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Jeff Sharlet has spent the past few years embedded in the deepest corners of the growing far-right movement in the United States. He's come to think of it as a black hole, something that can pull people in with ever-shifting grievances and a desire for power. He chronicles the movement and the characters in it in his book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War and joins us to discuss the book and how he's thinking about its thesis in the context of the new Trump administration. We also discuss some of Sharlet's more recent reporting on war churches in Idaho and Washington, and how things that were on the fringes of the movement five years ago are now squarely in the mainstream.Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing and Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which was adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers.His reporting on LGBTQI+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International's Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; The New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's Weekly; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large.
Notes and Links to Alexander Chee's Work Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays. He was guest-editor for The Best American Essays of 2022. He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Buy How To Write an Autobiographical Novel Alexander's Website Book Review for How To Write an Autobiographical Novel from The New York Times At about 2:00, Alexander details his Amtrak residency, later written about in The New Yorker At about 6:00, Alexander outlines some interesting characters that he met during his Amtrak residency At about 12:00, Alexander reflects on a book project inspired by an interesting encounter with a former detective and British and American sensibilities At about 16:30, Pete shares his own Amtrak story, possible fodder for essays and short stories, as Alexander remarks on “immediate friendship” At about 18:50, Alexander talks about upcoming novel and short story projects and the process of picking a title; he recounts how he arrived at his essay collection's title, through a Buzzfeed publication At about 26:30, Alexander highlights Kirkus Review naming How to Write an Autobiographical Novel one At about 27:35, Alexander gives background on his essay collection's cover photo At about 34:10, Alexander talks about the composition of the previous essay collection and his upcoming one, with regards to placement and focuses on his “rose garden”- “The Rosary”-essay's development At about 39:00, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about the order of the essays in the collections and any throughlines-Garnette Cadogan and Naomi Gibbs are shouted out At about 43:40, Alexander talks about a manuscript that he has been working At about 44:45, Pete is complimentary of Alexander's “The Rosary” essay, and Alexander tells a story of an interested and poignant conversation with At about 48:00, Pete shouts At about 49:00, Pete and Alexander talk about the essay collection's first piece, and Alexander talks about being “Alejandro from Oaxaca” for a short time-he references Yiyun Li's powerful essay, “To Speak is to Blunder” At about 55:10, Pete compliments Alexander's powerful advocacy work and asks him about perspective and time, and how Alexander looks back at the essays from the collection so many years later (for some of the essays) At about 1:02:00, In talking about modern protest and activist culture, mutual aid, etc., Alexander shouts out Sarah Thankam Mathews' powerful All This Could Be Different At about 1:04:30, Alexander discusses a dynamic class that he has mentored at Dartmouth At about 1:05:30, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about what fiction allows him to do with his writing At about 1:06:30, Alexander reflects on ideas of catharsis in his writing You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website this week. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 282 with Emely Rumble, a licensed clinical social worker, school social worker, and seasoned biblio/psychotherapist who specializes in bibliotherapy, the use of literature and expressive writing to heal. Pub Day and episode air day are April 29 for her wonderful book, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx.
Episode Notes With the Virginia Quarterly Review's 100th Anniversary approaching Executive Director Allison Wright and Senior Editorial Intern Michael Newell-Dimoff, reflect on the magazine's last hundred years, their own experiences with VQR and the celebration for the magazine's 100th anniversary!
Notes and Links to Lauren Markham's Work Lauren Markham is a writer based in northern California. She is the author of the recent A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (Riverhead, 2024) which The New Yorker listed as one of “The Best Books We've Read in 2024 So Far” and which Kirkus reviews called “a remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis.” A fiction writer, essayist and journalist, her work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California. Markham's first book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (Crown, 2017) was the winner of the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, and a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a New York Times Book Critics' Top Book of 2017, and was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography. Markham has reported from the border regions of Greece and Mexico and Thailand and Texas; from arctic Norway; from gang-controlled regions of El Salvador; from depopulating towns in rural Sardinia and rural Guatemala, too; from home school havens in southern California; from imperiled forests in Oregon and Washington; from the offices of overwhelmed immigration attorneys in L.A. and Tijuana; from the upscale haunts of women scammed on the Upper East Side. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is a contributing editor), Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Guernica, Freeman's, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lit Hub, California Sunday, Zyzzyva, The Georgia Review, The Best American Travel Writing 2019, and on This American Life. She has been awarded fellowships from The Mesa Refuge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, the McGraw Center, the French American Foundation, the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Silvers Prize, the de Groot Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. In addition to writing, Markham has spent fifteen years working at the intersection of education and immigration. She regularly teaches writing in various community writing centers as well as at the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program, the University of San Francisco and St. Mary's MFA in Writing Program. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025. Buy A Map of Future Ruins Lauren's Website Los Angeles Review of Books' Review of A Map of Future Ruins At about 4:00, Lauren makes the case that not all young reading has to be high-brow as she discusses formative works as a kid and adolescent, which included Nancy Drew and Milan Kundera At about 6:50, Lauren responds to Pete's question about how she thinks and writes in diverse genres, and how her reading of varied writers informs her own work At about 10:40, Lauren shouts out Vauhini Vara, Hernan Diaz, Nathan Heller, Jia Tolentino, and other treasured contemporary writers At about 12:45, Lauren talks about how writing informs her teaching, and vice versa At about 15:25, Pete asks Lauren about seeds for A Map of Future Ruins and how her work with many undocumented and refugee students has affected her writing At about 19:00, Lauren and Pete discuss ideas of belonging and exclusion and pride and heritage in connection to Lauren's Greek heritage and reporting trips there At about 23:10, Ideas of “insiders” and “outsiders” and the challenges of immigration paperwork are discussed At about 26:05, Pete and Lauren reflect on a powerful quote from Warsan Shire regarding people being impelled to emigrate At about 26:55, Lauren gives background on the conditions that made Moria on the Greek slang of Lesbos a “purgatory” At about 31:20, Demetrios, a representative Greek from the book, and his views on immigration and “speak[ing] bird” is discussed At about 36:05, Lauren expands upon how Greece as the “starting point of democracy” has been corrupted and co-opted and points to a stellar expose on truth from Kwame Anthony Appiah At about 41:50, The two discuss the arbitrary nature of “The West” and Greece and its ideals and ideas of a “Western lineage At about 43:55, Lauren expands upon the ideas of “proximity to Whiteness” with particular historical relevance for Greeks, Italians, and Southern Europeans At about 44:55, Pete and Lauren reference the horrific images of the Syrian refugee whose death galvanized support, as well as Ali Sayed's story, traced in her book At about 46:40, Lauren explains terminology and methods of doing business by Turkish and other smugglers At about 48:10, Turkish and Greek relations and how they affected the lack of patrols is highlighted At about 49:20, “The Moria Six” and Ali's story and trials are discussed in relation to the fire referenced at the beginning of the book At about 52:00, The impositions of maps and Empire are reflected upon At about 53:05, “Whiteness” and its imposition on “classical form” and racist science are explored, as written about in the book At about 54:55, The two trace the initial and later welcome for refugees to Greek islands and ideas of the original meaning of “asylum”; Lauren also highlights many incredible people helping refugees to this day, as well as ideas of “invaders” and scapegoats At about 58:40, Discussion of Greek austerity and true issues of difficulty for are referenced At about 59:50, The two discuss Lauren's section in the book regarding Darien Gap and connections to Lauren's family's own emigration/immigration story At about 1:02:00, The two highlight ideas of community among refugees, and Pete asks Lauren about pessimism and optimism and the book's title At about 1:03:25, Ali's unfinished story is referenced At about 1:04:05-Laser Round Questions! East Bay Booksellers, Point Reyes Books and Green Apple are shouted out as good places to buy her books At about 1:05:05, Immemorial, Lauren's 2025 release, is described What a pleasure it has been to speak with Lauren. Continued good luck to her with her future writing and important work. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Chills at Will Podcast. You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. I am very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features segments from conversations with Jeff Pearlman, F. Douglas Brown, Matt Bell, Rachel Yoder, Jorge Lacera, and more, as they reflect on chill-inducing writing and writers that have inspired their own work. I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 261 with Greg Mania, who is a writer, comedian, and award-winning screenwriter. He's also author of the debut memoir, Born to Be Public, which was an NPR Best Book of 2020 and an O, Oprah Magazine Best LGBTQ Book of 2020. Greg's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms. This episode will air on November 12. Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.
Notes and Links to Jessica Whipple's Work Jessica Whipple writes for adults and children from her home in Eastern PA. Her poetry has been published recently in Funicular, Door Is a Jar, and Green Ink Poetry, and online at Whale Road Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Pine Hills Review. Her poem "Broken Strings" has been nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize in poetry. She has published two children's picture books in 2023: Enough Is… (Tilbury House, illustrated by Nicole Wong) and I Think I Think a Lot (Free Spirit Publishing, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon). (Josay Bisay-yohn) To read more of Jessica's work or to learn about her books, including praise and reviews, peruse her website or follow her on Twitter/X/Instagram @JessicaWhippl17. Buy I Think I Think a Lot Interview with WESA/NPR, Regarding I Think I Think a Lot Jessica Whipple's Website At about 2:20, Jessica gives background information on places to buy her books At about 4:40, Jessica speaks to how her reading life is and was At about 7:00, Jessca traces where her writing life kicked in and how her writing life was “reinvigorated” At about 10:00, Julie Fogliano and other inspiring and beloved children's authors are given kudos At about 12:20, Jessica reads “This is What I'm Thinking at the Container Store” At about 15:50, Jessica expands on the universality and specificity of her poem, talking about OCD as a “spectrum” At about 19:00, The two reflect on some stellar and vivid lines from the poem At about 21:00, Jessica breaks down the different mechanisms of OCD and focuses on the compulsions and obsessions in their mental and outward forms At about 23:35, Jessica introduces and reads her poem, “ Sometimes I Google You” At about 26:25, Jessica explains how she is “speaking to the memory” depicted in the poem At about 29:30, Jessica provides a nice way to think of haiku, thanks to Tim Green At about 32:45, Pete highlights the beautiful security given in Jessica's work and other standout work At about 33:40, Pete asks about the “Enough” from the title of Enough Is… and Jessica expands upon the “sense of importance” given to the word At about 35:20, Jessica responds to Pete's questions about using symbolism and analogy in books for kids At about 37:00, Pete wonders about seeds for the book, I Think I Think a Lot At about 40:15, Pete likens the apologies in the book to a Seinfeld episode At about 41:20, Jessica talks about how the illustrator works off her writing At about 42:45, Pete highlights the ways in which Jessica use nuance and asks Jessica about writing to engender empathy in kids At about 44:40, Jessica reads and discusses “To My Husband Now a Father” At about 48:20, Pete asks Jessica about writing about personal things and catharsis At about 50:20, Lauren details exciting upcoming projects You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. I am very excited about having one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode features segments from conversations with Deesha Philyaw, Luis Alberto Urrea, Chris Stuck, and more, as they reflect on chill-inducing writing and writers that have inspired their own work. 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 260 with Lauren Markham, whose writing regularly appears in outlets like Harper's, Lithub, The New York Times Magazine and VQR. She is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, the winner of the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize and a CA Book Award Silver Prize. Her most recent book, A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, is out in 2024 to acclaim. The episode airs on November 5. Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.
Recently, twenty-three lecturers in the highly successful Creative Writing program at Stanford were summoned to a Zoom meeting where they were first praised, and then summarily fired. One of the most surprising aspects of this purge is the fact that it was carried out not by top-tier university administrators, but by tenure-track faculty in the program. It was they who decided to brutally terminate their colleagues. On today's show we speak with two of the lecturers who have been told they will leave Stanford in nine months, and one of their students, a published novelist. They explain the devastating nature of this act and share statistics and histories that show this was not at all necessary. Expediency for senior faculty trumped the survival of a carefully developed and nurtured community of creative writers.Here is the link to a petition we urge our listeners to sign and share as widely as possible to support this program, and these talented and devoted teachers.Sarah Frisch is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and current Lecturer in Stanford's Creative Writing Program. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, the VQR, and The New England Review. She's won a Pushcart Prize and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for fiction and has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis.Malavika Kannan is a queer fiction writer who graduated from Stanford University in 2024 with a minor in Creative Writing, where she served as the Creative Writing peer advisor. Her work appears in Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere and her YA novel was published by Little & Brown in 2023. From the Chappell-Lougee and Major Grants to the IDA fellowship and the Honors in the Arts program, Malavika feels thankful for the many opportunities at Stanford to nurture her craft and all the people who supported her. Malavika feels very grateful to her mentor Nina Schloesser Tarano, a Jones Lecturer, for all her support. Nina Schloesser Tárano was born and grew up in Guatemala City. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Fence and The New Inquiry Magazine. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction 2010-2012, and has been a lecturer in the Stanford Creative Writing Program since 2012
Jordan chats with Emma Copley Eisenberg (Housemates) about a ghostly encounter that led to her new novel, the opposing worldviews of Grace Paley and Ottessa Moshfegh, and the choice to make art in difficult times.MENTIONED:Jazz by Toni MorrisonFleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-AknerAmerican Pastoral by Philip RothTerrace Story by Hilary Leichter"Why I Write" by George OrwellEmma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Housemates and the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Emma Copley Eisenberg discusses her debut novel, Housemates, Philadelphia, BODIES, the spectrum of Ottessa Moshfegh to Grace Paley, structure, road trips, the historical figures who inspired the novel, and more! Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the novel Housemates and the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jason and Brett continue PRIDE 2024 with celebrated authors. They're joined in conversation with Jen Silverman (There's Going to Be Trouble), David Levithan (Wide Awake Now), and Emma Copley Eisenberg (Housemates) talking about the cyclical nature of history, queer inheritance, intersectionality of arts and queerness, and much more. Jen Silverman is a New York-based writer, playwright, and screenwriter. Jen is the author of novel We Play Ourselves, which is short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award, the story collection The Island Dwellers, which was longlisted for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, and the poetry chapbook Bath, selected by Traci Brimhall for Driftwood Press. Additional work has appeared in Vogue, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, LitHub, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Jen's plays have been produced across the United States and internationally. Jen is a three-time MacDowell fellow, a member of New Dramatists, and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Fellowship, the Yale Drama Series Award, and a Playwrights of New York Fellowship. Jen is a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for Prose and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow for Drama. Jen also writes for TV and film.When not writing during spare hours on weekends, David Levithan is editorial director at Scholastic and the founding editor of the PUSH imprint, which is devoted to finding new voices and new authors in teen literature. His acclaimed novels Boy Meets Boy and The Realm of Possibility started as stories he wrote for his friends for Valentine's Day (something he's done for the past 22 years and counting) that turned themselves into teen novels. He's often asked if the book is a work of fantasy or a work of reality, and the answer is right down the middle—it's about where we're going, and where we should be.Emma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her first book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.**BOOKS!** Check out the list of books discussed on each episode on our Bookshop page:https://bookshop.org/shop/gaysreading | By purchasing books through this Bookshop link, you can support both Gays Reading and an independent bookstore of your choice!Join our Patreon for exclusive bonus content! Purchase your Gays Reading podcast Merch! Follow us on Instagram @gaysreading | @bretts.book.stack | @jasonblitmanWhat are you reading? Send us an email or a voice memo at gaysreading@gmail.com
Is it time to start worrying about the Germans again? Perhaps, at least according to Jacob Kushner, the author of LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants, a book about an eleven year terror campaign by the National Socialist Underground (NSU). Kushner is ambivalent about the broad appeal in Germany of the NSU's murderous violence against immgrants, but he does suggest that this recent chapter in German history suggests that the country isn't quite the peaceful haven of toleration that some previous KEEN ON guests, like Peter Gumbel, believe it to be.Jacob Kushner is an international correspondent who writes magazine and other longform stories from Africa, Germany, and the Caribbean. He reports on migration and human rights, foreign aid and investment, terrorism and violent extremism, science and global health, climate change and wildlife, and press freedom. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Economist, National Geographic, The Nation, VQR, The Atavist, WIRED, Foreign Policy, and VICE. He has photographed for National Geographic and field-produced for VICE on HBO, and PBS NewsHour. He is the author of China's Congo Plan, which was favorably reviewed in The New York Review of Books.His new book, Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants, is published in May 2024. He teaches International Reporting and Migration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 377, my conversation with author Karolina Waclawiak. The episode first aired on August 26, 2015. Waclawiak is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Life Events, The Invaders, and How to Get Into the Twin Palms. She was most recently the Editor in Chief of Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News. Previously, she was the Executive Editor of Culture for BuzzFeed News and Deputy Editor of The Believer magazine. Work she has edited has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards, received a number of prestigious awards, and been selected for the Best American Essays anthology series. Karolina received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, VQR, the Believer, Hazlitt, and other publications. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I am still turning this over in my head, that Dr. Ricardo Nuila says the purpose of Arts and Humanities is...beauty. I have not thought of it in that way before, and he has really made me think about the role of beauty in my life, in my work, in small and big spaces of good and bad. I think this is a must listen! Dr. Ricardo Nuila, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and sees patients at Ben Taub hospital in Houston, Texas as part of the Harris Health System. Ben Taub is a safety-net hospital where the focus in on a given individual's healthcare problem. He is also a writer, and his pieces on health disparities, politics and medicine, and art and medicine have been published in VQR, The Atlantic, The New York Times Sunday Review, The New Yorker, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
Emily Dickinson was one of the first poets that I was introduced to when I was younger, and Dr. Ricardo Nuila refers to one of her lines, Tell the truth but tell it slant. We talk about this, about nuance and context, and how that relates to algorithmania. It comes back to metacognition, gestalt vs algorithmic thinking. Dr. Ricardo Nuila, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and sees patients at Ben Taub hospital in Houston, Texas as part of the Harris Health System. Ben Taub is a safety-net hospital where the focus in on a given individual's healthcare problem. He is also a writer, and his pieces on health disparities, politics and medicine, and art and medicine have been published in VQR, The Atlantic, The New York Times Sunday Review, The New Yorker, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
In conversation with Airea Dee Matthews Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of A Little Devil in America, a sweeping look at Black music, art, and culture that won the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His other works include the essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which was named a best book of 2017 by Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, and NPR, among other outlets; Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist; and the poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, winner of the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His other essays, poems, and criticism have been published in a wide array of media. In There's Always This Year, Abdurraqib offers an emotional and historical meditation on basketball-who makes it, who we think should be successful in the game, and the very notion of role models. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulcra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her latest work, Bread and Circus, addresses themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories through poetry, prose, and imagery. The book was nominated for an LA Times Poetry Book Prize. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/27/2024)
In conversation with Airea Dee Matthews Referred to by Nick Cave as ''exquisitely crafted fire bombs of incandescent rage,'' Nam Le's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is a debut collection of verse that both honors and shatters the tropes of diasporic literature. Le is also the author of The Boat, a short story collection that takes readers to such places as New York City, Tehran, his birth country of Vietnam, and Australia, where he was raised and now lives. Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award, and a Pushcart Prize, this work has been widely anthologized, translated, and taught. Le has also contributed writing to a wide array of publications, including Zoetrope, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Bomb, Boston Review, and One Story. Airea Dee Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulcra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her latest work, Bread and Circus, addresses themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories through poetry, prose, and imagery. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/14/2024)
Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and VQR. Her new book is A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. “It took me a while to figure out that this is actually a book about storytelling, about journalistic storytelling, about the kind of myths we spin culturally and politically, about history, about current events, and the role of journalism within all of that, and my role as a journalist.” Show notes: @LaurenMarkham_ laurenmarkham.info Markham on Longform 01:00 The Far Away Brothers (Crown • 2018) 03:00oaklandinternational.org 28:00 How the Word Is Passed (Clint Smith • Little, Brown and Company • 2021) 38:00 “How Greece Secretly Adopted the World's Most Brazen—and Brutal—Way of Keeping Out Refugees” (Mother Jones • March 2022) 44:00 “For Me, With Love and Squalor” (Longreads • June 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In conversation with Airea D. Matthews Phillip B. Williams is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, Thief in the Interior, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. A creative writing professor in New York University's MFA creative writing program, he is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. A surrealistic epic about the complexities of freedom and the boundaries of love, Ours tells the story of an 1830s-era conjuror who destroys plantations and spirits enslaved people away to a magically concealed community. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Addressing themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories, her most recent book Bread and Circus combines poetry, prose, and imagery to tell an intimate story about the author and her family. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/20/2024)
City Lights LIVE and Litquake celebrate the final issue of John Freeman's distinguished journal “Freeman's: Conclusions,” published by Grove Atlantic, with John Freeman, joined by Jaime Cortez, Elaine Castillo, and Oscar Villaon. Over the course of ten years, “Freeman's" has introduced the English-speaking world to countless writers of international import and acclaim, from Olga Tokarczuk to Valeria Luiselli, while also spotlighting brilliant writers working in English, from Tommy Orange to Tess Gunty. Now, in its last issue, this unique literary project ponders all the ways of reaching a fitting conclusion. For Sayaka Murata, keeping up with the comings and goings of fashion and its changing emotional landscapes can mean being left behind, and in her poem “Amenorrhea,” Julia Alvarez experiences the end of the line as menopause takes hold. Yet sometimes an end is merely a beginning, as Barry Lopez meditates while walking through the snowy Oregonian landscapes. While Chinelo Okparanta's story “Fatu” confronts the end of a relationship under the specter of new life, other writers look towards aging as an opportunity for rebirth, such as Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who takes on the role of being her own elder, comforting herself in the ways that her grandmother used to. Finally, in his comic story “Everyone at Dinner Has a Max von Sydow Story,” Dave Eggers suggests that sometimes stories don't have neat or clean endings—that sometimes the middle is enough. John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual “Freeman's” and the author and editor of ten books, including “Dictionary of the Undoing,” “The Park,” “Tales of Two Planets,” “The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story,” and, with Tracy K. Smith, “There's a Revolution Outside,” “My Love”. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Orion, and been translated into over twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at NYU and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Jaime Cortez is a writer and visual artist based in Watsonville, California. His fiction, essays, and drawings have appeared in diverse publications that include “Kindergarde: Experimental Writing For Children,” “No Straight Lines,” a 40-year compendium of LGBT comics, “Street Art San Francisco,” and “Infinite Cities,” an experimental atlas of San Francisco. He wrote and illustrated the graphic novel “Sexile” for AIDS Project Los Angeles in 2003. “Gordo” is Jaime's debut collection of short stories, and was published by Grove Atlantic to national acclaim in 2021. Jaime received his BA in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MFA from UC Berkeley. Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the planet's most exciting young people” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut novel “America Is Not the Heart” was named one of the best books of 2018 and has been nominated for the Elle Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, the Aspen Words Prize, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Book Award, and the California Book Award. Her essay collection “How To Read Now” was published to wide acclaim in July 2022, and was chosen as the September pick for Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club, among others. Her latest longform essay on grief, dog rescue and the politics of dog training is forthcoming this fall from Scribd. She is currently working on her second novel, to be published in late 2024/early 2025. Oscar Villalon is the editor of “ZYZZYVA." His work has been published in The Believer, Freeman's, VQR, Stranger's Guide, Alta, and many other publications. He lives with his wife and son in San Francisco. You can purchase copies of “Freeman's: Conclusions” at https://citylights.com/freemans-conclusions/ This event is made possible with the support of the City Lights Foundation. To learn more visit: https://citylights.com/foundation/
In conversation with Airea D. Matthews The winner of three Grammy Awards and three NAACP Image Awards, Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, is the MC and co-founder of The Roots. The Philly-based hip-hop group has produced 11 albums and is the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Trotter's solo work includes three volumes of Streams of Thought, collaborative albums with Danger Mouse and El Michels Affair, and guest appearances on dozens of other artists' tracks. He also co-wrote, co-composed, and starred in the off-Broadway play Black No More; acted in other such varied projects as The Deuce; Tick, Tick . . . Boom!; and Brooklyn Babylon; and, with Roots partner Questlove, founded the production company Two One Five Entertainment. ''Refined literary fire from the soulful furnace of pain and suffering'' (The New York Times), The Upcycled Self tells the story of Trotter's difficult early life, his redemptive steps toward success and happiness, and the lessons he gleaned that readers can use to move forward on their own paths. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her latest work, Bread and Circus, addresses themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories through poetry, prose, and imagery. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 11/18/2023)
In conversation with Philadelphia Poet Laureate Airea D Matthews Hailed by Tara Westover as ''Dazzling. Potent Vital. A light shining on the path of self-deliverance,'' Safiya Sinclair's memoir How to Say Babylon recounts her struggle to break free from her rigid Rastafarian upbringing and her father's repressive control, set against the backdrop of a larger story of colonialism in Jamaica. Sinclair is also the author of the acclaimed poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers' Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award in Literature, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, among other honors. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, and Kenyon Review. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Addressing themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories, Bread and Circus combines poetry, prose, and imagery to tell an intimate story about the author and her family. : Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 10/5/2023)
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and poems, they believed, could inoculate weak minds against simplistic totalitarian ideologies, heal the spiritual wounds of global catastrophe, and just maybe prevent the like from happening again. As the Cold War began, high-minded and well-intentioned scholars, critics, and writers from across the political spectrum argued that human values remained crucial to civilization and that such values stood in dire need of formulation and affirmation. They believed that the complexity of literature—of ideas bound to concrete images, of ideologies leavened with experiences—enshrined such values as no other medium could. Creative writing emerged as a graduate discipline in the United States amid this astonishing swirl of grand conceptions. The early workshops were formed not only at the time of, but in the image of, and under the tremendous urgency of, the postwar imperatives for the humanities. Vivid renderings of personal experience would preserve the liberal democratic soul—a soul menaced by the gathering leftwing totalitarianism of the USSR and the memory of fascism in Italy and Germany. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (U Iowa Press, 2015) explores this history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual, and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs—a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system—was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read, and written into the twenty-first century. Eric Bennett is professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the author of A Big Enough Lie, and his writing has appeared in A Public Space, New Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, Blackwell-Wiley's Companion to Creative Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, VQR, MFA vs. NYC, and Africana. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In The Heart of It All (Melville House, 2023), Christian Kiefer imagines a group of factory workers and their families living in a once vibrant Ohio town during the Trump era. The factory is the only place to work outside of Walmart, the grocery store, or a fast-food chain, and it's owned by Mr. Marwat, a Pakistani man whose wife helps in the office, while their teenagers embrace American life. The family is upended when Mr. Marwat's parents move in. The factory foreman, Tom Bailey, and his family's lives are upended when their sick baby dies. Their daughter Janey's life is upended when she befriends the only Black young man in the town. Mr. Marwat's secretary Mary Lou's life is upended when her mother moves into a nursing home and dies. All of their struggles are exacerbated by small injustices but eased by small kindnesses in this sweet and thoughtful glimpse into the lives of people just trying to get by. CHRISTIAN KIEFER's novels have appeared on best of the year lists from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist and have received rave reviews in The Washington Post, Oprah.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Brooklyn Rain, Library Journal, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novels The Infinite Tides, The Animals, Phantoms, and the novella One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide. Christian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction and has enjoyed a long second career in music, under the auspices of which he has collaborated with members of Smog, Pedro the Lion, DNA, 7 Seconds, John Zorn's Naked City, Sun Kil Moon, Boxhead Ensemble, Califone, Cake, Kronos Quartet, Wilco, Low, Fun, Anathallo, and The Band, among many others. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California at Davis and has served as contributing editor for Zyzzyva, fiction reader for VQR, and as the West Coast editor for The Paris Review. He teaches at American River College in Sacramento and is the Director of the Ashland University MFA. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
In The Heart of It All (Melville House, 2023), Christian Kiefer imagines a group of factory workers and their families living in a once vibrant Ohio town during the Trump era. The factory is the only place to work outside of Walmart, the grocery store, or a fast-food chain, and it's owned by Mr. Marwat, a Pakistani man whose wife helps in the office, while their teenagers embrace American life. The family is upended when Mr. Marwat's parents move in. The factory foreman, Tom Bailey, and his family's lives are upended when their sick baby dies. Their daughter Janey's life is upended when she befriends the only Black young man in the town. Mr. Marwat's secretary Mary Lou's life is upended when her mother moves into a nursing home and dies. All of their struggles are exacerbated by small injustices but eased by small kindnesses in this sweet and thoughtful glimpse into the lives of people just trying to get by. CHRISTIAN KIEFER's novels have appeared on best of the year lists from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist and have received rave reviews in The Washington Post, Oprah.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Brooklyn Rain, Library Journal, Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novels The Infinite Tides, The Animals, Phantoms, and the novella One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide. Christian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction and has enjoyed a long second career in music, under the auspices of which he has collaborated with members of Smog, Pedro the Lion, DNA, 7 Seconds, John Zorn's Naked City, Sun Kil Moon, Boxhead Ensemble, Califone, Cake, Kronos Quartet, Wilco, Low, Fun, Anathallo, and The Band, among many others. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of California at Davis and has served as contributing editor for Zyzzyva, fiction reader for VQR, and as the West Coast editor for The Paris Review. He teaches at American River College in Sacramento and is the Director of the Ashland University MFA. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
In conversation with poet Phillip B. Williams Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Addressing themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories, Bread and Circus combines poetry, prose, and imagery to tell an intimate story about the author and her family. Phillip B. Williams is the Whiting Award-winning author of Thief in the Interior and Mutiny. A recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Whiting Award, he has also received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches at Bennington College and the Randolph College low-residency MFA. (recorded 6/1/2023)
Jeff Sharlet has been studying and reporting on far-right movements in the US for decades, but something feels different now. From Waco and Ruby Ridge in the ‘90s to the 2014 Bundy family standoff with the federal government in Nevada, from the rise of Donald Trump to the “martyrdom” of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed raiding the Capitol on Jan. 6, from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to COVID-19, from the Q-Anon conspiracy to the veneration of vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse, new and long-brewing currents of rightwing rage and resentment are converging to change the American political landscape in ways that we will have to contend with for years, if not decades, to come. In the latest installment of our ongoing “Rise of the Right” series on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Sharlet about his new book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, the volatile moment America is in right now, and what we need to do to confront the far right today. Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author and editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and This Brilliant Darkness. His reporting on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International's Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where he lives in the woods with many animals.Studio / Post-Production: David HebdenHelp us continue producing The Marc Steiner Show by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer:Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-pod-mssSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/nl-pod-stLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews
Jeff Sharlet has been studying and reporting on far-right movements in the US for decades, but something feels different now. From Waco and Ruby Ridge in the ‘90s to the 2014 Bundy family standoff with the federal government in Nevada, from the rise of Donald Trump to the “martyrdom” of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed raiding the Capitol on Jan. 6, from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to COVID-19, from the Q-Anon conspiracy to the veneration of vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse, new and long-brewing currents of rightwing rage and resentment are converging to change the American political landscape in ways that we will have to contend with for years, if not decades, to come. In the latest installment of our ongoing “Rise of the Right” series on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Sharlet about his new book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, the volatile moment America is in right now, and what we need to do to confront the far right today.Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author and editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and This Brilliant Darkness. His reporting on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International's Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where he lives in the woods with many animals.Studio Production/Post-Production: David HebdenHelp us continue producing The Marc Steiner Show by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer:Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-pod-mssSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/nl-pod-stGet The Marc Steiner Show updates: https://therealnews.com/up-pod-stLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews
Frank Schaeffer In Conversation with Jeff Sharlet, Author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, exploring the themes of his forthcoming book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War._____LINKShttps://wwnorton.com/author/SHARLETJEFF/jeffsharlet_____BOOKSThe Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil WarThe Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power_____Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and This Brilliant Darkness. His reporting on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International's Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where he lives in the woods with many animals.An ex-evangelical boomer, a middle-aged gay artist, and a frazzled stay-at-home mom walk into a bar, share a table, and go deep about some of life's big questions.Join Frank, Ernie, and Erin as they share stories of love, sex, grief, religion and so much more. This is “Love in Common.”Visit LoveInCommon.org to Subscribe on your favorite Podcast platform. Support the show_____In Conversation… with Frank Schaeffer is a production of the George Bailey Morality in Public Life Fellowship. It is hosted by Frank Schaeffer, author of Fall In Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy. Learn more at https://www.lovechildrenplanet.comFollow Frank on Substack, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. https://frankschaeffer.substack.comhttps://www.facebook.com/frank.schaeffer.16https://twitter.com/Frank_Schaefferhttps://www.youtube.com/c/FrankSchaefferYouTube In Conversation… with Frank Schaeffer PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-conversation-with-frank-schaeffer/id1570357787NEW: Love In Common Podcast with Frank Schaeffer, Ernie Gregg, and Erin BagwellApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-in-common/id1665307674
Jeff Sharlet is the author of the new book Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, and the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which led to the must-watch Netflix docuseries The Family. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He currently teaches the art of writing as a professor at Dartmouth College. In this week's bonus episode, Sharlet takes the Gaslit Nation Self-Care Q&A to share what art, music, books, and documentaries and other things he recommends to help process the times we live in. We will be back with an all new bonus episode Q&A next week. For subscribers at the Democracy Defender level and higher, submit your questions to be answered in an upcoming episode! Thank you so much for your support of the show -- we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! To join our community on Patreon and help keep the show going, sign up here: Patreon.com/Gaslit
With political violence on the rise in America, along with disinformation, mainstream propaganda and the consolidation of media under conservative ownership, the scapegoating of LGBTQ+ people, women, and nonwhite people, and the weaponization of government in several Republican-led states, are we headed towards a civil war? In this week's episode, Andrea interviews Jeff Sharlet, the author of the new book Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Sharlet is also the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, that launched the must-watch Netflix series of the same name, that takes viewers into the dark heart of corruption known as the National Prayer Breakfast, and how it's used as a tool for the extreme religious right to consolidate power. In Undertow, Sharlet takes readers on a cross-country roadtrip to show how we're in a slow-motion civil war, and provides ways to confront this dangerous crossroads, including lessons from Civil Rights leader and artist Harry Belafonte. Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper's; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He currently teaches the art of writing as a professor at Dartmouth College. In our bonus episode, out later this week for Patreon subscribers at the Truth-teller level or higher, Sharlet takes the Gaslit Nation Self-Care Q&A to share what art, music, books, and documentaries and other cultural resources that he recommends to help process the times we live in. We will share a free excerpt of that for all listeners wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back with an all new Gaslit Nation episode next week, along with our regular Q&A bonus episode for Patreon subscribers. For supporters at the Democracy Defender level and higher, submit your questions to be answered in an upcoming bonus episode. Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation and keeps our show going! To join our community of listeners, sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit
Inspired by an audience member writing in, Episode 4 explores ways we are reframing rejection and failure to best aid us on our writing journey. The following are questions regarding rejection and failure from our hosts: 1. How do you process rejection other than the generic , get yourself back on the horse or allow yourself time to sulk ? What's another way of looking at not getting what you want for your writing ? 2. Have you ever failed at something you were trying to write? How did that failure function for you after? Is there a difference between how you saw failure earlier in your writing and now? Show Notes 1. Celeste Mohammed's book Pleasantview: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56186509-pleasantview?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=nzlAGQjgAn&rank=1 2. Rejection Wiki: https://www.rejectionwiki.com/index.php?title=Literary_Journals_and_Rejections 3. Why Marriages Succeed or Fail : And How You Can Make Yours Last by John Gottman, in which the Four Horseman are mentioned: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129025695-john-gottman?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=67vLw9eAxv&rank=1 4. Chillsubs: https://www.chillsubs.com/ 5. Duotrope: https://duotrope.com/ 6. Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/ 7. Indiana Review “Sunbathing is Forbidden in the Graveyard” by Jeannetta Craigwell-Graham: https://indianareview.org/item/winter-2023-volume-44-number-2/ 8. VQR: https://www.vqronline.org/ 9. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4136760 10. Email us at writeattention@gmail.com to join The Write Space accountability meeting held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 11am-1pm Pacific Time 11. Brené Brown's book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, https://brenebrown.com/book/daring-greatly/ 12. Brené Brown's book Atlas of the Heart, https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/
On today's episode, we are going to talk about designing hope in American medicine. Dr. Ricardo Nuila works as an internal medicine doctor and hospitalist in his hometown of Houston. It's hard for him to imagine practicing medicine anywhere else but at a safety-net hospital, where he focuses on a person's healthcare problem. His experiences as a doctor gives his writing its fuel. Ricardo focuses mostly on health disparities, how policies affect real people, and the interface between art and medicine. He has written for Texas Monthly, VQR, The New York Times Sunday Review, The Atlantic.com, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He has also covered Hurricane Harvey and the COVID pandemic for The New Yorker. His short stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories anthology as well as in McSweeney's and other literary magazines. The New England Review published one of his short stories and awarded him with its inaugural Emerging Writer's Award. Ricardo directs the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) at Baylor College of Medicine. This lab develops educational materials and experiences that weave the arts and humanities into medical education. Episode mentions and links: www.ricardonuila.com Made to Care For Those Left Behind, This Hospital Leads the Way (Book Review via NYT) Humanities Expressions and Arts Lab (HEAL) Ricardo's restaurant rec: Nancy's Hustle Follow Ricardo: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook; Episode Website: https://www.designlabpod.com/episodes/116
Episode 203: The Glamour Girl Slayer & Plane Crashes Galore: July and August of 1958 Onion Futures Act, Superstar Birthdays, Tons of Plane Crashes, Lemming & Cartoonist Suicides, and the Glamour Girl Slayer are all covered in this thrilling episode of American Timelines! Part of the Queen City Podcast Network: www.queencitypodcastnetwork.com. Credits Include: The Washington Post, VQR, Unsolved Mysteries, Popculture.us, Wikipedia, New York Times, IMDB & Youtube. Information may not be accurate, as it is produced by jerks. Music by MATT TRUMAN EGO TRIP, the greatest American Band. Click Here to buy their albums!
Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 740 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more Virginia Heffernan is a journalist, critic and author, most recently, of MAGIC AND LOSS: The Internet as Art (Simon & Schuster, 2016). She is a contributing editor at WIRED, a cohost of Slate's Trumpcast podcast, and a columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Heffernan has been called "America's preeminent cultural critic," "a public intellectual for the 21st century," and among the "finest living writers of English prose." Edward Mendelson in The New York Review of Books called MAGIC AND LOSS, "surprisingly moving...an ecstatic narrative of submission." Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of WIRED, writes, "Heffernan is a new species of wizard. It is a joy and a revelation to be under her spell." Follow her on twitter and subscribe to her Substack Order Jeff's new book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Jeff Sharlet is a journalist and bestselling author or editor of seven books, including The Family, the basis for a 2019 Netflix documentary series, The Family, of which he is executive producer. His most recent book, combining image and text, is This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. "Gorgeous," says The New York Times, "[t]he book ingeniously reminds us that all of our lives — our struggles, desires, grief — happen concurrently with everyone else's, and this awareness helps dissolve the boundaries between us." Sharlet's other books include Sweet Heaven When I Die, C Street, and, with Peter Manseau, Killing the Buddha, and two edited volumes, Radiant Truths, and (with Manseau) Believer, Beware. His writing on Russia's anti-LGBTQ crusade earned the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and his writing on anti-LGBT campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly Ivins Prize and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's Outspoken Award, among others. He has also been the recipient of numerous fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. Sharlet is an editor-at-large for VQR, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, and a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, Bookforum, and others. At Dartmouth College, he is the publisher of 40 Towns and a member of the Society of Fellows. Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page
The jerks jump to June and July of 1958, in which striking red head Jean Ellroy was murdered, the dog who made the name Fido popular did too, and the Hula Hoop was invented, all while Interracial marriage in Virginia sent a couple to jail, & the Quarrymen recorded their first songs and more! Part of the Queen City Podcast Network: www.queencitypodcastnetwork.com. Credits Include: The Washington Post, VQR, Unsolved Mysteries, Popculture.us, Wikipedia, New York Times, IMDB & Youtube. Information may not be accurate, as it is produced by jerks. Music by MATT TRUMAN EGO TRIP, the greatest American Band. Click Here to buy their albums!
In conversation with Airea D. Matthews A ''powerful work of lyric art'' and ''tour de force indictment of the carceral industrial state'' (The New York Times Book Review), Reginald Dwayne Betts' poetry collection Felon won the NAACP Image Award, the American Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Also the author of two other poetry collections and a memoir, he received the 2019 National Magazine Award for his New York Times Magazine essay about his journey from prison inmate to Yale Law School. His other honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, a 2021 MacArthur ''genius grant'', and a Radcliffe fellowship from Harvard. Betts is the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit institution devoted to providing greater access to literature in prisons. Created in collaboration with visual artist Titus Kaphar, Redaction is a multimedia examination of the relationship between race and incarceration in America. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022-2023 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Her autobiographical poetry collection Bread and Circus will be published this spring. (recorded 2/27/2023)
Mira chats with novelist Angie Cruz (How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water) about figuring out who you want to be, Angie's semi-secret history in fashion design and painting, the arrival of her character Cara Romero in her life, and questioning the truths of America in these most trying of times. MENTIONED: FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin Just Above My Head by James Baldwin Jazz by Toni Morrison Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel is How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022). Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women's Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Fellowship. She's published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York and Turin. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, too! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
New episodes beginning Feb 7. This episode originally aired in June 2021. Like her contemporary Herman Melville, New England writer Elizabeth Stoddard was a critical success—Nathaniel Hawthorne himself was a fan, and she was compared to Tolstoy, George Eliot, Balzac, and the Bronte sisters—but her books failed to find an audience when they were published. Join us as we discuss Stoddard's brilliant novel The Morgesons and its bold and inimitable heroine with guest Rachel Vorona Cote, author of Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today.Discussed in this episode: The Morgesons by Elizabeth StoddardToo Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today by Rachel Vorona Cote The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)James Russell LoweNathanial HawthorneHerman MelvilleEdgar Allan PoeHenry JamesGeorge EliotBull RunTwo Men by Elizabeth StoddardTemple House by Elizabeth StoddardRamona QuimbyJane Eyre by Charlotte BronteDorothea Brooke in Middlemarch by George Eliot“The Goblin Market” by Christina Rosetti Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights by Emily BronteThe Green Parrot by Marthe Bibesco on Lost Ladies of LitSt. Cecilia“Tell It Slant” in VQR by Rachel Vorona CoteFor episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit. Follow Kim on twitter @kaskew. Sign up for our newsletter: LostLadiesofLit.com Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast
Welcome to the fourth meditation of our Grief, Collected series, which come out every Friday.Today is a literary meditation with the esteemed author Alexander Chee. Alexander is the bestselling author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and a beautiful essayist making meaning of the world around us and helping us imagine new ones. In today's episode he is reading his 2018 essay, “Why Grieve Is The Word Of The Year,” which walks us through all of our many griefs, and how we can find ourselves in them.More about Alexander Chee and his work here and find him on Twitter at @alexanderchee and on Instagram at @cheemobile.You can find more info and resources at GriefCollected.com More about Alexander Chee - Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewaneee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays.He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Hello and welcome to today's show notes! Kind of you to stop by! You look great today! Are you doing something different with your hair? Whatever it is I love it! I have 3 great guests joining me today so please show your support with a paid subscription if you haven't already! Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 740 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls. At about 15 mins I start with Jeff Sharlet Pre Order Jeff's new book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Jeff Sharlet is a journalist and bestselling author or editor of seven books, including The Family, the basis for a 2019 Netflix documentary series, The Family, of which he is executive producer. His most recent book, combining image and text, is This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. "Gorgeous," says The New York Times, "[t]he book ingeniously reminds us that all of our lives — our struggles, desires, grief — happen concurrently with everyone else's, and this awareness helps dissolve the boundaries between us." Sharlet's other books include Sweet Heaven When I Die, C Street, and, with Peter Manseau, Killing the Buddha, and two edited volumes, Radiant Truths, and (with Manseau) Believer, Beware. His writing on Russia's anti-LGBTQ crusade earned the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and his writing on anti-LGBT campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly Ivins Prize and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's Outspoken Award, among others. He has also been the recipient of numerous fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. Sharlet is an editor-at-large for VQR, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, and a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, Bookforum, and others. At Dartmouth College, he is the publisher of 40 Towns and a member of the Society of Fellows. At 51 minutes I begin with Aaron David Miller Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He has written five books, including his most recent, The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President (Palgrave, 2014) and The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (Bantam, 2008). He received his PhD in Middle East and U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977. Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations. He also served as the deputy special Middle East coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations, senior member of the State Department's policy planning staff, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and in the office of the historian. He has received the department's Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards. Miller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly served as resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has been a featured presenter at the World Economic Forum and leading U.S. universities. Between 2003 and 2006 he served as president of Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence. From 2006 to 2019, Miller was a public policy scholar; vice president for new initiatives, and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Miller is a global affairs analyst for CNN. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, USAToday, and CNN.com. He is a frequent commentator on NPR, BBC, and Sirius XM radio. At 1:07 I start with Eric J. Segall graduated from Emory University, Phi Beta Kappa 27 and summa cum laude, and from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was the research editor for the Law Review and member of Order of the Coif. He clerked for the Chief Judge Charles Moye Jr. for the Northern District of Georgia, and Albert J. Henderson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. After his clerkships, Segall worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the U.S. Department of Justice, before joining the Georgia State faculty in 1991. Segall teaches federal courts and constitutional law I and II. He is the author of the books Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in, among others, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Stanford Law Review On Line, the UCLA Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, and Constitutional Commentary among many others. Segall's op-eds and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, SLATE, Vox, Salon, and the Daily Beast, among others. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and France 24 and all four of Atlanta's local television stations. He has also appeared on numerous local and national radio shows. Listen and Subscribe to Eric's Podcast Supreme Myths and follow him on Tik Tok! Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page
Establishing your setting and time period from the get-go of your writing process is vital in creating a memorable book, real tension, dynamic characters, and a more complex reading experience. Writers Hesse Phillips and Louise Berliner help us figure out how to do it.Hesse Phillips (she/they) was born next-door to a chicken farm in Western PA but now lives in Spain. Their Novel Incubator project Lightborne, about the mysterious death of queer Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, was a finalist in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022 and is now out on submission. Their poetry and prose have appeared in The Bridport Review, the epoque (pronounced “epoch”) press e-zine, Embark: A Literary Journal for Novelists, and is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, The Hyacinth Review, and other publications. They have a PhD in Drama from Tufts University and are obsessed with all things relating to sixteenth and early seventeenth century English theatre and its intersections with religion, gender, sexuality, and politics.Another lucky Novel Incubator grad, Louise Berliner's work has appeared in VQR, Porter Gulch Review, Ibbetson Review, The Mom Egg, Sacred Fire and various chapbook collections. Her first book, Texas Guinan GuyNan, Queen of the Night Clubs, written in part thanks to an NEH grant, is a biography of a Roaring ‘20s night club hostess famous for saying “Hello, Suckers!” Her middle grade novel, Houdini's Elephant, is with her agent and she's currently working on an adult literary novel with a magical realism kick. Her work is heavily influenced by New York City and the 20th century, as well as the ghosts of her matrilineage.Also discussed: Ben Percy's chapter “Activating Setting” in his craft book Thrill Me. For more book recs, check out our bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/the7amnovelist 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
The book of the moment for today's episode is Dominicana by Angie Cruz. Just a forewarning for those of you listening, this is NOT a spoiler-free zone. We will be discussing this book in all of its glory, which of course includes revealing the ending. Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her fourth novel, How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water is forthcoming Fall 2022. Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and chosen as the 2019/2020 Wordup Uptown Reads. It was shortlisted for The Women's Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Fellowship. She's published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York and Turin. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to leave a review on whichever platform you are listening on, if applicable. If you have any further questions regarding topics discussed throughout the episode feel free to join our Hardcover Hoes Discord Server via the link in the show notes, or send us an email at hardcoverhoespod@gmail.com. Feel free to recommend books to cover in future episodes as well! Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zpvW4FyuPF TikTok, IG, Twitter: @HardcoverHoes Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/993967071461813/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Co-hosts Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton speak with writer William Pei Shih, author of the Ursa Original “Happy Family,” a story about a lost childhood, a struggling restaurant, and a bygone era of Chinatown. (Warning: This episode contains “Happy Family” spoilers.) Read the transcript. “Your character has to fail in telling their story,” Shih says. “I think that's one of the beautiful things about fiction. It truly is the messiness of life.” Shih's stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories 2020, VQR, McSweeney's, and The Southern Review, among many other publications. He spoke with Philyaw and Walton about his approach to writing and developing characters, how “Happy Family” first came to life, and how hearing the audio version changed his storytelling approach. This episode is sponsored by Catapult: Award-winning classes by writers, for writers. Ursa listeners get 20% off upcoming online classes with the coupon code URSA20. Go to catapult.co/classes. Additional production support for this episode by Veronica Smith. Episode Links and Reading List: “Happy Family” (Ursa) “Enlightenment” (VQR) “Necessary Evils” (Southern Review) What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell Look How Happy I'm Making You, by Polly Rosenwaike More from William Pei Shih: "The Golden Arowana" (The Masters Review), about a precious and rare fish, a young man and his grandmother from China, and the road trip of a lifetime—to Pittsburgh, and what happens when one finds more than they bargained for. "My Son," (F(r)iction, Spring 2021), a story focusing on father/son cross-generational and cross-cultural struggles and miscommunications. More stories: https://williampeishih.com/home/publications/ More from Deesha Philyaw and Dawnie Walton: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton Support Ursa by becoming a Member in Apple Podcasts, or by going to ursastory.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://ursastory.com/join
Besides all but banning abortions, GOP leaders in Texas are limiting what students may learn about slavery, they're sidelining transgender athletes, they're allowing citizens to carry guns unlicensed, and they're making voting harder rather than easier. This week we replay for you the story of a teacher in Dallas who says those education reforms hurt classrooms and democracy. Plus, two historians speak Texan with Siva and guest-host Allison Wright of VQR, as they cover all those other divisive measures.
Debra Gwartney joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the difference between character and narrator in memoir, navigating writing about loved ones, why memoirists need to hold their own feet to the fire, and what question every memoir asks. Also in this episode: -memoir and essay recommendations -craft book suggestions -tips for avoiding common pitfalls when writing memoir Memoirs/Work mentioned in this episode: The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopate "The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" by Ariel Levy Authors mentioned: Melissa Febos, Eula Biss, Ann Carson, Claire Vaye Watkins, Ander Monson Debra Gwartney is the author of two book-length memoirs, Live Through This, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and I Am a Stranger Here Myself, winner of the RiverTeeth Nonfiction Prize and the Willa Award for Nonfiction. Debra has published in such journals as Granta, The Sun, Tin House, American Scholar, The Normal School, Creative Nonfiction, Prairie Schooner, and others. She's the 2018 winner of the Real Simple essay contest. She's also a contributing editor at Poets & Writers magazine and received a Pushcart Prize in 2021 for her essay “Suffer Me to Pass,” from VQR. Debra is co-editor, along with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. She lives in Western Oregon. Connect with Debra: https://www.facebook.com/writerdebragwartney/ http://www.debragwartney.com Ronit's essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, 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 both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd 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
And we're back! Welcome everyone to the third year of Article Club. I'm really happy that you're here, and I encourage you to join this month's discussion. That's because this month's article is awesome. I'm pleased to announce that we'll be reading “Good Mother,” by Sierra Crane Murdoch. It was one of my favorite articles last year.Here's the blurb I wrote about it for The Highlighter:Lissa Yellow Bird wants to become a foster parent. But the county social services department in North Dakota isn't so sure. So they send a questionnaire to journalist Sierra Crane Murdoch, asking for her thoughts.In this touching, beautifully written essay, Ms. Murdoch reflects on what it means to be a good mother in the shadow of colonization. She traces how the United States government decimated American Indian motherhood by separating families, forcing children to attend boarding schools, and sterilizing women – all the way until the mid-1970s.And here's an excerpt from the piece:Mothering was the only conceivable role in society for a Native woman, and yet motherhood was at odds with indigeneity. To become a citizen, a woman had to become a mother; to become a mother, she had to become less Indian. In the Yellow Bird family, the antidote to intergenerational trauma is intergenerational love, the piling on of relatives. When a mother falls short, the solution is not to take the child away from the mother, but to give the child more mothers and fathers.Sierra Crane Murdoch is a journalist and essayist whose work concerns, primarily, communities in the American West. Her book, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Named one of the best books of 2020 by The New York Times, NPR, and Publisher's Weekly, it was also nominated for the Edgar Award, won an Oregon Book Award, and is being developed as a TV series for Paramount+. Ms. Murdoch's writing has appeared on This American Life and in Harper's, VQR, The New Yorker online, Orion, The Atlantic, and High Country News.Whether or not you're a mother, whether or not you're a parent, I encourage you to read this article, even if you're not able to participate in the discussion. It's brilliantly structured, sensitively written, and deeply thought-provoking.I hope you'll join me and fellow Article Clubbers in discussing the piece on Sunday, January 30, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT! This event will be on Zoom and be limited to 24 participants.Are you IN?I hope so! If so, here's what to do:Announce the good news by leaving a comment below. Click on the green button. In a sentence or two, say hi and share why you're interested.Sign up for the discussion by clicking here.This will save your spot and tell me you're committed to joining.Start reading the article.Here's the original, and here's a shared version we can annotate together.Coming up this month at Article ClubThis week: We'll sign up for the discussion and start reading the article.Next week: We'll go deeper, annotating the article, sharing our first impressions, and “meeting” Ms. Murdoch.The week of January 24: We'll listen to an interview with Ms. Murdoch.Sunday, January 30: We'll discuss the article with fellow Article Clubbers.Are you new to Article Club? If so, welcome! We look forward to meeting you and having your voice in the conversation. Feel free to reach out with questions: mark@highlighter.cc.Thank you for reading Article Club. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com/subscribe
Besides all but banning abortions, GOP leaders in Texas are limiting what students may learn about slavery, sidelining transgender athletes, allowing citizens to carry guns unlicensed, and making voting more difficult. This week a teacher in Dallas explains why those education reforms hurt classrooms and democracy. Plus, we hear from two historians about all those other divisive measures... Join Siva and guest-host Allison Wright of VQR as they speak Texan in this first of a series on state-level politics.
In this interview, Alexander and I talk a lot about money, and specifically, about how asking for money and negotiating for what you want and need is a key piece of building a healthy relationship with your work and career. We also talked about the myth of the solitary artist, and the reality: that community and relationships are key to not just success, but survival. Finally, Alexander is the source of an incredibly pivotal insight for me: that caring for your creative process IS self-care, and when you allow yourself the margin to take care of your work process, it benefits not only your body and mental health (and that of your family and loved ones) but the work itself. More from the episode... The importance of collective action in securing the rights of authors. The role of community in creative career-building. How is writing "a community project"? What is the "golden thread" and how does it help creators build relationships with their followers? The word "networking" sounds "weirdly clinical" to Alexander— why at some point he figured out that's what he was doing, and that it was a key to his success. What's a better way to look at this fraught term? Alexander breaks down why writers should always ask for more money: "Sometimes people are like, how come the Queen of the Night took you so long? And it's like, well, I did waste a lot of time writing essays for $150." What was in the folder writer Denis Johnson (Jesus's Son) labeled "answers"? Instead of running himself into the ground because he's eager to please, Alexander lays out his process to not overschedule himself. How earning with your work can help you make more work, in a literal as well as an emotional sense: "It won me ...a typewriter that I then used to write for a long time. And that typewriter became a talisman at a time that I needed a talisman. I wrote this typewriter into existence. I'm now using it to write more stories." "Don't be so grateful that you let yourself down." —What Alexander would tell his younger self if he could. Why it's so important to trust yourself and recognizing when self-doubt is holding you back from pursuing your creative goals. Alexander lays out several important pieces of advice to novice pro writers, including "There's no reason to think that just because you're an unknown writer you can't somehow get a decent fee for your work." More from our guest: Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel as well as many short stories and essays. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at VQR, and a critic-at-large for The Los Angeles Times. He currently teaches creative nonfiction and fiction at Dartmouth College. Connect with Alexander Chee alexanderchee.net twitter @alexanderchee instagram @cheemobile facebook.com/alexanderchee https://alexanderchee.medium.com/ querent.substack.com Additional links authorsguild.org https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/the-autobiography-of-my-novel https://alexanderchee.medium.com/your-questions-answered-how-have-you-overcome-writers-block-fc5525bab1cb https://www.crowdcast.io/e/acpod-alexander-cheeThe Autonomous Creative is brought to you by Authentic Visibility: marketing for creatives who (think they) hate marketing. Learn more here!
In anticipation of the Collingswood Book Festival, we thought it might be nice to have some of our senior editors and a couple of festival participants sit down for a proper chat about poetry and community, the anonymity of sending work out into the void and the anonymity of masks, and of course, bears and bathrobes. Enjoy and let us know what you think! Has the pandemic made writing more universal or melted our minds so terribly that our relationship to literature has changed? Will readings stay virtual and/or can we find a happy relationship between Zoom and IRL? This episode includes these special guests: Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) from Northwestern University Press, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (2016) from Thread Makes Blanket Press. A recipient of the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, POETRY, Academy of American Poets, The Rumpus, PANK, Guernica, ESPNW, and elsewhere. In collaboration with Philadelphia Contemporary, Friends of the Rail Park, and Asian Arts Initiative, her experimental poem, Future Revisions, was exhibited at the Rail Park billboard in Philadelphia from July to August 2021. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and is a 2021-2022 Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA. She is originally from Bali, Indonesia. Rogan Kelly is the author of Demolition in the Tropics (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in New Orleans Review, The Penn Review, Plume, RHINO, and elsewhere. He is the editor of The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. We thought we'd include our bio's here, since we never do: Jason Schneiderman is the author of four books of poems, most recently Hold Me Tight (Red Hen 2020) and Primary Source (Red Hen 2016). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford UP 2016). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, VQR, The Believer, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet; he is a co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile. His awards include the Shestack Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is an Associate Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Kathleen Volk Miller has written for LitHub, NYT Modern Love, O, the Oprah magazine, Salon, the NYTimes, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Family Circle, Philadelphia Magazine and other venues. “How We Want to Live,” an essay, was chosen as the penultimate piece in Oprah's Book of Starting Over (Flat Iron Books, Hearst Publications, 2016). She is co-editor of the anthology, Humor: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2014). She is co-editor of The Painted Bride Quarterly and co-host of PBQ's podcast, Slush Pile. She has also published in literary magazines, such as Drunken Boat, Opium, and other venues. She holds “Healing through Writing” and “Writing and Neuroplasticity” workshops, and other memoir classes. She consults on literary magazine start up, working with college students, and getting published in literary magazines. She is a professor at Drexel University. Marion Wrenn is Director of the Writing Program; Senior Lecturer of Writing and Literature and Creative Writing at NYU Abu Dhabi. Marion C. Wrenn is a media critic, cultural historian, and literary editor who writes essays and creative non-fiction. She earned her PhD from NYU's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and has received grants and awards from NYU, the AAUW, and the Rockefeller Archive Center. Recent work on satirical news and citizen audiences have appeared in Poetics. Her essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, South Loop Review, and elsewhere. She co-edits the literary journal Painted Bride Quarterly (pbqmag.org) and has taught writing at NYU, Parsons, and the Princeton Writing Program. This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.
In this sixth episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation with Tracy O'Neill, on acclimating to new jobs during a pandemic, the importance of eavesdropping, and the fact that even when you are not writing, you are writing. Also, sandwiches are important. Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020. In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, long-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, and was a Narrative Under 30 finalist. In 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. Her short fiction was distinguished in the Best American Short Stories 2016 and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2017. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Believer, The Literarian, the Austin Chronicle, New World Writing, Narrative, Scoundrel Time, Guernica, Bookforum, Electric Literature, Grantland, Vice, The Guardian, VQR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Catapult. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. While editor-in-chief of the literary journal Epiphany, she established the Breakout 8 Writers Prize with the Authors Guild. She teaches at Vassar College. Find out more about Tracy O'Neill here: https://www.tracyoneill.net/ 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/ Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota. Our podcast editor is Craig Eley, and our music is by Pat Irwin. FULL TRANSCRIPTS for Cabana Chats podcast episodes are available in the free Resort network: https://community.theresortlic.com/
William Pei Shih reads an excerpt from "The Enlightenment," backed by an original Storybound remix with Modern Diet, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer. William Pei Shih has had stories published in "The Best American Short Stories 2020," VQR, McSweeney's, Catapult, The Asian American Literary Review, The Des Monies Register, The Masters Review, and many others. He's received scholarships and support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Sun Valley Writers' Conference, Kundiman, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, and the Ragdale Residency. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA, Fiction), where he was a recipient of the Dean's Graduate Fellowship. He currently teaches at NYU. Modern Diet is a Brooklyn based indie-rock band who have played everywhere from Vermont to Nashville. Their latest release, "Post Grad," was released in 2020. Support Storybound by supporting our sponsors: Norton brings you Michael Lewis' The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, a nonfiction thriller that pits a band of medical visionaries against a wall of ignorance as the COVID-19 pandemic looms. Scribd combines the latest technology with the best human minds to recommend content that you'll love. Go to try.scribd.com/storybound to get 60 days of Scribd for free. Finding You is an inspirational romantic drama full of heart and humor about finding the strength to be true to oneself. Now playing only in theaters. Acorn.tv is the largest commercial free British streaming service with hundreds of exclusive shows from around the world. Try acorn.tv for free for 30 days by going to acorn.tv and using promo code Storybound. Storybound is hosted by Jude Brewer and brought to you by The Podglomerate and Lit Hub Radio. Let us know what you think of the show on Instagram and Twitter @storyboundpod. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Storybound, you might enjoy reading, writing, and storytelling. We'd like to suggest you also try the History of Literature or Book Dreams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nina talks with Claire Luchette about her new book! Claire's work has appeared in VQR, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Granta. A 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Luchette graduated from the University of Oregon MFA program and has received grants and scholarships from MacDowell, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Millay Colony, Lighthouse Works, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the James Merrill House. Agatha of Little Neon is Luchette's first novel.
This episode marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the uprising in Syria. This is episode 3/13 in the new GCSP Podcast Series. Dr Paul Vallet interviews Mr Kenneth R. Rosen is an award-winning foreign news correspondent, who reports especially from the Middle East for numerous publications, among which the New York Times New Yorker magazine, The Atlantic, VQR, and now Wired. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, and Japanese, and he's the author of two books. He is also a digital fellow with the GCSP's Global Fellowship Initiative Dr Paul Vallet: This week marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the uprising in Syria against the regime of Bashar Al Assad, in what was Syria’s part of what was then called the Arab Spring. The results of that spring have been varied in countries across the Middle East North Africa region. In Syria, Libya and Yemen, a civil war emerged from these initial uprisings in 2011, which, despite the varying levels of foreign involvement, have not died down. In terms of casualties and displaced people, Syria’s perhaps among the most complex one that is most edged on international conscience, especially when seeing from Europe. But how is it that the war is being perceived on the outside? How can the story be told when it has been so dangerous for journalists to cover it? To get an idea today, we're talking with Kenneth R. Rosen, who has recently joined to become a digital fellow for the GCSP Global Fellowship Initiative. This is a great favour in joining us from the region in the Middle East. So welcome to the podcast, Ken. My first question to you, of course, has to do with a bit of your work experience, but probably those of your fellows as well. Can you tell us what has been the experience and the role of foreign correspondents and reporting about the war in Syria? Mr Kenneth R. Rosen: Sure, the former press corps is given a lot of access to campaigns and military movements and a lot of the upper political parties who are tied into the region and also into these conflicts writ large. If I if I can just go back a little bit in history, you know, the First World War in the Second World War, foreign correspondents on both sides were granted unprecedented access. I mean, you had AP and Reuters correspondents who were embedded with German troops. And there was a lot of transparency on either side there. And I'd like to mention that only because while we do have access to say the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria or the Peshmerga, in northern Iraq, where I am calling you from today, it's just not the same as it was many years ago, even as even as recent as the invasion of Iraq with US forces, a lot of American media, we're able to embed with the forces and see upfront up close the multiple sides of the conflict. But now it's a little bit more restrained. There's more vetting going on between who's allowed in to report on different campaigns or different situations, such as the internally displaced people's camps within north-eastern Syria, you certainly can't report from regime controlled areas, and it's very difficult to report from Turkish-backed opposition controlled areas. There was a recent report in the New York Times when a correspondent and several other agencies were granted access to the Turkish areas. But generally speaking, it's very difficult. And when you are granted access, you're followed by miner and taken only to areas that are of interest to government agenda. So it's a lot of narratives are coming out of the region. And there are a lot of journalists who are doing really great work. And it's important work. But it's very limited given the situation and the types of parties who are involved with the conflict. You have Russia, you have Iran, you have northern Iraq, you had the autonomous administration in north-eastern Syria, you have the regime controlled areas of the government of Syria in the West.
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Kenneth R. Rosen, the author of Troubled, to discuss the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out in America's behavioral treatment programs. Kenneth R. Rosen is a senior editor and correspondent at Newsweek based in Italy. He is a contributing writer at WIRED, and the journalist-in-residence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of two books of narrative nonfiction, an incoming Executive-in-Residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and a 2021 Alicia Patterson Fellow. Previously, he spent six years on staff at The New York Times. Rosen is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award in international reporting. Among other honors, he received the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents for his reporting on Iraq in 2018 and was a finalist for his reporting on Syria in 2019. He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and VQR. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, and Japanese. As a foreign correspondent and magazine writer, he has reported from more than 13 countries, appeared on NPR, PRI's "The World," The Guardian's daily podcast, and NRC's (Netherlands) podcast, among others. And he has briefed the State Department on his reporting from the Levant. He has received generous support from MacDowell (Calderwood Foundation Art of Nonfiction Grantee), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Literary Journalist-in-Residence), the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (Grantee '17, '20), the Fulbright Program, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for American Studies (Robert Novak Fellow), the Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation with John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good. Educated at Columbia University and the Savannah College of Art and Design, he lectured at the University of Massachusetts Boston, has held workshops on creative nonfiction for Catapult magazine, and has volunteered with troubled teens seeking to return to school and complete their bachelor's degrees. He works out of tiny, bunker-like wood shed he converted into a writer's-bungalow/machinist shop. It reminds Zoom call participants of Ted Kryzinski's cabin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode Notes Welcome to Circle of Willis, my podcast about science and the scientists who do it, brought to you by generous folks at VQR, the Center for Media and Citizenship, and WTJU Radio at the University of Virginia here in Charlottesville. Folks, sometimes the chaos swirls and the lights dim. Sometimes things go very wrong and we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Sometimes those who’ve dedicated their lives to helping don’t know how to help, or, more likely these days, they don’t have the tools they need. And despite what you may have heard, laughter is not the best medicine. But in Part 2 of our conversation, my guest TIM CUNNINGHAM is here to remind us that sometimes laughter is the only medicine available, that laughter can catalyze the kinds of social connections we need most during our times of trial, and that laughter might even make those medicines that are the best more effective. Maybe that’s why Pablo Neruda once wrote, Take bread away from me, if you wish Take air away But do not take from me your laughter Humor has an almost mystical power to make life a little better, sometimes a LOT better. That’s why, in addition to being the VP for Practice and Innovation at Emory Healthcare, a Registered Nurse, and a Dr. of Public Health, Tim Cunningham is a professional Clown, trained at the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre up in Northern California, and a board member of CLOWNS WITHOUT BORDERS, which you are going to hear all about in just a few moments. Tim is going to tell us how being a professional clown has informed his work, world view, and personal life, and how all of that converged in all too real moments of life and death in a time of pandemic. ———————— Folks, the Music on Circle of Willis is written and performed by TOM STAUFFER and his band THE NEW DRAKES… For information about how to purchase their music, check the “Music if Circle of Willis” page at circleofwillispodcast.com Circle of Willis is Produced by SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN and brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia… And that Circle of Willis is a member of the VIRGINIA AUDIO COLLECTIVE! You can find out more about that at Virginiaaudio.org. Special thanks Circle of Willis Associate Producer GRACE BOYLE, NATHAN MOORE, General Manager and swell guy at WTJU FM in Charlottesville, VA, and tough as nails editor-in-chief PAUL REYES at VQR—otherwise known as the Virginia Quarterly Review, winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, in 2019, and finalist for the same award right here in 2020. If you like this podcast, how about giving us a little review at iTunes and letting us know how we’re doing? It’s super easy and we like it! Or send us an email by going to circleofwillispodcast.com and clicking on the “contact” tab. Find out more at http://circleofwillispodcast.com This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
WELCOME BACK to CIRCLE OF WILLIS, my podcast about science and the scientists who do it. In this episode, I introduce you to TIM CUNNINGHAM, VP for Practice & Innovation at Emory Healthcare, super nice guy, and badass who's given more of himself than you have to the cause of health, well being, and even literal survival. Here in Part 1 of our interview, we talk about how caregivers and patients endure pandemics like the one we’re going through right now, from a guy who’s been through one before, as a pediatric nurse in Sierra Leone during the Ebola Crisis. Watch for Part 2, coming up in a couple of weeks, where Tim and I talk about the existential and life affirming practice of Clowning, and indeed about how Clowning dovetails with nursing and medicine, especially during times of crisis. Yes, I'm talking about being a literal professional clown. Tim is that, too. Folks, the Music on Circle of Willis is written and performed by TOM STAUFFER and his band THE NEW DRAKES… For information about how to purchase their music, check the “Music if Circle of Willis” page at circleofwillispodcast.com Circle of Willis is Produced by SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN and brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia… And that Circle of Willis is a member of the VIRGINIA AUDIO COLLECTIVE! You can find out more about that at Virginiaaudio.org. Special thanks Circle of Willis Associate Producer GRACE BOYLE, NATHAN MOORE, General Manager and swell guy at WTJU FM in Charlottesville, VA, and tough as nails editor-in-chief PAUL REYES at VQR—otherwise known as the Virginia Quarterly Review, winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, in 2019, and finalist for the same award right here in 2020. If you like this podcast, how about giving us a little review at iTunes and letting us know how we’re doing? It’s super easy and we like it! Or send us an email by going to circleofwillispodcast.com and clicking on the “contact” tab. Find out more at http://circleofwillispodcast.com This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
As the 2020 presidential election nears, Lauren R. Kerby and Jeff Sharlet discussed the politics of white evangelicals in the U.S. today. Kerby's book, Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America, offers a starting point for this important conversation about how race, nationalism, and Christianity become entangled for many white evangelicals through what they learn from their leaders about American history. Their political commitments are baffling to many observers, but this conversation will explore how white evangelicals’ relationship to the nation offers a key to understanding their continued allegiance to Donald Trump. Lauren R. Kerby is a lecturer on religious studies at Harvard Divinity School and the education specialist for the Religious Literacy Project. She earned her PhD from Boston University. She is the author of Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation's Capital and Redeem a Christian America (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). Jeff Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author or editor of seven books including the national bestseller The Family, recently adapted into a Netflix documentary series of the same name, and This Brilliant Darkness. Sharlet is an editor at large for VQR and a contributor to publications including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ, for which his reporting on anti-LGBTQ+ crusades in Russia won the National Magazine Award. Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/10/07/video-campaign-white-christian-america-lauren-r-kerby-conversation-jeff-sharlet
Dustin Schell and Alexander Chee were longtime residents of New York City who recently found an opportunity to fulfill their dreams of full-scale gardening. Dustin previously had a community garden plot the size of a grave in New York City. It was located in the Clinton Community Garden in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, where he gardened for over twenty years. Then they moved to rural Vermont in 2016 and bought a home there in the fall of 2019. Dustin and Alex started their new garden in the midst of a pandemic in their first year as homeowners. They talk about starting with what they had--and around obstacles, which include getting sick in the early weeks of the COVID pandemic. Let's take a listen to hear about how they're enjoying their new space.Dustin Schell studied Theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Circle in the Square Theater School In New York City. His varied career includes work as an actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, and most recently, a ski instructor at the Dartmouth Skiway. He splits his time between NYC and Vermont. Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, and Out, among others. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.Learn more and follow:Still Queer InstagramStill Queer Tiny LetterDustin Schell's InstagramAlexander Chee's Instagram and Twitter
Kate Zambreno is the author of several acclaimed books including Screen Tests, Heroines, and Green Girl. Her latest novel, Drifts, was released in May 2020. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. This episode is brought to you by: Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/thresholds; What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, now available wherever you get books from Catapult; and, Luster by Raven Leilani, now available from FSG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What’s in your junk drawer? For writer Alexander Chee, answering that question resulted in a critically-acclaimed collection of essays called “How To Write An Autobiographical Novel.” Alex sits down with host Amanda Stern to talk about personal growth, what we can learn from roses, fair pay in the workplace, and divining the mysteries of the universe through tarot. About the Author:Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, and Guernica, among others.He is the winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. Chee is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. Episode Credits:This episode was produced, mixed, and sound-designed by Andrew Dunn, with editorial help from Beau Friedlander. Our host and co-producer is Amanda Stern. Music:“Rufus Canis” by Rufus Canis, “Timeless Love” by Joonie, “The Finch” by Rufus Canis, “Bloom” by Brian Sussman, “Anti Atlas” by Angele David Guillou, “Better” by Jackie Hill Perry,, “Uni Swing Vox” by Rufus Canis, “Grin” by JPoetic.
This talk examined the forms that grief can take, in the work of Zoe Leonard, Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, and John Constable. Kate Zambreno is the author of several acclaimed books, including Screen Tests, Heroines, and Green Girl. She has recently published a collection of talks and essays, Appendix Project, in the shadow of Book of Mutter, her meditation on grief. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. A novel, Drifts, is forthcoming in May 2020. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. Video and full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2020/02/10/video-forms-grief Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.
Join the Awakening Educator as we interview Lauren Markam, New York times best-selling author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. Lauren is also the Community Schools Manager at Oakland International Highschool, an Oakland Public School serving newcomer students from around the world. Lauren Markham is a writer and reporter based in Berkeley, California, and the author of The Far Away Brothers, a chronicle of unaccompanied minor migrants from El Salvador to the United States. Drawing on her expertise, Markham speaks about global refugee issues, Central American child migration in the U.S., environmental issues, and urban education and education policy. Having spent over a decade working with refugees and immigrants in nonprofits and schools, Lauren began reporting on unaccompanied minors from Central America in 2013. She continued reporting on this issue while supporting access to legal counsel, social services support, and mental healthcare for an influx of hundreds of unaccompanied minors at the school where she was working in Oakland, California, many of whom were fleeing the region's brutal violence. She began working on The Far Away Brothers to examine the root causes of this mass youth migration—to understand why all of these children were suddenly, alone and under extremely dangerous conditions, making their way from Central America to the United States. In 2019, she published a version of The Far Away Brothersadapted for young adults. An expert in migration, an educator, and an accomplished journalist, Lauren's work has appeared or is forthcoming in outlets such as The Guardian, Harper's, Orion, Guernica, VICE, Pacific Standard, The New Yorker.com and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts' MFA in writing program and has been awarded fellowships from the Mesa Refuge, the UC Berkeley 11th Hour Food & Farming Journalism Fellowship, The French American Foundation, The Rotary Foundation, and the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism.This show is brought to you by Your 3 Eyes:https://www.your3eyes.com/join-the-movement.html
Welcome to Circle of Willis! For this episode I'm sharing a conversation I had a while ago with BRIAN NOSEK, professor of Psychology here, with me, at the University of Virginia, as well as co-Founder and Executive Director of the CENTER FOR OPEN SCIENCE, also here in Charlottesville. Brian earned his PhD at Yale University way back in 2002, only about a year before I first met him here, when I was just a jittery job candidate. Brian has been in the public eye quite a lot in the past decade or so, not only due to his work with the Implicit Association Test, otherwise known as the IAT, but also and perhaps mainly for his more recent path breaking efforts to increase the transparency and reproducibility of the work scientists do. I think you'll find that in our conversation, Brian is relentlessly thoughtful about everything that comes up. And I want to say here, publicly, that I think he's absolutely right, at the very least, about the toxicity of the current system of incentives and rewards faced by academic scientists. Occasionally you'll hear that "science is broken." It's a great, click-baity phrase that thrives in our current social media ecosystem. But it's completely wrong. Science is not and has never been broken. Even now, science is our most precious, life affirming, life saving, human activity. Literally nothing humans have invented has done more than science has to improve our welfare, to increase our sensitivity to the natural world, or to reveal the forces and mechanisms that form and constrain our miraculous universe. But the institutional structures within which science is done are in bad shape. At the foundation, public funding for science is dismal, and that problem is yoked to the steadily declining public commitment to higher education in general. Our institutions have come to rely on bloated federal grants to just keep the lights on, and the responsibility for securing those federal dollars has fallen heavily on the shoulders of scientists who ought to be focused on making discoveries and solving the world's problems. And because that is a heavy burden, institutional structures have formed to incentivize -- some would say coerce -- scientists into striving for those federal dollars. Want to get tenure? Better bring in some big federal grants. Want 12 months of continuous salary? Better bring in some big federal grants. You get the idea. But there are other problems, too. Want to get a good raise? You'd better publish a lot. Note that I didn't say you'd better publish excellent work. No one would say that excellent work isn't valued -- it is -- but what you really want is good numbers, because numbers are easier to evaluate. And we love indices we can point to, that can help us evaluate each other as algorithmically as possible. So each individual scientist has an h-index associated with their name (Google Scholar thinks mine is 44). Journals come with impact factors. And all of these indices are relatively easy to game, so professional advancement and stability orients itself toward gaming the indices at least as much as doing high quality work. In the meantime, a profession -- a passion, and even an art, really -- can gradually transform into a cynical race for money and prestige. And though a scientist may well grow skilled at reeling in the money during their career, whatever level of prestige they attain will ultimately fail them. As John Cacioppo argued in a previous episode of this very podcast, you and your specific work are not likely to be remembered for long, if at all. Prestige and recognition are understandable but ultimately foolish goals. Far better, Cacioppo argued, to focus your attention on the process -- on the doing of your work. And your best shot at enjoying that work -- perhaps at enjoying your life -- is to make sure that the work that you do is aligned with your values. Brian Nosek and I are in full agreement on at least one point: The system within which science is done -- particularly within which American science is done -- discourages a process-oriented focus, and, by extension, discourages us from aligning our scientific process with our values. Why? Because our institutions have to keep the lights on. So, science isn't broken at all. How could it be? Science is a system, a philosophy, perhaps even a moral commitment...to transparency and openness, to verifiability, to repeatability, to discovery, and, I would argue, to humility. Science is far more than a collection of methods and techniques, and, by the way, there is nothing about science that requires coverage by the New York Times to be valid. What may be broken is the system within which science manifests as a profession. So here's why I admire Brian Nosek so much: He isn't just complaining about things, the way I do. Instead, he's working hard to develop an alternative system -- a system based on the scientific process instead of rewarding outcomes, and, by extension, a scientific process based on deeply held scientific values. You and I may not agree with all the details in Brian's approach, but, you know, it's easy to criticize, right? Anyway, here are Brian Nosek and me, having a conversation in one of the conference rooms at the Center for Open Science. * * * Music for this episode of Circle of Willis was written and performed by Tom Stauffer of Tucson, Arizona. For information about how to purchase Tom’s music, as well as the music of his band THE NEW DRAKES, visit his Amazon page. Circle of Willis is Produced by Siva Vaidhyanathan and brought brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. Special thanks to VQR Editor Paul Reyes, WTJU FM General Manager Nathan Moore, as well as NPR reporter and co-founder of the very popular podcast Invisibilia, Lulu Miller.
Welcome to Part 2 of my conversation with SUSAN JOHNSON, inventor of Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT, which is an evidence based therapy for couples that she's been developing and refining for more than30 years. How do you develop and refine a psychological intervention? Well, on the one hand, you spend a lot of time working with your intervention targets—in Sue's case, romantic couples in distress. On the other hand, you put a lot of time and energy into subjecting the intervention to scientific studies, not only to see whether it works, but to pick apart HOW it works, what the mechanisms are. Sue's work has influenced thousands of therapists and couples over the past several decades, and her work continues to this day, as professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa, as founder of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and as inductee into the very prestigious Order of Canada in recognition of her profound service to her adopted country. In the last episode, I mentioned her books HOLD ME TIGHT and LOVE SENSE. I advise you to check them out if you are interested in sprucing up your relationships and learning a little about what Sue calls the science of love. Sue is certainly passionate and committed to this work, but you'll also find that she's unusually thoughtful about it, too. Sue is a first generation college student who grew up working in a pub, in Chatham, Kent, southeast of London. I think you can hear that background in her, in the way she allows herself a sort of straight-talky candor and accessibility. But don't let that accessibility fool you. Sue is one of our deepest and most sophisticated thinkers. So here in Part 2, we dive a little deeper into the scientific side of Sue's life and into the development of EFT. And we talk a little bit about what life's all about, too. Wisdom, folks. * * * Music for this episode of Circle of Willis was written and performed by Tom Stauffer of Tucson, Arizona. For information about how to purchase Tom’s music, as well as the music of his band THE NEW DRAKES, visit his Amazon page. Circle of Willis is Produced by Siva Vaidhyanathan and brought brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. Special thanks to VQR Editor Paul Reyes, WTJU FM General Manager Nathan Moore, as well as NPR reporter and co-founder of the very popular podcast Invisibilia, Lulu Miller.
Welcome to Part 1 of my epic conversation with SUSAN JOHNSON, inventor of Emotionally Focused Therapy—EFT—which is an evidence-based therapy for couples, one focused on repairing and enhancing the kinds of emotional bonds that we all depend on for our health and well being. The author of numerous scientific articles, Sue has also written a bunch of books—some for practicing psychotherapists and some, notably HOLD ME TIGHT and LOVE SENSE, for the general public. In 2017, Sue was honored by the Canadian Government with membership in the Order of Canada, one of Canada's highest civilian honors, which recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community, and service to the country. Sue is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa, and the founder of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. * * * Music for this episode of Circle of Willis was written and performed by Tom Stauffer of Tucson, Arizona. For information about how to purchase Tom’s music, as well as the music of his band THE NEW DRAKES, visit his Amazon page. Circle of Willis is Produced by Siva Vaidhyanathan and brought brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. Special thanks to VQR Editor Paul Reyes, WTJU FM General Manager Nathan Moore, as well as NPR reporter and co-founder of the very popular podcast Invisibilia, Lulu Miller.
Sarah has reported on socioeconomic class, politics and public policy for The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's online, VQR, Pacific Standard, Longreads, Guernica, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and many others. She was a Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government during the spring 2018 semester. www.sarahsmarsh.com
Joe Mungo Reed was born in London and raised in Gloucestershire, England. He has a master's in philosophy and politics at the University of Edinburgh and an MFA in creative writing at Syracuse University, where he won the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction. He is the author of the novel, We Begin Our Ascent, and his short stories have appeared in VQR and Gigantic and anthologized in Best of Gigantic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Episode 13, where I’m talking with NILANJANA DASGUPTA about how young women interested in STEM disciplines can benefit from women teachers and mentors. We also talk about Nilanjana’s fascinating family history that for generations has combined science and social activism. Nilanjana is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also serves as Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion. In Part 1 of this episode, Nilanjana talks about the origins of her work on women in STEM—how she discovered the effect of women mentors for young women in these disciplines—and gets us up to date on her latest attempt to use this knowledge to develop targeted interventions designed to encourage young women interested in STEM to stick with it! In Part 2, Nilanjana tells the story of her family history—a history of science and social activism that begins in India and influences her choices step by step to the work she’s doing today. We’ll also hear about some of her earlier work on what psychologists call implicit biases — the attitudes, beliefs or stereotypes thought by some to be guiding our actions unconsciously. As you’ll hear, Nilanjana’s contribution to this research radically changed how we understand it. * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 12, where JAY VAN BAVEL and I discuss the effect of moralizing language on political debates, how scientists--how we all--use social media to settle disputes, and how a kid from Fox Creek, Alberta manages to become a renowned social scientist at New York University. Jay is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University and an affiliate scholar at the Stern School of Business, in their Managment and Organizations program. Jay's work on group identity, social motivation, moral values, and political beliefs have rocketed him to the national spotlight as one of social science's most influential young scholars. Jay's work and perspective has increasingly seen him working with, and for, such popular outlets as Scientific American and the New York Times. Interested in learning more about Jay Van Bavel’s work? Check out some of these links: Jay Van Bavel on Twitter The Flexibility of Racial Bias (with Mina Cikara) Twitter’s Passion Politics * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 11, where NICOLE PRAUSE and I discuss, among other things, the scientific study of orgasm, the pernicious effects of social discomfort about sex on those trying to study it, and her journey from sleepy little Beaumont, Texas to sparkly, cutting-edge Los Angeles. Life hasn’t always been easy for Nikky, but that’s just made her scrappy—a determined problem solver. Nikky Prause is an expert psychophysiologist and neuroscientist. She trained among other places at the KINSEY INSTITUTE for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, at Indiana University in Bloomington. She’s an associate research scientist at UCLA and a licensed clinical psychologist. Recently, she founded LIBEROS, LLC, which is her very own private research institute and biotech company. I don’t have a Nicole Prause book to link to here, but I do have things for you to check out if you’re interested in learning more (see links below). And I do want to say this: Nicole Prause is doing vitally important work—work that for all kinds of bad reasons has been made unreasonably difficult for her to do. She has been subject to threats, lies, attempts to derail her career…it goes on and on. So she has fashioned an unorthodox approach that seeks to overcome the various and relentless impediments she’s had to face. This makes me think at least two things: 1) She really is going to win these battles. Don’t let her good humor and warmth deceive you—she’s a real fighter. 2) We owe Nikky a tremendous debt of gratitude. She’s fighting to do her work, yes, but when the ultimate accounting is done—when we realize the fruits of her labor—we’ll realize that WE are the real beneficiaries. So thanks Nikky. Keep up the fight. We’re standing with you. And here are those links I promised! Check them out: Nicole Prause in the Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers Studying Sexual Rewards: It May Not Be Orgasm: TEDx Boulder * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 10, where I talk to DAVID SLOAN WILSON, Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, about, well, a lot of stuff, from Skinnerian behaviorism to multilevel selection theory, to the behaviors that impede and facilitate scientific progress and even to what Wilson calls “the science to narrative chain,” which is the process by which scientists might most effectively engage with the general public. Wilson is the author of numerous classic papers in the field of evolutionary biology and several books, including Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, and others. And as if that weren’t enough, Wilson also founded Binghamton University’s Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program, as well as the Evolution Institute, which sets as its goal the application of evolutionary science to the solving of pressing social issues, and, ultimately, to improve quality of life around the globe. The Evolution Institute in turn publishes a fascinating online magazine called This View of Life, “an online general interest magazine in which all of the content is from an evolutionary perspective.” I was a little starstruck during our conversation, but David was an amazing sport about it, generously engaging with each topic and happily spending time with me. I’m extremely grateful for this. My advice for listening is to keep a notepad handy. David Sloan Wilson is almost perpetually quotable! Enjoy! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 9, where I talk to HAL MOVIUS, founder and president of Movius Consulting, about the nature of confidence, the ways in which confidence can both help us and hurt us when we’re working through a difficult negotiation. My conversation with Hal takes Circle of Willis in a bit of a different direction, since Hal isn’t currently a working scientist, per se, but is instead applying his training and expertise in behavioral science to work with some of the world’s most impactful and recognizable companies and NGOs, including Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Ogilvy & Mather, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, the United Nations Development Program, the Federal Aviation Administration, the University of Chicago, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Rockefeller Foundation! Hal advises these organizations about the science of negotiation, influence, emotion regulation, leadership, and organizational development. As he notes in our conversation, “[the science on these topics] makes you cautious. It helps you recognize BS, which is in no short supply…[there are] endless claims…endless misrepresentations of research…and I like to think that the advice that we’re giving is really grounded in evidence…” Hal is a trusted advisor to the leaders of these companies, not least because he helps them spot and avoid unsupported claims and advice. Hal is the author of two books: Resolve: Negotiating Life’s Conflicts with Greater Confidence (2017, LifeTree Media) and Built to Win: Creating A World Class Negotiating Organization (Harvard Business Press, May 2009). He has produced a bunch of films on negotiation and influence challenges, published papers on the effectiveness of negotiation training, cross-cultural business negotiations, and dealing with difficult negotiation counterparts, and he has taught at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Most importantly, Hal Movius is among the closest friends I’ve ever had—ever will have. I met him 20+ years ago as a first-year graduate student at the University of Arizona, and my life has been far better as a result. In this episode, Hal talks with me not only about his specific areas of expertise, but also about how he came to work in the private sector instead of academia, when, it seemed to me, academia was his natural home. Hal has does things differently than most of us. He’s an independent thinker, and he’s passionate about his work. I’m thrilled to be able to share him with the world! Oh! Catch Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate interview with Hal here! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 8, where I talk to SIMINE VAZIRE, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, about the stability of personality, our ability to know ourselves, and some of the nuances within the prescriptive advice of the Open Science Movement. Simine wears a number of different hats. In recent years, she’s been at or near the center of ongoing conversations among scientists about the virtues and challenges of open science. As part of this work, she co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) and co-hosts a science podcast (with Sanjay Srivastava and Alexa Tullett) called THE BLACK GOAT. Simine is also editor in chief of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and a senior editor at Collabra. Interestingly, Simine has also been a part of the conversation about the process of criticism in science. As most listeners well know, criticism is unquestionably essential if science is going to be self-correcting (which is of course the whole point!). One question the field has been grappling with is the point at which criticism crosses over into harassment and bullying—a question at the heart of a recent op-ed Simine wrote for Slate. I have my own thoughts on this question, which I’ll save for another time, but one of the reasons I was so keen to ask Simine to be on Circle of Willis is that I find her approach to grappling with such questions to be equal parts humble, charitable, and firm. She isn’t likely to allow a legitimate criticism to be brushed aside in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, but neither is she going to participate in (or for that matter tolerate) bullying. I think that in our age of shoot-from-the-hip outrage, that can be a hard path to find, let alone walk, and I genuinely admire her efforts. There are many other things I love about Simine, but as you’ll hear in this episode, at or near the top of the list of her agreeable traits is that she’ll be the first to tell any of you that sometimes she’s wrong. We try to be right while tolerating (and admitting to) our mistakes. Oh, and — seriously — keep a notepad handy for this episode. Simine is unusually quotable! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 7, where Professor MARCO IACOBONI and I talk about the mirroring, mirror neurons, the science of empathy, and how we understand the minds of others. Marco is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he directs the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory within the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Marco has written volumes of vitally important scientific papers, including a very famous paper published in the journal Science back in 1999 called Cortical Mechanisms of Human Imitation. But Marco has also written a fantastic, highly readable book for the general public that I recommend to anyone interested in the human mind generally, and human empathy more specifically. This book is called MIRRORING PEOPLE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HOW WE CONNECT WITH OTHERS, and, as I said, it is excellent. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Check this out: “Those of us who thirty years ago began to speculate about the social brain never guessed what riches were in store. Iacoboni's book is both a thrilling account of how research on mirror neurons is revolutionising our understanding of inter-subjectivity, and a passionate manifesto for what he calls ‘existential neuroscience.’ Mirroring People does for the story of mirror neurons what The Double Helix did for DNA.” —Nicholas Humphrey, author of Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness As enjoyable as Marco is in Episode 7, I wish all my listeners could spend some actual time with him. Marco Iacoboni is one of he friendliest, optimistic, and open-minded folks you’re likely to meet. I feel very lucky indeed to count him as a friend. Thanks for the great conversation, Marco! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 6, where Professor JOHN CACIOPPO and I talk about inferring causal associations between mind and body, and how to be human is to care for others. John is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, and the founder and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, at the University of Chicago John’s contributions to the fields of Social Psychology, Psychophysiology, Social Neuroscience (an entire field he helped create more or less from scratch), research methodology, philosophy of science…on and on…would be hard or impossible to overstate. He is a quasi-religious figure to me in that I’ve been reading his methodological critiques and recommendations about mind-body research, as well as his work on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Electromyography, and Loneliness, for my entire career. I’ve described his groundbreaking book, PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY (later, the HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY) as the holy text of my scholarly origin story, and I mean it. It was published in 1990, right about the time I went back to college as a nervous 21-year-old, and soon after going to work in John Gottman’s lab. There, the book was literally required reading. As I moved through graduate school and well into my career, John has been a guide to the work I do, conceptually, methodologically, and philosophically, and the same can be said of a relatively unknown ocean of researchers all across the globe. John’s recent popular book, LONELINESS, covers decades of work he and others have done documenting the cost of social isolation, whether “objective” isolation (as he calls it) or perceived. It turns out that perceived isolation may be the most harmful of the two kinds, and in any case, isolation kills. We are not a species that relies on our own resources to survive just long enough to reproduce. We are a species that cares for others, and that expects to be cared for. At any rate, I hope you enjoy this chance to spend a little time with one of psychology’s most prolific and restless minds. I know I did. * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 5, where Neuroscientist LISA FELDMAN BARRETT and I talk about the nature of human emotion, and how misunderstanding emotion may be more consequential than you think. Lisa is one of the world's leading theorists of emotion—of what emotions are—and the conclusions she’s drawn from decades of research may surprise you—a lot. Her work so compelling and fresh that it's been prominently featured—along with Lisa herself—pretty much all through Season 3 of the popular NPR podcast INVISIBILIA, which is all about the invisible forces that control human behavior. Lisa and I spoke in Boston shortly after her recent book came out. It's called, HOW EMOTIONS ARE MADE: THE SECRET LIFE OF THE BRAIN and I highly recommend it. This book has got everything. It’s feature interest—human emotion—is compelling all by itself. But her exploration of the topic draws from a deep dive into neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, behavioral ecology, linguistics, philosophy, and on and on—following whichever leads help her find answers. And along the way, she accessibly addresses tough theoretical questions like, "what is a brain even for?” “How do brains work?” and “Why does this matter?” But Lisa also gets into why researchers might have gotten these questions wrong for so long—and that not only touches on a lot of contemporary controversies regarding the way science is done, but also grounds the doing of science in a historical and cultural perspective. This really highlights, among other things, the fact that science is a human activity, conducted by people who, just like you, sometimes have a hard time reconciling strongly held beliefs with conflicting evidence. Science is hard, friends. It requires cleverness, sure, but also courage and persistence. Lisa Feldman Barrett has all of that in abundance. * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 4, where Professor WIL CUNNINGHAM and I discuss the beauty of complexity, psychology’s language trap, and the unconscious processes that shape our conscious motivations. We also talk about the aesthetics of data analysis, what it might feel like to discover that ESP was real, and the various factors that lead Wil to a life in the sciences. Wil is a Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Psychology and at the Rotman School of Management. And Wil has received about a bazillion awards for his work, including a Janet Taylor Spence Award For Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science. He’s the current Editor at Psychological Inquiry, and he’s served on a bunch of editorial boards, from the journal Emotion to Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. I don’t have a Wil Cunningham book to link to here, though I do have things for you to check out if you’re interested in reading more. But before I get to that, I feel compelled to share with you a picture (left) that Wil sent me only the week before this episode was posted, that shows the real inner workings of the modern scientific laboratory: a couple of hacked together old computers that people in Wil’s lab thought were obsolete. (Extra points for the desk positioned to face the blank cinderblock wall.) Wil and I like to use a term we invented for situations like these, which is Scrappy Science. Scrappy Science is science that boldly pushes forward when resources are not available, either in abundance or at all. And for those of you who are not scientists, here’s a little secret: Although not all science is Scrappy Science, I’d estimate that about 85% of it is. Scrappy Science is the science that scientists manage to do against the odds, when salaries are relatively low, old materials are all that’s available, and, often enough, you’ve got to just invent the tool you need because it literally doesn’t exist otherwise. Wil Cunningham is the consummate Scrappy Scientist! And here are those readings I promised! Check them out: Hierarchical Brain Systems Support Multiple Representations of Valence and Mixed Affect Affective Flexibility: Evaluative Processing Goals Shape Amygdala Activity Attitudes and Evaluations: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 3, where I discuss the science and politics ofsexual identity with LISA DIAMOND of the University of Utah. We’ll also hear about Lisa’s personal story—how she came to identify as a feminist, as a lesbian, and as a scientist, and how all of those identities have converged on a profound body of work. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into this research, you should check out her award-winning 2009 book entitled, SEXUAL FLUIDITY: UNDERSTANDING WOMEN'S LOVE AND DESIRE, about which Hanne Blank of Ms. had this to say: "Captivating, nuanced, and rigorous… Diamond’s work is vital precisely because sexual fluidity is not a new concept—Freud called his version ‘polymorphous perversity’—but merely one that is typically dismissed. Nor is it news to women, particularly not to a generation for whom a nonspecific ‘queer’ affiliation, or no affiliation at all, is increasingly common. What is so important is not that this fluidity exists, but that someone has finally paid it systematic attention and found that it is in fact not the exception, but may well be the rule." And while you're at it, check out this truly seminal paper Lisa wrote for Psychological Review on the differences between romantic love and sexual attraction in the determination of sexual orientation. It’s an amazing piece of work, and pretty accessible even for non-specialists. Here it is: WHAT DOES SEXUAL ORIENTATION ORIENT? A BIOBEHAVIORAL MODEL DISTINGUISHING ROMANTIC LOVE AND SEXUAL DESIRE * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Welcome to Episode 2, where I talk with Professor ELI FINKEL of Northwestern University about everything from the history and science of marriage, to the trade-offs underlying science's contemporary methodological growing pains. Although you may recognize Eli from his many New York Times op-eds, you may not know that his book, THE ALL OR NOTHING MARRIAGE, is set to hit bookstores September 19th. You can get it for your Kindle, in hardcover, or even as an audiobook. Many others have already heaped praise upon his book--among them folks like Aziz Ansari, Adam Grant, and my old friend and mentor John Gottman, so I won't say much except that one of its best attributes is how clearly you can hear Eli's voice in the text--a rarity in this hyper-edited genre (so a tip of the hat to Eli's editor, too). It really is essential reading if you want to understand modern marriage on any level--either abstractly as a scientific question or, concretely, as a guide to your own. When I spoke with Eli for CIRCLE OF WILLIS, he was in the midst of writing it, and I'm delighted to see it hit the bookshelves. Buy it, enjoy it. * * * A NOTE ON THE CONTENT OF OUR CONVERSATION In many ways, my conversation with Eli hits the bullseye of what I was hoping to accomplish with this podcast, which is to capture the essence of the great conversations I've had over the years with colleagues as I visited other universities or attended conferences. We talk about his book and his research area, meander through some theoretical backcountry, confess some of our methodological sins, and ruminate together about the future of science. It's marvelous. And... I thought it might also be nice to have a few links to extended readings for those inclined to do so. So here are a few topics that might have left a few listeners scratching their heads. Maslow's hierarchy of needs Nash equilibrium Attachment Style Meta Analysis As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
Coming this Fall to wherever you get your podcasts, it’s CIRCLE OF WILLIS, a podcast for and about the scientists, authors, journalists (and even a few mystics) who make and communicate science for all of us. Circle of Willis is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship, and is a member of the Teej.fm network. Find out more at TEEJ.FM
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and “…the realities of making a living in the writing world.” Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers?, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and “…essays from today’s most acclaimed authors–from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen…” on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In Part One of this file Manjula Martin and I discuss: Why the school of real life is so valuable to writers How an unpaid internship led to a dream job The revenge of analog and print magazines How a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living ManjulaMartin.com How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part One Who Pays Writers? Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine three cents newsletter by Manjula Martin Manjula Martin on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How the Editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Manjula Martin Writes: Part One Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I am your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers to learn their secrets. The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award winning magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and the realities of making a living in the writing world. Manjula is the founder of the website, Who Pays Writers, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Miss Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and essays from today’s most acclaimed authors from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Franzen, and many others on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. In part one of this file, Manjula and I discuss why the school of real life is so valuable to writers, how an unpaid internship led to her dream job, the revenge of analog and print magazines, and how a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. A quick note to subscribers that the show will be moving to Tuesdays for 2017 so look for part 2 of this file January 17th. Thanks for listening. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. We are back on The Writer Files with a special guest. Manjula Martin is joining us today. Writer, editor, managing editor of Zoetrope magazine, a fantastic magazine that I’m a big fan of, and also the editor of a brand new book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, a fantastic new edition. Thanks for joining us. Manjula Martin: Thanks, it’s great to be here. Why the School of Real Life is So Valuable to Writers Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, so I’d love to talk about the book itself, which I think is an important one, at least an inspiring one for writers of every level out there in the world. But, let’s talk a little bit about kind of your origins as a writer. You contribute to the book itself and it’s a fantastic, inspiring story about your own journey, but let’s talk a little bit about that kind of, maybe for listeners who don’t know you or are familiar with your journey, kind of where you’ve been and a little bit of that story of where you’re going, maybe, too. Manjula Martin: Do you have any tips? Yeah, my journey is somewhat meandering, but also rather direct in its way. I’ve always been into writing in some way or another. I wrote poetry and letters and a zine when I was young. From there I worked in journalism. I was a receptionist at a magazine. Then I was a reporter at a magazine. I also worked outside of journalism a lot. I’ve worked a lot of service jobs. I’ve worked a lot of day jobs where I’m a writer in addition to doing creative writing on my own. I’ve done copywriting. I’ve been a marketing editor at nonprofits and art organizations. I’ve been a full-time freelancer for many, many years. I write fiction and nonfiction and I edit. About a year ago I got the job as managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, so that’s, at the moment, a proper day job that I have. I think, I guess, I would say my path has been somewhat meandering but a cool part of that is that I have gotten to do all kinds of stuff and I’ve gotten to experience what it’s like to be a writer in many different situations. As your job, not as your job, different types of writing, different environments, different goals, and so I tend to describe myself as sort of a generalist, I guess, in that way. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a fascinating path and you write about it. You’ve written about it quite extensively. It seems like it’s led you to this, some great epiphanies, and you have some amazing advice for writers. The book obviously is an extension of that, and it’s this beautiful collection of essays and interviews that you yourself have done and some others have done. Congrats on the book. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: By the way. Once this is published the book will have just come out so writers and readers can find it. Manjula Martin: At Readscratch.com. Kelton Reid: Yes, yes, Readscratch.com. That is the official website for the book. Where else can we find your writing? You’ve written for quite a few kind of high profile magazines and literary What Manjula is Working on Now Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah, what I’ve mostly published up to this point is I’ve done a lot of like essay writing, personal essay and mix of reported and personal essay. Yeah, I’ve done stuff. The essay that is in the book was first assigned by the VQR, the Virginia Quarterly Review. I’ve written for Pacific Standard and Aeon, which is a really cool British publication online, a bunch of The Awl family websites. I used to write for The Toast (R.I.P), so those are some of the places where my work lives online still. If folks want to actually read stories I’ve written, you can just go to my personal website and I have clips there. You can click on all the links you want. Then I’m also working on a novel, which you cannot yet read but will at some point. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Hopefully. Then I’m also, you know, I’ve been working on this project with Scratch for several years now. It started out of Who Pays Writers, the website, and then it sort of became it’s own online magazine, and then that became a book. But I’m actually, right now, just starting to work on my next project, which is a bit of a pivot. I am co-authoring a gardening book with my father. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Manjula Martin: Who is a somewhat acclaimed organic gardening instructor. Kelton Reid: That’s fantastic. Manjula Martin: We’re writing a book for Ten Speed Press about how to grow fruit trees. Kelton Reid: Amazing. Manjula Martin: But that will be a different kind of project, yeah. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well it’s kind of hard to keep track of all the stuff you’re getting into, but it’s Manjula Martin: I thought, as you were listing it out, I sound like a crazy person. Kelton Reid: No, but it’s inspiring. As I’m looking at your bio, there’s like the short version in there and then you start to dig into it a little bit and it’s like, wow, you’ve done so many cool things, so kudos. Manjula Martin: Part of that is that I’ve had about 4,000 jobs. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Because I didn’t graduate from college around the time that most people graduate from college. I dropped out of college after a year and just went to work. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: A lot of that experience comes from school of real life. Kelton Reid: Right. Manjula Martin: I did eventually go back and get my Bachelor’s Degree just a few years ago, which was a really interesting experience being a grown-up and going back to school in that way. That’s part of, I think, what is an important sort of approach that I took to the book too, is like I think there’s a perception that there’s some sort of divide behind like schmancy literary world and more commercial or other types of writing or journalism. That has not been the case in my life. I have done everything and continue to do everything. I love everything and I’m interested in everything. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: I can totally read a chick-lit book and I can totally read a fancy literary novel. Each of those have value in their own way to me in my life. I’ve really experienced that, I think, through my winding career path. Part of what I did with the book, with Scratch, was try to bring together writers who you might not normally find in the same place under the umbrella of the book. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well, the book has so much wisdom. There are heartbreaking pieces and there are truly inspiring pieces. Manjula Martin: It’s so good to hear that because my great fear with the book is that it will be depressing. Kelton Reid: No, I didn’t take it that way at all. In fact, there’s just so much. There’s so much to unpack that it’s, I think, it is one of those that you’re just going to want to keep around and keep getting nuggets from. It’ll be one that people will keep on their desks as just kind of inspiration; open it up, read a section. But you know, as you kind of are talking about your own journey, it’s like, I think it’s obviously given you kind of the vision that everybody’s financial situation is different, right? Everyone has different goals. You talk about their different backgrounds and emotional hangups. It’s really cool that you’ve done work to help writers to kind of at least bring some transparency to these age-old questions of, you know Manjula Martin: Yeah. Kelton Reid: Should you quit your day job? Which you talk about extensively. How do creators make money and why aren’t we talking more about how everybody’s journey is different and everybody’s needs are different? Anyway, I think it’s all really great. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Writers especially will love this one, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. Kudos on that. It’s exciting to see. Manjula Martin: Thank you so much. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, and now you are a managing editor at Zoetrope, which has been around for what, almost 20 years now, this magazine. Manjula Martin: Next year is our 20th birthday. Kelton Reid: It’s a kind of a storied institution. I have been reading it since probably around the turn of the millennium. Manjula Martin: Cool. Kelton Reid: There’s just been some great authors, David Mamet for instance, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Murakami and then some art editors including David Bowie, is that right? Manjula Martin: Yes. Kelton Reid: Who worked on the magazine. I remember the David Burn issue. Manjula Martin: That was a good one, yeah. How an Unpaid Internship Led to a Dream Job Kelton Reid: Yeah. That must be a challenging job. Then you’re also kind of rubbing elbows with all these newer, exciting authors and older, established authors. Manjula Martin: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I won’t lie. All-Story is a magazine that I have also been a huge fan of for many, many years. I will be very honest and tell you that the path that led me to getting this job was that I did an unpaid internship there about 10 years ago. Kelton Reid: Wow, wow. Manjula Martin: I’m generally not pro unpaid internships but I am also pro transparency, so that’s how that works. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: I was an adult. I was going back to college and I was like, “Ooh, I could do an internship. This is like my chance to do an internship,” because normally I am working all the time and could never do that. I actually took out extra loans so that I would be able to not work as much because I was working the whole time I was in school. I was like, If there was one magazine where I would want to be an intern, what would it be? It’s All-Story and it’s here in San Francisco where I live. I miraculously was able to do that for a short period of time. Then I just stayed in touch with the editor. We have coffee every once in awhile. He’s a wonderful, brilliant editor named Michael Ray and he’s been at the magazine for probably about 15 years I think, a very long time. Kelton Reid: Wow. Manjula Martin: Most of the amazing, amazing short fiction you see in the magazine has had his touch in some way on it. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: It’s really cool. It’s also really cool to see sort of it is a very, you know, we’ve won some awards. We have a pretty nice reputation. We get to publish amazing authors. As the managing editor, I am deeply involved in the process with the guest designers. We have a different artist guest design each issue of the magazine and they contribute all the imagery for the magazine as well as dictate the look and feel of it, so every issue looks entirely different, like different mastheads. Sometimes it’s a different shape, different paper, you know Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: That sort of thing. That’s sort of an extra amazing part of it is sort of being able to make the connections between like visual storytelling and storytelling through fiction. Then, obviously, the magazine is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and he’s very interested in the connections between different kinds of storytelling. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Every issue we also reprint a story that has been made into a film. It’s along the lines of some of the other work I’ve done, like it is somewhat interdisciplinary. I’ve only been there for a short period of time, so I don’t really have any good stories from the trenches yet, but Michael and I often joke that we have an impossible … a job that basically shouldn’t exist now and is maybe a job from the 1960s where we work in an office in an old building and put out a print magazine. The Revenge of Analog and Print Magazines Kelton Reid: It’s cool to see. It’s great to see, as David Sax, my previous guest called it, the revenge of paper and a new return to analog. Manjula Martin: Yeah, I’m a fan. Kelton Reid: Yeah and especially print magazines and the resurgence of people’s love for those. Manjula Martin: Well and that I think is not necessarily unrelated to the economics of it, you know? It has been difficult for publications, whether they be fiction magazines or the New York Times, to find sustainable profit models online. While print advertising is not exactly a perfect beast, we all know how it works, you know? It’s somewhat clear as far as, as clear as advertising could ever be in terms of metrics. I experienced that putting out Scratch as a digital publication. It was wonderful and we had a pretty great subscriber base who were paying money to read this magazine on the internet, and it just wasn’t enough. Kelton Reid: That was the one you collaborated with Jane Friedman on, is that correct? Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Jane Friedman, who is an awesome blogger and educator about the business of publishing, and I launched that magazine together. Kelton Reid: She was on this show also so I’ll link to that episode. Manjula Martin: I want to listen to that one, yeah. How a Tumblr Became an Inspiring Collection of Stories on the Writing Life Kelton Reid: Yeah, and then the Who Pays Writers is a fantastic tool also, which I will link to, which seemed like it was a kind of an offshoot or connected with Scratch. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers actually came first. Kelton Reid: Okay. Manjula Martin: Then Scratch followed because there was a need for more context, basically. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers is just a list of rates that people have been paid to do freelance writing. Kelton Reid: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Manjula Martin: People submit their rates anonymously and then I post them. It started as a Tumblr, actually, in 2012 and then I sort of turned it into its own site. Through that people were sort of asking for more context around the numbers and that was sort of one of the ideas behind Scratch, was to sort of tell the stories behind the numbers. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer’s File podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.
On The Gist, how filmmaker Jennifer Nelson helped bring the birthday song back into the public domain. Plus, we welcome back Dax-Devlon Ross to discuss his research into black juror exclusion, one of the facets of the upcoming Supreme Court case Foster v. Humphrey. We first spoke with Dax-Devlon after he wrote about black jury exclusion in VQR last fall, and you can join Dax’s After Schools All-Stars on their World Trade Center climb fundraiser on Oct. 22, 2015. For the Spiel, as a general rule of thumb there’s something all Republicans hate: rules. Today’s sponsor: Stamps.com, where you can buy and print official U.S. postage right from your desk using your own computer and printer. Use the promo code THEGIST to get a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Just as polio loomed over the 1950s, and AIDS stalked the 1980s and ’90s, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts us in the early years of the twenty-first century. Over a decade into the United States’ “global war on terror,” PTSD afflicts as many as 30 percent of the conflict’s veterans. But the disorder’s reach extends far beyond the armed forces. In total, some twenty-seven million Americans are believed to be PTSD survivors. Yet to many of us, the disorder remains shrouded in mystery, secrecy, and shame. This week we speak with David Morris, former Marine turned war correspondent. While on assignment, David's humvee was hit by an IED (improvised explosive device) and his life was forever changed. In this episode we discuss America's hunger for violence, the effect of war movies on our nation (specifically we discuss the newest blockbuster - American Sniper), the truth about PTSD, and much more. David is the author of the brand new best-selling book, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. David Morris is a former Marine infantry officer. He worked in Iraq from 2004 to 2007 as a reporter for Salon and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His story “The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground” was originally published in VQR and was included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. In 2008 Morris was awarded a creative nonfiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as residencies at The MacDowell Colony and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. "The only people who don't think that America has an empire are Americans." - David Morris Quotes from David: What we learn in this episode: What is the mental and physical toll that war takes on a soldier? How are war movies distorting our feelings towards war and violence? What should the average person understand about post-traumatic stress disorder? Resources: The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder www.theevilhours.com New York Times Article by David Morris -- This episode is brought to you by: Shari's Berries: Go to Shari's Berries Get an amazing Valentine’s Day deal: Giant, juicy, freshly dipped strawberries – starting at $19.99! Or double the berries for $10 more! Lynda.com: Do something good for yourself in 2015 and sign up for a FREE 10-day trial to Lynda.com by visiting Lynda.com/smartpeople. Need suggestions? Try these: Getting things done - Lynda.com Breaking out of a rut - Lynda.com
Deni Béchard was born in British Columbia to Québécois and American parents and grew up in both Canada and the United States. He has also traveled in over fifty countries. His recently-published memoir, Cures for Hunger, describes growing up with his father who was a bank robber, and was both an IndieNext pick and Amazon Canada’s editor’s pick as one of the best memoir/biography of 2012. Empty Hands, Open Arms, a book about conservation in the Congo rainforest, was published in October 2013. His first novel, Vandal Love, was published in French and Arabic, and won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, both for the best first book in Canada and for the best overall first book in the British Commonwealth. It was also nominated for Le Prix du Grand Public Salon du Livre Montréal / La Presse, 2008, as well as the French version of Canada Reads (Le Combat des Livres, 2009), and in 2012 was on Oprah’s Book Club’s summer reading list. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Edward Albee Foundation. He has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and has written for a number of magazines and newspapers, among them the LA Times, Outside, Salon, VQR, the National Post, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He is introduced by Rachid Aadnani, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Wellesley College.
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