Leaning Toward Light: A Conversation with Tess Taylor
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
- About Tess Taylor
- Buy the book: Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them
Index
Exploring the Boundless Nature of Language with Lissa Soep
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
“Other People’s Words shows us how we carry within us the language of loved ones who are gone, and how their words can be portals to other times and places. Language—as with love—is boundless, and Other People’s Words is an intimate, original, and profoundly generous look at its power to nurture life amid the wreckage of grief. Dialogues do not end when a friendship or person is gone; instead, they accrue new layers of meaning, showing how the conversations we share with those we love continue after them, and will continue after us.”
Witch Hunt: A Conversation with Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
About the Authors
Dr. Andrea Balis is not only a distinguished faculty member in the history department of John Jay College, City University of New York, specializing in twentieth-century political history, but also a versatile writer and director.
Elizabeth Levy is an award-winning author of over 100 fiction and non-fiction books for young readers. Renowned for her humorous yet meticulously researched approach, Levy brings subjects to life and inspires and entertains audiences worldwide.
Buy the Book
Story Carrier: An Interview with Jane Clark
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
Jane is a retired college teacher of composition, literature, and journalism, who worked for a major northeastern university and a small, private liberal arts college. She was also the director of the Capital Area Writing Project at Penn State Harrisburg.
Additional Links from the Show
Teaching Creative Writing: A Conversation with Stephanie Vanderslice
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
More Info
The Write Time and the Furious Flower Syllabus Project
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
About Our Guests
McKinley E. Melton earned his PhD from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining the Gettysburg College faculty, Dr. Melton was a visiting assistant professor of literature at Hampshire College from 2007-2012. He is also the recipient of a 2015 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and was a 2015-16 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. Most recently, Dr. Melton was awarded a 2019-20 Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies, in order to support a year as scholar-in-residence at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.
Allia Abdullah-Matta is a poet and Professor of English at CUNY LaGuardia, where she teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses. She writes about the culture and history of Black women and explores the presence of Black bodies and voices in fine art and poetry. She was the co-recipient of the The Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Poetry (2018) from The City College of New York (CCNY). Her poetry has been published in Newtown Literary, Promethean, Marsh Hawk Review, Mom Egg Review Vox, Global City Review, and the Jam Journal Issue of Push/Pull. Her chapbook(s) washed clean & blues politico (2021) were published by harlequin creature (hcx). Abdullah-Matta has published critical and pedagogical articles and serves on the Radical Teacher and WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly) editorial boards. She is working on a collection of poems inspired by archival and field research in South Carolina and Georgia, funded by a CUNY BRESI grant.
Hayes Davis’ first volume, Let Our Eyes Linger, was published by Poetry Mutual Press; he is currently serving as the Howard County (Md) Poetry and Literature Society Writer in Residence, and he won a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. His work has appeared most recently on the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day feature, he has been anthologized in This is What America Looks Like, Deep Beauty, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-justice Poetry Anthology, and others. His poems have also appeared in Mom Egg Review, New England Review, Poet Lore, Auburn Avenue, Gargoyle, Kinfolks, Fledgling Rag, and other journals. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland, and is a member of Cave Canem’s (Cah-vay Cah-nem) first cohort of fellows. He has attended or been awarded writing residencies at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Hermitage, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Manhattanville College, and Soul Mountain. He has appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU, 88.5 in Washington, D.C. and at the Hay Festival Kells in Kells, Ireland. He has taught English and directed equity and justice work in Washington, D.C.-area independent schools for 20+ years; he shares his creative and domestic life with his wife, poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, and their children.
Dave Wooley is an English, Journalism and Creative Writing teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, where he has taught since 2001. He has served as a Co-Adviser for the school’s hybrid newspaper The Westword since 2003. He has served as an adjunct Professor at Fairfield University, teaching Philosophy of Hip Hop, and he is a teaching fellow at the Connecticut Writing Project. Dave is one half of the rap group d_Cyphernauts and a hip-hop educator who has presented at the HipHopEd conference, the NCTE annual conference, the CSPA conference, among others. He served as a curriculum and music coordinator for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ “From Harlem to Hip-Hop: African- American History, Literature, and Song” which was hosted at Fairfield University. Dave is a contributing poet on the website Ethical ELA, and he has been involved with the Furious Flower Center for Black Poetry as a participating scholar in its last three Legacy Seminars. He is one of the authors of Furious Flower’s newly created open access syllabus, Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus. He lives in Stratford, Connecticut with his wife and four children.
Watch the Video
A Visit with Novelly
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
Novelly is on a mission to publish diverse teenage authors and get their books taught in classrooms, so that every student can feel seen and inspired by what they read. This episode features the founder and managing director Anna Gabriella Casalme, along with two youth authors who have had their work published through Novelly.
For the Sake of Argument: Teaching Evidence-Based Writing
“To the detriment of education, we live in what author Deborah Tannen calls the ‘argument culture,’ where ‘winning’ is more valued than ‘understanding.’ The NWP’s approach to argument writing starts with having students understand multiple points of view that go beyond pros and cons and are based on multiple pieces of evidence, which ultimately enables students to take responsible civic action.”
The Write Time with Songwriter/Storyteller Rob Rokicki and Educator Kevin Hodgson
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
Rob Rokicki is an NYC-based artist and educator. He wrote the music, lyrics, and co-orchestrated the Broadway show, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (book by Joe Tracz); nominated for a Lortel, Off-Broadway Alliance, and three Drama Desk Awards. His graphic novel/musical, Monstersongs (National Alliance for Musical Theatre official selection), is played internationally and is being developed as a VR game. He’s a two-time Larson Award finalist, an alum of the BMI Workshop, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. As an actor, Rob has performed in Broadway national tours and at Carnegie Hall.
Rob is interviewed by Kevin Hodgson, a sixth-grade teacher and musician in Southampton, Massachusetts, and a teacher-consultant with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.
Watch the Video
Experiments in Reflection: A Conversation with Leticia Britos Cavagnaro
Download | Subscribe: Apple / Spotify / Soundcloud
Today we visit with Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, author of Experiments in Reflection. Leticia is a developmental biologist turned design educator, who has been a part of Stanford University’s d.school since 2006. She co-founded and co-directs the University Innovation Fellows program, impacting students and educators worldwide. Leticia’s work integrates emerging technologies in creative methods to foster self-directed and responsible future shapers.