Podcasts about zoetrope all story

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Best podcasts about zoetrope all story

Latest podcast episodes about zoetrope all story

Mystic Ink, Publisher of Spiritual, Shamanic, Transcendent  Works, and Phantastic Fiction
Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - Santa Barbara Writers Conference 2024 - Agents Panel

Mystic Ink, Publisher of Spiritual, Shamanic, Transcendent Works, and Phantastic Fiction

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2025 58:28


SBWC faculty member Norm Thoeming (aka August Norman) is author of two literary thrillers and mysteries, Come and Get Me and Sins of the Mother.Annie Bomke is a literary agent with more than a decade of experience in the publishing industry. She represents a wide range of projects from hard-nosed business books to otherworldly historical novels. Annie has loved the publishing industry since her internship at Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine founded by Francis Ford Coppola. She once managed a rare bookstore and had a brief stint as a technical writer. Authors have called her the pH test for good writing, and a bedrock for literary quality control.Elizabeth Kracht joined Kimberley Cameron & Associates in 2010 and is the author of The Author's Checklist: An Agent's Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript. She represents both literary and commercial fiction, as well as nonfiction. She's compelled by multicultural themes and strong settings. She represents literary, commercial, women's, thrillers, mysteries, historical, and crossover YA. In nonfiction, she's interested in high concept, health, science, environment, prescriptive, investigative, true crime, voice- or adventure-driven memoir, sexuality, spirituality, and animal/pet stories.Dana Newman is an LA-based independent literary agent representing authors of practical and narrative nonfiction and literary and upmarket fiction. She's interested by authors with smart, unique perspectives who're committed to actively marketing and promoting their books. A favorite genre is literary nonfiction: true stories, well told, that read like a compelling novel. She's also an attorney, focusing on publishing law and contracts. Before founding her literary agency, she worked as in-house counsel in the entertainment industry.Jonah Straus is the founder of Straus Literary in San Francisco. He specializes in literary fiction, often with an international or multicultural outlook, as well as journalism, history, narrative nonfiction, and the culinary arts. Jonah got his start at Atrium Publishers Group, an independent book distributor in Northern California, and went on to hold positions in production, editorial, sales, and marketing at several publishers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He established Straus Literary in 2007 and moved the agency to San Francisco in 2013.Andy Ross opened his literary agency in 2008. He was the owner of the legendary Cody's Books in Berkeley for 30 years before switching careers. His agency represents books in a wide range of nonfiction genres. He looks for writing with a strong voice, robust story arc, and books that tell a big story about culture and society by authors with the authority to write about their subject. In fiction, he likes character and voice-driven stories about real people in the real world.

KPFA - Terra Verde
A Personal Chronicle of California's Wildfire Crisis

KPFA - Terra Verde

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2024 29:57


On this week's Terra Verde episode, host and producer Hannah Wilton interviews author Manjula Martin about her recently-published memoir, The Last Fire Season; A Personal and Pyronatural History, out now from Pantheon Books. Set during the catastrophic 2020 wildfire season and the compounding crises of the pandemic and political upheaval, Martin tells the story of evacuating from her home in West Sonoma County and her journey of healing from a personal health crisis. Tracing the contours of hope, healing, and despair, The Last Fire Season explores what it means to live on a dynamic, changing planet and how we might shift our relationship to the keystone process of fire. Manjula Martin is coauthor, with her father, Orin Martin, of Fruit Trees for Every Garden, which won the 2020 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Cut, Pacific Standard, Modern Farmer, and Hazlitt. She edited the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living; was managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story; and has worked in varied editorial capacities in the nonprofit and publishing sectors. She lives in West Sonoma County, California. The post A Personal Chronicle of California's Wildfire Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment
Book Passage Talk with Derek Fagerstrom

A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2024 38:26


Derek Fagerstrom interviews Scott Snibbe about his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at San Francisco's Book Passage. Derek is the co-founder of Pop-up Magazine, and has worked at Esquire, Interview, and Francis Ford Coppola's literary journal Zoetrope: All-Story. How to Train a Happy Mind is out now in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. You can find it anywhere you buy books.Episode 156: Book Passage Talk with Derek FagerstromScott Snibbe has just released a new book called How to Train a Happy Mind that shares the accessible approach to Buddhism familiar to podcast listeners. The book features a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and you can order it right now anywhere you buy books. Go to skepticspath.org for more details on the book and tour, featuring some of the great artists, authors and activists you've heard on the podcast.Support the show

Otherppl with Brad Listi
908. Téa Obreht

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2024 80:30


Téa Obreht is the author of the novel The Morningside, available from Random House. Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming. *** 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

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
First Draft - Téa Obreht (Returns)

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2024 64:38


Téa Obreht is the author of the novel The Tiger's Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller.  Her novel Inland won the BRLA Southwest Book Award and the Ballard Prize.  Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Vogue, Esquire and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. She currently lives in Wyoming.  Her new novel is called The Morningside. We talked about writing during the pandemic in a fever dream, confronting trauma in writing, besting your therapist, folktales, the world our children will inherit, and crafting a novel from feverish draft to structured finished product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Burned By Books
Alexandra Chang, "Tomb Sweeping: Stories" (Ecco Press, 2023)

Burned By Books

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2023 46:00


Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco Press, 2023) probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity. These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as "a writer to watch" (New York Times Book Review). Alexandra Chang is the author of the fabulous novel Days of Distraction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ventura County, California with her husband, and their dog and cats. Recommended Books: Rachel Kang, The Real Americans Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story Cleo Quian, Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go  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 as 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

New Books Network
Alexandra Chang, "Tomb Sweeping: Stories" (Ecco Press, 2023)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2023 46:00


Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco Press, 2023) probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity. These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as "a writer to watch" (New York Times Book Review). Alexandra Chang is the author of the fabulous novel Days of Distraction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ventura County, California with her husband, and their dog and cats. Recommended Books: Rachel Kang, The Real Americans Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story Cleo Quian, Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go  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 as 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

New Books in Literary Studies
Alexandra Chang, "Tomb Sweeping: Stories" (Ecco Press, 2023)

New Books in Literary Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2023 46:00


Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco Press, 2023) probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity. These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as "a writer to watch" (New York Times Book Review). Alexandra Chang is the author of the fabulous novel Days of Distraction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ventura County, California with her husband, and their dog and cats. Recommended Books: Rachel Kang, The Real Americans Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story Cleo Quian, Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go  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 as 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

New Books in Literature
Alexandra Chang, "Tomb Sweeping: Stories" (Ecco Press, 2023)

New Books in Literature

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2023 46:00


Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping (Ecco Press, 2023) probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants. A woman known only to her neighbors as "the Asian recycling lady" collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity. These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as "a writer to watch" (New York Times Book Review). Alexandra Chang is the author of the fabulous novel Days of Distraction. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Ventura County, California with her husband, and their dog and cats. Recommended Books: Rachel Kang, The Real Americans Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story Cleo Quian, Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go  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 as 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

New Books Network
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 36:15


The characters in Nishanth Injam's The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don't always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way. That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam's stories, whether it's a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration. Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. 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

New Books in Asian American Studies
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)

New Books in Asian American Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 36:15


The characters in Nishanth Injam's The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don't always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way. That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam's stories, whether it's a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration. Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

New Books in Literature
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)

New Books in Literature

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 36:15


The characters in Nishanth Injam's The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don't always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way. That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam's stories, whether it's a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration. Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

New Books in South Asian Studies
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)

New Books in South Asian Studies

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 36:15


The characters in Nishanth Injam's The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don't always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way. That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam's stories, whether it's a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration. Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Asian Review of Books
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)

Asian Review of Books

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 36:15


The characters in Nishanth Injam's The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don't always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way. That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam's stories, whether it's a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration. Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022. Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The Stinging Fly Podcast
Sophie Mackintosh Reads David Hayden

The Stinging Fly Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2023 50:20


On this month's episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by writer Sophie Mackintosh to read and discuss David Hayden's short story, ‘Leckerdam of the Golden Hand', originally published in our Summer 2016 issue. Sophie Mackintosh is the author of three novels: The Water Cure, Blue Ticket and Cursed Bread. Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019, and Cursed Bread was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2023. Sophie's short story ‘Revivalists' was published in our Summer 2018 issue. David Hayden was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines including The Stinging Fly, Granta online, Zoetrope All-Story, The Dublin Review, AGNI, The Georgia Review and A Public Space. His first book of stories, Darker With the Lights On, was published by Transit Books and Carcanet Press. Nicole Flattery is a writer and critic. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time, was published by The Stinging Fly and Bloomsbury in 2019. Her first novel, Nothing Special, was recently published by Bloomsbury.   The Stinging Fly Podcast invites writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast's theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes', by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available to subscribers.

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
First Draft - Adrienne Brodeur (Returns)

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2023 61:51


Adrienne Brodeur is the author of the memoir Wild Game, which was selected as a Best Book of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post and is in development as a Netflix film. She founded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with Francis Ford Coppola, and currently serves as executive director of Aspen Words, a literary nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute. She splits her time between Cambridge and Cape Cod, where she lives with her husband and children. Her new novel is Little Monsters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 7am Novelist
Passages: Frances de Pontes Peebles on The Air You Breathe

The 7am Novelist

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2023 32:39


First pages are impossible… so we're hearing from authors about how they got them right. In this episode, Frances de Pontes Peebles discusses the first pages of her latest novel, The Air You Breathe, her powerful use of a reminiscent narrator, how to plant the seeds of what your reader needs to know (and leave out what they don't), how best to include lists and dialog to wake up your prose, and how to stick to your decisions as a writer.Peebles's first pages can be found here.Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the novels The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. She is a Creative Writing Fellow in Literature for 2020 from The National Endowment for the Arts. Her books have been translated into ten languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. Her second novel, The Air You Breathe, was a Book of the Month Club pick. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has received a Fulbright Grant, Brazil's Sacatar Foundation Fellowship, and was a Teaching Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her short stories and essays have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Guernica, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Catapult, and Real Simple. Her novel, The Seamstress, was adapted for film and mini-series on Brazil's Globo Network. She is proud to serve as Chair of the Board of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights. In Spring 2019, she served as Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

The 7am Novelist
Day 25: Writing in (and about) Gardens with Margo Rabb

The 7am Novelist

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2023 32:27


Lost your sense of wonder and excitement about your writing? Margo Rabb has the cure. And read more about Margo finding inspiration in gardens:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/abandoned-industrial-ruin-garden-wilmington-dupont-crowninshield-180981544/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/opinion/garden-of-solace.htmlFor a list of my fave craft books and most recent works by our guests, go to our Bookshop page.Margo Rabb s the author of the award-winning novels Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize, Kissing in America, and Cures for Heartbreak, all published by HarperCollins. Margo's essays, journalism, book reviews, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Slate, Zoetrope: All-Story, One Story, and Marie Claire, and have been broadcast on NPR. She received the grand prize in the Zoetrope short story contest, first prize in The Atlantic fiction contest, first prize in the American Fiction contest, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award. Margo grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in the Philadelphia area with her family. Visit her online at www.margorabb.com.Thank you for reading The 7am Novelist. This post is public so feel free to share it. 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

DIY MFA Radio
454: Exploring Themes of Grief and Loneliness in a Neo-Noir Speculative Novel — Interview

DIY MFA Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2023 48:25


Today, Lori is interviewing Jinwoo Chong. They'll be talking about themes of loss and disconnection and how they relate to his book Flux. Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, coming March 21, 2023 from Melville House. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, CRAFT, and Salamander. He received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Fiction from The Southern Review and a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology, as well as recognition from The Sewanee Review, Tin House and Zoetrope: All-Story. He received an MFA from Columbia University and is an editorial assistant at One Story. You can find him on his website or follow him on Twitter and Instagram.   In this episode Jinwoo Chong and Lori discuss: Immigration as synthesis. What it means to blend speculative fiction and neo-noir genres How the immigrant experience helped to shape his book.   Plus, his #1 tip for writers. For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/454

Read Between the Lines
Blake Sanz discusses his book, "The Boundaries of Their Dwelling"

Read Between the Lines

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2022 31:26


Molly talks with author Blake Sanz about his book, "The Boundaries of Their Dwelling". Order "The Boundaries of Their Dwelling" from an independent bookseller at this link: https://bookshop.org/a/10588/9781609388072 or at Amazon right here https://amzn.to/3NzgHQl About The Boundaries of Their Dwelling Moving between the American South and Mexico, these stories explore how immigrant and native characters are shaped by absent family and geography. A Chilanga teen wins a trip to Miami to film a reality show about family while pining for the American brother she's never met. A Louisiana carpenter tends to his drug-addicted son while rebuilding his house after a slew of hurricanes. A New Orleans ne'er-do-well opens a Catholic-themed bar in the wake of his devout mother's death. A village girl from Chiapas baptizes her infant on a trek toward the U.S. border. In the collection's second half, we follow a Veracruzan-born drifter, Manuel, and his estranged American son, Tommy. Over decades, they negotiate separate nations and personal tragicomedies on their journeys from innocence to experience. As Manuel participates in student protests in Mexico City in 1968, he drops out to pursue his art. In the 1970s, he immigrates to Louisiana, but soon leaves his wife and infant son behind after his art shop fails. Meanwhile, Tommy grows up in 1980s Louisiana, sometimes escaping his mother's watchful eye to play basketball at a park filled with the threat of violence. In college, he seeks acceptance from teammates by writing their term papers. Years later, as Manuel nears death and Tommy reaches middle age, they reconnect, embarking on a mission to jointly interview a former riot policeman about his military days; in the process, father and son discover what it has meant to carry each other's stories and memories from afar. About Blake Sanz Blake Sanz, originally from Louisiana, has published fiction in American Short Fiction, Ecotone, Puerto del Sol, Joyland, and elsewhere. A graduate of the MFA program at Notre Dame, his writing has garnered recognition and awards from Zoetrope: All-Story, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and other conferences and residencies. He teaches writing at the University of Denver.

UIndy's Potluck Podcast
UIndy's Potluck Podcast - SEASON 4 – EPISODE 2 – Lysley Tenorio

UIndy's Potluck Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2022 33:34


In this episode of UIndy's Potluck Podcast, where we host conversations about the arts, Barney Haney, assistant professor of English, interviews novelist Lysley Tenorio, a guest of the Kellogg Writers Series, which is a series that brings writers of distinction to the University of Indianapolis campus for classroom discussions and free public readings. Special thanks to Music Technology majors Sean Montgomery and Jackson Smith for editing this episode's audio. Lysley Tenorio is the author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune and the story collection Monstress, which was named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Stegner fellowship, the Edmund White Award, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-(Yee)Yi Theater in New York City. Born in the Philippines, he lives in San Francisco, and is a professor at Saint Mary's College of California. We thank you for listening to UIndy's Potluck Podcast, which is hosted by students and faculty of the University of Indianapolis. We would like to thank our guests and the Shaheen College of Arts and Sciences. To learn more about UIndy's Potluck Podcast and hear other episodes, please visit etchings.uindy.edu/the-potluck-podcast. Thank you for your support.

Writing the Coast: BC and Yukon Book Prizes Podcast
S3 Episode 41: Shaena Lambert, Eve Lazarus and Michael Prior about writing the past

Writing the Coast: BC and Yukon Book Prizes Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2022 55:15


ABOUT THIS EPISODE: This episode features a discussion with Shaena Lambert, author of Petra, Eve Lazarus, author of Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City's Hidden History, and Michael Prior, author of Burning Province, moderated by poet Fiona Tinwei Lam. These four authors discuss writing history and the past, and how to juggle the ethics of writing when it includes other people's stories. This conversation was part of our Storied Series and originally aired in November 2021. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Shaena Lambert is the author of the novel, Radiance and two books of stories, Oh, My Darling and The Falling Woman, all of which were Globe and Mail best books of the year. Her fiction has been published to critical acclaim in Canada, the UK and Germany and has been nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Evergreen Award, the Danuta Gleed Award and the Frank O'Connor Award for the Short Story. Her stories have been chosen four times for Best Canadian Stories, and have appeared in many publications, including The Walrus, Zoetrope: All Story, Ploughshares, The Journey Prize Anthology… Eve Lazarus is a Vancouver writer and podcaster with an Aussie accent and a passion for true crime stories, cold cases, and non-traditional history. She is the author of four Arsenal titles: Cold Case Vancouver: The City's Most Baffling Unsolved Murders (2015), a BC bestseller and 2016 finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award at the BC Book Prizes; Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver's First Forensic Investigator (2017); Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer (2018); and Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City's Hidden History (2020). She is also the author of Sensational Vancouver (2014), , Sensational Victoria: Bright Lights, Red Lights, Murders, Ghosts & Gardens (2012), and her book At Home with History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver's Heritage Houses was a 2008 City of Vancouver book award finalist. Michael Prior is a writer and teacher. He is the author of two books of poems: Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart, 2020), which won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes' Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016), which was named one of the best books of the year by the CBC. Prior is the recent recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center and the Jerome Foundation. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, The Walrus, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English and an ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow at Macalester College. Fiona Tinwei Lam is the author of three poetry collections and a children's book. She edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems on Facing Cancer and co-edited the nonfiction and poetry collection Love Me True: Writers Reflect on the Ins, Outs, Ups & Downs of Marriage with Jane Silcott. Her work has won TNQ's Nick Blatchford prize and been shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Award. Her work appears in more than 40 anthologies. She teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. ABOUT THE PODCAST: Writing the Coast is recorded and produced on the traditional territory of the Tla'amin Nation. As a settler on these lands, Megan Cole finds opportunities to learn and listen to the stories from those whose land was stolen. Writing the Coast is a recorded series of conversations, readings, and insights into the work of the writers, illustrators, and creators whose books are nominated for the annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes. We'll also check in on people in the writing community who are supporting books, writers and readers every day. The podcast is produced and hosted by Megan Cole.

Writing the Coast: BC and Yukon Book Prizes Podcast
S3 Episode 29: Shaena Lambert talks about the role of imagination in creative writing

Writing the Coast: BC and Yukon Book Prizes Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2021 36:09


ABOUT THIS EPISODE: In this episode, host Megan Cole talks to Shaena Lambert, author of Petra. Petra won the 2021 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. In their conversation Shaena talks about how she met Petra Kelly and how growing up in Horseshoe Bay helped her write about Berlin and Germany. ABOUT SHAENA LAMBERT: Shaena Lambert is the author of the novel, Radiance and two books of stories, Oh, My Darling and The Falling Woman – all of which were Globe and Mail best books of the year. Her fiction has been published to critical acclaim in Canada, the UK and Germany and has been nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Evergreen Award, the Danuta Gleed Award and the Frank O'Connor Award for the Short Story. Her stories have been chosen four times for Best Canadian Stories, and have appeared in many publications, including The Walrus, Zoetrope: All Story, Ploughshares, The Journey Prize Anthology and Toronto Life. A dedicated environmentalist and climate activist, Shaena was arrested twice on Burnaby Mountain for crossing a police barrier, to protest the building of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands, and continues to actively oppose oil pipelines, logging of old growth, and other policies leading to climate change and environmental destruction. Her most recent novel is PETRA, inspired by the activist and green party founder Petra Kelly who changed history and transformed environmental politics, only to find herself caught up in a triangle of love, jealousy and murder. Lambert lives in Vancouver with her family. ABOUT MEGAN COLE: Megan Cole the Director of Programming and Communications for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. She is also a writer based on the territory of the Tla'amin Nation. Megan writes creative nonfiction and has had essays published in The Puritan, Untethered, Invisible publishing's invisiblog, This Magazine and more. She has her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King's College and is working her first book titled Head Over Feet: The Lasting Heartache of First Loves. Find out more about Megan at megancolewriter.com ABOUT THE PODCAST: Writing the Coast is recorded and produced on the traditional territory of the Tla'amin Nation. As a settler on these lands, Megan Cole finds opportunities to learn and listen to the stories from those whose land was stolen. Writing the Coast is a recorded series of conversations, readings, and insights into the work of the writers, illustrators, and creators whose books are nominated for the annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes. We'll also check in on people in the writing community who are supporting books, writers and readers every day. The podcast is produced and hosted by Megan Cole.

Write On, Mississippi!
Write On, Mississippi: Season 4, Chapter 22: Southern Writers

Write On, Mississippi!

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2021 50:58


Talented Southern authors discuss standout characters that compel readers to come along on exciting journeys that seek to tackle questions of self-determination, life's potential, and our duty to each other.Panelists:Gin Phillips is the author of six novels, ranging from historical fiction to literary thriller to middle grade. Her work has been sold in 29 countries. Gin's debut novel, The Well and the Mine, won the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Her recent novel, Fierce Kingdom, was named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review. GiIt was also was named one of the best books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly, NPR, Amazon, and Kirkus Reviews. A Kirkus starred review called it "poignant and profound," adding that "this adrenaline-fueled thriller will shatter readers like a bullet through bone." Born in Montgomery, Al., Gin graduated from Birmingham-Southern College with a degree in political journalism. After time spent in Ireland, New York, and Washington, D.C., she currently lives with her family (plus a schnoodle and a mini golden mountain doodle) in Birmingham.Lee Durkee is a graduate of the Mississippi public school system and was bussed to various schools throughout the Hattiesburg area. He later attended Pearl River Junior College, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Arkansas, and Syracuse University. He is the author of the novels RIDES OF THE MIDWAY (WW Norton, 2000) and THE LAST TAXI DRIVER (Tin House Books, 2020). His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Sun, The Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope: All Story, Tin House, & Mississippi Noir. In 2022 Scribner will publish Stalking Shakespeare, a memoir about his obsession with trying to find a lost portrait of William Shakespeare. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.Moderator:Jimmy Cajoleas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi and is the author of five novels for children and young adults. He now lives in New York. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bill Myers Inspires
“Impermanence” Everything Must Change – with Brandt Ryan

Bill Myers Inspires

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2021


Bill Myers Inspires  Over the past year, we all have experienced great change. Change has happened at every turn from our political leadership to our racial awareness, to life on lockdown in quarantine during a global pandemic, to loved ones and friends who are no longer with us today. While this all may seem unusual, it is actually normal that change happens, continuously and constantly in ways we perhaps do not take notice of, but impermanence and constant change is both natural and normal. The biggest challenge we face is not getting stuck. After obtaining a B.A. in Philosophy from Marian University, Brandt Ryan earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University in 2001. While living in New York he served as an editorial assistant for Zoetrope: All-Story, Francis Ford Coppola's internationally acclaimed fiction and art magazine. He currently resides in his home town of Indianapolis where he recently wrote and directed his first play, Restitution.   *Listen now on the Inspired Choices Network app!  https://linktr.ee/inspiredchoicesnetwork ~ More About Bill Myers Inspires ~  Emmy Award-winning actor Bill Myers is an accomplished actor, jazz musician, filmmaker, writer, educator, and speaker. As a bi-racial man who is both black and white, Bill leverages his background, talents, and voice through creativity, compassion, and connection as activism for social justice to focus on uniting the divide and compelling change. In a civic leadership capacity, he has served as President of the African American Jazz Caucus in NYC, member of the Indianapolis Cultural Development Committee, and served as President of the Indianapolis Downtown Optimist Club. In addition to his Emmy Award, Bill has received many awards and notable commissions for his work including being commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art to create an original work for Dr. Martin Luther King Day entitled “The Music, Martin & Me.” Bill Myers seeks to encourage, enlighten, and empower others through the power of entertainment to affect social justice. You can find Bill Myers: Billmyersinspires.com   https://www.facebook.com/billmyersinspires  https://twitter.com/bmyersinspires1 https://www.instagram.com/billmyersinspires billmyersinspires@gmail.com To get more of Bill Myers Inspires, be sure to visit the podcast page for replays of all her shows here: https://www.inspiredchoicesnetwork.com/podcast/bill-myers-inspires/  

Crime Time FM
LEE DURKEE In Person With Paul CTFM

Crime Time FM

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2021 53:15


LEE DURKEE chats to Paul Burke about his novel THE LAST TAXI DRIVER published in the UK by Oldcastle Books. In a brutally honest interview Lee talks about his fictional driver, Lou, and the life of a taxi driver in North Mississippi, the enemy - Uber, racism and Shakespeare. THE LAST TAXI DRIVER is a darkly comic novel about a day in the life of an exhausted, middle-aged cabbie about to lose his job to Uber, his girlfriend to lethargy, and his ability to stand upright to chronic back spasms. Lou - a lapsed novelist and UFO enthusiast who has returned to his home state of Mississippi after decades away - drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a college town among the trailer parks and housing projects. With Lou s way of life fast vanishing, an ex-dispatcher resurfaces in town on the lam, triggering a bedlam shift which will test Lou's sanity and perhaps cost him his life. Against this backdrop, Lou has to keep driving, and driving - even if that means aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his Town Car. Written by a former cabbie, The Last Taxi Driver careens through the highways and backroads of North Mississippi as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's novel is an homage to a dying American industry.Lee Durkee is the author of the novel Rides of the Midway (W. W. Norton). His stories and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, the Sun, Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope: All Story, Tin House, New England Review, and Mississippi Noir. In 2021 Scribner will publish his memoir Stalking Shakespeare, which chronicles his decade-long obsession with trying to find lost portraits of William Shakespeare. A former cab driver, he lives in North Mississippi. The Last Taxi Driver is his first novel in twenty years.  Music courtesy of Southgate and LeighProduced by Junkyard DogFor news, features and reviews check out:Crime Time

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network
Jonathan Haupt & Valerie Sayers, The Age of Infidelity

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2021 58:57


LIVE from the Pat Conroy Literary Center and the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Executive Director Jonathan Haupt is IN CONVERSATION with Pushcart winner, writer Valeria Sayers. Val is a 2 time Pushcart Prize recipient for short fiction, a SC Academy of Authors honoree, author of six novels (two of which were adapted into a film), and author of the new story collection The Age of Infidelity, which we'll be discussing. She was a Beaufort High School psychology student of Pat Conroy's and she's a contributing writer to Our Prince of Scribes and a member of the Conroy Center board of directors. Valerie Sayers is the author of six critically acclaimed novels: The Powers, Brain Fever, The Distance Between Us, Who Do You Love, How I Got Him Back, and Due East. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared the New York Times, Washington Post, Commonweal, Agni, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Image, Witness, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her literary honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and two Pushcart Prizes for stories, as well as appearances on several “Notable Books of the Year” lists, including the New York Times Book Review. Born and raised in Beaufort, South Carolina, which became the thinly-disguised Due East of much of her fiction, Sayers was educated at Fordham and Columbia and lived for many years in Brooklyn with her husband, Christian Jara, and their two sons. In 1993, she joined the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame, where she is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English. HOST: Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center and co-editor of Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. About the Pat Conroy Literary Center: patconroyliterarycenter.org/about/ @copyrighted

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network
Jonathan Haupt & Valerie Sayers, The Age of Infidelity

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2021 58:57


LIVE from the Pat Conroy Literary Center and the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Executive Director Jonathan Haupt is IN CONVERSATION with Pushcart winner, writer Valeria Sayers. Val is a 2 time Pushcart Prize recipient for short fiction, a SC Academy of Authors honoree, author of six novels (two of which were adapted into a film), and author of the new story collection The Age of Infidelity, which we'll be discussing. She was a Beaufort High School psychology student of Pat Conroy's and she's a contributing writer to Our Prince of Scribes and a member of the Conroy Center board of directors. Valerie Sayers is the author of six critically acclaimed novels: The Powers, Brain Fever, The Distance Between Us, Who Do You Love, How I Got Him Back, and Due East. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared the New York Times, Washington Post, Commonweal, Agni, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Image, Witness, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her literary honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and two Pushcart Prizes for stories, as well as appearances on several “Notable Books of the Year” lists, including the New York Times Book Review. Born and raised in Beaufort, South Carolina, which became the thinly-disguised Due East of much of her fiction, Sayers was educated at Fordham and Columbia and lived for many years in Brooklyn with her husband, Christian Jara, and their two sons. In 1993, she joined the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame, where she is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English. HOST: Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center and co-editor of Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. About the Pat Conroy Literary Center: patconroyliterarycenter.org/about/ @copyrighted

LIVE! From City Lights
Zoetrope Fall 2020 Issue Celebration

LIVE! From City Lights

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2020 86:33


City Lights celebrates the award-winning literary periodical's fall issue. Editor Michael Ray and Managing Editor Manjula Martin are joined by several contributors in an afternoon of readings and celebrations. Guests include Frances de Pontes Peebles, Patrick Dacey, and Daniel Orozco. Founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997, Zoetrope: All-Story is a quarterly print magazine of short fiction, one-act plays, and essays on film. Among the most celebrated literary periodicals in the world, it has won every major story award, including four National Magazine Awards for Fiction, along with a number of design commendations. The magazine's contributors comprise the most promising and significant writers of our era: Mary Gaitskill, Colum McCann, Rachel Cusk, Jim Shepard, Elena Ferrante, Daniel Alarcón, Karen Russell, Yiyun Li, Jonathan Lethem, Wes Anderson, Elizabeth McCracken, David Mamet, Ha Jin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Pedro Almodóvar, Ethan Coen, Yoko Ogawa, Charles D'Ambrosio, Neil Jordan, Haruki Murakami, and many more.

Tribeca Talks
The Godfather

Tribeca Talks

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2020 72:35


Tribeca celebrated the legacy of The Godfather & The Godfather Part II one with a 45th anniversary screening and reunion event at our 2017 festival. The director and cast got together for a conversation after the screening.Francis Ford Coppola (Director) is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of our time; a six-time Academy Award®-winning writer, director, and producer of such films as Patton, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, American Graffiti, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He produces a short story magazine called Zoetrope: All-Story, winner of three National Magazine Awards for Fiction, and is the best-selling author of The Godfather Notebook and Live Cinema and Its Techniques, about a new form of art which is a combination of theater, film, and television. He has also been producing wine for nearly forty years at his Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley wineries.Actor and director Al Pacino (Michael Corleone) was born in East Harlem and grew up in New York City’s South Bronx. He attended the School of Performing Arts until he moved on to study acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio with Charles Laughton, and later, at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. His first leading part in a feature film was in the 1971 drama Panic in Needle Park. The following year, Francis Ford Coppola selected him to take on the breakthrough role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award®One of the most versatile actors in film, James Caan (Sonny Corleone) is best known for his Academy Award® nominated performance as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather and for his Emmy®-nominated portrayal of football star Brian Piccolo in Brian’s Song. Appearing in more than 100 movies, Caan also earned great recognition starring in Rob Reiner’s critically acclaimed film Misery; and For The Boys, co-starring Bette Midler. He was equally praised for his performance as a brain damaged football star in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People. Caan made his directorial debut and starred in the critically acclaimed film Hide In Plain Sight.A leading man since the 1960s, Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen) has specialized in driven characters of all types. Respected by his peers and adored by audiences worldwide, he has earned numerous Oscar® nominations for his performances in The Judge, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini and The Apostle. Duvall won the Academy Award® and a Golden Globe® as Best Actor for his role in Tender Mercies. In addition, he has received Golden Globe® Awards for his performances in the title role of HBO’s Stalin as well as for his memorable turns in Apocalypse Now and Lonesome Dove.Talia Shire (Connie) comes from a family of artists. The Yale drama school alum has appeared in over fifty movies and television shows, received two Academy Award® nominations, and won the NY Film Critics Award for her performance in Rocky (1976). She and her husband Jack Schwartzman independently financed and produced several movies among them Never Say Never Again (1983) and Rad (1986) whose sequel is currently in development. In 1994 she directed One Night Stand. In 1994 Jack Schwartzman died. In 1997 she was one of several producers on the Tony® nominated play Golden Child. Family is at the center of her life. Talia’s children continue on in the same tradition of theatre and film. Her two step children John Schwartzman (Cinematographer) and Stephanie Schwartzman (Artist), her son Matthew Shire (Writer/Producer), Jason Schwartzman (Actor/Musician/Writer/Director/Producer), & Robert Schwartzman (Actor/Musician/Director/Producer).Diane Keaton (Kay Adams)Robert De Niro (Vito Corleone - The Godfather: Part II) launched his motion picture career in Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party in 1969. By 1974, he had won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor in Bang the Drum Slowly and from the National Society of Film Critics for Mean Streets. In 1974 De Niro won the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather: Part II. In 1980 he won his second Oscar®, as Best Actor, for Raging Bull. De Niro has also earned Academy Award® nominations for his work in: Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings, the remake of Cape Fear and Silver Linings Playbook. He was most recently seen in The Irishman, his ninth collaboration with Martin Scorsese. The Irishman, based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, either won or was nominated for a multitude of awards including being nominated for best picture from the Academy of Motion Pictures and BAFTA. The Irishman, released by Netflix, also won the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review awards for Best Picture. Prior to The Irishman, De Niro was seen in Warner Bros. The Joker and Tribeca Productions’ and HBO’s Wizard of Lies starring as Bernie Madoff, for which he received both an Emmy Award® nomination for lead actor in a limited series or movie and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding performance by a male actor in a Miniseries or Television movie. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting and the Stanley Kubrick Award from the BAFTA Britannia Awards. De Niro was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He served as the jury president of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.  In 2020, De Niro received the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. De Niro takes pride in his production company, Tribeca Productions, and the Tribeca Film Festival, which he founded with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Through Tribeca Productions, De Niro has developed projects on which he has served as producer, director and actor. Tribeca's A Bronx Tale in 1993 marked De Niro’s directorial debut. De Niro also directed The Good Shepherd in 2006.Taylor Hackford (Moderator) was the director of the Academy Award® winning films Ray and An Officer and a Gentleman. In addition, he helmed the beloved features Against All Odds, The Devil’s Advocate, Dolores Claiborne, and Blood In, Blood Out. Hackford most recently directed Robert De Niro in The Comedian. His feature documentary work is equally acclaimed, with Chuck Berry: Hail!, Hail! Rock n’ Roll and When We Were Kings, a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary 1974 bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which won for Best Documentary Feature. He has served two terms as president of the Directors Guild of America.

america family netflix new york city conversations school rock song devil lies hbo judge academy actor comedians advocates joker television fiction panic academy awards wizard apostles emmy awards bang godfather yale golden globes good shepherd dracula officer warner bros hail martin scorsese misery gentleman robert de niro joseph stalin irishman best picture al pacino muhammad ali performing arts rad miniseries bafta francis ford coppola bram stoker outstanding patton appearing taxi drivers cannes film festival bette midler one night stands motion pictures best actor coppola napa valley respected bernie madoff awakenings brian de palma rob reiner apocalypse now tribeca film festival tribeca james caan national board george foreman south bronx pacino raging bull film critics diane keaton deer hunter duvall robert duvall best supporting actor american graffiti screen actors guild cape fear national society national magazine award golden child silver linings playbook corleone bronx tale against all odds godfather part ii mean streets wedding party michael corleone actors studio charles laughton kennedy center honors cecil b demille directors guild east harlem lonesome dove best documentary feature talia shire never say never again caan lee strasberg tender mercies vito corleone sonoma valley don corleone taylor hackford dolores claiborne when we were kings blood out charles brandt sonny corleone jane rosenthal i heard you paint houses drum slowly needle park brian piccolo zoetrope all story rain people tribeca productions
SoundWorks Collection
James Mockoski - Film Archivist and Restoration Supervisor at American Zoetrope

SoundWorks Collection

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2020 45:00


James Mockoski, head of production and archives at American Zoetrope joins us this week to discuss his work supervising the restoration department for Director Francis Ford Coppola’s production company. We discuss his recent work on the 4K Dolby Atmos release of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut and other titles including The Conversation, The Godfather and Lost in Translation. ABOUT AMERICAN ZOETROPE: American Zoetrope (also known as Zoetrope Studios from 1979 until 1990) is a privately run American film production company, centered in San Francisco, California and founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Opened on December 12, 1969, the studio has produced not only the films of Coppola (including Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Tetro), but also George Lucas's pre-Star Wars films (THX 1138, American Graffiti), as well as many others by avant-garde directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders and Godfrey Reggio. American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV. Four films produced by American Zoetrope are included in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films. American Zoetrope-produced films have received 15 Academy Awards and 68 nominations. Initially located in a warehouse on Folsom Street, the company's headquarters have since 1972 been in the historic Sentinel Building, at 916 Kearny Street in San Francisco's North Beach neighbourhood. Coppola named the studio after a zoetrope he was given in the late 1960s by the filmmaker and collector of early film devices, Mogens Skot-Hansen. "Zoetrope" is also the name by which Coppola's quarterly fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, is often known. American Zoetrope is now owned entirely by Coppola's son and daughter, directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, while a majority of the film library is now owned by Lionsgate. www..zoetrope.com/american-zoetrope

Now, Appalachia Interview with Mississippi author Lee Durkee

"Now, Appalachia"

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2020 30:31


On the latest episode of Now, Appalachia, Eliot interviews Mississippi author Lee Durkee about his latest novel The Last Taxi Driver. Lee Durkee is the author of the novel Rides of the Midway. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Sun, Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, New England Review, and Mississippi Noir. In 2021, his memoir Stalking Shakespeare will chronicle his decade-long obsession with trying to find lost portraits of William Shakespeare. A former cab driver, he lives in north Mississippi. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eliot-parker/support

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network
Now, Appalachia Interview with Mississippi author Lee Durkee

Authors on the Air Global Radio Network

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2020 30:31


On this episode of Now, Appalachia, Eliot interviews author Lee Durkee about his latest novel The Last Taxi Driver. Lee is the author of the novel Rides of the Midway. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Sun, Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, New England Review, and Mississippi Noir. In 2021, his memoir Stalking Shakespeare will chronicle his decade-long obsession with trying to find lost portraits of William Shakespeare. A former cab driver, he lives in north Mississippi.

The Story Collider
Leap of Faith: Stories about finding and losing faith

The Story Collider

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2020 35:33


This week we share two stories from people who were confronted with their faith. Part 1: Feeling like a loser after he fails to graduate on time with his degree in materials science, Len Kruger accepts a dinner invitation from a cult. Part 2: After young Jehovah's Witness Emmanuel Garcia loses his faith, he finds a new purpose at a neuroscience conference. Len Kruger is a writer and storyteller. He recently retired from the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, where he was a Specialist in Science and Technology Policy. Len has performed stories on stage with local storytelling groups such as Story District, the Moth, and Better Said Than Done. His short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Zoetrope All-Story, The Barcelona Review, and Gargoyle. He has Bachelor of Applied Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Emmanuel (Mani) Garcia is an Indigenous-Black-Latino psychological scientist-practitioner; passionate science communicator; sign language interpreter; group fitness instructor; certified holistic yoga teacher; statistics educator; filmmaker; artist; writer; musician; and cult survivor living in Queens NYC. While completing his PhD in Clinical Psychology at CUNY-John Jay, Mani is focused on developing his recently launched wellness capacity-building movement #Joy4L. His mission with #Joy4L is to increase joy in the lives of all minoritized people by increasing their access to high quality wellness resources. You can follow Mani at: manigarcia.com; Instagram: @bodyweightfun; Twitter: @manigarcianyc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
First Draft - Adrienne Brodeur

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2019 48:31


Adrienne Brodeur is the author of the memoir, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me.  Brodeur founded the fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, where she served as editor in chief from 1996-2002.  In 2005, she became an editor at Harcourt.  She is now the Executive Director of Aspen Words, a literary arts nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unsound Methods
15: Tom Lee

Unsound Methods

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2018 49:32


This month we speak to Tom Lee award-winning short fiction writer and author of The Alarming Palsy of James Orr. We talk about Tom's approach to writing and how he finds new ideas, the impact of ill-health on his writing as well as the difficulties in moving from short stories to longer form fiction. Tom's work has appeared in The Sunday Times, Esquire and Prospect in the UK, The Dublin Review in Ireland and in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope All Story in the United States, among others. In 2012 he was shortlisted for The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the largest prize for a single short story in the world and in 2015 his non-fiction account of spending 51 days in intensive care was longlisted for The Notting Hill Essay Prize. Tom is on twitter [@TomLeeStories](https://twitter.com/tomleestories?lang=en) and more about his writing at [www.tomleestories.com](http://tomleestories.com)

Marginally | a podcast about writing, work, and friendship

Today's guest is Manjula Martin, the creator of Who Pays Writers and the editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living . Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, Nieman Storyboard, and The Awl, among other publications. Martin’s next nonfiction book will be Fruit Trees for Every Garden, cowritten with Orin Martin, forthcoming in Fall 2019 from Ten Speed Press. Martin is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, the National Magazine Award–winning fiction and art magazine published by Francis Ford Coppola. She has previously worked in varied editorial and writing capacities with book and magazine publishers, nonprofit organizations, and arts organizations. She lives in San Francisco. You can find her at manjulamartin.com. We talk about: What Manjula has learned from many years of writing, blogging and editing about writers and money; Balancing (or not) many creative projects when you have a day job; The importance of prioritizing the work you consider to be your art; YOLO; Her gardening book coming out in 2019; Branding and genre-hopping As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review usin your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcastor Facebook. Meghan's on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá 

Free Library Podcast
Zinzi Clemmons | What We Lose

Free Library Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2018 44:17


Watch the video here. A cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor for Literary Hub, Zinzi Clemmons has had work published in a variety of literary magazines, including Zoetrope: All Story, The Paris Review Daily, and Transition. Raised in Philadelphia to a South African mother and an American father, Clemmons teaches in Los Angeles at The Coleburn Conservatory and Occidental College. Her debut novel, What We Lose, tells the story of Thandi, a young woman caught between cultures as she struggles with love, unexpected motherhood, and the loss of the person who shaped her the most.  (recorded 7/13/2017)

On The Edge
On the Edge September 2017 | Michael Backus "Every Day With Her (New York City, 1982)"

On The Edge

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2017 3:36


Michael Backus’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Digging Through the Fat, and Okey Panky, among others. Xynobooks published his novel, Double, in 2012, and he’s currently shopping a book-length memoir about tossing meat in New York City’s meatpacking district in the early ’80s. He teaches creative writing for Gotham Writer’s Workshop and Zoetrope: All-Story magazine and lives in Albuquerque, NM. On the Edge is a production of Cleaver Magazine and is produced by Ryan Evans. Visit cleavermagazine.com for more high quality art and literary work.

Little Atoms
474: Ryan Gattis & Zinzi Clemmons

Little Atoms

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2017 50:29


Ryan Gattis is the author of Kung Fu and All Involved, which won the American Library Association’s Alex Award & the Lire Award for Noir of the Year in France. Gattis lives and writes in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the street art crew UGLARworks & a founding board member of 1888, a Southern California literary arts non-profit. Ryan’s latest novel is Safe. Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Paris Review Daily, Transition and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College. Zinzi’s debut novel is What We Lose. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

KUCI: Get the Funk Out
Janeane Bernstein speaks with Zinzi Clemmons about her debut novel, WHAT WE LOSE -- a powerful and innovative debut novel that questions the nature of identity, grief, and love through the eyes of a young woman who loses her mother to cancer.

KUCI: Get the Funk Out

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2017


Named a “Writer Worth Knowing” in The New York Times Summer Book Preview Named a summer 2017 recommended read by The New York Times, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Elle, The Millions, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Nylon, Houston Chronicle, Redbook, and Time Zinzi Clemmons’ WHAT WE LOSE is a powerful and innovative debut novel that questions the nature of identity, grief, and love through the eyes of a young woman who loses her mother to cancer. Told in visceral vignettes that draw from autofiction, online media, and encyclopedia, WHAT WE LOSE is a thoughtful, poignant debut from a promising new voice. At the beginning of the novel we meet Thandi, a second generation South African American of mixed race growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs. Thandi is raised by her South African mother, yet in Thandi’s daily life she is immersed in the culture of “American Blacks . . . my precarious homeland.” “Because of my light skin and foreign roots,” Clemmons writes, “I was never fully accepted by any race.” This feeling, of being detached from a tribe, the loneliness of a perpetual outsider, follows her throughout her life. Her mother, a pillar of strength in their family, becomes ill while Thandi is at college, and eventually Thandi leaves school to care for her. After her mother’s death, Thandi struggles to anchor herself to a self-image and to relationships that seem increasingly tenuous to her. She falls in love and fashions an unexpected new family for herself, only to find herself uncomfortable in it—an interloper again—and still deeply disoriented by the loss of her mother. Clemmons intersperses the narrative with photography, text messages, excerpts from blogs and newspaper articles; the effect is by turns playful and haunting. The primary sources create intimate and sprawling connections between the reader, Thandi, and the novel’s larger questions: about the construct of race, injustice within social systems, the durability of love, and the ability to overcome grief. In this way WHAT WE LOSE confronts the horrors and the legacy of Apartheid, and the tyranny of race in the personal and political realms. The meditations in WHAT WE LOSE are deeply felt, not least because its themes are informed by the author’s personal experiences. www.zinziclemmons.com Twitter: @zinziclemmons ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. She is a graduate of Brown and Columbia universities, and her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal, a contributing editor to Literary Hub. She has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Dar al-Ma’mûn, Morocco. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Little Atoms
450: Chibundu Onuzo & Alexandra Kleeman

Little Atoms

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2017 58:40


Chibundu Onuzo was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1991. Her first novel, The Spider King's Daughter, won a Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is completing a PhD on the West African Student's Union at King's College London. Her latest novel is Welcome to Lagos. Alexandra Kleeman is a NYC-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, Guernica, and Gulf Coast, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Harpers, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She is the author of the short story collection Intimations, and a debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2017 19:22


In Part Two of this file the writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, returns to the show this week to talk about her new book and “…the realities of making a living in the writing world.” Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers?, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and “…essays from today’s most acclaimed authors–from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen…” on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of this file Manjula Martin and I discuss: Productivity, irregular hours, and the 400 hats of a working editor and writer Why finding your writing flow is so important when you have a day job One great hack for beating writer’s block How creativity resists definition Why writers need to share info about making a living Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living ManjulaMartin.com How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part One Who Pays Writers? Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine How Bestselling Author Austin Kleon Writes: Part One three cents newsletter by Manjula Martin Manjula Martin on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How the Editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files, I am your host Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers. In part two of this file, the writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, returns to talk about the realities of making a living in the writing world. Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers, an invaluable service dedicated helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and essays from today’s most acclaimed authors from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chi, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Franzen and many others, on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon magazine, Hazlet, the Awl, SF Weekly, the Rumpus, and many others. In part two of this file, Manjula and I discuss productivity, irregular hours and the 400 hats of a working editor and writer, why finding your writing flow is so important when you have a day job, one great hack for beating writer’s block, how creativity resists definition and why writers need to share info about making a living. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. If you missed the first half of this show, you can find it in the archives on iTunes, on WriterFiles.FM, and in the show notes. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. Productivity, Irregular Hours, and the 400 Hats of a Working Editor and Writer Kelton Reid: I’d love to dig into your productivity. You wear a lot of hats, clearly, with all of the different projects you’re doing and do on a daily basis for your day job. Let’s talk about what does your day usually look like? How much time are you doing research? How much time are you actually sitting and clacking away? Manjula Martin: Yeah. I work 40 to 60 hours a week at my job. It varies depending on where we are in the production cycle. My day is busy. I am reading and researching in some form or another most of the day. In terms of whether I’m reading or researching for my own writing work, it’s a much smaller amount of the day. I read for pleasure, usually at night before bed. I’ll tell you right now I am sitting in my gym clothes because I just came from the gym. I’m in my living room because I am working from home today. I got up this morning at 7:00 and I sent a bunch of emails and corresponded with my layout designer and my co-editor and then also did a bunch of emails for the promotion of the Scratch book, and then I ran to the gym and worked out and then I ran home and ate some toast and got on the phone with you. I’m not sitting here writing beautiful prose all morning on my typewriter. I do a lot of email, and for me productivity, it’s all about figuring out a way to just find time to carve out that space to do my own writing. One thing I think that I have learned is that unfortunately, at this moment in my career, there isn’t a regular schedule to that. Because I work for a publication, the busyness of it ebbs and flows, we’re quarterly. There’s one month where things are ****ing crazy, we’re in production, and then right after we publish the magazine it’s a little bit mellower and I’m doing more dealing with circulation, and that sort of thing. I should add here that the entire staff of Zoetrope is two people. Kelton Reid: Holy cow. Manjula Martin: We manage circulation and marketing and everything. I think it’s identifying that ebb and flow in a larger sense in my life, not talking about the ebb and flow of the day, but talking about the ebb and flow of weeks or months or even seasons, and just being okay with that knowing that like, Right now things are crazy and I’m promoting this book and I’m also going into production on the magazine on Monday. So it’s going to be really crazy and I’m not going to write anything for probably two weeks. Then I’m going to have some time off and then I’m going to write all day for three days. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Manjula Martin: I also happen to work better in long chunks. That’s actually somewhat conducive to the way that I write. Why Finding Your Writing Flow is So Important When You Have a Day Job Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Like a lot of writers who have day jobs, we kind of push our other projects to the margins, but finding that flow is so important, isn’t it? To find those longer deep flow days where you can just get into it. Manjula Martin: Yeah, and I think a lot of that psychologically has to do with being okay with the reality of your life. I would love to wake up every morning and write for three hours, but I don’t, because I’m exhausted and I need to sleep, and exercise is important to me and it keeps me from being depressed, so I need exercise. That’s what I do in the morning. Once I understood that, Okay, this is how it’s going to go, accepting that and not being too hard on myself for it, I think, is a huge part of that. You have to look at what actually your life and your work is like and not try and force yourself into habits or productivity hacks or anything like that that aren’t realistic and that aren’t actually applicable to your own situation. Kelton Reid: Totally. How do you feel about writer’s block? Manjula Martin: I didn’t believe in it until it happened to me. Writer’s block hasn’t been a big problem in my life, I think it can be a really big problem for people and I recognize that it is a huge psychological block for a lot of people. I have never had that feeling of staring at the blank page and being like, Ugh, what do I put on it? For me I just am like, I wish I could have time to have a blank page, is sort of how I feel sometimes. For me, it’s a lot about being busy and having 400 jobs. I do think that I have, I think, since November 8, 2016, had difficulty writing. The way that I found to work around it is to write, but maybe write other things. Kelton Reid: Yeah, something that Austin Kleon actually calls productive procrastination. He also contributes You interviewed Kleon for your book. Manjula Martin: He’s genius. One Great Hack for Beating Writer’s Block Kelton Reid: I love Kleon, he was on this show also. His hack is just work on something else until you’re- Manjula Martin: Yeah, do something else. The cool thing about being a writer is that “working” can mean reading a book or even maybe staring at the wall and thinking. There is a lot of process and internal stuff that goes into creating literature. That’s all part of the job. It’s important to give yourself time to do that stuff. It’s also important to know the difference between processing and procrastinating. Yeah, I think for me, for example, since the election I’ve had trouble working on my novel, because I’m sort of like, How is this ****ing relevant? I don’t know. I’m rethinking parts of it. I have found that I am writing letters, I’ve been writing letters to friends on paper with a pen, and it’s been amazing. It’s basically like a much easier way to write in your journal. Kelton Reid: Yeah, for sure. And you work through stuff as you’re doing it, don’t you? Manjula Martin: Yeah. Kelton Reid: It’s kind of like a therapy hack. Just write a letter to a friend- Manjula Martin: You don t even have to send them! You can just write them. Kelton Reid: You never do. That’s right, that’s a great trick. I think an author I had on recently, Dan Buettner, he s a journalist, said that very thing. He said, “When you get stuck you just write an email to someone,” and often times he doesn’t send it because he’s working the problem out in his head as he does it. Manjula Martin: Yeah, my fourth grade teacher used to make us do a free write, which thinking back on it, was awesome. She used to say, she would stand on her desk, she was a bit of a character, and she used to say, “You have to put your pen on the paper for 10 minutes, and if you don’t know what to write, just write over and over again the words, ‘I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write,’ and I guarantee you, at some point you’re going to stop writing that sentence and write something else.” Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: The fourth grade method, man. Kelton Reid: Fourth grade method, noted down. Get up on your desk. Let’s ask a couple workflow questions, these are easy ones. Mac or PC? Manjula Martin: Mac. Kelton Reid: Are you using Microsoft Word primarily or Scrivener or something crazy? Manjula Martin: I use Microsoft Word because I’m old. But, I should say I have recently started writing longhand and then typing it in at the end of the day. Kelton Reid: Okay, I like that. Manjula Martin: Which is a tip I picked up from Alexander Chee. Kelton Reid: Yes, and also appears in your collection, is that correct? Manjula Martin: He does. Kelton Reid: Do you have any procrastination beating tools or do you lean into it? Some writers turn off the internet, or- Manjula Martin: It depends. Yeah, I was going to say my number one procrastination tool is get off the damn internet, which includes your phone, hot tip. If you turn off your computer you also have to turn off your phone. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: People joke a lot about Jonathan Franzen‘s opinions on the internet, which he goes into in the book a bit, he’s in the book too. I gotta say I’m with him on this one, turn it off. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Again, that prosthetic brain is easy to use, and then I think your real brain just atrophies a little. Manjula Martin: Yeah, and especially if you’re on social media and you’re having a flood of spastic images and words being thrown at you, at your brain. Your brain is just like, What? Kelton Reid: It loves it. Manjula Martin: For me It loves it, but then it can’t come back from that, I feel like. For me, if I get up and I turn on Twitter first in the morning, there s no coming back from that. My whole day is different. How Creativity Resists Definition Kelton Reid: Yeah. All right, well I want to get into creativity before I lose you here. Can you define creativity? You rub up against all these amazing creatives in all these different fields. Do you have a definition of creativity floating around? Manjula Martin: Probably not. Creativity tends to resist definition and I would say that’s sort of its thing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. When do you personally feel most creative? Manjula Martin: When it’s foggy outside and I’m inside and it’s the morning and I have time. Kelton Reid: Yeah, time. Do you have a creative muse right now? Manjula Martin: Like a being? Kelton Reid: No, yeah, sure, it could be a deity, it could be other TV show, I don’t know. Manjula Martin: One thing that I often turn to is poetry, I read poetry. I don’t write poetry, but I read it. At the moment I’ve been rereading Anne Carson’s Sappho fragments. The book is called If Not, Winter. Loving those. Poetry, I think for me, serves as a bit of a muse, but it’s also more of a writing prompt. It helps get things flowing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It does require a different part of your brain to probably both write and read, I think. Manjula Martin: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kelton Reid: Which is so great about poetry. What, in your estimation, makes a writer great? Manjula Martin: Great writing? Kelton Reid: Yes. The words, once again. Manjula Martin: Is this a trick question? Kelton Reid: It is. Manjula Martin: Yeah, man, I’ll just leave it at that. Kelton Reid: Okay, perfect. I like it. That’s the most succinct answer I’ve had to date. Before we go, I know that you are in a bit of a time crunch, but what do you think I’ll ask you one final fun one. If you could choose any author from any era for an all expense paid dinner to your favorite spot in the world, where would you go and who would you go with? Manjula Martin: Okay, let’s see, I’m going to start with I would love to see what would happen if I took Gertrude Stein to Chez Panisse. Kelton Reid: Hmmm. And what would you eat? Manjula Martin: Whatever Gertrude told me to eat. Kelton Reid: Okay, perfect. All right, as we wrap up here, before I ask you to offer advice to your fellow scribes, I want to point back to this fantastic book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. It’s a fantastic book. It is a collection of essays, interviews, by writers at all different places in their careers. It’s broken up into three distinct sections: Early days, we talk about the earlier parts of the career, The daily grind, that every day grind, and then Someday, which has some more successful authors talking about the perception, at least, of success. It’s a great book, kudos on this collection. Your contribution to it also very inspiring, lots of inspiring and somewhat heartbreaking things in there. Yeah, I want to point writers to that and readers alike, it’s a great one. Congrats. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Why Writers Need to Share Info About Making a Living Kelton Reid: To wrap up here, in addition to Scratch, what other advice can you offer your fellow writers to keep going, keep the ink moving, keep the cursor moving and the ink flowing? Manjula Martin: A couple things, I guess. I would just say money and work are an intricate part of any art that an artist puts out into the world, whether or not you’re getting paid for that art, even. We all have to deal with money and we all are affected by it. So we need to share information and acknowledge that commerce is a part of literature. Whether or not you like it, it is. You don’t have to like it and you don’t have to be okay with it but you kind of have to do it. It might be a good idea to get educated about it and get comfy with it. My only other general advice tip for writers is to not listen too much to tips for writers. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: It’s useful and fun and we all love this, but make sure you’re spending more time writing than you are getting tips about writing. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I love that, that’s a great takeaway. Manjula Martin, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Where can writers connect with you out there in the world? Manjula Martin: I’m on Twitter, for better or worse, it’s my full name, Manjula Martin. My other contact info is on my website, ManjulaMartin.com. I like getting new letters, so send me an email. Also, I have a newsletter, a tiny letter, it’s called 3 Cents, you can find that on my website as well. That goes out about once a month. Kelton Reid: Perfect. I will be signing up for that shortly. Thanks again, come back any time, we really appreciate your wisdom. Manjula Martin: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: Cheers. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer’s File podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

DIY MFA Radio
129: Let's Talk About the Money - Interview with Manjula Martin

DIY MFA Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2017 48:29


Hey there word nerds! Today I’m thrilled to welcome Manjula Martin on the show. Manjula is editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living from Simon & Schuster. She’s the creator of the blog Who Pays Writers? And was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical focused on the business of being a writer. Her work has appeared in various publications like the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, SF Weekly, The Billfold, and The Toast, plus, she is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story. Today, Manjula and I will be talking about writers and money, how to make ends meet, and generate revenue from your writing. In this episode we discuss: Why it’s so difficult—but so important—for writers to talk about money. Also why it doesn’t have to be difficult. Different options and strategies for how writers can make a living beyond a book deal. The pros and cons of working for free, and the broader implications this has on the publishing landscape. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and leveraging them to help you make a living. Plus, her #1 tip for writers. About the Author Manjula Martin is editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living (Simon & Schuster, January 2017). She created the blog Who Pays Writers? and was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical that focused on the business of being a writer. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, SF Weekly, The Billfold, The Toast, and other publications. She is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story and lives in San Francisco. You can learn more about Manjula Martin at her website: https://manjulamartin.com/. Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living A collection of essays from today’s most acclaimed authors—from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen—on the realities of making a living in the writing world. In the literary world, the debate around writing and commerce often begs us to take sides: either writers should be paid for everything they do or writers should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job, but your ultimate goal should be to quit your day job. It’s an endless, confusing, and often controversial conversation that, despite our bare-it-all culture, still remains taboo. In Scratch, Manjula Martin has gathered interviews and essays from established and rising authors to confront the age-old question: how do creative people make money? For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/129

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part One

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2017 17:41


The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and “…the realities of making a living in the writing world.” Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers?, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and “…essays from today’s most acclaimed authors–from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen…” on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In Part One of this file Manjula Martin and I discuss: Why the school of real life is so valuable to writers How an unpaid internship led to a dream job The revenge of analog and print magazines How a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living ManjulaMartin.com How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part One Who Pays Writers? Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine three cents newsletter by Manjula Martin Manjula Martin on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How the Editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Manjula Martin Writes: Part One Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I am your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers to learn their secrets. The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award winning magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and the realities of making a living in the writing world. Manjula is the founder of the website, Who Pays Writers, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Miss Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and essays from today’s most acclaimed authors from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Franzen, and many others on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. In part one of this file, Manjula and I discuss why the school of real life is so valuable to writers, how an unpaid internship led to her dream job, the revenge of analog and print magazines, and how a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. A quick note to subscribers that the show will be moving to Tuesdays for 2017 so look for part 2 of this file January 17th. Thanks for listening. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. We are back on The Writer Files with a special guest. Manjula Martin is joining us today. Writer, editor, managing editor of Zoetrope magazine, a fantastic magazine that I’m a big fan of, and also the editor of a brand new book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, a fantastic new edition. Thanks for joining us. Manjula Martin: Thanks, it’s great to be here. Why the School of Real Life is So Valuable to Writers Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, so I’d love to talk about the book itself, which I think is an important one, at least an inspiring one for writers of every level out there in the world. But, let’s talk a little bit about kind of your origins as a writer. You contribute to the book itself and it’s a fantastic, inspiring story about your own journey, but let’s talk a little bit about that kind of, maybe for listeners who don’t know you or are familiar with your journey, kind of where you’ve been and a little bit of that story of where you’re going, maybe, too. Manjula Martin: Do you have any tips? Yeah, my journey is somewhat meandering, but also rather direct in its way. I’ve always been into writing in some way or another. I wrote poetry and letters and a zine when I was young. From there I worked in journalism. I was a receptionist at a magazine. Then I was a reporter at a magazine. I also worked outside of journalism a lot. I’ve worked a lot of service jobs. I’ve worked a lot of day jobs where I’m a writer in addition to doing creative writing on my own. I’ve done copywriting. I’ve been a marketing editor at nonprofits and art organizations. I’ve been a full-time freelancer for many, many years. I write fiction and nonfiction and I edit. About a year ago I got the job as managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, so that’s, at the moment, a proper day job that I have. I think, I guess, I would say my path has been somewhat meandering but a cool part of that is that I have gotten to do all kinds of stuff and I’ve gotten to experience what it’s like to be a writer in many different situations. As your job, not as your job, different types of writing, different environments, different goals, and so I tend to describe myself as sort of a generalist, I guess, in that way. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a fascinating path and you write about it. You’ve written about it quite extensively. It seems like it’s led you to this, some great epiphanies, and you have some amazing advice for writers. The book obviously is an extension of that, and it’s this beautiful collection of essays and interviews that you yourself have done and some others have done. Congrats on the book. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: By the way. Once this is published the book will have just come out so writers and readers can find it. Manjula Martin: At Readscratch.com. Kelton Reid: Yes, yes, Readscratch.com. That is the official website for the book. Where else can we find your writing? You’ve written for quite a few kind of high profile magazines and literary What Manjula is Working on Now Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah, what I’ve mostly published up to this point is I’ve done a lot of like essay writing, personal essay and mix of reported and personal essay. Yeah, I’ve done stuff. The essay that is in the book was first assigned by the VQR, the Virginia Quarterly Review. I’ve written for Pacific Standard and Aeon, which is a really cool British publication online, a bunch of The Awl family websites. I used to write for The Toast (R.I.P), so those are some of the places where my work lives online still. If folks want to actually read stories I’ve written, you can just go to my personal website and I have clips there. You can click on all the links you want. Then I’m also working on a novel, which you cannot yet read but will at some point. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Hopefully. Then I’m also, you know, I’ve been working on this project with Scratch for several years now. It started out of Who Pays Writers, the website, and then it sort of became it’s own online magazine, and then that became a book. But I’m actually, right now, just starting to work on my next project, which is a bit of a pivot. I am co-authoring a gardening book with my father. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Manjula Martin: Who is a somewhat acclaimed organic gardening instructor. Kelton Reid: That’s fantastic. Manjula Martin: We’re writing a book for Ten Speed Press about how to grow fruit trees. Kelton Reid: Amazing. Manjula Martin: But that will be a different kind of project, yeah. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well it’s kind of hard to keep track of all the stuff you’re getting into, but it’s Manjula Martin: I thought, as you were listing it out, I sound like a crazy person. Kelton Reid: No, but it’s inspiring. As I’m looking at your bio, there’s like the short version in there and then you start to dig into it a little bit and it’s like, wow, you’ve done so many cool things, so kudos. Manjula Martin: Part of that is that I’ve had about 4,000 jobs. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Because I didn’t graduate from college around the time that most people graduate from college. I dropped out of college after a year and just went to work. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: A lot of that experience comes from school of real life. Kelton Reid: Right. Manjula Martin: I did eventually go back and get my Bachelor’s Degree just a few years ago, which was a really interesting experience being a grown-up and going back to school in that way. That’s part of, I think, what is an important sort of approach that I took to the book too, is like I think there’s a perception that there’s some sort of divide behind like schmancy literary world and more commercial or other types of writing or journalism. That has not been the case in my life. I have done everything and continue to do everything. I love everything and I’m interested in everything. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: I can totally read a chick-lit book and I can totally read a fancy literary novel. Each of those have value in their own way to me in my life. I’ve really experienced that, I think, through my winding career path. Part of what I did with the book, with Scratch, was try to bring together writers who you might not normally find in the same place under the umbrella of the book. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well, the book has so much wisdom. There are heartbreaking pieces and there are truly inspiring pieces. Manjula Martin: It’s so good to hear that because my great fear with the book is that it will be depressing. Kelton Reid: No, I didn’t take it that way at all. In fact, there’s just so much. There’s so much to unpack that it’s, I think, it is one of those that you’re just going to want to keep around and keep getting nuggets from. It’ll be one that people will keep on their desks as just kind of inspiration; open it up, read a section. But you know, as you kind of are talking about your own journey, it’s like, I think it’s obviously given you kind of the vision that everybody’s financial situation is different, right? Everyone has different goals. You talk about their different backgrounds and emotional hangups. It’s really cool that you’ve done work to help writers to kind of at least bring some transparency to these age-old questions of, you know Manjula Martin: Yeah. Kelton Reid: Should you quit your day job? Which you talk about extensively. How do creators make money and why aren’t we talking more about how everybody’s journey is different and everybody’s needs are different? Anyway, I think it’s all really great. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Writers especially will love this one, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. Kudos on that. It’s exciting to see. Manjula Martin: Thank you so much. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, and now you are a managing editor at Zoetrope, which has been around for what, almost 20 years now, this magazine. Manjula Martin: Next year is our 20th birthday. Kelton Reid: It’s a kind of a storied institution. I have been reading it since probably around the turn of the millennium. Manjula Martin: Cool. Kelton Reid: There’s just been some great authors, David Mamet for instance, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Murakami and then some art editors including David Bowie, is that right? Manjula Martin: Yes. Kelton Reid: Who worked on the magazine. I remember the David Burn issue. Manjula Martin: That was a good one, yeah. How an Unpaid Internship Led to a Dream Job Kelton Reid: Yeah. That must be a challenging job. Then you’re also kind of rubbing elbows with all these newer, exciting authors and older, established authors. Manjula Martin: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I won’t lie. All-Story is a magazine that I have also been a huge fan of for many, many years. I will be very honest and tell you that the path that led me to getting this job was that I did an unpaid internship there about 10 years ago. Kelton Reid: Wow, wow. Manjula Martin: I’m generally not pro unpaid internships but I am also pro transparency, so that’s how that works. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: I was an adult. I was going back to college and I was like, “Ooh, I could do an internship. This is like my chance to do an internship,” because normally I am working all the time and could never do that. I actually took out extra loans so that I would be able to not work as much because I was working the whole time I was in school. I was like, If there was one magazine where I would want to be an intern, what would it be? It’s All-Story and it’s here in San Francisco where I live. I miraculously was able to do that for a short period of time. Then I just stayed in touch with the editor. We have coffee every once in awhile. He’s a wonderful, brilliant editor named Michael Ray and he’s been at the magazine for probably about 15 years I think, a very long time. Kelton Reid: Wow. Manjula Martin: Most of the amazing, amazing short fiction you see in the magazine has had his touch in some way on it. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: It’s really cool. It’s also really cool to see sort of it is a very, you know, we’ve won some awards. We have a pretty nice reputation. We get to publish amazing authors. As the managing editor, I am deeply involved in the process with the guest designers. We have a different artist guest design each issue of the magazine and they contribute all the imagery for the magazine as well as dictate the look and feel of it, so every issue looks entirely different, like different mastheads. Sometimes it’s a different shape, different paper, you know Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: That sort of thing. That’s sort of an extra amazing part of it is sort of being able to make the connections between like visual storytelling and storytelling through fiction. Then, obviously, the magazine is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and he’s very interested in the connections between different kinds of storytelling. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Every issue we also reprint a story that has been made into a film. It’s along the lines of some of the other work I’ve done, like it is somewhat interdisciplinary. I’ve only been there for a short period of time, so I don’t really have any good stories from the trenches yet, but Michael and I often joke that we have an impossible … a job that basically shouldn’t exist now and is maybe a job from the 1960s where we work in an office in an old building and put out a print magazine. The Revenge of Analog and Print Magazines Kelton Reid: It’s cool to see. It’s great to see, as David Sax, my previous guest called it, the revenge of paper and a new return to analog. Manjula Martin: Yeah, I’m a fan. Kelton Reid: Yeah and especially print magazines and the resurgence of people’s love for those. Manjula Martin: Well and that I think is not necessarily unrelated to the economics of it, you know? It has been difficult for publications, whether they be fiction magazines or the New York Times, to find sustainable profit models online. While print advertising is not exactly a perfect beast, we all know how it works, you know? It’s somewhat clear as far as, as clear as advertising could ever be in terms of metrics. I experienced that putting out Scratch as a digital publication. It was wonderful and we had a pretty great subscriber base who were paying money to read this magazine on the internet, and it just wasn’t enough. Kelton Reid: That was the one you collaborated with Jane Friedman on, is that correct? Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Jane Friedman, who is an awesome blogger and educator about the business of publishing, and I launched that magazine together. Kelton Reid: She was on this show also so I’ll link to that episode. Manjula Martin: I want to listen to that one, yeah. How a Tumblr Became an Inspiring Collection of Stories on the Writing Life Kelton Reid: Yeah, and then the Who Pays Writers is a fantastic tool also, which I will link to, which seemed like it was a kind of an offshoot or connected with Scratch. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers actually came first. Kelton Reid: Okay. Manjula Martin: Then Scratch followed because there was a need for more context, basically. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers is just a list of rates that people have been paid to do freelance writing. Kelton Reid: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Manjula Martin: People submit their rates anonymously and then I post them. It started as a Tumblr, actually, in 2012 and then I sort of turned it into its own site. Through that people were sort of asking for more context around the numbers and that was sort of one of the ideas behind Scratch, was to sort of tell the stories behind the numbers. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer’s File podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

The Lubetkin Media Companies
Jewish Sacred Aging Podcast 2016-14: Aviya Kushner, The Grammar of God

The Lubetkin Media Companies

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 24, 2016 37:28


On this edition of the Jewish Sacred Aging podcast, Rabbi Address welcomes Aviya Kushner, the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible.   About Aviya Kushner, in her own words: I grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by language, culture, and belief. My first book, The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau/Random House 2015), is about the intense experience of reading the Bible in English after an entire life of reading it in Hebrew. My writing has also appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Partisan Review, Poets & Writers, A Public Space, The Wilson Quarterly, and Zoetrope: All-Story. I have worked as a travel columnist for The International Jerusalem Post and as a poetry columnist for BarnesandNoble.com. I am currently an associate professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, and I am a contributing editor at A Public Space as well as a mentor for The National Yiddish Book Cente

MoAD SF
ZZ Packer and Sarah Ladipo Manyika In Conversation

MoAD SF

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2013 65:59


Acclaimed author ZZ Packer has been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Whiting Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her story collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere won the Commonwealth First Fiction Award and an ALEX award, and was selected for the Today Show Book Club by John Updike. She is currently at work on a novel, Thousands, about the Buffalo Soldiers, which was excerpted in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction Issue. Here, we present Packer reading from Thousands, followed by a wide-ranging conversation with author and professor Sarah Ladipo Manyika. ZZ Packer’s stories and nonfiction have appeared in Harper’s, Story, Ploughshares, Zoetrope All-Story, and The New York Times Magazine. She was recently named a professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and her writing includes essays, academic papers, reviews and short stories. Her first novel is In Dependence (Legend Press, London; Cassava Republic Press, Abuja). She teaches literature at San Francisco State University. This program is co-presented by MoAD and Litquake.

Skylight Books Author Reading Series

Beck (Chronicle Books) Photographer Autumn de Wilde (Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie) will discuss and sign her brand-new collection of photographs of Beck, based on a 15-year collaboration between the two, and including portraits, photo sessions, and images from recording sessions and live performances. Autumn de Wilde is a photographer and a director best known for her portrait and documentary work in music, fashion and film. Some of her album covers include The White Stripes, Elliott Smith, Beck, Wilco, Norah Jones, and The Decemberists. Documenting the life and work of Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte has been an ongoing project since the designer's explosive beginning. Her portraits of actors, directors, designers, musicians and artists have been featured in Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Lula, Zoetrope All-Story, Interview, Elle, Flash-Art, Purple, Paper, Nylon, Black Book, Tar, The Lab, Spin, and Rolling Stone. She lives in Los Angeles. See more of her work at autumndewilde.tumblr.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 11, 2011.