Podcasts about stonecoast

197 To celebrate Melanie and Nadine's collaborative masterclass, Publishing Your Stories, on May 13, we're bringing back this chat with Melanie Brooks. If you can't make it live, you can still register and catch the replay.---Many of us have carried at least one hard story for years, suffering under the weight of secrecy and silence. But what if you didn't have to carry it anymore? What if writing or telling it could not only free you, but deepen your relationships with your loved ones? Melanie Brooks--author of Writing Hard Stories and A Hard Silence--is here to help us write and tell our hard stories. Covered in this episode:The life changing impact that Writing Hard Stories had on NadineMelanie's surprising experiences with renowned authors as she researched her bookThe benefits of writing a hard story How and why it gets easierWhat you discover when you're writing hard stories and how it's able to help you processThe phases we go throughout when telling hard stories What prompted Nadine to write and publish her hard storyThe 2 books Nadine reread while writing her memoirThe hard silence Melanie had to keep for almost 10 yrsThe long term impact of not being able to speak your truthWhat helps us stay centered while writing hard stories The guilty pleasure TV show that Melanie and Nadine both watch when they need to escape How it felt for Melanie and Nadine to have their vulnerable books be published What it was like for both writers to write about real life characters and what their family's reactions wereWhat narrative medicine is and how it's changing health care Hear Melanie read a moving passage that gives anyone permission to share their hard story About Melanie:IG: melaniejmbrookswriterwebsite: melaniebrooks.comMelanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab.About Nadine:Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. She is the proud founder of WriteWELL, an online community that helps women reclaim their writing time, put pen to page, and get published. The authors in her community have published countless books and hundreds of essays in places like The New York Times, Vogue, The Sun, The Boston Globe, Longreads, and more. Her infertility memoir,

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab. Website: https://www.melaniebrooks.com/ ‘A Hard Silence' book from: https://shorturl.at/ipHQ4

Melanie Brooks joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the misinformation and fear around HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the role of the evangelical church in her family's history, the emotional toll of keeping secrets, her work in the growing field of narrative medicine, radical listening, revisiting our heritage and beliefs, leaning into courage, vulnerability and risk, and her memoir A Hard Silence.   Also in this episode:  -self-care -permission to take our time  -our integrated selves   Books mentioned in this episode: Writing Hard Stories by Melanie Brooks    Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from college), and chocolate Lab.   Connect with Melanie: Website: www.melaniebrooks.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/melanie.brooks.1690 IG: https://www.instagram.com/melaniejmbrookswriter X: https://x.com/MelanieJMBrooks LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-brooks-504826121   — Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com   Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

153 Many of us have carried at least one hard story for years, suffering under the weight of secrecy and silence. But what if you didn't have to carry it anymore? What if writing or telling it could not only free you, but deepen your relationships with your loved ones? Melanie Brooks--author of Writing Hard Stories and A Hard Silence--is here to help us write and tell our hard stories. Covered in this episode:The life changing impact that Writing Hard Stories had on NadineMelanie's surprising experiences with renowned authors as she researched her bookThe benefits of writing a hard story How and why it gets easierWhat you discover when you're writing hard stories and how it's able to help you processThe phases we go throughout when telling hard stories What prompted Nadine to write and publish her hard storyThe 2 books Nadine reread while writing her memoirThe hard silence Melanie had to keep for almost 10 yrsThe long term impact of not being able to speak your truthWhat helps us stay centered while writing hard stories The guilty pleasure TV show that Melanie and Nadine both watch when they need to escape How it felt for Melanie and Nadine to have their vulnerable books be published What it was like for both writers to write about real life characters and what their family's reactions wereWhat narrative medicine is and how it's changing health care Hear Melanie read a moving passage that gives anyone permission to share their hard story About Melanie:IG: melaniejmbrookswriterwebsite: melaniebrooks.comMelanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab.About Nadine:Download Nadine's mini-retreat reset for busy women here. This guided meditation creates calm and clarity so you can listen to the directions of your heart. Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, was named book of the year by the Chicago Writer's Association. Her articles and interviews have appeared in Cosmo, Authority, Good Grit, OnSite Journal, MindBodyGreen, HERE, Urban Wellness, Natural Awakenings, Chicago Magazine, and more. Nadine is the podcast host of Heart of the Story, where she shares stories from the heart as well as interviews with today's most impactful female creatives. Pulling from her vast experience as a writing, meditation, and yoga nidra instructor, Nadine leads women's workshops and retreats online and around the...

Come celebrate the launch of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor's collected poems The Limitless Heart. Encompassing the breadth of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor's astounding career, The Limitless Heart is a time capsule of the boundless love, care, grief, and fortitude that make her work so stirring. With deep empathy, thoughtfulness, charisma, and lyricism, Boyce-Taylor's work explores questions of immigration, motherhood, and queer sensuality, among other themes. Grief is both an anchor and a door throughout Boyce-Taylor's poetry, as seen in Mama Phife Represents, a hybrid of memoir and verse on the death of her son, Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Questions regarding Blackness and Black womanhood in the United States are stitched throughout her books, and Boyce-Taylor leans into a more overtly defiant political register in her latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets, while maintaining the connective spine of the Trinidadian dialect that appears throughout all her work. Selections from these books, as well as her other poetry collections, appear in this new volume. Curated from Boyce-Taylor's body of work, The Limitless Heart encapsulates her progression as a writer throughout the decades of her highly successful career. Get The Limitless Heart from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speakers Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival (2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Mama Phife Represents (2021) won the 2022 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry by The Publishing Triangle. We Are Not Wearing Helmets (2022) was nominated for the 2023 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone, Under the Sun, What My Hand Say, Listening Skin, Three Harriets & Others, and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter (artwork by Jonathan Green). Glenis received the Governor's Award and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She was recently a recipient of the Peacemaker Award by the Upstate Mediation Center in 2022. Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-k5Oqj9Ms Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and professional writing at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. Though her Canadian roots run deep, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab. Website: melaniebrooks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melanie.brooks.1690/  Instagram: melaniejmbrookswriter X/Twitter: @MelanieJMBrooks LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-brooks-504826121 A HARD SILENCE: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all

Lexa Hillyer is a creativity and life coach, writer, editorial consultant, and entrepreneur who created a seven-figure boutique book and entertainment business over twelve years ago, after nearly a decade working in traditional publishing, at HarperCollins and Penguin Books. She received an MFA in poetry from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and became a certified Jungian Life Coach through ICF-accredited CreativeMinds. She has published four novels with HarperCollins, and one prize-winning poetry collection. She is also a mother, human, sister, daughter, wife, friend, three-time wedding officiant, wine lover and failed ukuleleist. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kristi-peck/message

In this episode, Amanda Pleau, marketing and communications manager at Maine Maritime Museum, describes the career path she took to get where she is today. Amanda also talks about the work Maine Maritime Museum is doing, including an upcoming exhibit to raise awareness about what is happening in the Gulf of Maine right now. Having taught writing, Amanda explains the importance of writing in PR and communications and shares a resource she has found interesting related to Maine history. 3:16 – Amanda describes her position at Maine Maritime Museum.   5:05 – Amanda explains how her first job helped prepare her for her career. 8:15 – Amanda talks about how she had no idea she wanted to be in marketing and communications when she started her career. 14:21 – Amanda gives details about an upcoming exhibit called SeaChange. 17:05 – Amanda shares her story of moving back to Maine. 23:01 – Amanda explains how strong writing skills help with PR and communications and her background in teaching writing. 28:33 – Amanda talks about her favorite parts of working at Maine Maritime Museum. 33:29 – Amanda shares a resource that helped her learn local Maine history.   Quote “This is kind of where the PR and marketing come in. You can't assume that people can read your mind and you have to constantly set the stage, reset, set the tone and explain where you're coming from and why you're doing what you're doing. I was thinking about this post that I did on the Maine Maritime Museum social media that was really successful. It was all of the ways you could get free admission to the museum. None of those were new. None of those had been introduced within the last year, but just reminding people of who we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it.” – Amanda Pleau, marketing and communications manager at Maine Maritime Museum   Links: Maine Maritime Museum: https://www.mainemaritimemuseum.org/exhibition/seachange/ Down East Magazine: https://downeast.com/ Bull Moose: https://www.bullmoose.com/ University of Southern Maine: https://usm.maine.edu/ Toms of Maine: https://www.tomsofmaine.com/ SeaChange: Darkness and Light in the Gulf of Maine: https://www.mainemaritimemuseum.org/exhibition/seachange/ Gulf of Maine EcoArts: http://www.gulfofmaineecoarts.org/ Roxane Gay: https://roxanegay.com/ Jo Ann Beard: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/117985.Jo_Ann_Beard Libby App: https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby “Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains” by Kerri Arsenault: https://www.amazon.com/Mill-Town-Reckoning-What-Remains/dp/1250155932 The Mexico Chicken Coop: http://mexicochickencoop.letseat.at/ “Vacationland: True Stories From Painful Beaches” by John Hodgman: https://www.amazon.com/Vacationland-True-Stories-Painful-Beaches/dp/0735224803   Listen to Emma Dimock's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast. Listen to Katie Shorey's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast to learn more about Live + Work in Maine. Listen to Dana Bullen's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast to learn more about Sunday River.   About the guest:     Amanda's first job in high school was working as a clerk at an independent record store. She holds a  Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communications from the University of Southern Maine and a  Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from USM's Stonecoast program, where she served as managing editor of the Stonecoast Review. After college, her professional experience includes consumer relations at Tom's of Maine, and in the communications office at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest and oldest congregations in the country. For two years, she also taught writing at the Gnomon School for Visual Effects in Hollywood. Currently, Amanda is the marketing and communications manager at Maine Maritime Museum and publishes a biweekly memoir/pop culture e-newsletter, Pleaushares. Amanda's writing has appeared in the Portland Phoenix, Vela Magazine, and the literary journal Two Serious Ladies. She lives in Bath with her husband, their dog and cat.   Looking to connect:           Email: pleau@maritimeme.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-pleau/ Website: https://bit.ly/pleaushares

NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired October 5th, 2022) featuring award-winning poet Lissa Kiernan, who will read from and discuss her most recent poetry collection, The Whispering Wall.  Planet Poet's Poet-At-Large, Pamela Manché Pearce, also joins us on the show.  The Whispering Wall, Lissa Kiernan's second full-length poetry collection, won the 2020 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. Her previous books are Glass Needles & Goose Quills, winner of the Nautilus Gold for lyric prose, and Two Faint Lines in the Violet, finalist for the Julie Suk Award and IndieFab Award. She received her MFA at Stonecoast and holds an MA in Media Arts from The New School. She founded and directs The Poetry Barn, a pollinator habitat for poetry in the Catskills, and AIM Higher, a nonprofit organization dedicated to elevating women artists. She volunteers with Flying Cat Music and, with her husband, Chris Abramides, is an enthusiastic herder of a fluctuating number of felines. lissakiernan.com “Besotted with, weighted with Beauty, The Whispering Wall constructs delicious sonic tangles and brutally candid testimonies. Kiernan's lyric recording of multiple losses—of father, fertility, beloved natural places, sheer breathing spaces destroyed by human encroachment—provides the elegant architecture guiding each poem. Seductions and menacing of drink, of violence, shadow the speaker's journey. Guiding all is the gorgeous dreaminess in Kiernan's voice, pouring into us its alchemies: art itself is the elixir that distracts from, or miraculously surpasses, illusion or myth. A witchy and sardonic wit's at work, too, in these poems, singing with Stevie Smith, and with Plath. What a great gift of solace and heart this book is.”—Judith Vollmer, author of The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems “Elegiac and alive with all five senses, plus whatever sixth sense allows us to perceive the metaphysical mysteries of life and death, Lissa Kiernan's The Whispering Wall limns the mists of grief and memory and delineates the lucidity of having a body.”—Kathleen Rooney, author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey   “...Kiernan deftly weaves her own personal narrative into the lives of other artists (including Remedios Varo, Leonor Fini, and Leonora Carrington), historical events, computer systems, mythological figures, and even aerodynamics concepts, so that the collection subtly expands the dimensions of what the self means... “—Christien Gholson, author of All the Beautiful Dead and winner of The Bitter Oleander Press Library Of Poetry Book Award Yours in Radio, Sharon

On November 1, 2022 the Lannan Center hosted a reading and talk featuring writer Chen Chen and moderated by Carolyn Forché. Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

A special episode for you in the midst of the Fall Literary Festival Season! The wonderful poets Luke Hathaway and Alexandra Oliver recently appeared at Biblioasis Bookstore. Their publisher, Dan Wells introduces them. Episode edited for length. Enjoy these dynamic readings!Luke Hathaway is a trans poet, librettist, and theatre maker. His mythopoeic word-worlds have given rise to new choral works by Colin Labadie, James Rolfe, and Zachary Wadsworth, among others, and to the folk opera The Sign of Jonas, a collaboration with Benton Roark. He is the author of four books of poems, one of which (Years, Months, and Days, 2018) was named a Best Book of the Year in the New York Times. He works with Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA to create and commission new works inspired by early music sources.He teaches creative writing and English literature at Saint Mary's University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He also appeared at BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor in October, 2022. http://biblioasis.com/brand/hathaway-luke/Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver, BC. She is the author of three collections published through Biblioasis: Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (2013; recipient of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Let the Empire Down ( 2016), and Hail, the Invisible Watchman (2022). Her libretto for From the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, conceived in conjunction with composer Scott Wilson at the University of Birmingham, was performed by Continuum Music in Toronto in December, 2017. Oliver is a past co-editor of Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Everyman's Library/Random House, 2015) as well as of the formalist journal The Rotary Dial. She has performed her work for CBC Radio and NPR, as well as at The National Poetry Slam and a murder of festivals and conferences. Oliver holds an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program and a Ph.D. in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University. She lives in Burlington, Ontario with her husband and son.http://biblioasis.com/brand/oliver-alexandra/

Episode 148 Notes and Links to Chen Chen's Work       On Episode 148 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Chen Chen, and the two discuss, among other topics, his experience as a teacher, his early relationships with reading, writing, and multilingualism, those writers and writing communities who continue to inspire and encourage him, muses in various arenas, etymology, and themes like family dynamics, racism, beauty, and anger that anchor his work.      Chen Chen is an author, teacher, & editor His second book of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is out now from BOA Editions. The UK edition will be published by Bloodaxe Books (UK) in October. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA, 2017; Bloodaxe, 2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. Chen is also the author of five chapbooks, including the forthcoming Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023), and the forthcoming book of craft essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, 2024). His work appears in many publications, including Poetry, Poem-a-Day, and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, & 2021). He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists.    He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. He has taught in UMass Boston's MFA program and at Brandeis University as the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. Currently he is core poetry faculty for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. With a brilliant team, he edits the journal Underblong; with Gudetama the lazy egg, he edits the lickety~split. He lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. Buy Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency   Chen Chen's Website   Interview with Chen Chen: “Chinatown Presents: Finding Home with Chen Chen”    Interview with Poetry LA from 2017   By Andrew Sargus Klein for Kenyon Review-"On Chen Chen's When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities"               At about 9:15, Chen responds to Pete asking about how he stays so prolific and creative by describing his processes and the idea of any muses or inspirations    At about 11:00, Chen describes “shed[ding] expectations” is or isn't “worthy” of poetry   At about 13:10, The two discuss books on craft and Chen gives more background on his upcoming book of craft essays   At about 16:10, Chen gives background on the Taiwanese Rabbit God and how his upcoming book was influenced by the idea, especially as presented in Andrew Thomas Huang's Kiss of the Rabbit God   At about 18:25, Chen explains his interest in the epistolary form, and how his upcoming work is influenced by Victoria Chang's Dear Memory and Jennifer S. Chang “Dear Blank Space,”    At about 22:30, Chen gives background and history in a macro and micro way for the use of the word “queer” and his usage and knowledge of Mandarin    At about 26:50, Chen describes the sizable influence of Justin Chin on Chen's own work   At about 28:25, Chen describes his early relationship with languages and explores how Mandarin and his parents' Hokkien may influence his writing    At about 34:55, Chen outlines what he read and wrote as a kid, including K.A. Applegate and The Animorphs and Phillip Pullman   At about 37:50, Chen responds to questions about motivations in reading fantasy and other works   At about 38:55, Chen highlights “chill-inducing” works and writers, such as Cunningham's The Hours    At about 41:30, Chen shouts Mrs. Kish and other formative writing teachers and talks about his early writing and the importance of “the interior voice”   At about 42:45, Pete wonders about how Chen's teaching informs his writing and vice versa   At about 45:20, Chen cites Marie Howe's “What the Living Do” and Rick Barot's During the Pandemic as some of his go-to's for teaching in his college classes   At about 48:20, Chen responds to Pete's question about teaching his own work   At about 49:50, Pete and Chen discuss the idea of muses and the writing community energizing-the two cite Bhanu Kapil and Mary Ruefle and the ways in which their philosophies are centered on mutual communication/conversation   At about 55:30, Chen highlights Muriel Leung and an enriching conversation and her unique perspective that led to “I Invite My Parents…”   At about 57:45, The two begin discussing Chen's Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency and its seeds   At about 1:00:40, Pete cites grackles as a motif, and Chen recounts memories of his time at Texas Tech and the Trump Presidency    At about 1:02:45, The two discuss the powerful poem “The School of Fury” and the themes of rage and powerlessness and racism; Pete cites a profound insight from Neema Avashia   At about 1:06:45, Pete cites some powerful lines from Chen's work and Chen makes connections   At about 1:08:20, Pete rattles off one of the longest titles known to man, “After My White Friends Say…” and Chen discusses ideas of identity and his rationale for the poem's title and structure   At about 1:11:30, Chen talks about exercises he does in class with Mary Jean Chan's Flèche    At about 1:12:10, The two discuss craft and structure tools used in the collection   At about 1:14:25, The two talk about family dynamics and the speaker's mother and her relationship with the speaker's boyfriend     At about 1:18:50, Pete cites lines that were powerful for “leaving things unsaid” and Chen expands on ideas of innocence and willful ignorance in his work   At about 1:22:30, The two discuss ideas of mortality, including the Pulse tragedy, familial connections, and the series of poems titled “A Small Book of Questions”   At about 1:24:10, Ideas of beauty of discussed from Chen's work   At about 1:25:15, Chen reads “The School of Fury” and the two discuss it afterwards   At about 1:29:40, Chen gives contact info and recommends Boa Editions as a place to buy his book and support independent publishers, and another good organization in Writers and Books, featuring Ampersand Bookstore     You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.  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.  Please check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl to read about benefits offered to members and to sign up to help me continue to produce high-quality content, and a lot of it. The coming months are bringing standout writers like Justin Tinsley, Jose Antonio Vargas, Robert Jones, Jr., Allegra Hyde, Laura Warrell, and Elizabeth Williamson. Thanks for your support!    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 149 with Erika T. Wurth. Erika's highly-awaited literary-horror novel, White Horse, is forthcoming on November 1; she is a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow and an urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. The episode will air on November 1, the publication date for White Horse.  

Episode 147 Notes and Links to Jonathan Escoffery's Work        On Episode 147 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Jonathan Escoffery, and the two discuss, among other topics, Jonathan's early relationship with language and literature, his initial interest in literature and viewing those works now as stereotypical and/or racist, his writing process and thoughts on varying points-of-view, the wild ride that has been recent weeks and months with the book receiving so many accolades, and themes of identity, race and racism, home, and of course, survival, in his linked story collection.        Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, a National Book Award Nominee, a New York Times Editor's Choice, and an Indie National Bestseller. If I Survive You has been named a ‘best' or ‘most anticipated' book by Entertainment Weekly, Oprah Daily, Good Morning America online, Goodreads, BuzzFeed, Vulture, L.A. Times, Shondaland, TIME, The Root, Vanity Fair, Kirkus, The Millions, BET, O Quarterly Magazine, Real Simple, and elsewhere. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, AGNI, Pleiades, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, and elsewhere.     Jonathan has taught creative writing and seminars on the writer's life at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, Writers in Progress, and at GrubStreet in Boston, where, as former staff, he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group, which currently has more than 2,000 members. He is a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Buy If I Survive You   Jonathan Escoffery's Website   “Jonathan Escoffery Has a Reality He'd Like to Share,” from The New York Times,” by Kate Dwyer, from Sept. 4, 2022, about If I Survive You       At about 5:15, Jonathan discusses what it has been like to be in the middle of so much praise and recognition for his linked short-story collection    At about 7:00, Jonathan talks about “lots of love” coming from Miami, including from Books and Books   At about 7:50, Jonathan responds to Pete asking about his early relationship with language and literature   At about 10:10, Jonathan describes his parents' influence on him and Jamaica's influence on him   At about 12:00, Jonathan talks about Miami's incredible richness of languages and English usages   At about 15:30, Jonathan highlights reading favorites from his childhood, as well as ideas of representation    At about 19:20, Jonathan cites an example of limited representation and stereotypical and racist depictions of people of color in his childhood reading of “classics”   At about 22:40, Jonathan talks about How to Leave Hialeah and other works by Latinx writers and fellow second-generation writers for inspiration    At about 24:30, Jonathan responds to Pete's question about his preference for Baldwin's fiction/nonfiction   At about 25:55, The two discuss ideas of revisionist and ignorant history and narratives   At about 26:30, Pete wonders about any “lightbulb moments” for Jonathan in his writing career    At about 28:55, Jonathan reflects on the aftermath of some encouragement and “chas[ing] the good feeling” that came with accolades for his writing at Florida International University   At about 33:30, Jonathan shouts out John Dufresne and other formative and inspirational teachers   At about 34:30, Jonathan discusses how teaching has informed his writing and vice versa   At about 38:20, Jonathan homes in on his story collection's eponymous story and talks about strategies    At about 39:35, Jonathan talks about the contemporary writing that inspires and challenges him and that excites his students, including “Who Will Greet You at Home?,” Gabriela Garcia's Women of Salt and Morgan Talty's Night of the Living Rez, and Laura Warrell's Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm    At about 46:10, Jonathan discusses the rationale for and background of the format of his book, including a wide range of POVs   At about 48:50, Jonathan elaborates on the history and background of the story collection, including his thoughts on story order and the auction process for his book   At about 53:45, The two discuss the story “Flux” that begins the collection, focusing on its POV, its narrator, and ideas of identity    At about 55:30, Jonathan expands on ideas of juxtaposition between brothers Trelawny and Delano, including in the ways in which their father sees them   At about 1:01:30, The two discuss the collection's second story, and Jonathan responds to Pete's question about getting into the father's mindset   At about 1:07:50, Ideas of class presented in the book are discussed, and WATCH OUT FOR A PLOT SPOILER FROM THE SECOND STORY   At about 1:09:30, The two highlight themes of father-son relationships    At about 1:10:40, Pete asks Jonathan about what he had to say in his book about survival, commercialism, and bureaucracies, as well as (un)ethical business practices   At about 1:16:00, Race and racism are highlighted, with a particular focus on the collection's last story    At about 1:22:00, The two reflect on a profound excerpt from the book that brings up ideas of perspective and family dynamics    At about 1:25:00, Jonathan addresses the story collection's title and the multiple meanings and how POV informs the writing    At about 1:30:10, Jonathan talks about future projects and Pete compliments Jonathan's website as Jonathan gives contact info     You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.      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 148 with Chen Chen, who is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, and the forthcoming book of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God. His debut book of poems, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.      The episode will air on October 21.

Jordan talks with Morgan Talty in advance of his debut story collection about moms, storytelling, writing from a teen point of view, and the villain of colonialism. MENTIONED: The Lowering Days by Gregory Brown "The Blessing Tobacco" The Penobscot Indian Nation Superstore Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He received his BA in Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and his MFA in fiction from Stonecoast's low-residency program. His story collection Night of the Living Rez is forthcoming from Tin House Books (2022), and his work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty's work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty teaches courses in both English and Native American Studies, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Be sure to rate/review/subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Courtney and Chris Margolin sit down with Chen Chen for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry. They might also talk about Russian literature, Buffy, and the horrors of getting sucked down a mall escalator. This is quite the conversation! 陳琛 / Chen Chen's second book of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Sept. 2022. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. In 2019 Bloodaxe Books published the UK edition. Chen is also the author of four chapbooks and the forthcoming book of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, 2023). His work appears/is forthcoming in many publications, including Poem-a-Day and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, & 2021). He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence and serves on the poetry faculty for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. With a brilliant team, he edits the journal, Underblong. With Gudetama the lazy egg, he edits the lickety~split. He lives in Waltham, MA with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. **Correction... it was not Courtney's Aunt, but a friend of the family. :) Find more about The Poetry Question on their website. Purchase TPQ20 and The Poetry Question Merchandise HERE. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib to celebrate the release of Boyce-Taylor's intimate collection Mama Phife Represents, a tribute to her departed son Malik ‘Phife Dawg' Taylor of the legendary hip-hop trio A Tribe Called Quest. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival(2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. The founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, Boyce-Taylor is also a poetry judge for the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She has led workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company. Boyce-Taylor is the recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award and a VONA fellow. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he will release the book A Little Devil In America with Random House. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Mama Phife Represents: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1551-mama-phife-represents Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EBSCuT-rM94 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and Alexis Pauline Gumbs as they discuss mothering, parenting, loss, and Cheryl's new book Mama Phife Represents. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival (2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. The founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, Boyce-Taylor is also a poetry judge for the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She has led workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company. Boyce-Taylor is the recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award and a VONA fellow. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist, a daughter-on-assignment and a cousin-in-the-making. She is the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Dub: Finding Ceremony, M Archive: After the End of the World and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity. She is also co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering Love on the Front Lines and co-founder of Mobile Homecoming Trust. This year Alexis is a National Humanities Fellow writing a new biography called The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony. Order a copy of Mama Phife Represents: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1551-mama-phife-represents Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/sr1_I0h4HZM Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

A conversation with award-winning author and illustrator Linda K. Sienkiewicz about the creative process, and her new children's picture book, 'Gordy & the Ghost Crab.' http://lindaksienkiewicz.com/bio/  Other writing awards include a poetry chapbook award from Heartlands and a Pushcart Prize Nomination in poetry. She has three other poetry chapbooks: Postcard of a Naked Man (March Street Press), Dear Jim (Main Street Rag) and Security (March Street Press). Linda earned her Masters of Fine Art Degree (MFA) in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine.

Today's guest is L.C. Barlow, a writer and professor working primarily in the field of speculative fiction.  She has an MA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. Her fiction has reached over sixty-five thousand readers and garnered praise, including a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Awards, a winner of the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, a winner of the eLit Awards, and IndieReader’s Best Books of 2014. She joined me today to talk about moving from a self-publishing career to a traditional career, and the value of having a large reader base in order to make the change. Read the Transcript Support the Podcast Follow on Facebook!   Links for LC: Site Twitter Instagram Facebook Quora   Ad Links: Now & When by Sara Bennett Wheeler Vellum Mystified Podcast Time Tuner Podcast

L.C. Barlow is a writer and professor working primarily in the field of speculative fiction. She has an MA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. She has studied with popular writers, including Nancy Holder, Elizabeth Hand, Ted Deppe, James Patrick Kelly, Elizabeth Searle, David Anthony Durham, and Theodora Goss. Her work has been published in Oak Bend Review, Flash Fiction World, Linguistic Erosion, Flashes in the Dark, Separate Worlds, Every Day Fiction, and Popular Culture Review. Her fiction has reached over sixty-five thousand readers and garnered praise, including a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Awards, a winner of the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, a winner of the eLit Awards, and IndieReader’s Best Books of 2014. Barlow’s horror trilogy – Pivot, Perish, and Peak – was picked up in 2018 by California Coldblood Books, an imprint of Rare Bird Books. The first of the trilogy, Pivot, was released in October 2019. Perish will be released this October 2020. Barlow lives in Dallas, TX with her two cats, Smaug and Dusty. Alex Dolan is the author of The Euthanist and The Empress of Tempera. He is also the host of the "Thrill Seekers" show on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. He was an executive committee member of the San Francisco Bay Area's Litquake festival, and is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. He holds an MS in strategic communications from Columbia University. This is a trademarked copyrighted podcast solely owned by the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network LLC.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam https://bonniejostufflebeam.com/ twitter: @BonnieJoStuffle Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction and poetry has appeared in over 40 magazines and anthologies such as The Toast, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, The Masters Review, Hobart, and Everyman Library’s Monster Verse. She and her partner collaborated on the recently-released audio fiction-jazz collaborative album Strange Monsters. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and created and coordinates the annual Art & Words Collaborative Show in Fort Worth, Texas. Bonnie is represented by Ann Collette at Rees Literary Agency.

Skeletonsby Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam   “Who’s gonna watch the skeletons?” I ask.            We’re about to go camping. Cathryn’s undressing before the closet in her garage apartment. I’m trying not to watch, though she wants me to. Instead I peer into her glass terrarium where the skeletons live, three of them: a dwarf T-Rex and two dwarf stegosauruses. The T-Rex stands atop a lonely pile of rocks.            “I was going to leave them extra food. You think that’s okay?” Cathryn rummages through the clothes pile on the floor, such beautiful chaos. I stare at her reflection in the glass. Her bra, lacey and black, makes me want to glimpse what’s underneath, even though I have before, five times.Full transcript appears after the cut.----more----Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 20 for January 19, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.Before we get started with this episode today, I've put together a small Listener's Poll for the first nine months of GlitterShip, covering the stories that we put out in 2015. This is intended to be a low-stress, just-because-I'm-curious poll. I will have the link up in the transcript on glittership.com, and you can also find it at: goo.gl/forms/sp9XsEJANj The poll will stay open through February 29, and I'll announce the results in one of the March episodes.Our story this week is "Skeletons" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, read by guest reader Ranylt RichildisBonnie Jo Stufflebeam lives in Texas with her partner and two literarily-named cats–Gimli and Don Quixote. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and curates the annual Art & Words Show in Fort Worth, Texas. Her work has appeared in over 40 magazines and anthologies such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Goblin Fruit. You can visit her on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle or at her website bonniejostufflebeam.com. She is represented by Ann Collette at Rees Literary Agency.Ranylt Richildis is a writer and editor based in Ottawa. Her short story, “Charlemagne and Florent,” was selected for Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Ranylt is the founding editor of the Aurora-nominated Lackington’s Magazine, an online SFF quarterly devoted to stories told in unusual or poetic language.Skeletonsby Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam“Who’s gonna watch the skeletons?” I ask.We’re about to go camping. Cathryn’s undressing before the closet in her garage apartment. I’m trying not to watch, though she wants me to. Instead I peer into her glass terrarium where the skeletons live, three of them: a dwarf T-Rex and two dwarf stegosauruses. The T-Rex stands atop a lonely pile of rocks.“I was going to leave them extra food. You think that’s okay?” Cathryn rummages through the clothes pile on the floor, such beautiful chaos. I stare at her reflection in the glass. Her bra, lacey and black, makes me want to glimpse what’s underneath, even though I have before, five times.“I guess so,” I say. I look back at the T-Rex. His name, Cathryn tells me, is Ronald. The steggos are called Thelma and Louise; she thinks she’s being ironic. The T-Rex’s bones are so small I'm sure that if I picked him up I would break him. His eyes are tiny as sequins and suspended in empty sockets. He wails like a cat in heat. “I think something’s wrong,” I say.“He’s just hungry, Emma. Feed him. Food’s next to the cage.”I open the yellow bottle of skeleton food; the musty smell makes me cough. The bottle is full of squiggling little worms. I pour some into the terrarium. Ronald clambers down the rocks. He dips his jaw into the worm pile and scoops them into his mouth, swallows. I can see them travel down his throat and into his empty bone stomach where they wriggle inside him.Cathryn clears her throat. She stands before me with her hands on her hips, wearing tight blue jeans and a bumblebee-striped halter top. She’s dressed for clubbing, not camping, and I realize that the kind of camping we’ll be doing won’t require the hiking shoes or the toilet paper I brought. I tell her she looks great. She does. I look back at the tank. The T-Rex peers up at me.“Let me free,” he whispers. His voice is like an echo. I can’t. We’re going camping.In the shallow forest we set up our tent. The land has been cleared for people like us, who want to be in nature but not too far in. Our tent is a miniature house. The box says it will fit twenty people, but we’ve only got five. It has French doors that fold down and collapsible walls to give everyone a sense of privacy, but through the first night I hear Cathryn and Anne, the girlfriend she brought along, their heavy breath and little moans. They make the whole tent sweat.The site is close to the river, but not too close. At night we cannot hear the current. The bathroom is just around the corner, and there’s a leaky water faucet next to where we parked the car, ten feet from the tent. Our friend Wendi brought a portable mini fridge and a fan; they run on batteries, but the fridge eats two an hour so we have to run to the store once a day and buy at least twelve packages of four. We make a game of it. In some ways the drive is the best part of the trip, mostly because Cathryn is the one with the car, and she’s asked me to go with her each time. We roll the windows down. She talks about the new girl, Anne, how they’ve just met but already spend nearly every night together. Every word she says feels like a secret between us. I don’t want to hear about Anne, but I don’t not want to hear about her either, because I want to know if she’s better than me. I want to know when we’ll share a bed again. I try to deduce the information from the cutesy story of how they met at the campus coffee shop, but I can’t, because Cathryn has always been unpredictable, mysterious. With her unflinching face she reveals nothing. Every time she asks me to get in the car with her, I do.The nearest trash can is two whole miles from our site, so we’re forced to rough it in that regard at least, dumping our food scraps into a plastic bag. Most of what we brought is food. Peanut butter, bread, baked beans in a can and hot dogs with mustard, two bottles of cheap red wine and a plastic handle of rum. Our broke friend Mike does the cooking. It’s his way of paying us back. He also does the majority of the drinking. He’s brought his set of oils, and his paint-stained hands dye whatever he touches. Each hot dog bun has a blue handprint, and by the time dinner’s finished the rum bottle is covered in fingerprints.The second night Wendi builds a fire and we sit around the flames. The smoke follows Cathryn. No matter where she sits, the wind moves in her direction. Finally she settles in one spot, lights a cigarette, and lets the smoke clog her eyes. We play a drinking game, Never Have I Ever.“Never have I ever been to Disneyworld,” I say. Cathryn and Wendi put down a finger; they went there once together.“Never have I ever done acid,” Wendi says. The rest of us admit defeat.“Never have I ever been in love,” Cathryn says. No one puts down a finger; no one is sure enough to commit to that. We all four of us look at Cathryn through the smoke. Her hair is up, the skin of her neck glistening with sweat. That we all want her is common knowledge; we can’t help ourselves. This is what holds our friendships together, the flame to which we are helpless as moths.That night, as we sleep, trees rustle, and the fallen branches on the ground crack like knuckles. When I leave the tent early in the morning to walk to the restroom, I find the contents of our trash bag scattered, the bottom ripped. By the river I spot a leopard, its white fur stretched so tight the bones poke through. In the disappearing moonlight I nearly see the heart pumping in its chest. It’s looking right at me, and I stand and stare until the sun creeps up and the leopard, its fur no longer see-through, bounds into the brush.Back at the campsite a crowd is gathered around the dying embers of last night’s fire. A dodo skeleton hops around the fire pit. One of the bones from its foot is missing. Without the feathers it looks just like any other bird. We only know it’s a dodo from its fat chest, its dodo beak. Plus it tells us what it is when we ask it.Cathryn shoos the bird. “Go, fly away.”“Dodos don’t fly,” it says, lifting a bone wing. The invisible joints crack. “I’m stuck.”It hangs around until we change into our swimsuits and leave for the swimming hole. It’s only a couple of miles away, so we walk. Cathryn and Anne hold hands. The rest of us walk behind them. We talk about the dodo. Mike had never seen one. “I’m going to paint it,” he says.Wendi huffs. “I was gonna paint it.”“In my painting, he’ll be wearing a tie and drinking a martini.” Mike laughs, and Cathryn turns around and gives him an eye. She knows that laugh. Since high school she’s known it.“How much have you had?” she says. “I swear to god, Mike, if that handle is gone.”“Excuse me,” he says. “Excuse me if I like to have a little fun.”Once Cathryn turns back around, Wendi reaches into the pocket of her swimming trunks and pulls out her flask. She and Mike take turns.“In my painting, he’ll be flying,” I say.“You don’t paint,” everyone says at once, except Anne, of course, who doesn’t know the first thing about me. Anne’s ass hangs out of her suit, and her walk is too sure, like she thinks she has this down, this Cathryn thing, like she’s permanent here, the most recent fixture. Wendi and Mike and I gulp and giggle.“Two more weeks, tops,” Mike whispers. His guesses are usually the most accurate. He’s known her the longest. My skin tingles all of a sudden, part rum, part the image that flashes in my memory; her clothes a pile on the floor, the scratch of Ronald’s gimpy paws on the glass, the stale smoke smell, and the feel of that skin, soft in my palm. Two weeks.At the swimming hole we rush the water. It laps our thighs as we sink our way in, getting used to the shock of cool. Submerging my whole body, I forget to hold my breath and rise up coughing. Mike grabs my legs, and I go down again. I open my eyes under the water. Bones litter the lake floor under our feet, many of them ground to form a second layer of sand. We walk all along them without noticing. I let the water carry my legs instead. I swim. When I come up for breath I’m at the far bank, where Wendi sits atop a rock with her feet skimming the water surface. Her face is red and wet, though her hair is dry.“You okay?” I ask. A brittle fishbone snaps under my weight.“I’m okay,” she says, shaking her head. “I think I’m in love with her.”Yeah, well, I want to say but don’t. I feign surprise. “You’re straight, though, right?”Wendi shrugs. “Does it matter? I hate seeing her like this.”“Happy?” Me too. “Well, if you really loved her, you’d want her happy.”I remember the first time I knew Cathryn wanted it. Wendi, Mike, and me in the car, driving down streets with no names for no reason. Cigarette ash blowing back in through the windows and staining our clothes with the stench. “You’re on her list.” Mike grinned. “She told me so.” Then it was a party at my place and we snuck into my bedroom and stuffed a chair under the doorknob. The curtains were attached by flimsy little clips and had fallen down, so we put them back up but you could still see through little holes where the fabric was worn, and we did it, aware and uncaring, while partygoer’s faces appeared and disappeared like apparitions at each hole in the window, trying to see in.“You’re right,” Wendi says, wetting a toe. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”A school of skeleton fish passes over my feet. Their bone-hard bodies make my hair stand on end. When I stick my head under the water and my eyes adjust, they are already far away, but bringing up their rear is a phantom shiner with the last vestige of its transparent orange scales intact.“Huh,” I say when I bring my head again above water. “I thought those had fully skeletoned a while ago.”“This water freaks me out.” Wendi stands and turns, and we both see the leopard this time, its body stretched across a rock in the sun, its rib bones now visible. Wendi’s closer to it than me, and I wish we could trade places as she steps toward it until she is so close she can touch it if she wants. She reaches her hand out. She pulls it back. She helps me out of the water. Together we run back to camp.When the gang returns from the swimming hole, Mike has a saber-tooth skeleton at his side, around its neck a collar he has made from the drawstring of his swimming trunks, which now hang below his navel. To keep them on he walks bow-legged, and once he arrives at the fire he hands Wendi the end of the string and disappears into the tent to change.Wendi and I have been silent, passing a notebook of portable haikus back and forth, each of us writing one page. It’s a game we all used to play. The haikus are nonsensical, the language of ridiculousness. When Mike comes back out we put the notebook away.“This is Tegan,” he says. “I’m gonna take her home with me.”“Another pet?” Wendi asks. A whole wall of Mike’s room is covered in aquariums already. “Dude, you can’t breathe in your room as is.”“I hate that name,” the saber says. “Give me another one.”“Okay, your name is Nimrod.”“Another one.”“Tilly?” Mike says.The saber shrugs.“Tigger?”The saber snaps Mike’s hand. Its teeth draw blood. He slaps its head. The bones rattle. He marches to a tree and ties the saber up, then wraps a dishcloth around his hand. As we eat peanut butter sandwiches and take shots of wine, the saber shouts insults. “Morons,” it says, “you don’t know shit about life. You think you know everything, but you’re fucking clueless.”Mike hits it over the head with an unburnt log. No one screams; it happens too fast. The saber’s body falls. Mike unties it and carries it to the river. I follow him, try to tell him to stop, but my voice catches. He tosses the bones in the river and wipes the dirt from his jeans; on top of the dried paint, the stain looks like a skewed portrait, blue eyes and lips and all the rest dirt.After walking back in silence, we find Cathryn holding the lucky girl, visibly shaken.“Fucking thing was reminding me of my parents,” Mike says.Cathryn doesn’t even bother to shoot Mike the eye. She takes Anne by the hand and leads her to the tent, and when we hear the click of the lock on the tent doors, Mike grabs hold of the wine, opens his throat, and guzzles. I sit beside Wendi and the fire and we don’t say a word. The bottle empty, Mike drops into the dirt and rolls back and forth, moving his arms in angel shapes. “I’m sorry,” he says again and again. Wendi and I don’t comfort him. The firewood crumbles like the bones and we just look on. I’m used to looking and not touching, staying out of the way until it’s my turn. I know that Anne won’t want us after this, won’t want to be a part of this, and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. Two weeks tops, Mike said. He was wrong. It’ll go back to normal before that. We’ll forget it ever happened, starting tomorrow when we’re back in the concrete world.We sleep the way we are.On the way out the next morning we drive across the bridge over the river. In the backseat I stare out the window, and from the water's edge the leopard stares at me. As it pads to shore I notice its legs, all skeleton now. I imagine its claws, invisible but deadly.The whole ride no one says a word.When Cathryn and I get back to her place, the skeletons are still in the tank. The T-Rex claws at the glass. His bones creak. “Let me free,” he says. I knock on the glass, and Thelma and Louise scurry to the back. Ronald doesn’t move, static in his pleading.Cathryn disappears into the bathroom. I look around her room, at the mess she’s left of clothes scattered over the ground. It’s hard to see the floor. I groan as I tiptoe over the piles. I reach my hand into the tank and pick the skeleton up by his shoulders. He falls apart in my hands. I carry his bones outside and look across her big backyard, which we only enter to smoke brief cigarettes at night when we need the air. In the back of the yard is an abandoned raised bed, one we all built together when we had nothing but time on our hands then forgot about, and I lay him down amongst the dead tomato plants, their thin spines snapped so that they seem to bow as we approach. His bones scatter in the dirt. I shake a plant. Its brittle leaves fall from the branches and bury him.END"Skeletons" was originally published in the Geek Girls issue of Room, 37.3 in Fall 2014 and was reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2015.This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on February 2nd with "Her Last Breath Before Waking" by A. C. Wise.

Coming Up… Interview: Nathaniel Calhoun Main Fiction: “The Damaged” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam Originally published in Interzone. Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction has appeared in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She lives in Texas with her partner and two literarily-named cats: Gimli and Don Quixote. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and curates the annual Art & Words Show in Fort Worth. You can visit her on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle or through her website: www.bonniejostufflebeam.com. Narrated by Katherine Inskip Katherine weighs galaxies for a living, and builds worlds in her spare... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Roshani Chokshi's "The Wives of Azhar," read by Karen Bovenmyer.  You can read the full text of the story, and more about Roshani, here. Karen Bovenmyer earned her MFA in Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program in July 2013. Some of the places her dark fantasy and scifi horror stories and poems have appeared are Bonnie Stufflebeam's Art & Words Show, Crossed Genres Magazine, and Abyss & Apex Magazine. She is the Nonfiction Editor for Escape Artist's new magazine Mothership Zeta—Issue 0 is currently available for download and Issue 1 will debut in October 2015. Karen had a wonderful time making this recording at Peter Brewer's Easy Brew Studio and highly recommends his audio-engineering talents.

Jennifer Marie Brissett‘s first novel, Elysium, or the World After (Aqueduct Press, 2014), portrays a fractured world, one whose seemingly irreversible destruction does nothing to dampen the survivors’ collective will to live. Brissett showed similar determination in writing the book, whose non-traditional structure places it outside the mainstream. Fortunately, her approach has been validated, first by her teachers at Stonecoast Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine, where she wrote Elysium as her final thesis, and later by the committee that selected Elysium as one of six nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award. (The winner will be announced April 3). “I wasn’t sure there was a space for me in this writing world. And to a certain degree I still sort of wonder. But the idea that I could write and that my stories are worthy of being told was something [Stonecoast] really helped to foster in me,” Brissett says in her New Books interview. In some respects, Elysium is simple: it tells a story of love and loss between two people. But Elysium is also complicated because those two people morph from scene to scene, changing from two brothers to father/daughter to husband/wife to boyfriend/boyfriend to girlfriend/girlfriend. When imagining the future, conventional science fiction often focuses too much on gadgets and not enough on people, Brissett says. “We think [science fiction] is about … the new machines we’ll have, the little gadgets that will make our lives easier … but I think the civil rights movement is one of the most science-fictional things that could have probably happened, because all of a sudden this entire group of people that was totally ignored showed up at the table and said ‘We want in.'” As a child, Brissett found the Wonder Bread future depicted in The Jetsons frightening. “I remember watching as a kid the Jetsons and thinking ‘That is an absolutely terrifying vision of the future. Where are all the black people?'” she says. “The future belongs to everybody. It doesn’t really belong to any one group. And yet when you see visions of the future, it’s usually mostly white heterosexual people wandering around.” In the early 2000s, Brissett owned an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she experienced the publishing industry’s struggles firsthand. Rather that discourage her from becoming a writer herself, the experience seems to have solidified her desire to tell stories in the way she wants to tell them. “You have to love this field to be here. If you’re here for money, you are certifiably crazy,” she says. Spoiler Alert From 6:45 to 10:24 we talk about a major part of the plot, which is revealed on the book jacket but isn’t explained until near the end of the book. Listeners might want to skip this part (and not read the jacket copy) if they want to approach the story as a mystery whose answer lies in the book’s structure. Related Links * Elysium was inspired, in part, by Roman Emperor Hadrian’s love of Antinous. * Brissett mentions her recently deceased friend, the writer Eugie Foster. * She also mentions a number of her teachers, including Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Marie Brissett‘s first novel, Elysium, or the World After (Aqueduct Press, 2014), portrays a fractured world, one whose seemingly irreversible destruction does nothing to dampen the survivors’ collective will to live. Brissett showed similar determination in writing the book, whose non-traditional structure places it outside the mainstream. Fortunately, her approach has been validated, first by her teachers at Stonecoast Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine, where she wrote Elysium as her final thesis, and later by the committee that selected Elysium as one of six nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award. (The winner will be announced April 3). “I wasn’t sure there was a space for me in this writing world. And to a certain degree I still sort of wonder. But the idea that I could write and that my stories are worthy of being told was something [Stonecoast] really helped to foster in me,” Brissett says in her New Books interview. In some respects, Elysium is simple: it tells a story of love and loss between two people. But Elysium is also complicated because those two people morph from scene to scene, changing from two brothers to father/daughter to husband/wife to boyfriend/boyfriend to girlfriend/girlfriend. When imagining the future, conventional science fiction often focuses too much on gadgets and not enough on people, Brissett says. “We think [science fiction] is about … the new machines we’ll have, the little gadgets that will make our lives easier … but I think the civil rights movement is one of the most science-fictional things that could have probably happened, because all of a sudden this entire group of people that was totally ignored showed up at the table and said ‘We want in.'” As a child, Brissett found the Wonder Bread future depicted in The Jetsons frightening. “I remember watching as a kid the Jetsons and thinking ‘That is an absolutely terrifying vision of the future. Where are all the black people?'” she says. “The future belongs to everybody. It doesn’t really belong to any one group. And yet when you see visions of the future, it’s usually mostly white heterosexual people wandering around.” In the early 2000s, Brissett owned an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she experienced the publishing industry’s struggles firsthand. Rather that discourage her from becoming a writer herself, the experience seems to have solidified her desire to tell stories in the way she wants to tell them. “You have to love this field to be here. If you’re here for money, you are certifiably crazy,” she says. Spoiler Alert From 6:45 to 10:24 we talk about a major part of the plot, which is revealed on the book jacket but isn’t explained until near the end of the book. Listeners might want to skip this part (and not read the jacket copy) if they want to approach the story as a mystery whose answer lies in the book’s structure. Related Links * Elysium was inspired, in part, by Roman Emperor Hadrian’s love of Antinous. * Brissett mentions her recently deceased friend, the writer Eugie Foster. * She also mentions a number of her teachers, including Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Marie Brissett‘s first novel, Elysium, or the World After (Aqueduct Press, 2014), portrays a fractured world, one whose seemingly irreversible destruction does nothing to dampen the survivors’ collective will to live. Brissett showed similar determination in writing the book, whose non-traditional structure places it outside the mainstream. Fortunately, her approach has been validated, first by her teachers at Stonecoast Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine, where she wrote Elysium as her final thesis, and later by the committee that selected Elysium as one of six nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award. (The winner will be announced April 3). “I wasn’t sure there was a space for me in this writing world. And to a certain degree I still sort of wonder. But the idea that I could write and that my stories are worthy of being told was something [Stonecoast] really helped to foster in me,” Brissett says in her New Books interview. In some respects, Elysium is simple: it tells a story of love and loss between two people. But Elysium is also complicated because those two people morph from scene to scene, changing from two brothers to father/daughter to husband/wife to boyfriend/boyfriend to girlfriend/girlfriend. When imagining the future, conventional science fiction often focuses too much on gadgets and not enough on people, Brissett says. “We think [science fiction] is about … the new machines we’ll have, the little gadgets that will make our lives easier … but I think the civil rights movement is one of the most science-fictional things that could have probably happened, because all of a sudden this entire group of people that was totally ignored showed up at the table and said ‘We want in.'” As a child, Brissett found the Wonder Bread future depicted in The Jetsons frightening. “I remember watching as a kid the Jetsons and thinking ‘That is an absolutely terrifying vision of the future. Where are all the black people?'” she says. “The future belongs to everybody. It doesn’t really belong to any one group. And yet when you see visions of the future, it’s usually mostly white heterosexual people wandering around.” In the early 2000s, Brissett owned an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she experienced the publishing industry’s struggles firsthand. Rather that discourage her from becoming a writer herself, the experience seems to have solidified her desire to tell stories in the way she wants to tell them. “You have to love this field to be here. If you’re here for money, you are certifiably crazy,” she says. Spoiler Alert From 6:45 to 10:24 we talk about a major part of the plot, which is revealed on the book jacket but isn’t explained until near the end of the book. Listeners might want to skip this part (and not read the jacket copy) if they want to approach the story as a mystery whose answer lies in the book’s structure. Related Links * Elysium was inspired, in part, by Roman Emperor Hadrian’s love of Antinous. * Brissett mentions her recently deceased friend, the writer Eugie Foster. * She also mentions a number of her teachers, including Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writers write, and rewrite and then they like to get published... in the mean time, there's life happening! How to balance it all? Join Cheri as she talks with Poet and Novelist Linda Sienkiewicz about living the writing life, and balancing your creative endeavors with everything else going on in your world! Sienkiewicz is a writer and artist who is always searching for a good story. Her poetry, short stories and essays have appeared in over fifty literary journals in print and online, and among her awards are a poetry chapbook and Pushcart Prize Nomination. She has an MFA in Fiction from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. Her novel, IN THE CONTEXT OF LOVE will be published in 2015 by BuddhaPuss Ink. Creative Energy in YOU is sponsored by: Pane View Window Cleaning www.paneviewwindowcleaning.com Jensen's Massage and Holistic Center www.jensensmassageandholisticcenter.com Creating Cloud Nine www.creatingcloudnine.com