Podcasts about Stegner Fellowship

Want to join the podcast? Come together with other listeners in a deep dive into this summer's episodes, discussing ideas, asking questions, and sharing your experiences about issues brought up in our interviews. Perfect for writers at every level. Only a few spots available. Email 7amnovelist@substack.com for more info.Today we get to hear from Maria Hummel whose most recent novel, GOLDENSEAL, was released in January. Maria and I will be talking about the advantages and pitfalls of rewriting an existing fictional story and revising existing fictional models.Watch a recording of our live webinar here. The audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.To find Hummel's most recent novel and many books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. Maria Hummel is a novelist and poet. Her books include Goldenseal, Lesson in Red, a follow-up to Still Lives, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, a Book of the Month Club pick, and a BBC Culture Best Book of 2018; Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. She is also the winner of a Stegner Fellowship, a Bread Loaf Fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. Hummel worked for many years as an arts editor and journalist, and as a writer/editor for The Museum of Contemporary Art, experience that informed Still Lives and Lesson in Red. She also taught creative writing at Stanford University and Colorado College, and is now a full professor at the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons. 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

Send us a Text Message.In this Literary Aviatrix Writers' Room interview with best-selling author Maggie Shipstead we get into the details of her author journey. Maggie is an inspiration for anyone who aspires to be a professional writer. In our conversation, she talks about how a writing course with Zadie Smith during her undergrad at Harvard cemented her path as a writer. She went on to earn an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, followed by a two-year creative writing Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. Her books include the novels Seating Arrangements (2012), Astonish Me (2014), and Great Circle (2021), and a collection of short stories entitled You Have a Friend in 10A (2022). She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times' Book Prize for First Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and Great Circle was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the UK's Women's Prize for Fiction. As a travel writer, Maggie has also had articles published in Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times, and Departures. Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/Thanks so much for listening! Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter. Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages. Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation. Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree. Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!-Liz Booker

Weekly Shoutout: Cruznotes is back! One email a month to bring you everything happening across the cruzfolio network, join Jaime's newsletter here: cruzfolio.com/cruznotes. -- Hi there, Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Paul Cody! (paulcodywriter.com) About our guest: Paul Cody was born in Newton, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School and from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, magna cum laude, With Distinction in English, and Senior Honors in Creative Writing. He worked at the Perkins School for the Blind for three years, and earned an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where he was twice co-winner of the Arthur Lynn Prize in Fiction. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, and was awarded a Stegner Fellowship by Stanford University (declined). He has worked as a housepainter, teacher, editor and journalist, was associate editor and staff writer at Cornell Magazine, where he twice won CASE awards for articles; and has taught at Cornell, Ithaca College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Colgate Writing Seminars, and in Auburn Prison. His published novels include The Stolen Child (Baskerville, 1995), Eyes Like Mine (Baskerville, 1996), So Far Gone (Picador USA, 1998), Shooting the Heart (Viking, 2004), Love Is Both Wave and Particle (Roaring Brook, 2017), Sphyxia (Fomite, 2020) as well as a memoir, The Last Next Time (Irving Place Editions, 2013). His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Harper's, Epoch, The Quarterly, Story, the Boston Globe Magazine, and Cornell Magazine, and he has appeared on Voice of America as a Critic's Choice. He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York. Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Paul! All the best! -- WALK THE DARK available May 27th from Regal House Publishing! https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/walk-the-dark ABOUT WALK THE DARK: Oliver Curtin grows up in a nocturnal world with a mother who is a sex worker and drug addict, and whose love is real yet increasingly unreliable. His narration alternates between that troubled childhood and the present of the novel, where he is serving the last months of a thirty-years-to-life sentence in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York for a crime he committed at age seventeen. His hope for redemption is closely allied with his memories, seen with growing clarity and courage. If he can remember, then life in the larger world might be possible for him. Praise for Walk the Dark "Paul Cody's Walk the Dark is creepily beautiful, full of stillness and darkness. Cody takes us into places we don't know and shows us strange states of mind that feel absolutely true. It's both soothing and terrifying being in Oliver's mind, because he sees such beauty but also feels forever separated from it. For decades now I've seen Paul Cody's work as the ultimate cross between horror and literary fiction, taking us deeper into the weird American night than anyone in either camp.  Walk the Dark is a continuation of that same world we know from Cody's The Stolen Child and So Far Gone, both of which are great, terrifying novels." - Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster,  Emily, Alone; and Wish You Were Here   "Walk the Dark is harrowing and vivid, taut as a wire. Paul Cody intertwines terror and hope; he knows how to hook his readers from the start -- and on every page. Keep the lights burning when you open this spell-binding book." - Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members -- Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN. Much love, j

When we're gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us?Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down.Elizabeth Bradfield is a poet and naturalist who sees first hand, in her work as a marine educator, the ravaging impacts of plastic on marine life. But she also confronts plastic and our collective addiction to it as a subject of poetry.Her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History,” is what she calls a “cranky naturalist” poem, which is pretty funny, but embedded in the humor are big questions: how has plastic become part of who we are as individuals and as a species? Now that we know the dangers and devastating effects of plastic production and disposal, how must we change our relationship to this petrochemical product? What kind of world are we making, and what alternatives do we have?Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Toward Antarctica. She co-edited the newly-released anthology, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Brandeis University and is founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press. She lives on Cape Cod, where she also works as a naturalist and marine educator.This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Elizabeth BradfieldBorn in Tacoma, Washington, Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Toward Antarctica, which uses haibun and her photographs to query the work of guiding tourists in Antarctica, and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro.Bradfield is also co-editor of the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020. A professor and co-director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University, Bradfield has received a great deal of recognition through awards and fellowships. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. Based on Cape Cod, Liz also works as a naturalist, adding an engaging and proactive component to back up the prowess of her evocative literature. She also is the founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, a journal and grass-roots initiative that, through monthly publications, aims to expose the broader community (beyond academia) to relevant literature and art.“Plastic: A Personal History”By Elizabeth BradfieldHow can I find a way to praise it? Do the early inventors & embracers churn with regret? I don't think my parents —born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew & chew & chew on plastic. But of course they do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air. And their parents? I remember Dad mocking his mother's drawer of saved rubber bands and his father-in-law's red, corroded jerry can, patched and patched, never replaced for new, for never- rusting. Cash or plastic? Plastic. Even for gum. We hate the $5 minimum. Bills paperless, automatic, almost unreal. My toys were plastic, castle and circus train and yo-yo. Did my lunches ever get wrapped in waxed paper or was it all Saran, Saran, Saran? Sarah's mom was given, in Girl Scouts, a blue sheet of plastic to cut, sew, and trim with white piping into pouches for camping. Sarah has it still, brittle but useful. Merit badge for waterproofing. For everlasting. You, too, must have heard stories, now quaint as carriages, of first plastic, pre-plastic. Eras of glass, waxed cloth, and tin. Of shared syringes. All our grocery bags, growing up, were paper. Bottom hefted on forearm, top crunched into grab. We used them to line the kitchen garbage pail. Not that long ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters out of putty-colored, red-lettered plastic Safeway bags. I'd snag a stack each time I went, then fold and sew, quilt with bright thread, line with thrift store blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. Rainproof and light. Clever. So clever. I regret them. And the plastic toothpicks, folders, shoes that seemed so cheap, so easy, so use-again and thus less wasteful, then. What did we do before to-go lids? Things must have just spilled and spilled. Do you know what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms around a grain of plastic in an oyster? Is it as beautiful? Would you wear it? Would you buy it for your daughter so she in turn could pass it down and pass it down and pass it down?Recommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn FiegeWhen we're gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us?Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down.Elizabeth Bradfield is a poet and naturalist who sees first hand, in her work as a marine educator, the ravaging impacts of plastic on marine life. But she also confronts plastic and our collective addiction to it as a subject of poetry.Her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History,” is what she calls a “cranky naturalist” poem, which is pretty funny, but embedded in the humor are big questions: how has plastic become part of who we are as individuals and as a species? Now that we know the dangers and devastating effects of plastic production and disposal, how must we change our relationship to this petrochemical product? What kind of world are we making, and what alternatives do we have?I'm John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Toward Antarctica. She co-edited the newly-released anthology, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Brandeis University and is founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press. She lives on Cape Cod, where she also works as a naturalist and marine educator.Here is Elizabeth Bradfield reading her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History.”---PoemElizabeth Bradfield  “Plastic: A Personal History”How can I find a way to praise it? Do the early inventors & embracers churn with regret? I don't think my parents —born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew & chew & chew on plastic. But of course they do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air. And their parents? I remember Dad mocking his mother's drawer of saved rubber bands and his father-in-law's red, corroded jerry can, patched and patched, never replaced for new, for never- rusting. Cash or plastic? Plastic. Even for gum. We hate the $5 minimum. Bills paperless, automatic, almost unreal. My toys were plastic, castle and circus train and yo-yo. Did my lunches ever get wrapped in waxed paper or was it all Saran, Saran, Saran? Sarah's mom was given, in Girl Scouts, a blue sheet of plastic to cut, sew, and trim with white piping into pouches for camping. Sarah has it still, brittle but useful. Merit badge for waterproofing. For everlasting. You, too, must have heard stories, now quaint as carriages, of first plastic, pre-plastic. Eras of glass, waxed cloth, and tin. Of shared syringes. All our grocery bags, growing up, were paper. Bottom hefted on forearm, top crunched into grab. We used them to line the kitchen garbage pail. Not that long ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters out of putty-colored, red-lettered plastic Safeway bags. I'd snag a stack each time I went, then fold and sew, quilt with bright thread, line with thrift store blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. Rainproof and light. Clever. So clever. I regret them. And the plastic toothpicks, folders, shoes that seemed so cheap, so easy, so use-again and thus less wasteful, then. What did we do before to-go lids? Things must have just spilled and spilled. Do you know what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms around a grain of plastic in an oyster? Is it as beautiful? Would you wear it? Would you buy it for your daughter so she in turn could pass it down and pass it down and pass it down?---ConversationJohn Fiege  Thank you, that's so beautiful. And there's so much going on there, in this poem.Elizabeth Bradfield  It's funny it started, this poem started kind of just, you know, as a bitter rant.John Fiege  Well, it didn't end there.Elizabeth Bradfield  No, it didn't end there.John Fiege  So, tell me about that. What's the bitter rant?Elizabeth Bradfield  Oh, just plastic. You know? Honestly, the poem started when my friend Sarah, you know, she's my age. I'm 50, 51. And she showed me this little bag her mom made and I started thinking, "Wow, imagine being the generation that discovered plastic, right? Wow, plastic, so handy," tupperware parties, all that stuff, right? And I mean, to be the generation that saw plastic come into use, I was just really thinking about that shift and, and that's where the poem started.John Fiege  So I want to just dive into to probably my favorite moment in the poem. So I'm gonna I'm gonna reread this one stanza. You too, must have heard stories now. quaintest carriages have first plastic, pre plastic eras of glass, wax cloth and tin of shared syringes. So that line of shared syringes hit me really hard. You know, prior to this, you mentioned rubber bands and credit cards, and Yo-Yos, and saran wrap, and Girl Scout pouches, all these kind of quaint objects of the past. But shared syringes is like this bomb you drop in the poem, you know, toys, and everyday items, the toils and frivolities of childhood all of a sudden become the life threatening addictions of the teenage years and young adulthood, a plastic addiction that may seem at first to make our lives better, while it slowly kills us. Can you talk about this moment in the poem, like, you know, where did this come from? Maybe, what's going on structurally here that gives this moment in the poem so much weight?Elizabeth Bradfield  Well, I think a couple of things, I was, you know, I did just want to imagine and put forth the ground truthing that we did have a world before plastic, right? What did we do? There were these things. And then I was thinking, I was thinking, all right, let's think about the advantages of plastic right of disposable syringes of, you know, the problems of disease being swapped out, the doctor comes to your house, or what you're a morphine addict, or whatever, in the Sherlock Holmes-ian kind of way with his glass syringe. But of course, you didn't throw any of that away, right? And so there is a benefit to plastic, right? There's a danger in this older world, as well as the danger in this present world, and so I wanted that pivot and that shift I didn't want this poem to be. I mean, gosh, you know, I think about what my life would have been like, as a queer woman in the era of wax cloth, and tin, it wouldn't have been so happy. So I was thinking of just the darker shadow of that nostalgia, I suppose. John Fiege  Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting to start with nostalgia. And then, I mean, this is the poetry of it. It's that single turn of phrase changes the color, and the tone of everything so quickly. Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah and I really, you know, there's, I think, you know, how you write a poem. And for me, when I write a poem, it's a journey, right? It's an act of discovery. And a lot of the discovery for me in this poem was through sound, as well as through images. And for me, that rhyme of tin and syringes was a discovery, a linkage, and I think it was same as same as earlier in the poem, you know, plastic, even for gum that we hate the $5 minimum, and that gum minimum, right? These kind of resonances. They kind of they tickle me, you know what I mean? So there's like, the darkness and also the humor for me, and also the delight of sound and all of these things swirling around. John Fiege  Right. Well, you know, the other thing, you know, I got cancer 10 years ago, and, and almost died.  Yeah, it was horrendous, but I'm here. But, you know, I spent two years in treatment, and the number of disposable plastic objects that were discarded in front of me to care just for me, just blew my mind away. And at the same time, it saved my life, you know, and so when I get, you know, you talk about how you started this poem as a rant against plastic. And I find myself in that place frequently. But I guess I try to--I don't know, I guess I try to forgive our society, our humanity sometimes, to say, you know, people weren't trying to destroy the planet when they invented plastic. You know, they were trying to create this miraculous thing that would allow us not to cut down so many trees and, and grow so much cotton and, you know, do all these other things that felt like the limits of the natural world.Elizabeth Bradfield  Oh, I'm so sorry. Not kill so many whales, right? I mean, that used a pre-plastic material. John Fiege  Exactly. So, you know, I try to remind myself of that. And, you know, you could talk about syringes in kind of a life saving positive way. But you can also talk about them as shared syringes. Which, you know, immediately brings to mind of course, you know, heroin epidemic, and things like that, that have just taken so many lives. So I don't know how, when you were in the midst of the journey for this poem, what were you--how are you weighing those things of the ranch versus kind of checking yourself about nostalgia or other things?Elizabeth Bradfield  I think what I love about poems is the ability to hold contradiction, you know? And I, you said, check yourself, and I do try and check myself, I try and think in poems, you know, how am I culpable in this moment? You know, I'm not removed from it. And so I wanted, I wanted those layers of complexity to be in the poem. And I think, you know, it's funny, I wrote this poem, the first draft of it, before the pandemic. I think the first draft was in 2017. And of course, during the pandemic, I've thought only more and more and more about plastic and the way that we've turned toward disposables in order to, you know, prevent contagion and contamination and spreading of disease, through our face masks, or even to-go containers. But I think what I really--what angers me about plastic in our lives, is how thoughtlessly it can enter, right? And I think I wanted a poem that used a little bit of humor, to possibly suggest that we can think twice about some of these things, right? Especially a yo-yo. There are still wooden yo-yos out there, right, there's still, there are glasses that we can use instead of plastic cups, we can--all of these things that we can do. And it's not convenient. And so we don't. And so I thought if I could just play a little and be a little funny, and a little snarky, but also kind of acknowledge these darknesses, that might be a way to just shine a little light.John Fiege  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and what I was saying before about, you know, being understanding of, you know, how we didn't really know how bad plastic was when it was invented. But the other side of that coin is--Elizabeth Bradfield  But now we do.John Fiege  And we're still not doing anything about it. Right? And that's where the, like, the real culpability starts to come of like, you know, what are you doing about it?Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah. Are you going to buy another fleece, is that recycled wood porch really a good thing? You know, the recycled wood?John Fiege  Yeah, well, it's got that word recycled in it. Elizabeth Bradfield  Oh, absolutely everything is recycled.John Fiege  Well, let me let me reread another stanza. So this is in the middle. Not that long ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters out of putty colored red lettered plastic Safeway bags, I had snag a stack each time I went. Then fold and sew quilt with bright thread line with thrift store blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. rain proof and light, clever, so clever. I regret them. So there again, that last line is so cutting, "I regret them." You set us up to see your kind of crafty upcycled purses, as, you know, practical, durable, ecologically responsible. But then you regret them. So I have questions about that. So I see the complicated relationship we have to plastic in this in this section of the poem: It's incredibly durable and malleable and useful, and in some ways, it can allow us to reduce our use of other resources. But there's this dark underside, again, like we were talking about before, to this durability and persistence in the environment, specifically. So maybe you regret stealing a bunch of Safeway bags so you weren't actually upcycling but I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about you know, what do you regret?Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah, I mean, I think to what you were speaking about before when you read that other stanza, too, in terms of form, for folks who haven't seen this poem, there's a there's a dropped line here, right? "Clever, so clever." And then a little bit of space and the next line, "I regret them," drops down, a continuation, but a break. And I wanted that break, you know, that pause and I wanted to allow the poem to be caught up in that kind of delight and joy of making, you know, I was totally broke, I wanted to make something pretty for my sisters. I felt like I was, yeah, upcycling, I suppose, I'm not sure the word existed then, it probably did. But yeah, make something new, free from what was at hand, and I love doing things like that. And I was kind of, you know, a little, a little in love with myself for coming up with this awesome plan. And pulling one over on Safeway.John Fiege  Free bags, I'll take some!Elizabeth Bradfield  And they were really cute little purses. I'm not a purse kind of person. I wonder if they still have them? I have no idea. But of course, now looking back, I'm like, "Oh my God. That's what I regret," that I would even think of this as a gift to give to, to spend all that time with that plastic, making this thing for my sisters, who I love. What an idiot, you know. And I was just, I was so blind to that at the moment. I was just in love with the making. And, you know, 10 years ago, we knew plastic was bad. But it just it wasn't, I don't know, the alarm bells were not as heightened. I was living at the time in Alaska. And we hardly had recycling. Paper recycling, no. Plastic recycling, no, you know, so even to that extra use adds another another layer, right? But yeah, I was living in a place where even, ostensibly, there was no recycling happening.John Fiege  So, you know, you can pay a lot of money right now to buy a fleece that's made from recycled plastic bags. And that is marketed as better than creating new plastic. I can't do the math about you know what the waste is in one direction or the other. But it seems on the surface like "Yeah, that's better. If you're going to have a fleece jacket, that's better." Elizabeth Bradfield  Oh, no. John Fiege  Not at all. You don't even think the recycled fleece is better?Elizabeth Bradfield  No, because, okay, wear wool. But also, those fleeces, when you wash them, the microfibers come out, and they go out through your gray water. And they go through if you, you know, if you're on a septic system, they just go right in, if you're on a sewer system, even they escape out, and they go out into the ocean. So I mean, I work on these, I work as a Marine educator and I work you know, help out with some field work with some whales and I work on the local WhaleWatch boats here as a naturalist and I always tell people like, one thing you can do to help save whales is do less laundry, all the stuff that we wash, it all goes out. And so, no, the recycled bottle into a fleece is, I believe, not good.John Fiege  Okay, so the better thing is to take that plastic and contain it and never let it release into a water source again.Elizabeth Bradfield  I think so.John Fiege  And find completely different alternative natural fibers to use.Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah, and I mean, we don't need we don't need plastic bottles. We don't need plastic trash liners. I still use a paper liner in my kitchen. You know what I mean? I I don't use shampoo, I use bar soap. I mean, now we're getting to this, like, what do you reduce your plastic footprint? Because there's plenty of plastic in my life. I mean, right here I am on a computer. My headphones that are plastic are plugged into my ears. You know, I'm not a purist in that way. But I do try and think, is there an alternative?John Fiege  Well, it's interesting too, because you know, things like upcycling, that's such a hip thing right now. And if you if you look at a lot of the eco fashion kind of world, that kind of all the rage. It's not just about the source of the of the materials, it's about the end destination of the materials. Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah. John Fiege  Let's jump to the last stanza. Elizabeth Bradfield  Sure. John Fiege  Do you know what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms around a grain of plastic and an oyster. Is it as beautiful, would you wear it? Would you buy it for your daughter? So she in turn could pass it down and pass it down and pass it down. So you end the poem by expanding these questions of our relationship to plastic to questions of time and value and beauty. And finally, you end with the question of what, you know, specifically with a question of: what would you pass down to your daughter? And thinking on that generational level, we pass down fair family heirlooms, or wealth or knowledge or traditions. But we can also pass down ecological devastation, social pathologies, inequalities, a planet polluted by so much plastic junk, and maybe junk disguised as a pearl, that appears to hold meaning, importance, value and beauty. But really, it's rotten or toxic or plastic at its core. So what's going on here at the end, for you?Elizabeth Bradfield  I mean, I think for me, that ending is very ironic, because we are passing this down, right? We are passing this down to the generations that follow us. And would that pearl be as beautiful? Probably, if you didn't know what was inside of it. How, you know, how important is it for us to drill down and really examine what we're holding? And what's inside of it? And to really question what's at the heart of what we're carrying? To me, that's a really, really important question.John Fiege  Right. Right. So how does this poem fit into the broader context of your work and your life? And in you know, are there any other, kind of, stories around this poem, specifically, that you think are interesting? Elizabeth Bradfield  Well, I kind of consider this poem as a sub-genre of nature poetry, which I call the cranky naturalist poem that I find myself writing quite a bit of, I think there's a lot of poems in, especially my book, once removed, that fall into the cranky naturalist genre. And I mean, I think I write them because I do get cranky. But also, I think they're a little bit funny. And things are so bad that I have to laugh. You know what I mean? I have to laugh, I hope someone else has to laugh too. Because if we're not laughing, then we're turning away. You know, and laughter is a way of engaging, it's a way of being. So I like putting on that posture of the cranky naturalist. And yeah, I do, I work as a naturalist. I work mostly with marine mammals with marine ecology. And so I divide my life between books and boats, basically. And both of those things really feed me and I think a lot about the world that a seal or a whale is swimming through. And the urban ocean, that most of us know, most of us who live on the coasts, whether you're on the East Coast, I live on Cape Cod, or the West Coast, or, you know, the UK, South Africa, Australia, wherever. All of these coasts are very urban coasts. And we, the ocean has been thought of for so long as something that's, you know, "too big to fail." But we're seeing some failures. And it's really concerning to me. So I think a lot about the ocean, which I love so much, you know, that I find inspiration and solace in and has a very complicated human history. Also a really complicated ecological history that we hardly even understand. You know, I mean, we don't even know how long really, humpback whales live. There are so many mysteries out there, and, and we're changing the ocean pretty rapidly. So a lot of my time and thought goes into thinking about ocean ecology, marine ecology.John Fiege  And in reality, the oceans are too big to ignore, which is exactly what we do. You know? Yeah. Human history is a history of dumping our waste into a water source, whether that's a river or an ocean, or some other place where it seems to our to our eyes to disappear.Elizabeth Bradfield  Yeah. And in all honesty, we're all downstream. Right? Exactly. I mean, some people more immediately than others.John Fiege  There's no, there's no stream on a sphere.Elizabeth Bradfield  That's right. Yeah. So yeah, so In terms of my writing, I read a lot about, there's a little ocean in here, not a ton. But I read a lot about the fulcrum between our social selves and our animal selves, you know, or the other more than human beings that are out there in the world. And I find that a really interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes inspiring, and complicated set of dynamics.John Fiege  And you know, if you're going to start a podcast, eventually you're going to have to call it "The Cranky Naturalist."Elizabeth Bradfield  My friend Melissa and I, she's a naturalist also. But we had a joke that we should start a podcast called "Wait, wait, don't touch that." All the things that you shouldn't be doing that the naturalist would like, you know, tisk tisk you for doing. Um, number one would be those those recycled fleece sweatshirts.John Fiege  Wow, I don't buy those recycled fleece sweatshirts, but I've at least given them the benefit of the doubt that it's better than the alternative. But you, you're right, you're totally right. So, right now, there's so much activism going on around our use of plastic and the ridiculous ubiquity of plastic pollution, single use plastic wasteful packaging, microplastics in the bodies of fish and every other living thing in the ocean. How do you see poetry or other forms of art, in relationship to the activist project of understanding and bringing attention to huge problems like plastic pollution,Elizabeth Bradfield  I think what I love about poetry, in addition to so many other things, is that it's really a form that asks us to occupy both the mind and the heart, right, the intellect and the emotion. And that's what we need to do to move forward and make any kind of progress. Thinking isn't enough, we also have to feel, and to help people connect and care. And so I think, if we can write things that keep these conversations alive, and stop us from just numbing over to the things we know, like we know plastic is bad. But if there's--I was at this show the other day, at the Center for Coastal Studies, which is a research and education nonprofit, on Cape Cod and Provincetown. And there was an art show that had a lot of marine debris-inspired of work in it. And one of the one of the images that was so striking to me, I can't remember the name of the artist, but it was a photographer, and she had collected, you know, tennis balls on the beach, which you find so many of and she set them up in this grid and photographed them in this sterile, pristine way. And they were so beautiful, and so strange and made me look at them differently and think about them differently. And I think that is what I think art and poetry can do to just wake us up and make us consider, slow down a little bit of time, hold a little bit of space, and allow us to feel and not just be numbed out by all this information. John Fiege  Right. Yeah, and, you know, ice core data, and, and, you know, carbon dioxide level changes over the last couple of decades, you know, that stuff's really important, but it doesn't, it doesn't make you feel in a direct way. I mean, maybe it has an indirect way of making you feel if you have enough background knowledge about what it means and you can translate it in your own head. But also, I think, besides the feeling is, kind of, a there's a pragmatic side to art, too. You know, you have a poetry reading, and you invite people and they come and it's fun. And you get to hang out with people, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna read your ice core data to people in a room unless you're at a scientific conference, at a glaciology conference, you know? So it, I mean, for me, also just in this on this very pragmatic level, and just allows us to keep the conversation going, in forms that people are more comfortable with, more excited about, are kind of a positive, beautiful, kind of beneficial side of their experience, rather than something that seems dull and grueling and opaque.Elizabeth Bradfield  No, absolutely. I think the energy of a rant or a cranky naturalist poem, for me can be a lot of fun and can be a way to vent frustration and rage that that is really necessary, and then hopefully move on, pick up and move on. Right, I think we look for art not just to help us explore the more difficult realities of our world, but also find energy, solace, inspiration to move on, you know, maybe do something a little bit differently to, to not just sink into despair.John Fiege  Yeah. Yeah.Elizabeth Bradfield  I think that's really important to me, that poems are part of our greater public discourse. And I think, you know, what you're doing with your podcast is doing that, our conversation is about that also. And, you know, it's not it's not an elite, isolated form, right? Poems want to connect. And they can, and, I welcome every little moment where I see that happening in the world. John Fiege  Awesome. Yeah, I, I have Irish heritage, although I've never been to Ireland. Although I've never been to Ireland, and I'm completely disconnected from the culture and place in a direct way. But, you know, I've heard that, to this day poets are, like, huge celebrities in Ireland, like, every town has their, like, you know, poet laureate, essentially. And it's such a big deal culturally. And then I think about America and how all of our superstars are, you know, from Hollywood or, you know, or like sports or, you know, business moguls. And sometimes ask myself, how would our society be different if the poets were the superstars here?Elizabeth Bradfield  I don't know. I think in some circles they are, you know, I was lucky enough to be able to study with the poet Eavan Boland, who's Irish, when I was at Stanford, and I'll never forget her telling us a story of Aer Lingus that the airline for Ireland. They were redesigning their interior cabin and they, I don't know, this kind of cracks me up. But they took one of her poems and wove it into the seat embroidery. And so I just think about all of those people sitting on Eavan Boland's words. And it's kind of gross, and kind of, like, farting into it and all the things that you do on an airplane. But it's also kind of amazing and wonderful that they would want poetry as part of this journey into the sky, too, you know? So yeah, so I wonder the same thing.John Fiege  Great. Well, can can you end by reading the poem once again?Elizabeth Bradfield  I'd be happy to. ---PoemElizabeth Bradfield  “Plastic: A Personal History”How can I find a way to praise it? Do the early inventors & embracers churn with regret? I don't think my parents —born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew & chew & chew on plastic. But of course they do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air. And their parents? I remember Dad mocking his mother's drawer of saved rubber bands and his father-in-law's red, corroded jerry can, patched and patched, never replaced for new, for never- rusting. Cash or plastic? Plastic. Even for gum. We hate the $5 minimum. Bills paperless, automatic, almost unreal. My toys were plastic, castle and circus train and yo-yo. Did my lunches ever get wrapped in waxed paper or was it all Saran, Saran, Saran? Sarah's mom was given, in Girl Scouts, a blue sheet of plastic to cut, sew, and trim with white piping into pouches for camping. Sarah has it still, brittle but useful. Merit badge for waterproofing. For everlasting. You, too, must have heard stories, now quaint as carriages, of first plastic, pre-plastic. Eras of glass, waxed cloth, and tin. Of shared syringes. All our grocery bags, growing up, were paper. Bottom hefted on forearm, top crunched into grab. We used them to line the kitchen garbage pail. Not that long ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters out of putty-colored, red-lettered plastic Safeway bags. I'd snag a stack each time I went, then fold and sew, quilt with bright thread, line with thrift store blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. Rainproof and light. Clever. So clever. I regret them. And the plastic toothpicks, folders, shoes that seemed so cheap, so easy, so use-again and thus less wasteful, then. What did we do before to-go lids? Things must have just spilled and spilled. Do you know what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms around a grain of plastic in an oyster? Is it as beautiful? Would you wear it? Would you buy it for your daughter so she in turn could pass it down and pass it down and pass it down?---ConversationJohn Fiege  Beautiful. Liz, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great.Elizabeth Bradfield  Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciated this conversation and really enjoyed it, John.---OutroJohn Fiege Thank you so much to Elizabeth Bradfield. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can read her poem “Plastic: A Personal History,” see some photographs of her at work as a naturalist and marine educator, and find our book and media recommendations.This episode was researched and edited by Brodie Mutschler, with additional editing by Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.If you enjoyed my conversation with Elizabeth, 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

Authors have for a long time used literary expressions of anguish as a powerful tool to connect with readers. They may use language and symbolic references to nuance the emotions associated with it, but whatever their approach, they look to inspire emotions that deliver that gut punch.My guest today, Aamina Ahmad clearly knows how to handle the literature of conflicted emotions. Her debut novel, The Return Of Faraz Ali—set in the walled city of Lahore, Pakistan—is the story of a cop who is asked to hush up the murder of a prostitute by some powerful figures. But his deep connection to the Mohullah from his past takes the story in a direction that is both unexpected and compelling.While “The Return Of Faraz Ali” might be Aamina's debut novel, she is an experienced writer. Her background and career speak to this experience.Aamina was born and raised in London and studied English in college. She worked for the BBC as a script editor, including on epic stories like The East Enders. And since then she has, of note, published a full length play, a short story and a novel. Here's how she did:Her play, titled The Dishonoured, won a Screencraft Stage Play Award and was nominated for an Off-West End Award. Her short story "The Red One Who Rocks," published in 2019, won the Pushcart Prize. And “The Return Of Faraz Ali” won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award. And then they decided to give her the 2017 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award for… well, simply for being a good and promising writer.One of the many things I like about doing this show is discovering new authors—even if the rest of the world discovered them before I did.And ever so often, a particularly delightful piece of writing presents itself and I spend several happy days disappearing into the worlds that they have crafted. The last few days were spent in the literature of Aamina.And now, she joins me from her home in Minneapolis. Aamina Ahmad, welcome to The Literary City.ABOUT AAMINA AHMADAamina Ahmad was born and raised in London, where she worked for BBC Drama and other independent television companies as a script editor. Her play The Dishonoured was produced by Kali Theatre Company, in 2016.  She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award. Her short fiction has appeared in journals including One Story, The Southern Review and Ecotone. She won the Writers' Guild Award 2022 for Best First Novel and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction at the L.A Book Prize for The Return of Faraz Ali. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Buy The Return Of Faraz Ali: https://amzn.to/3nBWrVHWHAT'S THAT WORD?!Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in "What's That Word?!",  where they discuss the origin of the phrase, "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME!".WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW?Reach us by mail: theliterarycity@explocity.com or simply, tlc@explocity.com.Or here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycityOr here:  https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/

Today, Lydia Conklin talks to us about their collection RAINBOW RAINBOW, writing humor and joy, Lorrie Moore, deciding to publish their collection before their novel, working with Catapult, and more!  Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative Writing Fellowship from Emory University, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, One Story, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They've served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are currently an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W Bingham Award and The Story Prize.  Sign up for Krys Malcolm Belc's online class, Writing Queer Memoir! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aamina Ahmad reads from The Return of Faraz Ali, a rich and deeply moving novel about confronting histories both personal and political. Aamina Ahmad, a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, The Southern Review, Ecotone, and elsewhere; she is also the author of a play, The Dishonored. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota.

Author Lydia Conklin reads "Pioneer," a story from Rainbow Rainbow, their delightful debut collection of prize-winning stories, queer, gender-nonconforming, and trans characters struggle to find love and forgiveness, despite their sometimes comic, sometimes tragic mistakes. Lydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Previously they were the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the University of Michigan. They've received a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, Brush Creek, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera, the Sitka Center, and Harvard University, among others. They were the 2015-2017 Creative Writing Fellow in fiction at Emory University. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming from The Paris Review. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine.

Stacey D'Erasmo is the author of five novels and one book of nonfiction. She has been the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship in fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, and a Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary, among other awards. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, the Boston Review, Bookforum, the New England Review, and Ploughshares, among other publications. She is an associate professor of writing and publishing practices at Fordham University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Let's Deconstruct a Story" is a podcast where we read and discuss one short story with the author. In this episode, Lydia Conklin and Lillian Li will be discussing the story "Sunny Talks" first published in One Story in January 2022. This conversation was recorded live at Pages Bookshop in Detroit on June 24, 2022. This episode is part of a series of "Let's Deconstruct a Story" podcasts offered in collaboration with the Grosse Pointe Public Library in Michigan. The GPPL has committed to purchasing ten books by each author this season to give to their patrons! If you are a short story writer who has tried to make money in this game then you know what a big deal their support is to us! My hope is that other libraries will follow the GPPL's lead and be inspired to buy books by these talented short story writers. I will be contacting many libraries this year to suggest this programming. Please feel free to do the same if you enjoy this podcast. This podcast is also supported by Pages Bookshop in Detroit, and we would be extremely grateful if you purchased the book online through Pages here. Local bookstores won't survive without help from customers like you! Lydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Previously they were the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the University of Michigan. They've received a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, Brush Creek, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera, the Sitka Center, and Harvard University, among others. They were the 2015-2017 Creative Writing Fellow in fiction at Emory University. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming from The Paris Review. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, will be published in June 2022 by Catapult in the US and Scribner in the UK. Lillian Li is the author of the novel Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was an NPR Best Book of 2018, and longlisted for the Women's Prize and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Granta, One Story, Bon Appetit, Travel & Leisure, The Guardian, and Jezebel. Originally from the D.C. metro area, she lives in Ann Arbor. The host of this podcast is Kelly Fordon and you can find out more about her at www.kellyfordon.com.

Jordan talks with Lydia Conklin about bucking the conventions of queer storytelling, how a childhood Oregon Trail reenactment led to one of the most memorable stories in Rainbow Rainbow, and the excitement of making big moves in life and art. MENTIONED: * The Oregon Trail (play here) * Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates * Intimacies by Katie Kitamura Lydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Previously they were the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the University of Michigan. They've received a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, Brush Creek, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera, the Sitka Center, and Harvard University, among others. They were the 2015-2017 Creative Writing Fellow in fiction at Emory University. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming from The Paris Review. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was published in June 2022 by Catapult in the US and Scribner in the UK. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Be sure to rate/review/subscribe on your favorite podcast platform! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this last episode of season two of Cabana Chats, writer Lydia Conklin talks with Resort founder Catherine LaSota about fostering dogs, writing a story versus making a comic, and the places we can't bring our cell phones (thank goodness), among many other fascinating topics. Lydia Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Previously they were the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the University of Michigan. They've received a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative & Performing Arts Fulbright to Poland, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the James Merrill House, the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Millay, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, Brush Creek, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Caldera, the Sitka Center, and Harvard University, among others. They were the 2015-2017 Creative Writing Fellow in fiction at Emory University. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming from The Paris Review. They have drawn graphic fiction for Lenny Letter, Drunken Boat, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine. Lydia's story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was recently published by Catapult in the US and Scribner in the UK. Find out more about Lydia Conklin here: https://lydia-conklin.com Purchase RAINBOW RAINBOW by Lydia Conklin here: https://bookshop.org/a/83344/9781646221011 Join our free Resort community, full of resources and support for writers, here: https://community.theresortlic.com/ More information about The Resort can be found here: https://www.theresortlic.com/ You can find books for purchase by all of our Cabana Chats guests here: https://bookshop.org/lists/cabana-chats-podcast Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota. Our podcast editor is Jade Iseri-Ramos, and our music is by Pat Irwin. Special thanks to Resort assistant Nadine Santoro. FULL TRANSCRIPTS for Cabana Chats podcast episodes are available in the free Resort network: https://community.theresortlic.com/ Follow us on social media! @TheResortLIC

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. She received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Chinese Literature and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.  Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Presently, Chin is Professor Emerita at San Diego State University and serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book is A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2018). Chin's other books of poems include Hard Love Province, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, Dwarf Bamboo, and the Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty. Her book of wild girl fiction is called Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen.    She has won numerous awards, including the distinguished Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement in poetry from the Poetry Foundation, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the United States Artist Foundation Award, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, two NEAs, the United Artist Foundation Award, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, five Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan, a Lannan Residency and others. In 2017, she was honored by the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus and the California Assembly for her activism and excellence in education. Visit her website.Read poems by Marilyn Chin Poetry FoundationAcademy of American Poets

Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, ''a startling debut collection'' (The New York Times) of short stories was a Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller, the 2009 Oprah Book Club Selection, and was translated in to 12 languages. It was named to several publications' ''best of the year'' lists and earned the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Open Book Award, among other honors. A professor in the University of Florida's MFA writing program and the recipient of many literary fellowships, Akpan has published stories and autobiographical work in The New Yorker, the Nigerian edition of The Guardian, and the Hekima Review, among other places. His debut novel tells the satirical story of a Nigerian editor who experiences racism and feelings of white cultural superiority underneath the façade of the Manhattan publishing industry.  Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of the ''quirky, compelling'' and ''polished debut'' (Dallas Morning News) story collection Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. A professor of creative writing at Princeton University, she has earned the ''5 Under 35'' award from the National Book Foundation, the Rome Prize, and a Stegner Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The O. Henry Prize Stories anthology, among other places. The Five Wounds, Quade's debut novel, finds five generations of a New Mexican family converging in the year following an unexpected birth. (recorded 11/10/2021)

Alison Deming is so prolific and has been writing for so long that it was a bit overwhelming to pack into a 20-minute interview, but we tried our best. Hawthorne is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, where she founded the Field Studies in Writing Program in 2015. She has an MFA from Vermont College, a Stegner Fellowship, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and multiple other fellowships, residencies and prizes. Her new book, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, was released by Counterpoint Press in August.Honorable mentions:Poet Pattiann RogersNovelist and short story writer Andrea BarrettScottish poet and essayist Kathleen JamieWriter and curator Rebecca SenfWriter Pam HoustonTrace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret SavoyThe Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco CantuGuerilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminist activist artistsDeming's daughter, artist Lucinda Bliss

Author Bio:Jesmyn Ward is a novelist and professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds; Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award; Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award; and of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time. Ward has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Award. She currently resides in Mississippi. To Learn More:Visit us online at Freedom Reads and follow us on Twitter @million_book

In this episode, we have a wonderful conversation with Marissa Grunes about the literal and literary awe and fascination humans have had for Antarctica. Marissa is an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University Center for the Environment, where she is at work on a narrative nonfiction book, Incognita: A Portrait of Antarctica. She studied Comparative Literature in German and Spanish at Yale, and earned her PhD in English Lit from Harvard, where she studied nineteenth century American literature and log cabins. For more on Marissa: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gone_Incognita Website: marissagrunes.com If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Jemma: @Geowrites Brandon: @BeGalm If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! ‘Polar Autumn’ read by permission of the author, Elizabeth Bradfield. Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, Approaching Ice, and Interpretive Work as well as Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Kenyon Review, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. Editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she works as a marine naturalist/guide and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University. www.ebradfield.com Other links:  www.broadsidedpress.org Instagram: @e.bradfield Twitter: @ecbradfield Episode recorded March 13, 2021. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

On episode 192 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by Kevin Young. Kevin is a poet and the new director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As the museum prepares to reopen this spring and approaches its fifth anniversary later this year, Kevin talks about what the museum means to him, as a museum director and as a poet. Paul asks Kevin about the collection of poetry he edited, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. They unpack the similarities between poetry and museum collections and discuss some of the art and objects on display in the museum. Paul asks Kevin what artifacts he would save from this moment and Kevin talks about some of his influences from his hometown of Topeka before ending the episode with a moving reading of two of Kevin’s poems.Listen to Kevin Young reciting "Won't You Celebrate With Me," a poem by Lucille Clifton. Kevin Young is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. As the nation's largest museum dedicated to telling the African American story, the 19th and newest museum in the Smithsonian complex welcomes 2 million annual visitors and engages an international audience through world-class online programming and digital access to its collections. Young holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. He has held a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a NEA fellowship. Director Young is active across the art and cultural community. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.

From the archives of the Port Townsend Writers Conference we’re pleased to present a craft lecture by William Pitt Root, given at the 1979 Conference. Root’s poetry collections include White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West (2006), PEN West Poetry Award finalist Trace Elements from a Recurring Kingdom: The First Five Books (1994), and The Storm and Other Poems (1969). He is the recipient of the Southern Review’s Guy Owen Prize and three Pushcart Prizes as well as a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and other fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Root is the poetry editor for the literary journal, Cutthroat.

Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press, 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Northern Ireland, and a Visiting Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. George David Clark’s Reveille (Arkansas, 2015) won the Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ecotone, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing at Washington and Jefferson College and lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife and their four young children.Read "Wind" by James Arthur.Read "Black Igloo" by George David Clark.Recorded On: Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press, 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Northern Ireland, and a Visiting Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. George David Clark’s Reveille (Arkansas, 2015) won the Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ecotone, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing at Washington and Jefferson College and lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife and their four young children.Read "Wind" by James Arthur.Read "Black Igloo" by George David Clark.

Painted Bride Quarterly presents another especially excellent episode of Slush Pile. This is of course because we are joined by Pushcart Prize winner and newly annointed #PeopleOfThePile BJ Ward! BJ Ward is an American poet. Ward is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize (Anthology XXVIII, 2004) for poetry and two Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has published three full books of poetry and has been featured in many journals including: Cerebellum, Edison Literary Review, Journal of Jersey Poets, Kimera, Lips, Long Shot, Maelstrom, Mid-American Review, Natural Bridge, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poetry, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Winds, Spitball, and TriQuarterly. His poem "For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims," is cast in bronze and featured at Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor sculpture museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. Ward is an Assistant Professor of English at Warren County Community College and has served as University Distinguished Fellow at Syracuse University. BJ Ward is an active educator in a number of realms. He teaches writing workshops in the public school system throughout New Jersey, and his work there earns him yearly residencies in many school districts. After introductions, and Kathleen teasing a potential tale regarding flea killing solution, we dive into two pieces by James Arthur, On a Marble Portrait Bust in Worcester, Massachusetts and Study. James Arthur was born in Connecticut and grew up in Toronto. He is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012.) His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, and a Fulbright Scholarship. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In 2019, he is Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, University of Oxford. Bj offers a masterful observation in his analysis of Study, which offers the reader a bit of an interesting existential question. After Marion is untimely raptured, and Tim’s emphatic urging for Ali to fight guests of the Podcast, the gang votes on the first piece before moving on to On a Marble Portrait Bust in Worcester, Massachusetts. The editors offer a gambit of opinions on the piece and eventually come to a final vote. After the poems are voted on Kathleen regales the listeners with a tale about CBD oil and Flea remover, in addition to praising the benefits of the substance. How did the poems do? Did they make the cut? Listen On and find out!

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky joined poet Monica Youn to share recent work and exchange ideas, along with moderator Elizabeth Bradfield, local poet and naturalist on June 9, 2018 in the Hawthorne Barn. Robert Pinsky‘s recent book is At the Foundling Hospital, nominated for the Nation Book Critics Award in poetry. As Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), he founded the Favorite Poem Project, featuring the videos at www.favoritepoem.org. His best-selling translation The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Harold Morton Landon translation prize. His other awards include the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Korean Manhae Prize, the Italian Premio Capri and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pen American Center. He performs with pianist Laurence Hobgood on CDs PoemJazz and House Hour, from Circumstantial Productions. Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press 2016), which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best poetry books of 2016 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and BuzzFeed. Her previous book Ignatz(Four Way Books 2010) was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former lawyer, she currently teaches at Princeton University and in the Sarah Lawrence and Columbia University MFA programs. Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work and the forthcoming Toward Antarctica. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, West Branch, Orion and her awards include a Stegner Fellowship and the Audre Lorde Prize. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she lives on Cape Cod, works as a naturalist locally as well as on ships around the globe, and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur 'Genius' Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency and the Strauss Living Prize. She is the first female author to win two National Book Awards for Fiction, for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones(2011). She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time, the author of the memoir Men We Reaped and the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Denison’s Beck Series welcomes poet Solmaz Sharif. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Sharif’s first poetry collection “Look” was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Witness, and others and has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, scholarships the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a winter fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an NEA fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship. She is currently a lecturer at Stanford University.

Ryan McIlvain was born in Utah and raised in Massachusetts. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review. A graduate of the Rutgers MFA Program and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, he currently lives with his wife in Los Angeles. As part of Mormon Stories Book Club, today Heather Olson Beal and I discuss Ryan’s book "Elders," which is the story of two young Mormon missionaries in Brazil and their tense, peculiar friendship. Elder McLeod - outspoken, surly, a brash American - is nearing the end of his mission. For nearly two years he has spent his days studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon, knocking on doors, teaching missionary lessons "experimenting on the word." His new partner is Elder Passos, a devout, ambitious Brazilian who found salvation and solace in the church after his mother’s early death. The two men are at first suspicious of each other, and their work together is frustrating, fruitless. That changes when a beautiful woman and her husband offer the missionaries a chance to be heard, to put all of their practice to good use, to test the mettle of their faith. But before they can bring the couple to baptism, they must confront their own long-held beliefs and doubts, and the simmering tensions at the heart of their friendship. A novel of unsparing honesty and beauty, Elders announces Ryan McIlvain as a writer of enormous talent.

Dean Young appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: When Dean Young received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, it was noted that "Dean Young's poems are as entertaining as a three-ring circus and as imaginative as a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch." Young has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. "Best American Poetry" has been a frequent publisher of his work. Young's new collection is "Bender: New and Selected Poems." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6087

Texas Tech introduces Duane Nellis as its president; the university welcomes a third National Academy member to its faculty; a TTU professor is appointed to a national committee on food safety; and a doctoral student earns a Stegner Fellowship. Also, Provost Bob Smith spotlights Integrated Faculty Scholar Bruce Clarke.