winner of the 2020 Quarterly West Chapbook Contest, and I Ask My Sister's Ghost (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2020). In addition to writing, he works with newcomer youth in Oakland, California through Soccer Without Borders, an organization he founded in 2006.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Benjamin Gucciardi's poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Derrick Austin reads a poem by Robert Hayden and "Black Docent." Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Black Sand, is recently out from Foundlings Press. Tenderness was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, a Golden Poppy Award, and a Northern California Book Award. He is a 2022-2023 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar. Text of today's original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.  Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.  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 this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. 

I'm continually amazed by the immensity of the world that a small poem can conjure. In just a few lines or words, or even just a line break, a poem can travel across time and space. It can jump from the minuscule to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. And in these inventive leaps, it can create, in our minds, new ideas and images. It can help us see connections that were, before, invisible.John Shoptaw has conjured such magic with his poem, “Near-Earth Object,” combining the gravity of mass extinction on Earth with the quotidian evanescence of his sprint to catch the bus.John Shoptaw grew up in the Missouri Bootheel. He picked cotton; he was baptized in a drainage ditch; and he worked in a lumber mill. He now lives a long way from home in Berkeley, California, where I was lucky enough to visit him last summer. John is the author of the poetry collection, Times Beach, which won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and the Northern California Book Award in poetry. He is also the author of On The Outside Looking Out, a critical study of John Ashbery's poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.John has a new poetry collection coming out soon, also called Near-Earth Object.This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series, which focuses on a single poems from poets who confront ecological issues in their work.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!John ShoptawJohn Shoptaw is a poet, poetry reader, teacher, and environmentalist. He was raised on the Missouri River bluffs of Omaha, Nebraska and in the Mississippi floodplain of “swampeast” Missouri. He began his education at Southeast Missouri State University and graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia with BAs in Physics and later in Comparative Literature and English, earned a PhD in English at Harvard University, and taught for some years at Princeton and Yale.  He now lives, bikes, gardens, and writes in the Bay Area and teaches poetry and environmental poetry & poetics at UC Berkeley, where he is a member of the Environmental Arts & Humanities Initiative. Shoptaw's first poetry collection, Times Beach (Notre Dame Press, 2015), won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and subsequently also the 2016 Northern California Book Award in Poetry; his new collection, Near-Earth Object, is forthcoming in March 2024 at Unbound Edition Press, with a foreword by Jenny Odell.Both collections embody what Shoptaw calls “a poetics of impurity,” tampering with inherited forms (haiku, masque, sestina, poulter's measure, the sonnet) while always bringing in the world beyond the poem. But where Times Beach was oriented toward the past (the 1811 New Madrid earthquake, the 1927 Mississippi River flood, the 1983 destruction of Times Beach), in Near-Earth Object Shoptaw focuses on contemporary experience: on what it means to live and write among other creatures in a world deranged by human-caused climate change. These questions are also at the center of his essays “Why Ecopoetry?” (published in 2016 at Poetry Magazine, where a number of his poems, including “Near-Earth Object,” have also appeared) and “The Poetry of Our Climate” (forthcoming at American Poetry Review).Shoptaw is also the author of a critical study, On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery's Poetry (Harvard University Press); a libretto on the Lincoln assassination for Eric Sawyer's opera Our American Cousin (recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project); and several essays on poetry and poetics, including “Lyric Cryptography,” “Listening to Dickinson” and an essay, “A Globally Warmed Metamorphoses,” on his Ovidian sequence “Whoa!” (both forthcoming in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Environmental Imagination at Bloomsbury Press in July 2023).“Near-Earth Object”Unlike the monarch, though the asteroid also slipped quietly from its colony on its annular migration between Jupiter and Mars, enticed maybe by our planetary pollen as the monarch by my neighbor's slender-leaved milkweed. Unlike it even when the fragrant Cretaceous atmosphere meteorized the airborne rock, flaring it into what might have looked to the horrid triceratops like a monarch ovipositing (had the butterfly begun before the period broke off). Not much like the monarch I met when I rushed out the door for the 79, though the sulfurous dust from the meteoric impact off the Yucatán took flight for all corners of the heavens much the way the next generation of monarchs took wing from the milkweed for their annual migration to the west of the Yucatán, and their unburdened mother took her final flit up my flagstone walkway, froze and, hurtling downward, impacted my stunned peninsular left foot. Less like the monarch for all this, the globe-clogging asteroid, than like me, one of my kind, bolting for the bus.Recommended Readings & MediaJohn Shoptaw reading from his collection Times Beach at the University of California, Berkeley.TranscriptionIntroJohn FiegeI'm continually amazed by the immensity of the world that a small poem can conjure. In just a few lines or words, or even just a line break, a poem can travel across time and space. It can jump from the minuscule to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. And in these inventive leaps, it can create, in our minds, new ideas and images. It can help us see connections that were, before, invisible.John Shoptaw has conjured such magic with his poem, “Near-Earth Object,” combining the gravity of mass extinction on Earth with the quotidian evanescence of his sprint to catch the bus.I'm John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.John Shoptaw grew up in the Missouri Bootheel. He picked cotton; he was baptized in a drainage ditch; and he worked in a lumber mill. He now lives a long way from home in Berkeley, California, where I was lucky enough to visit him last summer. You can see some of my photos from that visit at ChrysalisPodcast.org, alongside the poem we discuss on this episode.John is the author of the poetry collection, Times Beach, which won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and the Northern California Book Award in poetry. He is also the author of On The Outside Looking Out, a critical study of John Ashbery's poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.John has a new poetry collection coming out soon, also called Near-Earth Object.Here is John Shoptaw reading his poem, “Near-Earth Object.”---PoemJohn Shoptaw “Near-Earth Object”Unlike the monarch, thoughthe asteroid also slippedquietly from its colonyon its annular migrationbetween Jupiter and Mars,enticed maybe byour planetary pollenas the monarch by my neighbor'sslender-leaved milkweed.Unlike it even whenthe fragrant Cretaceousatmosphere meteorizedthe airborne rock,flaring it into what mighthave looked to the horridtriceratops like a monarchovipositing (had the butterflybegun before the periodbroke off). Not much likethe monarch I met when Irushed out the door for the 79,though the sulfurous dustfrom the meteoric impactoff the Yucatán took flightfor all corners of the heavensmuch the way the nextgeneration of monarchstook wing from the milkweedfor their annual migrationto the west of the Yucatán,and their unburdened mothertook her final flitup my flagstone walkway,froze and, hurtlingdownward, impactedmy stunned peninsularleft foot. Less likethe monarch for all this,the globe-clogging asteroid,than like me, one of my kind,bolting for the bus.---ConversationJohn Fiege Thank you so much. Well, let's start by talking about this fragrant Cretaceous atmosphere that metorizes the airborne rock, which is is really the most beautiful way I've ever heard of describing the moment when a massive asteroid became a meteor, and impacted the earth 66 million years ago, on the Yucatan Peninsula. And that led to the extinction of about 75% of all species on Earth, including all the dinosaurs. This, of course, is known as the fifth mass extinction event on earth now, now we're in the sixth mass extinction. But but this time, the difference is that the asteroid is us. And, and we're causing species extinctions at even a much faster rate than the asteroid impact did, including the devastation of the monarch butterfly, which migrates between the US and Mexico not far from the Yucatan where the asteroid hit. And in your poem, these analogies metaphors parallels, they all bounce off one another. parallels between extinction events between humans and asteroids between planets and pollen, between monarch eggs and meteors between the one I absolutely love is the annular migration of asteroids in the annual migration of monarchs. But in some ways, the poem puts forward an anti analogy a refutation of these parallels you know, you say multiple times things like unlike the, monarch unlike it, not much like the monarch less like the monarch. So So what's going what's going on here? You're you're giving us these analogies and then and then you're taking them away.John Shoptaw The ending of Near Earth Object is a culmination of fanciful comparisons. In this regard it resembles Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. And you probably know this, John, And that poem proceeds—Shakespeare's—through a series of negative similarities, which I call dis-similes. And at the end, the poem turns on a dime in the final couplet, which is, “and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” Now, I didn't have Shakespeare's poem in mind—probably good—when I wrote Near Earth Object, but I was certainly familiar with it. And my poem goes through a series of far-fetched similarities between a monarch butterfly and the Chicxulub asteroid, we follow the lifecycles of these two and then a third character, the first person I enters the poem comes out the door, and then gets, you know, hit by the asteroid monarch on penisular left foot. That turn at the end, to comparing the asteroid to me, one of my kind, would seem equally farfetched. What can I have to do with the globe-clogging asteroid? Before climate change, the answer would have been nothing. This poem couldn't have been understood, wouldn't have made sense. Now, we're caught out by the unlikely similarity that, you know, humankind has the geologically destructive potential of the life-altering asteroid.John Fiege I love that the idea of that turn partially because it's so much pulls out the power of poetry, and the power of poetic thinking, where, you know, so much environmental discourse is around rationality, of making rational, reasonable arguments about this is how things are, this is how things ought to be. But when you have this kind of turn, you're you're kind of highlighting the complexity, and the complicated nature of understanding these things, which are really complex. And it really, you know, in such a short poem, you can encapsulate so much of that complexity, which I think benefits our ultimate understanding of, of what we're grappling with, with these environmental questions.John Shoptaw Yeah, that's very well put. I think that this poem is a kind of psychological poem as well, and that I'm playing on the readers expectations. And I think the reader probably has less and less faith in this persona, who keeps keeps being lured into these weird comparisons between the asteroid and and the and the monarch butterfly. And then at the end, we're thinking, well, this, too, is absurd. And then we're caught up, like I say, and that's the psychological turn, you know, early on, when people and people still many people doubt. The existence of climate change. It's just  because of a matter of scale. How can we affect Mother Nature, right? It's so big, it's so overwhelming. It does what it wants. We're just little features on this big, big planet. So that it's so counterintuitive. So that's why yes, we grapple and this poem is meant to take you through that kind of experience. That without saying that explicitly, and I think that's something that, yeah, it sets this apart from both the psychological essay and an environmental essay,John Fiege Right the other line I want to pull out of this is slender leaved milkweed. Which I love. and there is a musicality to it. How do you about that? sonorous aspect of the poem and the musicality and the rhythm of it.John Shoptaw Yeah, Thank you for that question. Its one of the ways I beleive that poetry is like music. We do have a musicality and one of the wonderful things about poetry and music is that it it works below the level of meaning. A way a song often does. You know you often will before you even know all the words will get the song. And understand what the song is comunicating and sometimes I am communicating delicacy in slender leaved milkweed. Not only by the image, but by the sound. Its a quiet line. Whereas when I say airborne rock, that's very tight. And very definitive, like globe clogging asteroid or bolting for the bus. These are dynamics that I can play with, and I can accentuate them by changing the rhythms making to very hard plosive as an explosion, you know, b sounds far from each other. And this is something that poetry can do, that prose can't. So well. And that, you know, it's one reason why you have soundtracks and film to help bring things across.John Fiege Yeah, and then in the midst of, of some of these grand images that you have in the poem of like monarch colonies and asteroid colonies, there's also your presence, and the glimpse of them of what seems like a moment in your life, potentially, you run out the door and catch the 79 bus, which goes through Berkeley where you live. And and you encounter a monarch butterfly, which also has a California migration route. The monarch impacts your, as you say, stunned, peninsular left foot. And so now you're shifting the metaphor from human as asteroid to human as Yucatan peninsula, which is the site the site of the impact. And the way you you play with scale. In this poem, I find quite remarkable moving from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars to your foot. And in your peninsular foot makes me feel as if humans are both the perpetrators of the sixth mass extinction, but also one of its victims. And so I was curious, was this moment with the butterfly is something that actually happened? And how do you understand it? In relation to that, you know, this small moment with the butterfly? How do you understand that in relation with the broader context of the poem?John Shoptaw Yeah, thank you. I, I think, one way I proceed. And in poetry, which is something like chance operations that John Cage and poets following John Cage would use as I become very receptive to things happening around me. And if something happens around me while I'm writing a poem, then it gets to come in the poem, at least I am receptive to that possibility. And as I was going for the bus one day, on the walkway, I came across a dead monarch butterfly was very startled to see it. And I thought, Oh, my God, that pet needs to be in the poem, this butterfly has fallen out of the sky like the asteroid. And so and it turned out that the third thing I needed to link our personal, small felt scale with the astronomical and the geological timescale. And it's exactly the problem of scale, both in space and time. I'm constantly zooming in and zooming out. I actually wrote one poem in which I compare this surreal or unreal feeling that we have, if not a knowledge but a feeling of climate change behind the weather as a hit the Hitchcock zoom, where the background suddenly comes into the foreground, right?John Fiege Yeah, and it seems like, you know, the problem of climate change is a problem of scale like, like it's so it's so foreign to our kind of everyday human senses of, of what is danger, and what is something we should be concerned about or care about it. And that problem of scale both, both spatially and temporally. It really prevents us from wrapping our heads around what it means and how to respond.John Shoptaw It does. That's our challenge. I take it as my challenge, for the kind of poetry I write. And I think of of poetry as a science of feelings. And one of the feelings I'm thinking about and trying to understand and work through is denial. You know, people usually think of denial as refusal, you refuse to admit, but look at the facts just face the facts. But as you say, climate is on such a different scale. It's often a problem of incomprehension.John Fiege Yeah, and I think this idea of denialism I mean, we tend to talk about it in very narrow terms of, you know, people of particular political persuasions deny the existence of climate change. And that's one like, very narrow view of denialism. But it really pervades everything in our culture, you know, anyone who eats a hamburger, or flies on a plane, or, or even turns on their, their heat in their house, you know, is is in is kind of implicated in some system of denial. That, you know, ultimately, our societies completely unsustainable. And we have to function we have to move forward, even though even if we know how problematic those various things are. And so just living in the world requires, you know, some sense of denialism.John Shoptaw It does, if you think of the word we commonly used today, adaptation, though, it's really another word for denial. If you see what I mean, we're, we're moving into accepting, partially accepting the reality as it is, so we can live into it. And again, if we think of relativity, flying less, not giving up flying, emitting less, not stopping all the way emissions on a dime, right, but moving as fast as we possibly can, these are things we can do and without being incapacitated by despair. And again, I think, you know, hope and despair are two other very fundamental concepts that poets if they're serious about feeling, can think about and think through and help people we understand.John Fiege Yeah, and I love this idea of impurity that you bring in. Not just with poetry, but, you know, I feel like environmentalism in general is, it's really susceptible to this kind of ideology of purity. And it becomes about, you know, checking all the boxes of, of, you know, lifestyle and beliefs and votes and all kinds of things where solutions, solutions don't come with some kind of attainment of purity. They come with it a shift of a huge section of the way the culture works. And that's never going to be perfect or consistent or anything. It's going to be imperfect, and it's going to be partial, but it can still move.John Shoptaw That's right. So when people say net zero, carbon offsets, recycling, this is all greenwashing. I say, listen to the word all. Yes, there is some greenwashing going on there. There is some self promotion and maintenance of one's corporate profile at work. But there's also good being done. You can recycle aluminum, and you get 90% aluminum back. You can recycle plastic, you get 50% back, but you still get 50% back.John Fiege Well, in the poem, you also give life to what we ordinarily see as inanimate objects. So let me let me reread a section of the poem enticed maybe by our planetary pollen as the monarch by my neighbor's slender leaves milkweed unlike it, even when the fragrant Cretaceous atmosphere media rised the airborne rock, flaring it into what might have looked to the horrid Triceratops like a monarch ovipositing. So in your words, the lifeless, inanimate asteroid is given life and a soul really? Why take it in that direction?John Shoptaw To make it real, to make it real for us. And you will see poets, giving a voice to storms to extreme weather events, seeing things from potentially destructive point of view. And that's what I was doing here is seeing things fancifully from the the meteor's point of view, but I wanted to give that personification to make the link that this is personal. What's happening at this scale, is still personal, it still has to do with us and links with us.John Fiege Yeah, and you wrote this great piece for Poetry Magazine called “Why Eco Poetry” and you bring up these these topics a bunch. And there's one line. I really love, you say, to empathize beyond humankind, eco-poets  must be ready to commit the pathetic fallacy and to be charged with anthropomorphism could could you explain this, this concept of John Ruskin's pathetic fallacy and how you've seen these issues play out?John Shoptaw I think Ruskin had certainly the good sense of what the natural world was. And many artists and poets laziness, when it came to the describing the natural world. storms were always raging, winds were always howling, the words were always that's really what he was getting at. And I appreciate that. You want to make these things real, right. But there is there is a place for pathetic fallacy. But on the other hand, strategically, we often need for that monologue of the lyric poem, to be overtaken by this larger voice, almost like a parental voice from on high, speaking to us and saying, Listen to me, this is real. This is happening. I'm out here. Right? So you've forced me to take over your poem and talk to you about anthropomorphism is, is related phenomenon. And it's it's a word that I, I still find useful and making us really consider and experience the outside world, the world, particularly of other creatures, as they actually are. However, it's a belief it's not a scientific idea. And the idea being that we are ascribing qualities or human qualities to animals or plants, or even inanimate objects, like like meteors. When in fact, when it comes to animals, for instance, we're often identifying qualities behaviors, actions, motivations, we share anyone who owns pets knows pet they have a range of feelings that to say, my dog is happy. My dog is bored. My dog is feeling bad because it feels it's disappointed me in some way, you know, these things are real. And you need to act accordingly to keep things going along. In the canine / human cup, you know, partnership that you have going there.John Fiege Yeah, Descartes must not have had any dogs or cats or ever encountered another animal besides a human in his life.John Shoptaw That's right. It's partly, you know, one feels, how can we know that other world? We shouldn't be so arrogant in our knowledge. And so it seems like we're being modest, and it's a good thing. And we have this anthropological attitude toward the relativity of, you know, consciousness. On the other hand, it's a form of denial, right? anthropomorphism is a form of denial of what we share and poets need to overcome that denial.John Fiege You mean, you mean anti-human anti-anthropomorphism?John Shoptaw Yeah, it's what I know. We don't have the language for it. We don't have that word of the problem.John Fiege Anti-anthropomorphism, it just slips right off your tongue.John Shoptaw That's right.John Fiege Well this point you make about anthropomorphism reminds me really strongly of a story. I've heard Jane Goodall tell many times, she was hired to observe chimpanzees in the wild, and she gave them names. But she was reprimanded by by many in the scientific community, who said, a researcher should use numbers to identify chimps or any other animals they're studying, because scientists must be dispassionate to not confuse animal behavior with human behavior. And she identifies one of her most significant contributions to science as recognizing the individuality and personality and really the souls of non human animals. And that recognition fundamentally changed. Our scientific understanding of chimps and other animals in allow these massive breakthroughs in the field. And you seem to be arguing that with poetry, we're in a similar place in relation to the Earth where we need to find a new language that allows us to empathize more profoundly with the other than human residence of the planet. Does that sound? Does that sound right to you?John Shoptaw Very much, and really, with thinking and realizing that I'm an animal, as a human being. brought on a conceptual paradigm shift for me, unlike anything I've experienced, in my adult life, everything changed. And when I think, what are the animals think about this? How are they dealing with climate change? Etc. It's always revelatory for me to ask that kind of question. I'm looking at a book by Jane Goodall right now on my shelf called the Book of Hope. And something I've been thinking about a lot in relation to this, because animals have not given up and they don't give up until they they have to. An animal with say, a song bird in the clutch of a hawk knows it's over, and you shut down in order to minimize the pain and suffering. They know that, but they know not to do that prematurely. And I think, you know, often we met we think of hope and despair, as antonyms, but they're very intertwined with each other. I mean, the word despair, contains hope. It means that the loss of hope and there as there is a sense of false hope, where you, you keep hoping beyond the point of hope, where reality tells you there's no point in hoping there's also what I would call a premature despair. I don't know if you have run across the Stockdale paradox. I find it helpful. There's a writer on Jim Collins, who talked to Admiral Stockdale who was taken prisoner of war in Vietnam. And he, he survived through seven years and several incidents of torture. And he said, he was asked by Jim Collins, well, who didn't survive? And he said, well, the optimists who said the optimists were saying, Oh, we're going to because we're gonna be led out by Christmas. In the winter that didn't happen and say, Oh, well, we'll be released by Easter. When that doesn't happen and Christmas comes around again. They die. They die of a broken heart.John Fiege Oh, wow. I have heard that in broad terms. I don't remember that story, though. That's great.John Shoptaw Yeah, and the paradox is that you have hope, which is resolute. It's not pie in the sky hope, but it's hope that faces reality. And it's hoped that is more like courage. It's more like resoluteness hope. Hope is not easy. And it does not deny despair, and even allows you to relax for a moment and maybe weep. Maybe you say, Oh, my God, it's over. Before you come back and say, No, I'm still here. I can still help I can do what I can.John Fiege Right, right. Yeah, and I love how you say that. Eco poetry can be anthropomorphic, but it cannot be anthropocentric, which which flips both of these assumptions that are so deeply embedded in our culture.John Shoptaw Now, maybe I could say something about anthropocentrism.John Fiege Yeah, for sure.John Shoptaw It's a word that, I think is maybe in the dictionary now, but maybe not so familiar word, but you know, thinking of everything in the world, a revolving around us and and the universe. We're the universe's reason for being right. That would be the kind of the strongest sense of anthropocentrismJohn Fiege Another another form of heliocentrism.John Shoptaw Yes, that's right. That's absolutely right. That's why I one reason why I, at the beginning of Near Earth Objects, see things for the asteroids point of view, right? To give that kind of scale, but also shifting perspective. On the other hand, lyric poetry is inevitably anthropocentric. We as humans are inevitably anthropocentric. So our moving out of anthropocentrism in poetry is always going to be relative and strategic, and rhetorical and persuasive, never absolute.John Fiege Right and totally. Well, another interesting issue you confront in the article is didacticism and the risks of moralism in eco-poetry. And in talking about this, you evoke two poets. The first is Archibald MacLeish, the renowned modernist poet who wrote "a poem should not mean but be." But then you write, poetics wasn't always this way, for Horace, a poem both pleases and instructs. And I feel like this issue of moralism, and didacticism goes way beyond poetry to encompass environmentalism more broadly. How can a poem please instruct without preaching and being didactic?John Shoptaw Yes, that's, that's a question. Where there's no single answer every poem, for me poses the question differently. And part of the excitement part of the experimental nature of poems is you find a new answer every time to that problem, how not to be preachy, but to leave readers in a different place at the end of the poem, than they were at the beginning. my poem to move people from unlike to less like., if I if I can get them there, in a poem, I have moved him in a way and that's enough for me.John Fiege Well, let's look at the end of the poem. You write less like the monarch for all this, the globe clogging asteroid than like me, one of my kind bolting for the bus? It seems in some ways that you might be settling on an analogy in the midst of of all these intersecting parallels, the asteroid is less like the monarch and more like us, us who have killed the monarchs. Where Where do you feel like the poem lands in terms of making a statement like this and and offering up many conflicting ideas that readers have to contemplate themselves?John Shoptaw What would I say? I think when it comes to guilt or responsibility, as I was saying before, we don't want to think in absolute terms, where I'm as guilty as Exxon, I am not. But I still am right. I am still part of this, this world. That monarch butterfly died naturally after it planted its eggs. Its its, its days, her days were numbered. So, that that is part of this. But yet, I do. I do want to say and this is part of, I think, part of the one of the gestures of poetry in the Anthropocene, the era of climate change, a gesture of saying, I take responsibility, I take responsibility. And this is, this is one of the problems of saying, I give up, you know, there's no point in doing any more. We don't have that option. It's irresponsible to give up to ever give up. So I still, though want to say, even something who that has global potential for damage is connected with me good little me, had taking taking the bus because I'm wondering, I'm one of humankind, and we have this destructive potential. And on the other hand, we have this corresponding responsibility.John Fiege Yeah. And looking back on the title of the poem, it feels as if we, as humans, have what you might call like, a dual contradictory existence? As, as both we're both Earth objects. And we're near Earth objects. Oh, what do you what do you think about that?John Shoptaw Yes, I do. I like that ambiguity. I think, one of the, one of the chances, and the happy accidents of the monarch appearing in my poem, as I was writing it, without planning to have a monarch in it, one of the accidents was to take the monarch also, as a Near Earth Object Near Earth Object is one of these scientific concepts of usually a very large object, like a, like a comet, or an asteroid entering the Earth's gravitational pull. With potentially hazardous effects. But, you know, it can be anything near the earth. And if you take object, also in the title as a goal, my object is to bring us near the earth. not have us simply abstract ourselves, how do we do that - we abstract ourselves by saying, we're special.John Fiege I really like that too, because that also ties into this question of scale. You know, you can be near the earth by being, you know, 1000 miles away. Or you can be near the earth by hovering, you know, centimeters over it. And it can be conceptual to, you can be oblivious to the fact that you live on Earth, or you can be extremely aware that you are of in within and near the earth at all times. Yeah, I really like that. That's beautiful. I love how so many meanings come from this tiny little poem?John Shoptaw Well, may I say I was not in a godlike position with this poem. For me. poems are like gardens and that they're less intended and tended, and they they grow of their own and I just tried to be the best collaborator with the poem that I can and not to ignore when it's trying to tell me something like, I need a monarch in here. Not to ignore that.John Fiege Yeah. Well, can you end by reading the poem once again. I can thank you very much.John Shoptaw Poem“Near-Earth Object”Unlike the monarch, thoughthe asteroid also slippedquietly from its colonyon its annular migrationbetween Jupiter and Mars,enticed maybe byour planetary pollenas the monarch by my neighbor'sslender-leaved milkweed.Unlike it even whenthe fragrant Cretaceousatmosphere meteorizedthe airborne rock,flaring it into what mighthave looked to the horridtriceratops like a monarchovipositing (had the butterflybegun before the periodbroke off). Not much likethe monarch I met when Irushed out the door for the 79,though the sulfurous dustfrom the meteoric impactoff the Yucatán took flightfor all corners of the heavensmuch the way the nextgeneration of monarchstook wing from the milkweedfor their annual migrationto the west of the Yucatán,and their unburdened mothertook her final flitup my flagstone walkway,froze and, hurtlingdownward, impactedmy stunned peninsularleft foot. Less likethe monarch for all this,the globe-clogging asteroid,than like me, one of my kind,bolting for the bus.ConversationJohn Fiege John, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fabulous.John Shoptaw Thank you, John, for the opportunity. And I love conversing with you.---OutroJohn Fiege Thank you so much to John Shoptaw. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can read his poem “Near-Earth Object” and also see some of my photographs of him at his house in Berkeley and find our book and media recommendations.This episode was researched by Elena Cebulash and Brodie Mutschler and edited by Brodie Mutschler and Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Sarah Westrich.If you enjoyed my conversation with John, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter, and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

One of the original Hive members, Lisa Allen Ortiz, joins us to talk about her Idaho Prize-winning poetry collection, STEM, a book which asks, among other questions, "where in the body does aliveness reside?" Our conversation plumbs more of these easy-to-answer inquiries. Lisa is the author of two poetry collections: Stem, winner of the 2021 Idaho Prize and Guide to the Exhibit winner of the 2016 Perugia Press Prize. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Colorado Review and The Literary Review among other places. She is co-translator with Sara Rivera of The Blinding Star, selected poems of the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela, a book which won the 2021 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation.

A younger woman looks at an older woman, admiring her beauty, skill, and freedom. Older now, she thinks of how hard-won such freedom is. Also: singing opera while taking off your clothes. That too.Danusha Laméris is a poet, teacher, and essayist. She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize, and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Danusha Laméris' poem, and thank you for joining us for Season 6 of Poetry Unbound. We'll be back with Season 7 later in 2023.Order your copy of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World and join us in our vibrant conversational space on Substack.

City Lights in conjunction with the Mechanics' Institute Library and Alfred Knopf present Leila Mottley in conversation with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, celebrating her fiction debut "Nightcrawling," published by Alfred A. Knopf. This live event took place at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco and was hosted by Laura Sheppard and Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "Nightcrawling" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/nightcrawling/ Leila Mottley is the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and Oprah Daily. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live. "Nightcrawling" is her first novel. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, "The Revisioners," won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and a George Garrett New Writing Award; was a California and Northern California Book Award finalist, a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Finalist and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing finalist; was nominated for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize; and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, "A Kind of Freedom," was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times Book Review; and other publications. She lives in Oakland with her family. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Do you want to learn more about SF? Have you been caught up in the whimsical nature of the city of San Francisco? Join us for a conversation w/ author Gary Kamiya & Artist Paul Madonna about the beautiful city of San Francisco & their book the Spirits of San Francisco - Voyages Through the Unknown City. About Gary Kamiya: I was born in Oakland, grew up in Berkeley and have lived in San Francisco since 1971. I received my BA and MA in English literature from UC Berkeley, where I won the Mark Schorer Citation. I was a co-founder and longtime executive editor of the groundbreaking web site Salon.com, where I reported from the Middle East, covered three Olympics, and wrote about politics, pop culture, literature, art, music and sports. Until March 2018 I was the executive editor of San Francisco Magazine, where I wrote award-winning features about the tech-driven transformation of San Francisco, homelessness, the Tenderloin, the injection drug crisis, the waterfront, the new Museum of Modern Art, the controversy over the canonization of Father Junipero Serra, and legalized marijuana, among other subjects. My first book, Shadow Knight: The Secret War Against Hitler, was a critically-acclaimed narrative history of Britain's top-secret Special Operations Executive. My second book, Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, was awarded the 2013 Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction and has sold more than 50,000 copies. My local history column, "Portals of the Past," runs every other Saturday in the San Francisco Chronicle. My work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, ArtForum, Sports Illustrated, Mother Jones, and many other publications and has been widely anthologized, including in The Best African-American Essays 2010, The New Harvard Literary History of the United States, and the Longman Reader. I have been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ron Ross Founder's Award by the San Francisco History Association and the Presidio Historical Association Award. I have appeared as an expert on-camera source in numerous documentaries, including a forthcoming PBS 4-hour documentary on William Randolph Hearst, Jim Yager and Peter Stein's forthcoming Moving San Francisco (about the past, present and future of transportation in San Francisco) and two of their previous documentaries, the Emmy Award-winningWater from the Wilderness (on Hetch Hetchy) and The People's Palace (on City Hall), Michael House's I Remember Herb Caen, and others. I live on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. About Paul Madonna: Paul Madonna is an award-winning artist and best-selling author whose unique blend of drawing and storytelling has been heralded as an “all new art form.” Paul is the creator of the series All Over Coffee, which ran in the San Francisco Chronicle for twelve years, and the author of five books, including the Emit Hopper Mystery Series. His book Everything is its own reward won the 2011 NCBA Award for best book. Paul's work ranges from novels to cartoons to large-scale public murals and can be found internationally in print as well as in galleries and museums, including the Oakland Museum of California, the William Blake Association in France, and the San Francisco International Airport. Paul was a founding editor for therumpus.net, has taught drawing at the University of San Francisco, and frequently lectures on creative practice. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and was the first (ever!) Art Intern at MAD magazine.

How do we imagine and flourish a future in times of wild interruptions?     In this episode Amisha talks with Jason Bayani, poet, author, educator and arts organiser. His poetry books ‘Amulet' and ‘Locus', the latter nominated for the Northern California Book Award, and his solo theater show ‘Locus of Control' explore the experience of identity of Pilipinx-Americans. His poems are oral histories, tales of magic and myth, ‘creatures of excess', as he describes them. Jason is the artistic director of ‘Kearny Street Workshop' in San Francisco, the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organisation in the country.   Jason shares a flow of collective insight embracing intuition, embodiment and grief, which he gathered during a Bioneers event with Nina Simons, both him and Amisha attended. This rich reading offers signposts and profound questions for navigating our current time.    Together they speak of the search for uninterrupted spaces of silence where our dreams and imagination can flourish, where we can reclaim and provide ourselves with soulfulness. They speak of the importance of giving ourselves permission to ‘disappear' into these spaces as a way of dissolving the pressures of productiveness impressed upon us, and as a necessity to flourish creative visions and expressions for the future.   Jason reveals that artists are pivotal in igniting our dreams. An artist's way can help us dream ourselves into new realities beyond the current systems and crisis of imagination. He believes that artists have ways of stirring the severely limited view of beauty, which we are able to see in this world right now.   We learn that seeking the tenderness of our creativity, unfolding it at its own pace and trusting this process is where we will visit the real depth of our creativity, where we will reconnect with our identities and root into our intuitive experience. This process will bring forth our true expressions, spark our imagination and help us engage in meaningful ways during times of wild interruptions.   Links from this episode and more at www.allthatweare.org

Born in Daejeon, Korea, and adopted to the United States at the age of ten months, Lee Herrick is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, a finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award, Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. He is also the co-editor of the anthology The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. As well as being a celebrated poet, Lee is among one of the kindest, most generous, and sincere guests we have ever had the pleasure of talking to on the podcast. In this broad-ranging conversation, Lee treats us to a reading of two poems from Scar and Flower, including “How Music Stays in the Body.” We then speak to Lee about his journey to poetry, about the fundamental fire that drives his art, and his process of coming to peace and forgiveness following his second trip to Korea and an unsuccessful birth family search. Most of all, Lee wants all of us to be ok, and after talking to him we feel that - just maybe - we will be. CW: This episode mentions suicide. Read "How Music Stays in the Body" here: https://poets.org/poem/how-music-stays-body For more about Lee, head to: https://www.leeherrick.com/ Adoptee Literary Festival, 9 April 2022: https://www.adopteelitfest.com/

SUPPORT Brynn Saito is a fourth generation Japanese American and Korean American author of two books of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon and The Palace of Contemplating Departure. She is also the winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She holds degrees in creative writing, religious studies and philosophy and has been a visiting writer in the MFA programs at several universities. She co-founded the Yonsei Memory Project, an endeavor which awakens the archives of Japanese American history through arts-based, intergenerational, and intercultural public programming. Brynn's work has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, and the American Poetry Review and she is a two-time recipient of the California State Library's Civil Liberties Public Education grant. Her work was recently featured in the opening ceremony for The People's Inauguration, a 10-day event inspiring collective action led by activist Valarie Kaur. Her third book of poetry will be published in the fall of 2023. CONTACT BRYNN SAITO Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brynnsaito/ CONTACT RON CECIL Website: https://www.roncecil.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rcecil/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ron.cecil CONTACT DANIEL PENNER CLINE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dpennercline/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1498866808 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/cutting-for-sign/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cutting-for-sign/support

Award-winning novelist Jennifer duBois, assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her career, creative process and joys of teaching in the MFA program in creative writing at Texas State. duBois has written three acclaimed novels. Her debut, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Her second book, Cartwheel, was the winner of the Housatonic Book Award fiction and was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award. Her most recent novel, The Spectators, earned recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. duBois' writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Lapham's Quarterly, American Short Fiction and The Wall Street Journal. Further reading: Novel by Texas State Professor Jennifer duBois Reviewed in the New York Times Texas State English professor named NEA Creative Writing Fellow Texas State lecturer receives prestigious Whiting Writers Award Jennifer duBois website

Alta Ifland was born in Transylvania (Romania), took part in the overthrow of Romania's communist dictatorship, and experienced two years of post-communism before emigrating to the United States in 1991.  After a PhD in French language and literature, and several years in academia, she now works as a full-time writer, book reviewer, and translator (from French, Italian, and Romanian). She is the author of two books of short stories―Elegy for a Fabulous World (2010 finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Fiction) and Death-in-a-Box (2011 Subito Press Fiction Prize)―and two collections of prose poems―Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice (bilingual, French-English, winner of the French prize Louis Guillaume) and The Snail’s Song Listen in as we discuss why she had to leave Romania, what it was like moving to the united states to seek asylum, and the journey she took to make a career in writing and publishing. Along the way, we of course had to talk about Romania’s either most infamous or heroic figure depending on your point of view, count Dracula himself. Her novel, The Wife who Wasn’t, is available for sale as of Tuesday, May 18th and can be purchased wherever books are sold. Thanks for listening.

Mimi Lok is the author of the story collection Last Of Her Name, which won the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection, a California Book Award silver medal, and a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. She is also a finalist for the 2020 National Magazine Award, Northern California Book Award, and CLMP Firecracker Award. Mimi is also the founding director and executive editor of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights & oral history nonprofit that amplifies marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program. Born and raised in the UK, Mimi lived and worked in China as a visual artist, writer, and educator before moving to the US, where she is currently based.

Today we have on the show Brynn Saito. Brynn is the author of two books of poetry and co-founder of Yonsei Memory Project (YMP). YMP uses art and storytelling to connect the WWII-era incarceration of the Japanese American community with current struggles for justice. Her poetry has been nominated for a Northern California Book Award and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, and American Poetry Review. Currently, Brynn is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English at California State University, Fresno, located on Yokuts land. This conversation was great fun and is occasionally or often quite nerdy. Links Brynn's Site Our Patreon Page Books Recommended: Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry John Murillo Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments Saidiya Hartman The World I Leave You Edited by Leah Silvieus and Lee Herrick Angel Island Erika Lee and Judy Yung Nisei Radicals Diane C Fujino

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, we spotlight American poet and professor, Camille T. Dungy. Included in this episode is a reading of her poem "Characteristics of Life." Addressing the paucity of African American poets in anthologies of nature poetry, Dungy stated in a 2010 interview for the Oakland Tribune, “I miss seeing writers of color in the conversation. Until we have greater variety in the conversation, it is not a conversation—it is a monologue.” To that end, Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), which won a Northern California Book Award and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She was also co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (2009), and assistant editor for Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (2006). Dungy's most recent work includes the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (2017). Support the show (https://getlit.org/donate/)

Maw Shein Win with Nathalie Khankan and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo reading from new poetry, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, (Maw Shein Win) and Quiet Orient Riot (Nathalie Khankan), both published Omnidawn. Maw Shein Win is the author of Invisible Gifts: Poems and her chapbooks include Ruins of a Glittering Palace and Score and Bone. Maw is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito (2016–18). She lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nathalie Khankan teaches Arabic language and literature in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and she is the founding director of the Danish House in Palestine. Her work has previously appeared in the Berkeley Poetry Review, jubilat, and Crab Creek Review. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughters. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Cenzontle, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize (BOA editions 2018), winner of the 2019 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award in poetry, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and named a best book of 2018 by NPR and the New York Public Library. Su Hwang is a recipient of the inaugural Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, the Academy of America Poets James Wright Prize, and writer-in-residence fellowships to Dickinson House and Hedgebrook, among others, Her debut poetry collection BODEGA, published with Milkweed Editions, won the 2020 Minnesota Book Awards in poetry. She currently lives in South Minneapolis.

American Messiahs author Adam Morris joins No-Prize From God to talk about the book NPR called "sharp and entertaining." American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation argues that, far from aberrant blips on the historical radar, false prophets and saviors are an essential part of the American story. The book joins together stories of cult leaders like Thomas Lake Harris, Father Divine, Jim Jones, and Jemima Wilkinson; people who led movements that ended in spectacular flameouts, yet were often propelled by at least some progressive ideas that later gained wide acceptance. Adam is a recipient of the Susan Sontag Foundation Prize in literary translation, a Northern California Book Award in prose translation, and a PhD in literature from Stanford University. Listen to No-Prize From God: Playlist For the Podcast on Spotify. Follow No-Prize From God on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Follow Ryan J. Downey on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check out other PopCurse network podcasts: PopCurse, Speak N' Destroy, and Hoosier Illusion.

SANDS HALL is the author of the memoir Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion and Spirituality. She is also the author of the novel Catching Heaven, a Random House Reader’s Circle selection, and Tools of the Writer’s Craft. She teaches for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and for the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, among other conferences. She lives in Nevada City, California. Find out more at sandshall.com. Named a Best Book in Religion and Spirituality by Publishers Weekly Longlisted for NCIBA’s Golden Poppy Award in Nonfiction A Finalist for the 2019 Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction In Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion—what she found intriguing and useful—and how she came to confront its darker sides and escape. RECLAIMING MY DECADE LOST IN SCIENTOLOGY A Memoir by Sands Hall

In this episode, I explore the ancient Greek story of Cassiopeia and Andromeda (Queen & Princess of a mythic "Aethiopia"), with a brief opening musing about Our Lady (Divine Mother, Mary, etc), the constellation Cassiopeia (that great M in the northern sky), and the roots of this story with the Babylonian sea-dragon, Tiamat, mother of the world. Storytelling begins at 17:30 ** Books & people mentioned in this episode ** The Way of the Rose By Clark Strand & Perdita Finn https://wayoftherose.org/ Vandana Shiva, Indian scientist, environmental activist & food sovereignty advocate (recommended reading, Who Really Feeds the World?) Star Names, Their Lore & Meaning By Richard Hinckley Allen For more mythic fiction, poetry, essays & audio recordings about Crete and Old Europe, subscribe to my Patreon! www.patreon.com/sylvialinsteadt/posts PODCAST ART: Catherine Sieck PODCAST MUSIC: Giannis Linardakis (Cretan lute composition) PODCAST SOUND EDITING: Simon Linsteadt ABOUT THE PODCAST: Welcome to Kalliope's Sanctum, a biweekly story podcast hosted by writer Sylvia V. Linsteadt. This podcast is dedicated to Kalliope, primordial and first Muse of epic poetry and ecstatic song in ancient Greece. This podcast is a place of sanctuary for her oldest stories. It is a return to the wild garden, to the spring, to the ground of being & the source of inspiration in the Earth. Here, we honor Kalliope as Muse of Earth. Here, you will find some of the stories beneath the stories of Old Europe: short fictional/poetic pieces written and read by Sylvia that explore elements of indigenous Old European mythology, with a focus on pre-Hellenic (pre-Patriarchal) Greece. Come sit with us in the honeyed light, among the ripe pomegranates, in Kalliope's sanctuary, where the stories that arise directly from the ground of being and lifeforce can still be safely told and celebrated. Come lean against the sun-warmed stones, with the fragrance of propolis & myrrh in the air, and the trees heavy with autumn quince. This is the garden before the fall, a sanctuary for all hearts in this time. Join us, and be revived. ABOUT SYLVIA V. LINSTEADT: Sylvia V. Linsteadt is a novelist, poet, scholar of ancient history, myth and ecology, and artist. She divides her time between California & Crete, where she is currently working on a novel set in Minoan times. Her published fiction includes the middle grade children’s duology The Stargold Chronicles— The Wild Folk (Usborne, June 2018) and The Wild Folk Rising (Usborne, May 2019)— Our Lady of the Dark Country, a collection of short stories (January 2018) and Tatterdemalion (Unbound, Spring 2017); her works of nonfiction include The Wonderments of the East Bay (Heyday 2014), and Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area (Heyday, Spring 2017). Her short fiction has been published in New California Writing 2013, Dark Mountain, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Golden Key and Deathless Press. Her creative nonfiction can be found in Dark Mountain, Earthlines Magazine, Poecology, and News from Native California. For three years (from 2013 to 2016) Sylvia ran a stories-in-the-mail business called Wild Talewort, in which she sent out rewilded tellings of fairytales and myths to the physical-post boxes of hundreds of subscribers around the world. Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area won the Northern California Book Award in General Nonfiction in 2018. Website: www.sylvialinsteadt.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/sylviavlinsteadt/ Newsletter: tinyletter.com/sylvialinsteadt

For more than 30 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect-- on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. He's the author of the new book, How to Change Your Mind, with the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence, and five New York times bestsellers. His book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Pollan is a professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and he's also a professor of practice of non-fiction at Harvard University. Please welcome Michael Pollan.Recorded and Produced by OwlCove ProductionsProducer: Lewis RobertsonAudio Engineer: Jeff KolhedeTechnical Director: Scott SchwerdtfegerProduction Assistant: Alex Miller

Stephanie Kuehn is a psychologist and an author. She has written five novels for teens, including Charm & Strange, which won the ALA’s 2014 William C. Morris Award for best debut young adult novel. Her second novel, Complicit, was named to YALSA’s 2015 Best Fiction for Young Adults list, and her third, Delicate Monsters, won the 2016 Northern California Book Award. In 2015, Stephanie was awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for The Smaller Evil and in 2017, her fifth novel, When I Am Through With You, received a starred review from Kirkus and was also named an Amazon Best Book of the Month. Booklist has praised her work as “Intelligent, compulsively readable literary fiction with a dark twist.” http://stephaniekuehn.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dallas-woodburn/support

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Kalliope's Sanctum! In this episode, I begin with a poetic imagining of Kalliope's story, the one before she was ever Muse on Mount Olympus, and also after, now, as we liberate her back to her own ground of being, where she began. I introduce the episode with a few notes about her mythic context, but the story-poem itself begins at 9:58. In the notes, I mention an upcoming opportunity to hear the ecstatic music of Crete live, in my house in California, on February 29th 2020. See more here! https://www.zygiamusic.com/ (Note that the opening music is played by the same musician who will be performing here, Giannis Linardakis.) For a pdf version of this piece, & more mythic fiction, see my Patreon offerings. https://www.patreon.com/sylvialinsteadt/posts ABOUT THE PODCAST: Welcome to Kalliope's Sanctum, a biweekly story podcast hosted by writer Sylvia V. Linsteadt. This podcast is dedicated to Kalliope, primordial and first Muse of epic poetry and ecstatic song in ancient Greece. This podcast is a place of sanctuary for her oldest stories. It is a return to the wild garden, to the spring, to the ground of being & the source of inspiration in the Earth. Here, we honor Kalliope as Muse of Earth. Here, you will find some of the stories beneath the stories of Old Europe: short fictional/poetic pieces written and read by Sylvia that explore elements of indigenous Old European mythology, with a focus on pre-Hellenic (pre-Patriarchal) Greece. Come sit with us in the honeyed light, among the ripe pomegranates, in Kalliope's sanctuary, where the stories that arise directly from the ground of being and lifeforce can still be safely told and celebrated. Come lean against the sun-warmed stones, with the fragrance of propolis & myrrh in the air, and the trees heavy with autumn quince. This is the garden before the fall, a sanctuary for all hearts in this time. Join us, and be revived. PODCAST ART: Catherine Sieck PODCAST MUSIC: Giannis Linardakis (Cretan lute composition) ABOUT SYLVIA V. LINSTEADT: Sylvia V. Linsteadt is a novelist, poet, scholar of ancient history, myth and ecology, and artist. She divides her time between California & Crete, where she is currently working on a novel set in Minoan times. Her published fiction includes the middle grade children’s duology The Stargold Chronicles— The Wild Folk (Usborne, June 2018) and The Wild Folk Rising (Usborne, May 2019)— Our Lady of the Dark Country, a collection of short stories (January 2018) and Tatterdemalion (Unbound, Spring 2017); her works of nonfiction include The Wonderments of the East Bay (Heyday 2014), and Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area (Heyday, Spring 2017). Her short fiction has been published in New California Writing 2013, Dark Mountain, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Golden Key and Deathless Press. Her creative nonfiction can be found in Dark Mountain, Earthlines Magazine, Poecology, and News from Native California. For three years (from 2013 to 2016) Sylvia ran a stories-in-the-mail business called Wild Talewort, in which she sent out rewilded tellings of fairytales and myths to the physical-post boxes of hundreds of subscribers around the world. Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area won the Northern California Book Award in General Nonfiction in 2018. Website: http://www.sylvialinsteadt.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sylviavlinsteadt/ Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/sylvialinsteadt

Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed as dangerous and hysterical outliers.After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history. As Morris demonstrates, these charismatic, if flawed, would-be prophets sought to expose and ameliorate deep social ills-such as income inequality, gender conformity, and racial injustice. Provocative and long overdue, this is the story of those who tried to point the way toward an impossible "American Dream": men and women who momentarily captured the imagination of a nation always searching for salvation.-Adam Morris is a writer and literary translator who lives in California. He is a recipient of the Susan Sontag Foundation Prize in literary translation, a Northern California Book Award in prose translation, and a Ph.D. in literature from Stanford University. His first book is American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation. You can follow him on Twitter @adamjaymorris.---Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, Alice Burton, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.

R.O. Kwon is the guest. Her bestselling debut novel, The Incendiaries, is available in trade paperback from Riverhead Books. Named a best book of the year by over forty publications, The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book, Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, and Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize. The book was also nominated for the Aspen Prize, Carnegie Medal, and the Northern California Book Award. Kwon’s next novel, as well as an essay collection, are forthcoming. Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Buzzfeed, NPR, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States. In today's monologue, I respond to more mail.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dion O'Reilly interviews Julia Levine. Julia B. Levine has won numerous awards for her work, including the Northern California Book Award in Poetry for Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight. She has three other books: Ditch Tender, Ask, and Practicing for Heaven. She received a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. She lives and works in Davis,California. Also, Farnaz Fatemi reads from Flèche by Mary Jean Chan and Halal If You Hear Me: The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3, edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo

A live recording of our educational podcast The How, The Why with Lucille Lang Day and Dave Holt. Lucille Lang Day is a co-editor of the anthology Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, which has received awards from PEN Oakland and Artists Embassy International. She has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, including Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, which received the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Award. She is also the author of a two children’s books, Chain Letter and The Rainbow Zoo, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen, which received a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies. The founder and director of Scarlet Tanager Books, she holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a PhD in science/mathematics education from the University of California, Berkeley. She is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent. After high school, Dave Holt began setting his poems to music. His desire to be a composer led to a move to California to get his songs published, but he ended up in San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing Program (BA ’93, MA ’95). His poetry has been published in several journals and has won prizes in the Thomas Merton’s Poetry of the Sacred, Maggie Meyer Memorial, Dancing Poetry, and  Ina Coolbrith contests. His essay “American Indian Poets and the Mixed-Blood Experience” appeared in Raven Chronicles. His book, Voyages to Ancestral Islands, which tells the story of reuniting with his Anishinaabe Ojibwe ancestors, won a Literary/Cultural Arts Award from Artists Embassy International (San Francisco). His work has been included in three anthologies, including Red Indian Road West and Descansos, Words from the Wayside, where his contributed poem received a Pushcart Prize nomination.     The How, The Why is a half-hour podcast documenting the creative process and the creative purpose hosted by Jon-Barrett Ingels. This free weekly series is an educational resource provided to discuss the evolution of literary arts with industry innovators—authors, journalists, and publishers. Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Trevor Allred Guests: Lucille Lang Day and David Holt Audio: Brew Sessions Live

For February’s Word By Word: Conversations With Writers host Gil Mansergh welcomes the award-winning novelist and writing teacher, Joshua Mohr, whose literary memoir Sirens has just been released. Joshua's five novels are populated with word-pictures of individuals addicted to booze and drugs and alternative realities. His work has earned accolades including one of O Magazine’s "Top 10 Reads," an "Editors Choice" in the New York Times and the Northern California Book Award. Joshua has turned inward for his latest book, Sirens, a literary memoir that grapples with the constant challenges involved with what Meredith May calls “letting chaos flow into sordid stories.”

Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoir "Sirens", as well as five novels including "Damascus", which The New York Times called "Beat-poet cool." He's also written "Fight Song" and "Some Things that Meant the World to Me," one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as "Termite Parade," an Editors' Choice in The New York Times.  His novel "All This Life" won the Northern California Book Award. He is the founder of Decant Editorial.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer duBois is the recipient of a 2013 Whiting Writer's Award and a 2012 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award. Her debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, Cartwheel, was the winner of the Housatonic Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for a New York Public Library Young Lions Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world is always better with poetry.. Listen to Brynn Saito talk about poetry in this wonderful interview with fellow poet Hays Berry. Let Brynn Saito read to you some of her poems and explain how her life has shaped her poetry. Savor this hour with the author of "Power Made Us Swoon" (2016) and "The Palace of Contemplating Departure" (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award and finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Brynn was born and raised in Fresno (CA) to a Korean American mother and a Japanese American father. Her poetry has been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed; it has also appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellowship, the Poets 11 award from the San Francisco Public Library, and the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merrill Memorial Award. Brynn Saito teaches in the MFA at USF. Currently, Brynn lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is the co-founder and director of the Center for Spiritual Life, an adjunct Assistant Professor in the BA program at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and director of the Center for Writing and Scholarship at CIIS. Wow!

The world is always better with poetry. Listen to Brynn Saito talk about poetry in this wonderful interview with fellow poet Hays Berry. Let Brynn Saito read to you some of her poems and explain how her life and past have shaped her poetry. Savor this hour with the author of "Power Made Us Swoon" (2016) and "The Palace of Contemplating Departure" (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award and finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Brynn was born and raised in Fresno (CA) to a Korean American mother and a Japanese American father. Her poetry has been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed; it has also appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellowship, the Poets 11 award from the San Francisco Public Library, and the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merrill Memorial Award. Brynn Saito teaches in the MFA at USF. Currently, Brynn lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is the co-founder and director of the Center for Spiritual Life, an adjunct Assistant Professor in the BA program at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and director of the Center for Writing and Scholarship at CIIS. Ay caramba!

Tonight's show began with the Community Calendar: Ryan and Jarae from Vertigo Coffee Roasters in San Juan Bautista tell us about "Pink Moon Pop-up Art Show" this Friday night. Lucille Lang Day co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and Dave Holt, contributing poet talk about the anthology. Lucille Lang Day (http://lucillelangday.com) has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, which won the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. She is also co-editor of the anthology Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California as well as the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, which received a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies and have received nine Pushcart Prize nominations. The founder and publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books (http://www.scarlettanager.com), she is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent. After high school, Dave Holt began setting his poems to music. This led to a reenactment of the well-known songwriter fable, moving from Toronto, Canada, to California, where he followed the muse of story-telling and poetry into San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program (B.A. ‘93, M.A. ‘95). His poetry is published in several journals such as Raven Chronicles, Pedestal Magazine, and Spillway; he won Thomas Merton’s Poetry of the Sacred prize; was a three-time winner of the Maggie H. Meyer Memorial Contest, 2011/2013/2015; Ina Coolbrith prize for Nature poem 2015, and was featured in the 9th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival. He is Anishinaabe/Ojibway (Chippewa) Indian from his mother’s side. His book, Voyages to Ancestral Islands, which won a Cultural Literary Award from Artists Embassy International (San Francisco, 2013), tells the story of reuniting with his Ojibwe ancestors of West Bay (M’Chigeeng) First Nation Reserve. Dave’s wife, singer/songwriter Chappell Holt, accompanies his SF Bay Area live performances on guitar.

Jane Hirshfield Language As Lathe: A Conversation on Poetry and Prose ~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books~ Join TNS Host Eric Karpeles for a conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield. Jane’s poems, described as “radiant and passionate” in The New York Times Book Review, “magnificent and distinctive” by The Irish Times, and “among the pantheon of the modern masters of simplicity” in the Washington Post, have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review, Poetry, Harper’s, The New Republic, The American Poetry Review, and eight editions of The Best American Poetry. Her new book, The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), appears along with a new book of essays, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015). Jane Hirshfield Jane is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Beauty (Knopf, 2015) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015); Come, Thief (Knopf, 2011); After (HarperCollins, 2006), named a best book of the year by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Financial Times (UK); and Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her previous collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997), is considered a classic. Her many honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry, Columbia University’s Translation Center Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Bestselling author Michelle Richmond reads from her novels and discusses her writing process to a group at UC Berkeley. She is author of “No One You Know,” the New York Times bestseller, “The Year of Fog,” award-winning story collection, “The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress,” and the novel “Dream of the Blue Room,” a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Series: "Story Hour in the Library" [Humanities] [Show ID: 18752]

Bestselling author Michelle Richmond reads from her novels and discusses her writing process to a group at UC Berkeley. She is author of “No One You Know,” the New York Times bestseller, “The Year of Fog,” award-winning story collection, “The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress,” and the novel “Dream of the Blue Room,” a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Series: "Story Hour in the Library" [Humanities] [Show ID: 18752]

Our most recent Part I of the multi-part series "A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda" has assisted in inspiring the collection of individuals lending their voices to this show. Of greatest relevance in tying the Pesticide series to today, is reintroducing the very ideology that drives the conventional food system of which we are all mostly a part, and that is one founded upon science. Farmer and Poet Wendell Berry has some important thoughts on this scientific relationship with nature and food. Also lending their voice will be Michael Pollan as he presents his unique and provocative thoughts on an alternative approach to viewing nature and our food; from the plants' and insects' point of view! Rounding off the show, we'll listen in on an episode of Peak Moment Television, a weekly broadcast produced in Nevada County, California. Judy Alexander has been experimenting with growing as much food as she possibly can around her Port Townshend home. This tour of her garden will present an on-the-ground example of how engaging in localized food production, one can begin to witness a very alternative ideology to how our food is produced. Instead of relying on science and its reductionist and limiting theories, the wisdom of natural systems are instead allowed to guide what seems to be a far more responsible approach to sourcing our sustenance. Voices Michael Pollan - Journalist/Author The Omnivore's Dillema (Berkeley, CA) - Most recently the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). Wendell Berry - Farmer/Poet Lane's Landing Farm (Port Royal, KY) - An American academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. Berry writes and works the land on Lane's Landing Farm, five miles from his birthplace in northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana. Other Featured Audio Peak Moment: Community Responses For a Changing Energy Future are weekly 28-minute programs featuring host Janaia Donaldson's conversations and on-site tours with guests. It highlights practical solutions and responses towards a lower-energy, more connected, sustainable life. How can we thrive, build stronger communities, and help one another in this time of transition? The show is cablecast on community-access TV stations throughout the USA. (Episode 87 with Judy Alexander) Judy Alexander - (Port Townsend, WA) - In summer 2006, Judy Alexander embarked on an experiment to see how much food she could grow, and how many neighbors could benefit, from the garden around her house. Check out her homegrown rainwater collection and irrigation system -- watering her 60+ edible crops. Meet the bees, the chickens and the worms. And catch her joy in producing so much food for so little effort.