Podcasts about Yaddo

Join "Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey and special guest Anna SperberIn this episode of  "Dance Talk” ® , host Joanne Carey interviews choreographer Anna Sperber, who shares her journey into the world of dance, her education, and her artistic identity. They discuss her upcoming piece 'Beacons' at the American Dance Festival, the role of the audience in dance, and the creative process behind choreography. Sperber reflects on the influence of motherhood and Martha Graham on her work, the importance of somatics, and her initiative 'Class, Class, Class' aimed at fostering new teaching talent. The conversation culminates in her thoughts on receiving the Bessie Award and her excitement about returning to ADF.Anna Sperber is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer. Her work has been described by The New York Times as “immediately compelling” and “wonderfully strange” with “moments of theatrical magic.” Her performances are rooted in the poetic potency of choreography and its potential for perceptual transformation, embodying a tension between formality and chaotic wildness.Sperber received a 2022 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award for Outstanding Choreographer / Creator for Bow Echo (2021). Her work has been presented and commissioned by The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater UNLEASHED Series, The Chocolate Factory, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Roulette, Gibney Dance, and Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, as well as by the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. Sperber has received fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco Italy, the Marble House Project, as a Schonberg Fellow at Dance The Yard, Dance Initiative in Carbondale Colorado, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance DiP (Dance in Process), Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Movement Research. Her work has been supported by New Music USA Live Music for Dance, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and Brooklyn Arts Council, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, and a 2025 NYSCA Grant to Individual Artists. Sperber has collaborated extensively with esteemed experimental composers and live musicians as well as visual designers in New York City. These interdisciplinary collaborations are crucial to the integration of visual and sonic landscapes with the moving body in her work. As a performer, she has worked with many New York-based choreographers including luciana achugar and Juliette Mapp.Sperber was a co-founder of classclassclass, designed to nurture new dance teachers while offering reduced class rates, and has taught as a guest artist at American Dance Festival, Movement Research, Freeskewl, Gibney Dance, Hunter College, George Washington University, and Wayne State University. Sperber founded and ran BRAZIL, a studio and intimate performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014 and Sunset Space from 2019-2020. More about Annahttps://www.annasperber.com/See the performance at American Dance Festivalhttps://americandancefestival.org/event/anna-sperber/2025-06-25/“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Careywherever you listen to your podcasts. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dancetalkwithjoannecarey.com/⁠⁠Follow Joanne on Instagram @westfieldschoolofdance Tune in. Follow. Like us. And Share. Please leave a review! “Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey "Where the Dance World Connects, the Conversations Inspire, and Where We Are Keeping Them Real."

In episode nine of Comics Karma, Lauren calls in from Yaddo, where she is in a totally intense headspace and is finishing a chapter with the luxury of not having to worry about daily, ordinary tasks. We caught up with her for an hour to talk about this experience. Then we welcomed SAW member Janice Goldberg, to talk about imposter syndrome, and about when it's ok to take a break on a very intense, personal story. This led to a discussion about “telling our story” vs daily therapeutic aspects of drawing and writing, about catharsis, about improv, about personal transformation, and about all the things we go through when tackling intense situations in our art.Give it a listen ! And come back for more. We'll be answering a different student each week for a few more weeks! Recorded at SAW on Zoom Thanks for listening! As always, you can participate live, by joining us in the COMICS FLOW + PUBLISH section of SAW Comics, or just visit us at sawcomics.org Get full access to How to Make a Graphic Novel at sawcomics.substack.com/subscribe

The artists retreat, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY nurtures talent, offering superb working space and time for artists, an engaged audience for their work, and a vibrant hub where diverse ideas and voices converge to inspire innovation.Since the first group of guests arrived in 1926, more than 6,500 artists have come to Yaddo. Such sustained support has helped launch and sustain some of the most celebrated careers in the arts.Collectively, Yaddo artists have won 83 Pulitzer Prizes, 1 Nobel Prize, 13 Academy Awards, 71 Emmy Awards, 34 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, 71 National Book Awards, 500+ Guggenheim Fellowships, and 16 Tony Awards.

This week, we discuss McSweeney's new quarterly issue: McSweeney's 78: The Make Believers, featuring writers of the Vietnamese diaspora. We are joined by contributors and guest editors of the issue, Thi Bui and Vu Tran, as well as McSweeney's Quarterly Editor Rita Bullwinkel. You can learn more about their work in the episode description below.During the episode, Thi, Vu, and Rita mention upcoming events in celebration of this issue. You can learn more about these special events at the links below. We hope to see you at one of these!Asian Art Museum | San Francisco | May 1 | 3:45 pm Natasha Reichle, Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art, leads a special curator's choice discussion with McSweeney's 78: The Make Believers co-guest editor Vu Tran and contributing author Doan Bui.Tenderloin Museum | San Francisco | May 1 | 6:00 pm A block party in the heart of Little Saigon. Readings by Vu Tran and Doan Bui, plus a DJ set by Topazu.University of Chicago | Chicago | May 15 | 5:00 pm Co-editors Vu Tran and Thi Bui will be joined by fellow contributor Isabelle Pelaud for a reading and celebration of the issue's publication.This conversation originally took place April 7, 2025 and was recorded via Zoom. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOMEMore about The Make Believers:In McSweeney's 78: The Make Believers (guest edited by Thi Bui and Vu Tran), ten writers of the Vietnamese diaspora write from the eclectic hodgepodge that is their shared imagination of what it means to be "Vietnamese." Packaged in a beautiful foil-stamped cigar box (with art by Bui on each and every surface), and including two booklets, one menu, and a glossary of broken Vietnamese, the work in this issue spans from highbrow to lowbrow, proper to naughty, logical to absurd, and painful to funny. Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, its contributors work across perspectives and multiple languages. In this completely singular, nothing-else-of-its-kind anthology, these artists write (and illustrate!) from a place of collective loss and joy.Featuring work by: Doan Bui, Thi Bui, H'Rina DeTroy, Anna Moï, Hoài Huong Nguyen, Vaan Nguyen, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Bao Phi, Paul Tran, and Vu Tran. Order your copy of McSweeney's 78: The Make Believers here.About our guests:THI BUI is a writer and artist from Viet Nam, California, and New York, now planting roots in New Orleans. Best known for her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, she has also been a longtime educator in public high schools, a professor of comics, an organizer and artist-activist, an ambivalent sculptor and puppeteer, and a fledgling screenwriter. She received a Caldecott Honor as the illustrator of her first children's book, A Different Pond, by Bao Phi.VU TRAN is the author of Dragonfish and a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His other writing has appeared in publications like The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007: The Best Stories of the Year, The Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and he is an associate professor of practice in the arts at the University of Chicago, where he directs undergraduate studies in creative writing.RITA BULLWINKEL is the author of Headshot and Belly Up, a story collection that won the Believer Book Award. She is a 2022 recipient of a Whiting Award, the editor of McSweeney's Quarterly, a contributing editor at NOON, the creator of Oral Florist, and a Picador Guest Professor of Literature at Leipzig University in Germany, where she teaches courses on creative writing, zines, and the uses of invented and foreign languages as tools for world building.

Photography by Balarama Heller Aaron Gilbert (b. 1979, Altoona, PA) lives and works between New York and Los Angeles. Gilbert received a BFA in painting from Yale University in 2005 followed by a MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2008. Gilbert also holds an Associate of Science in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Penn State University (2000). Gilbert's work has been exhibited with Sant'Andrea de Scaphis, Rome; PPOW Gallery, New York; Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles; Lyles & King, New York; and Deitch Projects, New York. Gilbert's work is in major public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Columbus Museum of Art, High Museum, and RISD Museum. Aaron Gilbert has also been the recipient of many awards including the Colene Brown Art Prize in 2022, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in 2015, and was named the 2010 “Young American Painter of Distinction” by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Gilbert has held residencies at Fountainhead Residency (2013), Yaddo (2012), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency (2008), and American Academy in Rome Affiliate Fellowship (2008). Aaron Gilbert • g • o • p • u • f • f •, 2025 Oil on linen 66 x 129 inches (167.6 x 327.7 cm) © Aaron Gilbert Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Photography by David Regen Aaron Gilbert The Fourth Way, 2024 Oil on linen 108 x 74 3/8 inches (274.3 x 188.6 cm) © Aaron Gilbert Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Photography by David Regen Aaron Gilbert Judah (Al Green), 2024 Oil on linen 21 3/4 x 28 7/8 inches (55.2 x 73.7 cm) © Aaron Gilbert Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Photography by David Regen

Mystics and prophets have reported receiving visions from the Divine for centuries—”Thus saith the Lord…”—Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Catherine of Siena, or Julian of Norwich. The list goes on.But what would you think if you met a seer of visions in the present day? Maybe you have.What about a prophet whose visions came like a movie screen unfurled before him, the images grotesque and vivid, all in the unsuspecting backwoods setting of Lookout Mountain, deep in the south of Tennessee.Would you believe it? Would you believe him? The beauty of fiction allows the reader to join the author in asking: What if?That's exactly what Jamie Quatro has allowed us to do in her newest work of literary fiction, Two-Step Devil.What if an earnest and wildly misunderstood Christian is left alone on Lookout Mountain? What if the receiver of visions makes art that reaches a girl who's stuck in the darkest grip of a fraught world? What if the Devil really did sit in the corner of the kitchen, wearing a cowboy hat, and what if he got to tell his own side of the Biblical story?On today's episode novelist Jamie Quatro joins Macie Bridge to share about her relationship to the theological exploration within her latest novel, Two-Step Devil; her experience of being a Christian and a writer, but not a “Christian Writer”; and how the trinity of main characters in the novel speak to and open up her own deepest concerns about the state of our country and the world we inhabit.Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, and Fire Sermon. *Two-Step Devil* is her latest work and is the winner of the 2024 Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing, and it's also been named a New York Times Editor's Choice, among other accolades. Jamie teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program.SPOILER ALERT! This episode contains substantial spoilers to the novel's plot, so if you'd like to read it for yourself, first grab a copy from your local bookstore, then two-step on back over here to listen to this conversation!About Jamie QuatroJamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent novel, Two-Step Devil, is the winner of the 2024 Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing. It has also been named a New York Times Editor's Choice, a 2025 ALA Notable Book, and a Best Book of 2024 by the Paris Review and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. A new story collection is forthcoming from Grove Press.Quatro's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper's, the New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and La Maison Dora Maar in Ménerbes, France, where she will be in residence in 2025. Quatro holds an MA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program, and lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Show NotesGet your copy of Two-Step Devil by Jamie QuatroClick here to view the art that inspired Jamie Quatro's Two-Step DevilProduction NotesThis podcast featured Jamie Quatro with Macie BridgeEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett & Emily BrookfieldA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Stephanie H. Shih in the studio, Brooklyn, NY, 2025. Photo: Robert Bredvad Stephanie H. Shih (b. 1986, Philadelphia, PA) renders outdated consumer goods as trompe l'oeil sculptures that reveal the tensions within American domestic life. Turning everyday items—a Thighmaster, a self-help book, many pantries' worth of condiments—into intricately painted ceramic objects transforms each into a permanent artifact. Seen together, the works play with notions of timelessness and obsolescence, nostalgia and disillusionment. Shih has exhibited work at James Cohan, New York, NY; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA; Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Bradbury Art Museum, Jonesboro, AR; and the American Museum of Ceramic Arts, Pomona, CA. The artist has also been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, New York, NY; residency at The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY as well as many others. Community work is central to Shih's practice, and since 2017, she has used her art and platform to raise over half a million dollars in direct aid for victims of state violence. Want to help? Click here. She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Works from Stephanie H. Shih's solo show Domestic Bliss (January 22-February 26, 2025) at Alexander Berggruen, New York. All works: 2023-2024, ceramic. Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Berggruen, NY. Photo: Robert Bredvad Stephanie H. Shih Filet-O-Fish, 2023 ceramic 5 1/2 x 5 x 5 1/2 in. (14 x 12.7 x 14 cm.) Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Berggruen, NY. Photo: Robert Bredvad.  Included in Stephanie H. Shih: Domestic Bliss (January 22-February 26, 2025) at Alexander Berggruen, NY. Stephanie H. Shih Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 2024 ceramic 7 x 4 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (17.8 x 11.4 x 3.8 cm.) Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Berggruen, NY. Photo: Robert Bredvad.  Included in Stephanie H. Shih: Domestic Bliss (January 22-February 26, 2025) at Alexander Berggruen, NY.

Welcome to the final installment of my interview with Paula Whyman, author of the new book, “Bad Naturalist: One Woman's Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop.” Paula's first book is “You May See a Stranger,” an award-winning, linked collection of short stories. Her work has been supported by fellowships from McDowell, Yaddo, and other residencies in Grants, and she was a Tennessee Williams scholar in fiction at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Today we find out what's currently brewing for Paula and what she knows at this moment about where her personal through line is leading her next, We covered: - The upside of winter - Why she's looking for American kestrels (a small raptor) every morning - A longing for sheep - Getting less frustrated by setbacks - The books she stays up late reading with a flashlight so as not to wake her husband Connect with Paula at paulawhyman.com. There are new Finding the Throughline episodes roughly every other week–hit “subscribe” so you know when the next ones drop! For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com. Thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, in celebration of Valentine's Day, three of America's leading romance writers—Xio Axelrod, Swan Huntley, and Claire Legrand—talk about how they write love stories and the love stories that inspired them. Moderated by author Pamala Knight.This conversation originally took place May 19, 2024 and was recorded live at the American Writers Festival. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOMEBooks by these authors:A Crown of Ivy and Glass by Claire Legrand — A lush, sweeping, steamy, forbidden romance series starter that's perfect for fans of Bridgerton and A Court of Thorns and Roses.Girls with Bad Reputations by Xio Axelrod — All her life, Kayla heard the same refrain: Don't be so loud. Don't act so wild. Don't take up so much space. Now she's the beating heart of an up-and-coming rock band...and the whole world is going to know her name.I Want You More by Swan Huntley — A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story.About the writers:XIO AXELROD [she/her] is a USA Today Bestselling author of contemporary fiction and romance. Growing up in the music industry, Xio began her recording career at a young age. Her experiences bring a lyrical quality to her writing and vibrancy to her characters, offering a unique perspective that adds depth and authenticity to the worlds she creates.SWAN HUNTLEY'S novels include I Want You More, Getting Clean with Stevie Green, The Goddesses, and We Could Be Beautiful. She's also the writer/illustrator of the darkly humorous The Bad Mood Book and You're Grounded: An Anti-Self-Help Book to Calm You the F*ck Down. Swan earned an MFA at Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo. She lives in Los Angeles.PAMALA KNIGHT writes historical paranormal, regency romance and mystery. She's a member of the Regency Fiction Writers, Hearts through History and the Chicago-North Romance Writers where she's a past president and programs chair. She's the current co-chair of the biennial conference, Spring Fling.CLAIRE LEGRAND used to be a musician until she realized she couldn't stop thinking about the stories in her head. Now she is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels, most notably A Crown of Ivy and Glass and the Empirium Trilogy, as well as The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, the Edgar Award-nominated Some Kind of Happiness, and Sawkill Girls, which was nominated for both a Bram Stoker Award and a Lambda Literary Award. She is also one of the four authors behind The Cabinet of Curiosities, a critically acclaimed anthology of short stories for young readers. Her next book, A Song of Ash and Moonlight, came out in September 2024. When not writing, Claire enjoys tending to her many plants, learning about fashion and interior design, rooting for the Phillies, and quoting Star Trek to anyone who will listen.

Matthew Leifheit, Photo by Shala Miller Matthew Leifheit is an American photographer, magazine editor, and professor based in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Yale School of Art, Leifheit is Editor-in-Chief of MATTE Magazine, the journal of emerging photography he has published since 2010. Leifheit's photographs have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Aperture, TIME, and Artforum, and have been exhibited internationally. His work has been supported by residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and The Watermill Center, receiving grants from the New York State Cultural Council and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, where he was awarded the Richard Benson Prize in 2017. He is currently full-time faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Gay Archive was presented at Union College Crowell and West Galleries and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design's Brant Gallery in the fall of 2024. "Matthew Leifheit: Gay Chorus" will be on view at REVERB Gallery in Tampa, Florida through February 14th. Selections from Leifheit's Gay Archive work will also be included in the Griffin Museum of Photography's upcoming exhibition "Nuclear Family," on view January 17th—March 30th 2025. Installation View of Matthew Leifheit: Queer Archive at Massachusetts College of Art and Design's Brant Gallery, November 2025 John Pfleiderer Body Hair Collection* (undated, collected prior to Pfleiderer's death in 1982) GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, 2023 40x30” dye sublimation print with footnote. Harvey Milk Underwear, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, 2023 40x30” dye sublimation print on aluminum Pedro Zamora Gift Image, 2024 22.75'' x 32.75'' offset lithography on newsprint, edition of 1000 copies.

Paula Whyman joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about getting out of our comfort zone,  her attempt to restore native meadows in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, becoming obsessed with subjects and deep diving, writing about science and nature, controlling and selecting details for impact, being attentive to what readers need, writing tangentially, the need for deadlines, when your editor calls you a meanderer, leaning into exploration and not shutting ourselves down, allowing our writing to reflect the way our minds work, and her new memoir Bad Naturalist.   Also in this episode: -jumping from fiction to nonfiction -talking with experts -reading work aloud   Books mentioned in this episode: The Leaving Season by Kelly McMasters H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy  Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy  Real Estate by Deborah Levy    Paula Whyman's new book, Bad Naturalist: One Woman's Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, is forthcoming from Timber Press/Hachette Book Group in January 2025. It's a blend of memoir, natural history, and conservation science, a chronicle of her attempts to restore retired farmland to natural habitat and what she discovered along the way. Her first book, the linked short story collection You May See a Stranger, won praise from The New Yorker and a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and won the Towson Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in journals including McSweeney's Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, and The Southampton Review. Her fiction was selected for the anthology Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review. Her nonfiction has been featured on NPR, and in the Washington Post, The American Scholar, and The Rumpus. She is co-founder and editor in chief of the literary journal Scoundrel Time.   Whyman has taught in writers-in-schools programs through the Pen/Faulkner Foundation in Washington, DC, and the Hudson Review in Harlem and the Bronx, New York. Her fiction is part of the curriculum at The Young Women's Leadership School in Harlem.   Whyman's work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, The Studios of Key West, and VCCA. She was a Tennessee Williams Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She served two terms as Vice President of the MacDowell Fellows Executive Committee.   Whyman is the recipient of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County. She was awarded an MSAC Creativity Grant and 2023 and 2024 Oak Spring Garden Foundation residencies and grants to support her work on Bad Naturalist.  Connect with Paula: Website: paulawhyman.com Instagram: @paulawhymanauthor Bluesky: @paulawhym  Mastodon: @paulawhyman@writing.exchange  – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

This episode on literary friendship with Claire Messud and Amitava Kumar was recorded live at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado at the June 2024 Lit Fest. Learn more about Lighthouse. Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essay collection is called Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. Her recent novel is called This Strange Eventful History. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family. Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and four novels. His new novel is My Beloved Life. Kumar lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. He serves on the board of the Corporation of Yaddo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paula Whyman's journey from bug-obsessed city kid to mountaintop conservationist is an inspiring environmental tale. Now the owner of a 200-acre Virginia mountaintop, she's traded her childhood fascination with cicadas for an ambitious ecological restoration project. Her new book Bad Naturalist chronicles this transformation. Despite the self-deprecating title, Whyman is dead serious about her mission. She's working to restore native plants and wildlife to her Virginia mountaintop, fighting invasive species, and challenging the notion that nature only exists in national parks. With 85% of American grasslands privately owned, she argues that individual landowners have a crucial role in conservation. Though she finds the concept of land ownership "weird" – questioning if she really owns the beetles and lichens – Whyman embraces her responsibility as a steward. Her regenerative agricultural project might seem idealistic, but each small victory, from a patch of restored meadow to the call of a bog quail, fuels her optimism for America's environmental future.Paula Whyman's first book of nonfiction is Bad Naturalist. Her earlier book, You May See a Stranger, is an award-winning linked short story collection. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post and The American Scholar, and in journals including McSweeney's Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Hudson Review. She was awarded residencies by MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, The Studios of Key West, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Her work on this book was supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council. She spends her time on a mountain in Virginia with her husband and a mercurial standard poodle. Visit Paula online at paulawhyman.comKeen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.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

Episode 455 / Mark Thomas Gibson Mark Thomas Gibson (b. 1980, Miami, FL) received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013. He was most recently named a recipient of the 2022 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and was awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. He was also a 2021-22 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and received a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in 2021. He was awarded residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collarworks, Troy, NY, in 2021; he was also a resident at the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH, in 2017. In 2016, Gibson co-curated the traveling exhibition Black Pulp! with William Villalongo. He has released two artist books, Early Retirement (2017), and Some Monsters Loom Large (2016).

Elise Engler's art ranges from the personal to the political, to various combinations of those elements. Her work consists of meticulous, highly pictorial drawings and paintings that capture and document the material world in all its myriad details. Her projects are large in scope, but often intimate in format, and are a narrative investigation of the world seen through its innumerable, but countable, individual components, assembled in suites and series of works. Engler has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in drawing, and an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant in painting. She has been the recipient of two MacDowell residencies, a Yaddo fellowship and a fellowship at Civatella Ranieri, In Umbria, Italy. She spent 2 months in Antarctica as an awardee of a National Science Foundation Antarctica Artists and Writers Grant. Her work has been written about in Art in America, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, among other publications, and she has shown in galleries across the U.S. and in Europe. Her project, A Year on Broadway, was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Her book, A Diary of the Plague Year: An Illustrated Chronicle of 2020, Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt/ MacMillan) was published in 2022. Engler lives and works in New York City. Box Camera, 2024 Oil on panel, 6 x 7 x 1 1/2 in 15.2 x 17.8 x 3.8 cm. January 6, 2021, 2023 Oil on canvas, 62 x 52 in 157.5 x 132.1 cm Homage to Florine Stettheimer's Cathedral of Art, 2024 Oil on panel, 5 x 6 x 1 1/2 in 12.7 x 15.2 x 3.8 cm

When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson's poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense memory of what was once so yearned for: to be seen, to be wanted, to be free.Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Washington, D.C. He has received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, VONA, Tin House, Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, Conversation Literary Festival, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference, among others. In 2017, Johnson received the Larry Neal Writers' Award from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His poems appear in The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and The Paris Review, among other journals and literary magazines. His first book, Inheritance, was published in November 2020 by Alice James Books.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Taylor Johnson's poem and invite you to subscribe to Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack newsletter, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen to past episodes of the podcast. We also have two books coming out in early 2025 — Kitchen Hymns (new poems from Pádraig) and 44 Poems on Being with Each Other (new essays by Pádraig). You can pre-order them wherever you buy books.

Sarah LaBrie joins Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about the year her mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the legacy of mental illness in her family, rethinking ambitions in light of tragedy and grief, releasing emotional pressure with writing, when fiction doesn't cut it, finding company for our mental illness stories, knowing why you want to write a memoir, learning to stop punishing ourselves, being a workaholic, processing our stories through writing, and her new memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart.   Also in this episode: -contemplating our parents' backstory -reading as much as you can -ketamine therapy   Books mentioned in this episode: Beautiful Days by Zack Williams Heartberries by Terese Marie Mailhot The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway Braiding Sweetgrass and all books by Robin Wall Kimmerer   Sarah LaBrie is from Houston, TX and is the author of the memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart (HarperCollins, October 2024). She is a TV writer, memoirist, and librettist. Sarah was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her fiction also appears in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Schools Fellow. Connect with Sarah: Website: https://www.sarahlabrielivesinlosangeles.com/ Get her book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/no-one-gets-to-fall-apart-sarah-labrie?variant=41476933419042 IG: @itsmesarahlabrie twitter: @sarah_labrie tiktok: sarahlabrie62 – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of Yr Dead (McSweeney's Books, 2024), longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of Yr Dead (McSweeney's Books, 2024), longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. 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

Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of Yr Dead (McSweeney's Books, 2024), longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They're the author of Yr Dead (McSweeney's Books, 2024), longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Sarah LaBrie is the author of the debut memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart, available from Harper Books. LaBrie is a writer from Houston, Texas. Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall and her fiction appears in Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in Los Angeles where she has written for television shows including Minx (Starz), Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (MAX), and Love, Victor(Hulu). She holds an MFA from NYU where she was a Writers in the Schools fellow. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly 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 Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired October 22nd, 2024) featuring award-winning poet Janet Kaplan who will explore the theme of “Chaos and Creativity” in her poetry. Her work has earned praise from poets and critics including Dan Beachy Quick and Adrienne Rich. Visit: Sharonisraelpoet.com.  Visit: Janet Kaplan Ecotones.   Janet Kaplan's full-length poetry books are Ecotones (2022; shortlisted for the Sexton Prize and published by The Black Spring Press Group Ltd., London), Dreamlife of a Philanthropist (2011 Sandeen Prizewinner from the University of Notre Dame Press), The Glazier's Country (2003 Poets Out Loud Prizewinner from Fordham University Press), and The Groundnote (1998, Alice James Books). Her collection & then is forthcoming from PB&J Books. Her honors include grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Bronx Council on the Arts, fellowships and residencies from the VCCA, Yaddo, Ucross, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, (An Introduction to the Prose Poem, Firewheel Editions, 2007; Lit from Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James, Alice James Books, 2012; and Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets & Writers, 2017). She has served as Poet in Residence at Fordham University and as a member of the undergraduate and graduate creative writing faculty at Hofstra University, where she edited the digital literary magazine AMP. Praise for Ecotones:"The personal. The citational. The chronicle. All the “conquistadorial spillage….” In Ecotones, Janet Kaplan pieces these verging environs. The writing is transitional; contemplative. We are reminded everywhere of how edges touch, how language is code. The poet has flipped the surface of the page to better show us a map of our disconsolate displacements. “Motion is the translation of a body from the place it occupies to another place,” writes Euler; Janet Kaplan: “and I, bit player, confessor-chronicler, / will write it.”  "- Edric Mesmer, author of Fawning and series editor of Among the NeighborsPraise for Dreamlife of a Philanthropist“…The poems here hover above their own titles, this dreamlife of the poem more important than the poem itself, a place in which thinking is not yet thought, intent not yet conclusive, not language even as a form of life, but language in the process of making that life possible.  It isn't a mental life; it's too real for that easy confine.  Let's just call it the necessary life – a life of serious play.”  - Dan Beachy-Quick

Kati Gegenheimer, photograph by Mark Gibson Kati Gegenheimer was born in Bucks County, PA, in 1984 and lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, where she is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.  She received a MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2013 and a BFA in Printmaking and Art History from the Tyler School of Art in 2007.  Her works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at North Orange, Montclair, NJ, 2022 and Gross McLeaf, Philadelphia, PA, 2021. Group and two-artist exhibitions include Kati Gegenheimer | Chenlu Hou, Kristen Lorello, New York, NJ, 2023, Mars in Cancer, David Peterson Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, 2023, Reveries, Peep Projects, Philadelphia, PA, 2022, and Good Pictures, curated by Austin Lee, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY, 2020.  She is the recipient of a Yaddo Artist Access Grant and a smART Ventures Grant, and has been granted artist residencies at The Goldey House Artist Residency, the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, and the Pollock-Krasner Residency at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. Kati Gegenheimer, Shell Songs, 2024, Oil on linen, 24 x 18 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Kristen Lorello, NY, Photo: Charles Benton Kati Gegenheimer, Correspondence, 2024, Oil on linen, 24 x 36 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Kristen Lorello, NY, Photo: Charles Benton Kati Gegenheimer, Atlas of Feeling, 2024, Oil on linen, 24 x 18 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Kristen Lorello, NY, Photo: Charles Benton

Sarah Gerard is the author of Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable, available from Zando Projects. Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Timescritics' choice; the novella Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize; two chapbooks; and the novel True Love. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies. She's been supported by fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Tin House, PlatteForum, Ucross, and the Whiting Foundation. She lives in Denver. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly 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 Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mala Iqbal was born in the Bronx in 1973 and grew up in a household where three cultures and four languages intersected. "The Edge of an Encounter," a solo show of her paintings and works on paper is currently on view at JJ Murphy Gallery in New York until November 9, 2024. Other solo exhibitions were at Soloway Gallery in Brooklyn; Ulterior Gallery, Bellwether Gallery, and PPOW in New York; Taylor University in Upland, Indiana; Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia; and Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles. Her series of collaborative paintings, made with Angela Dufresne, was shown in October 2021 at the Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, SUNY Purchase, and at LSU in Baton Rouge in November 2023. Her work has been exhibited in group shows throughout the United States as well as in Australia, China, Europe, and India. Her work has been reviewed in various publications including The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and The New Yorker. Iqbal has been awarded artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and the Hermitage Artist Retreat. She received a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2023. Mala Iqbal lives and works in New York City. Animals, 2024 Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches Ghost Friend, 2024 Gouache and crayon on gray paper 4 x 6 inches. Interrupture, 2024 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches.

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Sacha Yanow is interviewed by Julia Cowitt (SLC'24) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Sacha Yanow is an NYC/Lenapehoking–based actor, performance artist and organizer. Yanow's performance practice draws on theater, dance, queer performance, and Jewish cultural traditions to reckon with ancestral trauma, gender and sexuality, antizionism and assimilation. Since 2015, Yanow has created a trio of solo performances based on familial archetypes— Dad Band (2015), Cherie Dre (2018) and Uncle! (2024) — these embodied portraits act as an entry point to discuss broader social issues, as well as connect to estranged personal and cultural histories. Sacha's work has been presented by venues including The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Danspace Project, Joe's Pub, and the New Museum in NYC; PICA's TBA Festival/Cooley Gallery at Reed College in Portland, OR; and Festival Theaterformen in Hanover, Germany. They have received residency support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, Denniston Hill, LIFT Festival UK, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Mass MoCA, SOMA Mexico City, and Yaddo. Sacha has performed in theater, film and dance works by artists including Karen Finley, Sarah Michelson, Laura Parnes, Katy Pyle, Elisabeth Subrin, and Julie Tolentino. And they were a member of the Dyke Division of Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, creators of Room for Cream, the live lesbian soap opera. Sacha is also working on two ongoing collaborative projects: a short film Grey Matter with organizer Bilal Ansari, disrupting settler colonial mythologies of their hometown of Williamstown, MA (Mohican Land); And an embodied dialogue Thank You for the Fire Between Us with Johannesburg-based performing artist Tshego Khutsoane involving divination practices. Sacha currently works as creative consultant for fellow artists and organizations. They served as Director of Art Matters Foundation for 12 years, and previously worked at The Kitchen as Director of Operations. They received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and are a graduate of the William Esper Studio Actor Training Program. Sacha is a member of the NY chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein

Adam Simon (born Hampstead, England, 1952) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, known both for his paintings and for projects addressing the presentation and distribution of art. Simon's paintings often mine cultural phenomena, including newspaper layout and content, stock photography, iconic images from art history and (most recently) corporate logos. His current exhibition at OSMOS address, in NYC, combines fragments from past paintings. Simon's public projects began with Four Walls, an artists' forum and exhibition space that featured one-evening exhibitions with discussion. Simon co-directed Four Walls first with Michele Araujo in Hoboken, NJ (1984-1988) and subsequently with Mike Ballou in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY (1990-1998). The Four Walls archives are now housed in the Smithsonian Archive of American Art. Simon's other well-known public project was the Fine Art Adoption Network, in collaboration with the NYC nonprofit, Art in General. Beginning in 2006, over 350 artists posted images of works they were willing to give to adopters they selected from among those that solicited the works online. Over 600 works were adopted through FAAN. Simon has exhibited his paintings in the United States and Europe. He has been the recipient of several awards and grants including a NYC Percent for Art commission and a Yaddo artist's residency. As Much As 18 x 14 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024  SeeSaw by Neatlight 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024 Gloaming 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 2024

This is a PREVIEW of a PREMIUM episode for paying subscribers, Meghan welcomes back writer and physician Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care specialist who writes with exquisite care and candor about end-of-life issues. Sunita was on the podcast a little over a year ago talking about the hidden harms of CPR, which she wrote about for The New Yorker. She's back to discuss two articles she published this summer. One in The Atlantic about how doctors deal with terminal illness in younger patients and another in The Wall Street Journal about dying at home. We've been taught to assume that a good death means dying at home, or at least not in a hospital, but Sunita points out that this can be better in theory than in practice. This is another extraordinary conversation with one of listeners' favorite guests. GUEST BIO Dr. Sunita Puri is a palliative care physician and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a literary memoir recounting her journey to the practice of palliative care and what it means to help people find dignity, purpose, and comfort when facing serious illnesses and the end of life. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles times, Tricycle, The Wall Street Journal and Slate. This fall, she is joining the UC Irvine Medical Center faculty as the director of the inpatient palliative care service and associate professor of medicine. She was recently awarded a one-month Bogliasco fellowship for exceptional artists and has received writing residencies from Yaddo and MacDowell, among other places. The Atlantic, The Silence Doctors Are Keeping About Millennial Deaths The Wall Street Journal, Most People Are Dying At Home. Is That A Good Thing? Sunita's previous interview on The Unspeakable. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: New ones will be announced soon. See where we'll be!

Today, we hear from RO Kwon whose latest novel, EXHIBIT, was released in May. We're talking to Reese about writing about what scares you.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.To find Kwon's latest and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling Exhibit, a New York Times Editors' Choice, which published in May 2024 with Riverhead (US) and will be out in July 2024 with Virago/Little Brown (UK). Kwon's bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, has been translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited Kink, a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of the inaugural Joy Award. Kwon's writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Time, Vanity Fair, Guardian, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. Kwon was the 2024 Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.Photo: Jesse Dittmar 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

Today, we hear from Jamie Quatro whose latest novel, TWO-STEP DEVIL, releases in September. We're talking to Jamie about experimenting with form.Sorry! There's no audio/video version of this episode available. Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.To find Quatro's debut and many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. HER new novel, Two-Step Devil, is forthcoming from Grove Press in September 2024, to be followed by a story collection, Next Time I'll Be Louder. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, she is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and Maison Dora Maar in Ménerbes, France, where she will be in residence in the spring of 2025. Quatro holds an MA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program and lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.Photo by National Library of Medicine on Unsplash 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

A. J. Rodriguez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Papel Picado,” which appears in The Common's most recent issue. A.J. talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores a fraught moment in the life of a Latino high schooler struggling under the pressures of family, friendship, and expectation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A.J. also discusses how his writing has changed over time, and why he's always writing toward not just a specific character's experience but also the complex community of a place. A. J. Rodriguez is a Chicano fiction writer born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon's MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Kerouac Project. His stories have won CRAFT's Flash Fiction Contest, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, second place in Salamander's Fiction Contest, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades, judged by Jonathan Escoffery. His fiction also appears in New England Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. He is the forty-third annual Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. ­­Read A.J.'s story “Papel Picado” in The Common at thecommononline.org/papel-picado. Follow A.J. on Instagram and Twitter @soyajrodriguez. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. 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

A. J. Rodriguez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Papel Picado,” which appears in The Common's most recent issue. A.J. talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores a fraught moment in the life of a Latino high schooler struggling under the pressures of family, friendship, and expectation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A.J. also discusses how his writing has changed over time, and why he's always writing toward not just a specific character's experience but also the complex community of a place. A. J. Rodriguez is a Chicano fiction writer born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon's MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Kerouac Project. His stories have won CRAFT's Flash Fiction Contest, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, second place in Salamander's Fiction Contest, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades, judged by Jonathan Escoffery. His fiction also appears in New England Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. He is the forty-third annual Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. ­­Read A.J.'s story “Papel Picado” in The Common at thecommononline.org/papel-picado. Follow A.J. on Instagram and Twitter @soyajrodriguez. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

 Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and four novels.  His new novel is My Beloved Life. Kumar lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. He serves on the board of the Corporation of Yaddo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shades on, sleeves up—it's summertime and we're back! This week, Jordan talks with Amy Lin, author of Here After, about grief, the sudden loss of her husband, miracles, and her family's history with thin places. Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? Here After is her first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Jena Brown as they discuss the week's entertainment news, including how an agent was fired over Twitter posts, some actual Amazon book sales data, Shopify adding sellers to its third-party marketplace, and how ElevenLabs just launched its iOS app. Then, stick around for a chat with Snowden Wright! Snowden Wright is the author of the novel American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month, selection for Barnes & Noble's “Discover Great New Writers” program, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and NPR Favorite Book of the Year. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Wright was the Visiting Writer and Prose Faculty at the 2021 Longleaf Writers Conference, and his debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, won the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars' Graywolf Prize. Recipient of the Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship from the Carson McCullers Center, he has attended writing residencies at Yaddo, Escape to Create, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Tusen Takk, Monson Arts, and the Hambidge Center. Wright lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi. His third novel, The Queen City Detective Agency, is forthcoming from HarperCollins in August 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and--most heartbreaking of all--her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine--long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in--and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe (Knopf, 2024) is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction--a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take. Kimberly King Parsons is the author of We Were the Universe, a novel the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power,” and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Recommended Books: Chelsea Bieker, Mad Woman Ryan Chapman, The Audacity Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and--most heartbreaking of all--her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine--long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in--and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe (Knopf, 2024) is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction--a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take. Kimberly King Parsons is the author of We Were the Universe, a novel the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power,” and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Recommended Books: Chelsea Bieker, Mad Woman Ryan Chapman, The Audacity Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. 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

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and--most heartbreaking of all--her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine--long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in--and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe (Knopf, 2024) is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction--a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take. Kimberly King Parsons is the author of We Were the Universe, a novel the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power,” and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Recommended Books: Chelsea Bieker, Mad Woman Ryan Chapman, The Audacity Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she's lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and--most heartbreaking of all--her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago. When she returns home to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle in to her routine--long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother's phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit's mind, she's reminiscing about the band she used to be in--and how they'd go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She's imagining an impossible threesome with her kid's pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone? Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe (Knopf, 2024) is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction--a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take. Kimberly King Parsons is the author of We Were the Universe, a novel the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief's dismantling power,” and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Recommended Books: Chelsea Bieker, Mad Woman Ryan Chapman, The Audacity Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

We're live from the beautiful Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago at Lindsay's favorite bookstore, Exile in Bookville! Kimberly King Parsons talks about her debut novel, We Were the Universe, a mother's right to disassociate, drugs, horny moms, “a quick squirt,” her painstaking sentence-making, Garielle Lutz, her favorite music, deserving her novel's ending and more! Plus audience questions! Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the forthcoming novel We Were the Universe and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Immigration remains a hot-button in American politics, but Javier Zamora tells the story of his own entry into the United States—a journey and a story that put a human face on the issue.    Zamora is the author of “SOLITO,” his New York Times bestselling memoir and is the 2024 Reading Across Rhode Island Selection. Born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990, his parents fled the country due to the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War from 1980-1992. Zamora was raised by his grandparents until the age of nine when he began his nine-week odyssey to Arizona. His memoir recounts the perilous journey. He is the author of a poetry collection entitled, “Unaccompanied.” He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation, Stanford University and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize and the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About:Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography, a finalist the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Women's Prize in Non-Fiction and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. How to Say Babylon was named one of the 100 Notable Books of the year by the New York Times, a Top 10 Book of 2023 by the Washington Post, one of The Atlantic's 10 Best Books of 2023, a TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2023, a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show Book Club pick, and one of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023. How to Say Babylon was also named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Vulture, Harper's Bazaar, and Barnes & Noble, among others, and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year. The audiobook of How to Say Babylon was named a Best Audiobook of the Year by Audible and AudioFile magazine.Sinclair's  other honors include a Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Granta, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Jason and Brett kick off PRIDE 2024 with some incredible queer authors! They talk to Carvell Wallace (Another Word for Love) about the key to your ability to fight for what's right, R.O. Kwon (Exhibit) about art and how taking a choreography workshop got her in the body of her characters, and Byron Lane (Big Gay Wedding) about why he thinks he'd thrive in prison. Carvell Wallace grew up between Southwestern PA, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. He attended Tisch School for the Arts and worked as a stage actor before spending fifteen years in direct service youth non-profits. He has covered arts, entertainment, music, culture, race, sports, and parenting for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Pitchfork, MTV News and others. As a podcast host, he has been nominated for a Peabody and won a Kaleidoscope Award and was the Slate parenting advice columnist. He is the co-author of the New York Times best-selling basketball memoir The Sixth Man with Andre Iguodala. He lives in Oakland and has two adult children, a comfortable couch, and a lot of plants.R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.Byron Lane is the author of A Star Is Bored, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “wildly funny and irreverent.” He's a playwright, screenwriter, Emmy Award–winning journalist, and former assistant to actress Carrie Fisher. He's originally from New Orleans and lives in Palm Springs, California, with his husband, author Steven Rowley, and their rescue dogs, Raindrop and Shirley.**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

R.O. Kwon is the author of the novel Exhibit, available from Riverhead Books. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States. *** 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 Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Traversing through time and space, and through humanness to the beyond, listening is a powerful and underrated practice. So says author, educator, and cultural activist Christian McEwen. She prefers to use the word "listening" not simply for the work of our ears, but as an extended metaphor for openness and receptivity - less actual than symbolic, less physical than metaphysical - rippling out from the self-centered human to the farthest reaches of the non-human world. In her latest work, In Praise of Listening (2023), she offers many accounts of listening as a pathway to realities forgotten and hidden, ranging from intimate anecdotes about family and friends to transformational social narratives from researchers, healers, activists, and more. The book tracks the endangered practice of listening through literature, Buddhism, nature writing, science, and sociology, including interviews with writers and therapists, naturalists, storytellers, and musicians. Christian's latest work might be seen as a cousin to her earlier, popular book, World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down (2011), now in its second edition. "From the beginning, I was concerned with how slowness might intersect with happiness, and then again with creativity," Christian writes in World Enough. "Like the English composer Brian Eno, I wanted to find a way of living in 'a Big Here and a Long Now.' It was obvious from the start that this would not be easy." Strewn with a delicious assortment of quotes on slowing down - ranging from Lily Tomlin to Gandhi to Rumi - World Enough also gave rise to a separate book of quotes celebrating slowness, aptly titled The Tortoise Diaries. Growing up in the Scottish countryside, perhaps it was the quietude of her childhood - or its contrast with the fast-paced life in New York she witnessed as a young adult - that drew her life to dedicate her life to listening. Even in her early work as a poet, listening was key to expressing what is experienced beyond the immediately visible. Her writing draws attention to minute everyday subtleties and deeply felt personal experiences. Pausing to listen to a snail as it munches on a leaf, or to a hyacinth growing loudly in its pot, she brings together many different stories of people who've learned to listen and attune. Her work grapples with a range of topics, including gender. In 2004, she co-produced a video documentary titled Tomboys! that celebrates "tomboys of all ages" - highlighting real-life stories of feisty girls who grew up to be spirited women. At the start of the documentary, you can hear Christian's crisp, enchanting voice, "When I was a child, I was what people called a tomboy. The word itself seemed magical to me: fiery, disobedient, gloriously untidy." She's also written a play Legal Tender: Women & the Secret Life of Money (2014), based upon personal interviews with more than fifty women about their relationship with money - intended as a creative catalyst, modeling courage and honesty for its listening audience, both through the play itself and through a linked project known as "The Money Stories" workshops. Christian's thesis as a writer and producer is simple: stories give rise to other stories, and courage and clarity inspire more of the same. She has edited four anthologies, including The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature Writing and Sparks from the Anvil: The Smith College Poetry Interviews, based on a series of interviews she conducted with visiting poets. She has written for The Nation, The Village Voice, and numerous other journals, including The Edinburgh Review of Books and the Shambhala Sun. Growing up in the Borders of Scotland "in a big old-fashioned house" with "beautiful shabby rooms and scented gardens" and "a perpetual drone of adult anxiety about school fees and taxes and the latest heating bill," Christian first came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship. She has taught poetry and creative writing at a number of venues, including Williams College in Massachusetts, the Zen Mountain Monastery in Upstate New York, and the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. She has also worked as a writer-in-the-schools for ALPS and the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Christian has been a fellow, several times, both at the MacDowell Colony, and at Yaddo. In 2011, she received a grant in playwriting from the MA Cultural Council. In all her work, she continues to encourage the reader to take a moment to stop and listen. "In a world of racket and distraction, generous, expansive listening is increasingly under siege. But it remains a skill worth honoring, worth passing on...Many an old story begins with the words, 'Long ago, when animals could speak....' Perhaps the corollary would be just as good an opening.... 'Long ago, when people could listen.'" Join us for a slow conversation with this ardent listener, as we co-create a circle to reclaim this ancient medicinal practice.

Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling authors Susannah Marren, Laura Zigman, and Dara Levan, who will be discussing their novels, new in paperback. About the Authors:  Susannah Marren is the author of Between the Tides, A Palm Beach Wife, A Palm Beach Scandal, and Maribelle's Shadow. Susannah has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Elle, and Marie Claire and has appeared on national television, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Several of her titles have been optioned by Lifetime and HBO. She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys, and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women's Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard. Her featured novel is Maribelle's Shadow.  About Maribelle's Shadow: When her adored and impressive husband, Samuel, dies suddenly, the secrets and lies between Maribelle and her sisters rise to the surface. Compounding the anguish, the authenticity of their socially ambitious mother and lavish lifestyle of mansions, privilege, and couture clothes is thrown into doubt. Each sister realizes she must fend for herself as their carefully constructed image unravels. The pathway out is steep and worth any risk. Until the winner takes all. Laura Zigman is the author of six novels, including Small World, Separation Anxiety (which was optioned by Julianne Nicholson and the production company Wiip for a limited television series); Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Her, and Piece of Work. She has ghostwritten/collaborated on several works of non-fiction, including Eddie Izzard's New York Times bestseller, Believe Me; been a contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post; produced a popular online series of animated videos called Annoying Conversations; and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she helps clients via Zoom, phone, and sometimes in person with their writing. Her featured novel is Small World.  About Small World A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she's developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life's easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she's moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment. Temporarily. Just until she finds a place of her own. But their unlikely cohabitation—not helped by annoying new neighbors upstairs—turns out to be the post-divorce rebound relationship Joyce hadn't planned on. Instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frayed. They rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only ten years old. When new revelations from their family's history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart or, of course, correct their connection for the future? Written with wry humor and keen sensitivity, Small World is a powerful novel of sisterhood and hope—a reminder that sometimes you must look back to move ahead. Dara Levan is the creator and host of Every Soul Has a Story, a podcast in which she interviews inspiring people from around the globe. Her calling to impact others began at the age of twelve in her hometown of North Miami Beach, Florida, when she interviewed the nursing home residents where her grandmother lived and wrote their stories. As an undergrad at Indiana University, Dara earned a BA in English and pursued a career in journalism but decided to pivot and return to South Florida to earn her MS in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Dara stopped practicing speech therapy to return to full-time writing. Actively involved in her community, she is currently a board member of the Community Foundation of Broward and a board member of Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital Foundation/Memorial Hospital Foundation and the Community Foundation of Broward. Dara served as a board member of the Goodman Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Broward County and Junior Achievement of South Florida. She is also a founding member of the Circle of Friends for the Alvin Sherman Library Research, Information, and Technology Center at Nova Southeastern University. Dara is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association, Women's National Book Association, and the Authors Guild. Her featured novel is It Could Be Worse. About It Could Be Worse Mired in self-doubt and blind loyalty, Allegra Gil suspects her charmed life may be a gilded cage. She has a devoted husband, Benito, two loving children, a thriving therapy practice, and lifelong friends. But when a surprising discovery in a piano bench reveals a shocking family secret, Allegra questions everything she thought she knew about the two people who raised her. Was it true? Did her father, a respected pediatric neurosurgeon, harm instead of heal? And Allegra's mother—how much did she know? As the past threatens the present, Allegra plays the song of what was, what is, and what may never be in this “powerful and poignant story about letting go” (Jean Meltzer, international bestselling author of The Matzah Ball). Composed with the cadence of a waltz—up, up, down—through flashbacks to childhood memories in Miami and a music camp in Michigan, It Could Be Worse is a heartwarming, at times heart-wrenching, multigenerational story of a woman supported and embraced by many while shaken to the core by a few. “The gorgeous prose and raw, unflinching narrative both heal and inspire. A stunning debut.” (Samantha M. Bailey, USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of Woman on the Edge) For more information about the authors, please visit Susannah Marren, Laura Zigman, and Dara Levan. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Amy Lin discusses her emotional debut memoir Here After. We discuss her surprising revelations about the grief process and better steps to show up for grievers.In our fear of saying the wrong thing, we often don't get to engage in essential conversations like the one we share today. Amy Lin, author of Here After, joins the Book Gang podcast to discuss her powerful memoir on grief and loss and what she wants you to understand about young widowhood.Here After Book SummaryLin never expected to find a love like the one she shared with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But thirty-two-year-old Kurtis unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind Amy, who struggled to navigate the loss while simultaneously confronting a life-threatening medical crisis. This sparse memoir was handcrafted for grievers as Amy shares the painstaking process down to margin, white space, and book size to give readers both space and understanding of her grief experience. More importantly, she offers life-altering advice on our falsehoods about grief, from the misconceptions around grief timelines to what we shouldn't say to those experiencing loss. After hearing Amy's sage advice today,I promise you will be a better friend, sister, daughter, or mother after listening to this conversation. To accompany today's show, I have a Books On Grief and Loss book list with fiction and nonfiction selections for adult and young readers.I've also gathered a curated collection of grief quotes from these books that speak to this universal experience in comforting ways to give words to this experience. I hope you feel both seen and loved today's series.Meet Amy LinAmy Lin is a writer and educator who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala.Here After is her debut novel.Mentioned in this episode:Joining the Patreon helps this show remain independent and on air for $5 a month. You will gain access to our 2024 MomAdvice Book Club, the FULLY BOOKED buzzy new release show, exclusive author interviews, music playlists, and more! Download Today's TranscriptJoin the 2024 MomAdvice Book Club BookBooks on Grief and Loss Book ListGrief Quotes From BooksA Heart That Works by Rob DelaneyHere After by Amy LinZibby BooksBookshop.org pays a 10% commission on every sale and matches 10% to independent bookstores!Connect With Us:Connect with Amy Lin on Instagram, Substack, or her WebsiteConnect with Amy on Instagram, TikTok, or MomAdviceGet My Happy List NewsletterGet the Daily Kindle Deals NewsletterBuy Me a Coffee (for a one-time donation)

Ep.193 Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Her work integrates archives, somatic studies, and dialogical practices, creating overlooked narratives that amplify BIPOC/femme bodies. Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University's School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include RISD Art Museum (2022-2023); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2021-2022); New York University's The Gallatin Galleries, New York, NY (2021); Michigan State University's Scene Metrospace Gallery, East Lansing, MI (2019); and Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2017). Metaferia's work was included in the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2023), the Tennessee Triennial through the Frist Art Museum and Fisk University Art Gallery (2023). Her work is in the permanent collection of institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates; Kadist, San Francisco, CA and Paris, France; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. Metaferia's work has been supported by several residencies including MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and MASS MoCA. She is currently a 2021-2023 artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects at the World Trade Center in New York City. Her work has been written about in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Artnet News, The Art Newspaper, and Hyperallergic. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Visual Art department, and lives and works in New York City. Photo credit: Tommie Battle Artist https://www.helinametaferia.com/ NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/arts/things-to-do-this-weekend.html Artsy Helina Metaferia Honors the Activist Legacies of Black Women across Collage and Performance | Artsy Artnet News https://news.artnet.com/art-world/how-do-you-judge-the-value-of-social-practice-art-artist-helina-metaferia-developed-metrics-to-determine-if-a-project-is-successful-2181336 Vanity Fair Leisure, Adornment, and Beauty Are Radical Acts in “Resting Our Eyes” | Vanity Fair The Cut ‘Resting Our Eyes': 10 Black Artists at ICA San Francisco (thecut.com) Chicago Tribune 4 female artists mount a Chicago exhibit on climate issues: ‘Activism work is care work' – Chicago Tribune Sugarcane Magazine Ritual and Remembrance in Sharjah Biennial 15 - Sugarcane Magazine ™| Black Art Magazine Interior Design Magazine Artist Helina Metaferia Celebrates Black Women Activists in Two Solo Shows - Interior Design The Art Newspaper https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/06/16/black-artists-and-performers-take-over-fort-greene-park-for-juneteenth-jubilee Financial Times ( First) https://www.ft.com/content/9b75fdcd-9f1a-4c3f-ae70-b1140fc9cdad Financial Times (Second) https://www.ft.com/content/e8030f71-2925-4fbb-8e0a-96d6ce1cf774 Contemporary And https://contemporaryand.com/magazines/helina-metaferia-weaving-and-resisting-in-more-than-a-few-ways/

Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry collections, including Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and Quarantine Highway (FlowerSong Press). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), Yaddo, Portuegese National Cultural Foundation, and the Barbara Deming Foundation, "Money for Women." She lives in Topanga canyon. From re-definition to re-calibration, the poems in Quarantine Highway are artifacts to the early and mid-days of the pandemic. Though not specifically labeled as "Covid poems," they strike to the heart of the universal yet individual struggles of solitude, confinement, justice, isolation and, ultimately, self-reckoning. The poems push and pull between the constantly knocking global news cycle to the stillness of a surreal inner world. Find more of Millicent's writings here. 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