The Lit Fantastic Podcast: Recent Episodes
Neil Aitken
The Lit Fantastic is a podcast series about authors and their obsessions. Each episode features host Neil Aitken in conversation with writers of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction at various stages of their careers.
Poet and essayist Joanna Penn Cooper is the author of The Itinerant Girl's Guide to Self-Hypnosis (Brooklyn Arts Press) and What Is a Domicile (Noctuary Press). Joanna holds a PhD in English from Temple University and has taught at Marquette University and Fordham University. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, South Dakota Review, Zocálo Public Square, Open Letters Monthly, Poetry International, and other journals. Joanna teaches online workshops in flash memoir and lyric essay for Creative Nonfiction. A new chapbook, When We Were Fearsome, is out this month from the Ethel Zine. (www.joannapenncooper.net)
Music credits: Beautocracy by Podington Bear; Conviction by Little Glass Men
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of ISAKO ISAKO (forthcoming September 2018), winner of the 2017 Alice James Award. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of Washington, and her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, Best New Poets, and DISMANTLE: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a founding editor of Lantern Review, she has received fellowships from the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop and Kundiman, an organization dedicated to the cultivation of Asian American writing. Mia lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Music credits: A. A. Aalto - Lantern Music (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/A_A_Aalto/Fest/Lantern_Music); Lee Rosevere - Past Catching Up (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Living_With_Trauma/Lee_Rosevere_-_Living_With_Trauma_-_08_Past_Catching_Up); Dee Yan-Key - Nightscape (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dee_Yan-Key/Dream_Time/07--Dee_Yan-Key-Nightscape)
Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth book of poems, Ragged Eden, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. He’s also the author of a fantasy series and serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. His work has appeared in Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry, Ploughshares, DIAGRAM, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, please visit www.troublewithhammers.com
Music credit: Little Glass Men - Conviction; Scott Buckley - Warriors of Destiny (Ultima V Orchestral Remix) https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley/warriors-of-destiny-ultima-5-remix; Kevin MacLeod - Devastation and Revenge (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Contemporary_Sampler/Devastation_and_Revenge)
TJ Jarrett is a writer and software developer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her recent work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry, African American Review, Boston Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, DIAGRAM, Third Coast, VQR, West Branch and others. She has earned scholarships from Colrain Manuscript Conference and Vermont Studio Center; fellowships from Sewanee Writer’s Conference 2014 and the Summer Literary Seminars 2012 and 2014; winner of VQR’s Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry 2014; a runner up for the 2012 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize and 2012 New Issues Poetry Prize; and her collection The Moon Looks Down and Laughs was selected as a finalist for the 2010 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. She has been anthologized in Language Lessons by Third Man Books and Best American Non-Required Reading 2015 from Houghton-Mifflin and others. She was awarded the 2017 George Garrett New Writing Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her debut collection Ain’t No Grave (finalist for the 2013 Balcones Prize) was published with New Issues Press (2013). (Purchase Here) Her second collection Zion (winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition 2013) was published by Southern Illinois University Press in the fall of 2014. Visit her online at www.tjjarrett.com
Music credits: Little Glass Men - Conviction; David Szesztay - Parody 3 (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Szesztay/20171113163527336/Parody_3)
Hari Alluri is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya, 2017), Carving Ashes (CiCAC, 2013) and the chapbook The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel). His poetic, curational and translation work appears in anthologies, journals and online venues, recently through The Margins, Poemeleon and Poetry International. A co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press and recipient of several grants and awards, he immigrated to Vancouver, Coast Salish territories, at age 12, where he again works and writes.
Lynne DeSilva-Johnson (they/them) is a nonbinary queer interdisciplinary creator, cultural scholar, and educator. Lynne is the founder and creative director of The Operating System, a radical open source arts organization, online platform, and publisher. Prior to teaching at Pratt, they were an adjunct in the CUNY system for 10 years, as well as a teaching artist for myriad organizations and schools, working in classrooms with K-12 through adult learners. Alongside their work in the education sector, Lynne has worked for two decades to help build programming, curriculum, publications, design, identity, and infrastructure for local nonprofits as well as independent arts and education oriented small businesses.
They are an independent curator and host of a wide range of exhibitions, panels, performances, and workshops, collaborating with a wide range of practitioners, organizations and venues. Recent publication credits and interviews include Wave Composition, The Conversant, The Philadelphia Supplement, Gorgon Poetics, POSTblank, Vintage Magazine, Live Mag, Coldfront, the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Resist Much/Obey Little: Poems for The Resistance, and In Memory of Feasible Grace, part of the Panthalassa Pamphlet series, among others. Their performances and work have appeared widely, including recent features or projects at Spoonbill Books, Open Source Gallery, Artists Space, Bowery Arts and Science, The NYC Poetry Festival, Parkside Lounge, Carmine Street Metrics, Eyebeam, LaMaMa, Happy Lucky No.1, Triangle Quarterly, Undercurrent Projects, Mellow Pages, The New York Public Library, Launchpad BK, Dixon Place, Poets Settlement, SOHO20 Gallery and many more. Current projects include a hybrid poetics / research project around evolving system ecologies, the Building Interpersonal Infrastructures series, and a multimedia text-performance project around the somatic manifestations of trauma. They are always still beginning.
Born in Wonju, Republic of Korea and adopted by a steelworker and homemaker in Oklahoma, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is a poet, essayist, and scholar with interests in creative writing, critical adoption studies, Asian American literature, and Korean literary translation. She holds a BA in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MA in English/PhD in Literature and Creative from the University of Southern California.
Her works include Paper Pavilion (2007), recipient of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; Interrogation Room (White Pine Press 2018), finalist for the Copper Nickel/Milkweed Jake Adam York Prize; and the chapbooks Notes from a Missing Person (Essay Press 2015); Necro Citizens (forthcoming); and Song of a Mirror, finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. Currently, she is co-editing Radical Kinships: An Anthology of Autocritical Writing with Dr. Jenny Heijun Wills and Joshua Whitehead.
Widely collaborative, Jennifer has partnered with composers, artists, documentary filmmakers, dance choreographers, and virtual reality programmers on a range of interdisciplinary projects that have premiered in Asia, Europe, and North America. In support of her writing and scholarship, she has received grants from the Daesan Foundation, Intermedia Arts, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Minnesota State Arts Board, among others.
A Minnesota-born daughter of Vietnam War refugees, Jenna Lê earned her B.A. in mathematics before obtaining her M.D. She lives and works as a physician and educator in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. She is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), which was a Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller, and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018; first edition: Anchor & Plume Press, 2016), which won Second Place in the 2017 Elgin Awards. Her poetry, fiction, essays, book criticism, and poetry translations have been published widely. Le has been a Minnetonka Review Editor’s Prize winner, a two-time Alpha Omega Alpha Pharos Poetry Competition winner, a William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition finalist, a Michael E. DeBakey Poetry Award finalist, a Pamet River Prize semifinalist, a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and a Rhysling Award nominee. Since 2014 (after her Pharos Poetry Competition wins), Le has also served on the editorial board of the Pharos, the journal of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Her hobbies include drawing and painting. Visit her online at https://jennalewriting.com
Saba Syed Razvi is the author of In the Crocodile Gardens (Agape Editions), heliophobia (Finishing Line Press) Limerence & Lux (Chax Press), Of the Divining and the Dead (Finishing Line Press), Beside the Muezzin’s Call & Beyond the Harem’s Veil (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Offending Adam, Diner, TheTHE Poetry Blog’s Infoxicated Corner, The Homestead Review, NonBinary Review, 10×3 plus, 13th Warrior Review, The Arbor Vitae Review, and Arsenic Lobster, and others, as well as in anthologies such as Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War Faith and Sexuality, The Loudest Voice Anthology, The Liddell Book of Poetry, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity, The Rhysling Anthology, Dreamspinning, and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace. Her poems have been nominated for the Elgin Award, the Bettering American Poetry Awards, The Best of the Net Award, the Rhysling Award, and have won a 2015 Independent Best American Poetry Award. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston in Victoria, TX, where in addition to working on scholarly research on interfaces between Science and contemporary Poetry, she is researching Sufi Poetry in translation, and writing new poems and fiction. She’s available for readings, guest lectures in person or by videoconference, visits to book clubs, individual consultations or commissions, workshops, and various collaborations. Visit her online at https://sabarazviauthorsite.wordpress.com
Jon Tribble is author of two collections of poems: Natural State (Glass Lyre Press, 2016), and, And There Is Many a Good Thing (Salmon Poetry, 2017). His third book, God of the Kitchen, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press in 2018. He is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship Award in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council and his poems have appeared in print in journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West,and The Jazz Poetry Anthology, and online at The Account, Dublin Poetry Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and storySouth. His work was selected as the 2001 winner of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College and as a winner in the 2016 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize Competition. He is managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by SIU Press.
Jessica Piazza is the author of three poetry collections: Interrobang (Red Hen Press, 2013), the chapbook This is not a sky (Black Lawrence Press, 2014) and Obliterations (with Heather Aimee O'Neill (Red Hen Press, 2016). Interrobang won the 2011 To the Lighthouse Prize from A Room of Her Own Foundation and the 2013 Balcones Prize from the Balcones Poetry Center in Austin, TX. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jessica now lives in Los Angeles where she teaches Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Southern California and poetry in the online MFA program at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, as well as moderating book clubs for Literary Affairs, a full service book club and literary event company in Beverly Hills. When she isn't teaching, writing or facilitating book clubs in Los Angeles, she curates the site Poetry Has Value, where conversations about poetry, money and worth abound.
http://www.jessicapiazza.com
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Waxing and Waning” by Robin Crutchfield “Scattered” by Ketsa
Lee Herrick is the author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead (WordTech Editions, 2012) and This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007) and a Fresno Poet Laureate emeritus (2017-2017). His poems have been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. He is the founding editor of In the Grove and has guest edited various projects, including The Rio Grande Review and New Truths: Writing in the 21st Century by Korean Adoptees. He served for seven years on the Board of Directors of the English Council of California Two-Year Colleges and currently serves on the leadership team of The Adoption Museum Project. Lee has traveled throughout Latin America and Asia, and he has given readings throughout the United States. He was born in Daejeon, South Korea, adopted at ten months old, and raised in the East Bay and later, Central California. He lives with his daughter and wife in Fresno, California. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.
https://www.leeherrick.com
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Open Door” by Little Glass Men “Waxing and Waning” by Robin Crutchfield
Brent Fisk is a writer from Bowling Green, Kentucky with over 300 poems, essays and short stories published so far. He has an B.A. in English Literature, and an M.A. in Creative Writing from WKU.
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Conviction” by Little Glass Men “Twosome” by Podington Bear
Helene Achanzar is a Kundiman fellow who has earned awards from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc. She is a freelance writer who has written for Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Vice Media. Helene will be beginning her MFA studies at University of Mississippi this fall.
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Peace Flower” by Ketsa “The tide will take us home” by Ketsa
Noel Pabillo Mariano is a storyteller & community arts activist. They’re the editor of the anthology Press Start & Game On: Voices On Gaming and he is the author of the chapbooks, A Girl Named Hemingway (Eight Point Star Press) and Dispatches from the Mushroom Kingdom (Hyacinth Girl Press). Their poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in Connotation Press, Redactions, Silverado Quarterly Review, Red Riverstones, and elsewhere. Noel’s work has been anthologized in Kuwento for Lost Things (Carayan Press), Here is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press) and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press).
https://noelpmariano.com
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Poolside” by Little Glass Men “Meet the Filter” by Little Glass Men
Jeannine Hall Gailey recently served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist's Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize, the upcoming Field Guide to the End of the World. Her work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and Prairie Schooner.
http://webbish6.com
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “The Atmosphere” by Little Glass Men “Scattered” by Ketsa
Hélène Cardona is a poet, literary translator and actor. Her six books include Life in Suspension (2016), and Dreaming My Animal Selves (2013). Her translations include Beyond Elsewhere (by Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, 2016), recipient of a Hemingway Grant; Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux, 2014); The Birnam Wood (by her father José Manuel Cardona, forthcoming 2018); and Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb (2015). She has also translated Rimbaud, Baudelaire, René Depestre, Ernest Pépin, Aloysius Bertrand, Maram Al-Masri, Eric Sarner, Jean-Claude Renard, Nicolas Grenier, and Christiane Singer. Her work has been translated into 13 languages. She contributes essays to The London Magazine, co-edits Plume and Fulcrum, holds a masters in American Literature from the Sorbonne, worked as a translator for the Canadian Embassy in Paris, and taught at Hamilton College & LMU. She is the recipient of numerous awards including fellowships from the Goethe-Institut & Universidad Internacional de Andalucía. She also writes children’s stories and co-wrote with John FitzGerald the screenplay Primate, based on his novel. Acting credits include Chocolat, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Muppets Most Wanted, Serendipity, Mumford, and Happy Feet 2. Born in Paris and raised all over Europe, she has lived in Switzerland, France, England, Wales, Monaco, Germany, Spain, and the United States.
https://helenecardona.com
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “The Atmosphere” by Little Glass Men “Break” by Little Glass Men
YA novelist Valynne E. Maetani talks about her strange obsession with a particular kind of weird and gaudy fashion accessory and how it ultimately informs how she sees the world and what she thinks of how the world sees those who are a bit different. More at http://www.thelitfantastic.com
Valynne E. Maetani grew up in Utah and obtained a Bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In a former life, she was a project manager and developed educational software for children with learning disabilities. Currently, she is a full-time writer. She is a member of the We Need Diverse Books team and is dedicated to promoting diversity in children's literature because every child should grow up believing his or her story deserves to be told. Her debut novel, Ink and Ashes, is the winner of the New Visions Award 2013, a Junior Library Guild 2015 selection, and Best Fiction Book in Salt Lake City Weekly’s Best of Utah Arts Award for 2015. She lives in Salt Lake City.
http://www.valynne.com
Host Neil Aiken Produced by Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Open Door” by Little Glass Men “Layers” by Ketsa
In a particularly geeky conversation, host Neil Aitken and poet David Campos unpack Campos' obsession with collaborative roleplaying and computer games, as well as how the lessons we learn at the game table carry over into both realms of writing and academic work. Visit www.thelitfantastic.com for more info.
David Campos, a CantoMundo Fellow, is the author of Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame Press 2015). It is the winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize 2014. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Luna Luna, Prairie Schooner, QueenMobs Teahouse, and among many others. David earned an M.F.A in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside in 2013. He earned his B.A. in English - English Education Option from California State University, Fresno in 2010. Currently, he lives in Fresno and is an Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing at Fresno City College.
http://davidcampos.co
Host - Neil Aiken Producer - Jenna Yokoyama
Music “Peace Flower” by Ketsa “Twosome” by Podington Bear
Poet Eugenia Leigh discusses her obsession with worldbuilding, whether in poetry, literary fiction, or fantasy realms. We geek out over JRR Tolkien's own obsession with language and the creation of founding myths, the intersection between faith and fantasy, and what exactly "selah" means. Check us out at www.thelitfantastic.com.
Eugenia Leigh is the author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books), the winner of the 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry. as well as a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Indiana Review, The Collagist, North American Review, and the Best New Poets 2010 anthology. Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was awarded the Thomas Lux Scholarship for her dedication to teaching, demonstrated through her writing workshops with incarcerated youths and with Brooklyn High School students. The recipient of fellowships and awards from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, The Frost Place, Rattle, and the Asian American Literary Review, Eugenia lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. http://www.eugenialeigh.com
Music used in this episode under the Creative Commons License: Intro: "Conviction" by Little Glass Men http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Little_Glass_Men/The_Age_of_Insignificance/Conviction Background: "De l'herbe sous les pieds" by Komiku http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/Its_time_for_adventure_/Komiku_-_Its_time_for_adventure_-_09_De_lherbe_sous_les_pieds