YourArtsyGirlPodcast

Lee Matthew Goldberg is an awesome fiction writer and screenwriter hailing from NYC.  Listen to us discuss his new book, "The Ancestor", learn what led him to writing, how he starts his novels, & find out some of his inspirations & processes!

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://leematthewgoldberg.com

Order your copy here:  https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/goldberg-ancestor/

BIO:  Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. ORANGE CITY is forthcoming in 2021. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

Listen to poet, John Compton, read his poetry and discuss his journey into writing poetry, publishing, and connecting with industry folks!

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

https://www.facebook.com/josh.compton.12914

Bio:  John Compton (formerly John Thompson) is a 33-year-old gay poet who lives in Kentucky. His poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. He has published 1 book and 5 chapbooks: "trainride elsewhere" (August 2016/TBA) from Pressed Wafer/Rouge Wolf Press; "that moan like a saxophone" (December 2016); Ampersand (March 2019) from Plan B Press; "a child growing wild inside the mothering womb" (June 2020) from Ghost City Press; "burning his matchstick fingers his hair went up like a wick" (Fall), From Dark Heart Press, "to wash all the pretty things off my skin" (end of 2021) from Ethel Zine & Micro-Press. Compton has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

https://ghostcitypress.com/2020-summer-series/a-child-growing-wild-inside-the-mothering-womb

https://www.planbpress.com/store/p56/ampersand_by_john_thompson.html

https://www.amazon.com/that-moan-like-saxophone-thompson-ebook/dp/B01NBP6JL3

winter poem

mouth open
letting snow cover my burial plot
of words

& fingers too cold to dig
the tongue out:
frozen corpse,

the stature of teeth chirping
a ruptured poem

we seeded him holy

you'll find him in a chair
sequenced

gay is vandalism

we used white rags &
smoke to purify him

to bleach the sin, to poach the black resin
from the heart-skin
to bring him
right
by rules of man

his arms & ankles tied
   crosswise
the naked body a rosary
        bead tucked in each wound

how we bury fish

motionless in my womb...
i remembered
my fish - i was eight.
it was floating belly up.

i tapped on my stomach
as a mother – a little girl
trying to tap her fish
from sleep.

i gave birth to a stillborn.
my father explained to me
how we bury fish: i heard the toilet flush
behind my sobbing.

John Compton Book Launch and Open Mic with Redheaded Stepchild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlBdFVBCcE

Yay!  The 60th episode.  How surreal.  I introduce to you Clinnesha D. Sibley, a writer & playwright with many publications and theatrical productions under her belt.  Hear us discuss her process, her advice to writers, & what creative projects she's working on now. 

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://thewriteaddiction.com

A Love Letter to Ntozake

You played with Barbies and watched as little boys gawked at Cindy Crawford in a

Pepsi commercial.

Your teacher suggested The Babysitters Club, “Kristy’s Great Idea” for your book

project because it was heartwarming, not um…controversial… like The Bluest Eye.

You watched The Cosby Show and knew you wanted to be that kind of black.

You were eating grandma’s field peas and okra when you got your period.

Mama was workin. Stayed workin.

Your body changed immediately and grandma gave you a girdle.

Same kind of girdle she gave your mama.

You stayed lookin in the mirror hoping your ass would catch up to your chest and hips.

It never did, not on its own.

Sophomore year, he let you wear his letterman.

It was warm and smelled like November.

He never let anyone but you wear his letterman.

He told you he loved you.

You didn’t know a man could ever do that.

He would take back the number 7 when y’all hated one another.

Back and forth, the jacket began to smell less like autumn and more like alcohol and

meat.

///

You were in the McDonald’s bathroom when you got one line and a faint.

You cried into your chicken nuggets.

You told your best friend and her mama who’s cool.

Then, cool mama told you ’bout Mrs. Poole…

He said he would come, too.

He lied.

But he brought you somethin to eat afterwards.

///

You left home after graduation.

Your mama had to work graduation day, and the day you moved away.

Grandma put a rolled up one hundred dollar bill in your hand for gas money and

groceries.

You got a job on campus.

He needed money and you would take care…he hated that you could do that.

You hated going home, and seeing him reminded you of how much you hated yourself.

So, you changed your look.

You found a college best friend who got you into places you were too young to be in.

She’s better than your old best friend who’s been actin real funny.

You hate her cuz you hate you.

And she hate you cause of that thing with him.

You say she pulls you down every time you get elevated.

But you high more than you elevated.

(High, drunk people don’t keep their scholarships.)

Your school daze become filled with nights you don’t remember.

And now, you goin back home.

At least you tried.

One day, you’re gonna finish.

///

Friend was like, I told you.

You had white liquor in you that night, and you fought her.

You looked at yourself in the McDonald’s bathroom mirror and didn’t like the

scratches, or your nose, your eyes, what the perm did to your hair, your dark skin, or

the fact that you flunked out of college.

Maybe your mama waz right when she called you a dumb ho; that was before she got

in bed with her best friend’s man.

You hate everything about yourself, and your mama’s probably right about you bein a

dumb ho, so…

You sleep with him again.

He tightens his sweaty palm around your heart.

You remember the baby.

This time, you won’t need Mrs. Poole.

///

Two healthy babies later, you’ve changed your look again.

People wonder what’s different.

They don’t wonder what your new hurt is. They just know you’ve got babies by him,

and so does your best friend.

But you’re the main one cuz he looks at you just like the boys looked at Cindy

Crawford.

You haven’t seen him since y’all got into it at his mama’s house.

You’ve been texting her cause she helps you understand him more…she cares about

you more than your own mama…more than your best friend, who loves him, too.

You finally talk to your mama about him, and she hugs you. Apologizes and says things

can only get worst.

///

His mama said he’s becoming like his daddy.

You realize that absent in one place means present in another.

There’s a new woman…

You consider going back to school.

You re-apply and get in.

He sees you trying to move on without him, and it gets really bad really fast, like your

mama said.

You pray, cause every time your grandma prayed, things got better, and people would

even come back Home.

You didn’t confirm with admissions, but you keep a record of dreams in a spiral

notebook.

///

You were working part time at the library when you came across for colored girls who

consider suicide when the rainbow is enuf in the return vault.

You experienced it and realized somebody was missing what you were missing. You

realize that you were born with the capacity to love yourself, and that changes the way

you look at your daughters.

--------------------------------------------------

BIO:  Clinnesha Sibley, a native of McComb, Mississippi, is a published author, community leader, and educator. She promotes creative-mindedness—believing that visual, performing, and literary arts can change the way we think about some of life’s most important questions. A writer of plays, poetry, prose, essays and creative non-fiction, Clinnesha has received numerous awards including the Holland New Voices Award, the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and the Mississippi Theatre Association Adult Playwriting Award.  Her writing has also appeared in national literary journals, anthologies, and various publications and anthologies including Feels Blind Literary, Quince Magazine, In Full Color, Black Masks Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine.

Clinnesha committed to training exclusively as a playwright while attending Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. As an Interdisciplinary Career Oriented Humanities major, she learned to focus inward—exploring identity, psyche, and the human condition. It was at this historically black college that Clinnesha also learned the connection between social activism and artistic practice. She received her M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville becoming the first African-American to earn such a degree from that institution. Her plays have been called feminist, protest, political, southern, and circular

Yay!  The 60th episode.  How surreal.  I introduce to you Clinnesha D. Sibley, a writer & playwright with many publications and theatrical productions under her belt.  Hear us discuss her process, her advice to writers, & what creative projects she's working on now. 

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://thewriteaddiction.com

A Love Letter to Ntozake

You played with Barbies and watched as little boys gawked at Cindy Crawford in a

Pepsi commercial.

Your teacher suggested The Babysitters Club, “Kristy’s Great Idea” for your book

project because it was heartwarming, not um…controversial… like The Bluest Eye.

You watched The Cosby Show and knew you wanted to be that kind of black.

You were eating grandma’s field peas and okra when you got your period.

Mama was workin. Stayed workin.

Your body changed immediately and grandma gave you a girdle.

Same kind of girdle she gave your mama.

You stayed lookin in the mirror hoping your ass would catch up to your chest and hips.

It never did, not on its own.

Sophomore year, he let you wear his letterman.

It was warm and smelled like November.

He never let anyone but you wear his letterman.

He told you he loved you.

You didn’t know a man could ever do that.

He would take back the number 7 when y’all hated one another.

Back and forth, the jacket began to smell less like autumn and more like alcohol and

meat.

///

You were in the McDonald’s bathroom when you got one line and a faint.

You cried into your chicken nuggets.

You told your best friend and her mama who’s cool.

Then, cool mama told you ’bout Mrs. Poole…

He said he would come, too.

He lied.

But he brought you somethin to eat afterwards.

///

You left home after graduation.

Your mama had to work graduation day, and the day you moved away.

Grandma put a rolled up one hundred dollar bill in your hand for gas money and

groceries.

You got a job on campus.

He needed money and you would take care…he hated that you could do that.

You hated going home, and seeing him reminded you of how much you hated yourself.

So, you changed your look.

You found a college best friend who got you into places you were too young to be in.

She’s better than your old best friend who’s been actin real funny.

You hate her cuz you hate you.

And she hate you cause of that thing with him.

You say she pulls you down every time you get elevated.

But you high more than you elevated.

(High, drunk people don’t keep their scholarships.)

Your school daze become filled with nights you don’t remember.

And now, you goin back home.

At least you tried.

One day, you’re gonna finish.

///

Friend was like, I told you.

You had white liquor in you that night, and you fought her.

You looked at yourself in the McDonald’s bathroom mirror and didn’t like the

scratches, or your nose, your eyes, what the perm did to your hair, your dark skin, or

the fact that you flunked out of college.

Maybe your mama waz right when she called you a dumb ho; that was before she got

in bed with her best friend’s man.

You hate everything about yourself, and your mama’s probably right about you bein a

dumb ho, so…

You sleep with him again.

He tightens his sweaty palm around your heart.

You remember the baby.

This time, you won’t need Mrs. Poole.

///

Two healthy babies later, you’ve changed your look again.

People wonder what’s different.

They don’t wonder what your new hurt is. They just know you’ve got babies by him,

and so does your best friend.

But you’re the main one cuz he looks at you just like the boys looked at Cindy

Crawford.

You haven’t seen him since y’all got into it at his mama’s house.

You’ve been texting her cause she helps you understand him more…she cares about

you more than your own mama…more than your best friend, who loves him, too.

You finally talk to your mama about him, and she hugs you. Apologizes and says things

can only get worst.

///

His mama said he’s becoming like his daddy.

You realize that absent in one place means present in another.

There’s a new woman…

You consider going back to school.

You re-apply and get in.

He sees you trying to move on without him, and it gets really bad really fast, like your

mama said.

You pray, cause every time your grandma prayed, things got better, and people would

even come back Home.

You didn’t confirm with admissions, but you keep a record of dreams in a spiral

notebook.

///

You were working part time at the library when you came across for colored girls who

consider suicide when the rainbow is enuf in the return vault.

You experienced it and realized somebody was missing what you were missing. You

realize that you were born with the capacity to love yourself, and that changes the way

you look at your daughters.

--------------------------------------------------

BIO:  Clinnesha Sibley, a native of McComb, Mississippi, is a published author, community leader, and educator. She promotes creative-mindedness—believing that visual, performing, and literary arts can change the way we think about some of life’s most important questions. A writer of plays, poetry, prose, essays and creative non-fiction, Clinnesha has received numerous awards including the Holland New Voices Award, the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and the Mississippi Theatre Association Adult Playwriting Award.  Her writing has also appeared in national literary journals, anthologies, and various publications and anthologies including Feels Blind Literary, Quince Magazine, In Full Color, Black Masks Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine.

Clinnesha committed to training exclusively as a playwright while attending Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. As an Interdisciplinary Career Oriented Humanities major, she learned to focus inward—exploring identity, psyche, and the human condition. It was at this historically black college that Clinnesha also learned the connection between social activism and artistic practice. She received her M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville becoming the first African-American to earn such a degree from that institution. Her plays have been called feminist, protest, political, southern, and circular

Dominique M. Carson has interviewed over 100 notable figures in entertainment.  Listen to us discuss how she became a journalist for major publications and author of two biographies as well as how message therapy has sustained her while she continued to pursue her artistic goals.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://dominiquecarson.contently.com

BIO: Dominique M. Carson is a freelance journalist, researcher, massage therapist, reporter and author. Carson's work has been featured in several publications including Ebony.com, The Grio, NBC News, Singersroom.com, Soultrain.com, Education Update, and Brooklyn news media outlets. She interviewed over 100 notable figures in entertainment such as Charlie Wilson, Regina Belle, Patti Labelle, Kirk Franklin, and many more. She also collaborated with Brooklyn historian and journalist, Suzanne Spellen and launched a 118 page journal on Lefferts Manor, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, and is releasing a biography on an R&B musician this fall while her first book is going through some legalities.

Listen to this week's featured guest, poet, Angela M. Brommel.  We discuss her influence & her new poetry collection, "Mojave in July". We also talk about her past & current projects supporting the art & literary community as an art curator & Editor-in-Chief at the Citron Review.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://tolsunbooks.com/shop/mojave-in-july-pre-order

Mojave in July

by Angela M. Brommel

You can’t explain to friends from home how the desert makes it better, but you try:

Imagine a heat so dry that it presses down into the earth, releasing its scent so that it takes on the comforting smell of clay pots in your grandmother’s kitchen when you were a child, or your hideout under the evergreens where you used to sit for hours smelling only the dirt, the sap, the pine.

Imagine a smell that reminds you of the kitchen on holidays: sage, rosemary, and something you chase that is reminiscent of honey, but feels like love.

Some people still fight it. They call the heat oppressive, they call it unrelenting. They have not learned how to live within it.

You must learn to smell the water beneath the surface.

You must learn to let the heat pass through you,
warming your bones, your ligaments, and all the pieces
that you call you.

Let the heat draw out everything unneeded.
Let it put you to bed midday.
Let it make you new.

---

Images/Angela M. Brommel
Book cover image art/Su Limbert

---

BIO: Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. In 2018, her chapbook, Plutonium & Platinum Blonde, was published by Serving House Books. Her poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry blog, The North American Review, The Literary Review’s (TLR) Share, and many other journals and anthologies. A 2018 Red Rock Canyon Artist in Residence, Angela served as the inaugural poet of the program. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and an MA in Theatre from the University of Northern Iowa. Mojave in July is her debut full-length poetry collection. Angela is the Executive Director of the Office of Arts & Culture as well as affiliate faculty in Humanities at Nevada State College. You can also find her at The Citron Review as Editor-in-Chief.

Gay Majure Wilson wrote a biography on the suffragist, Sue Shelton White, entitled: "Some Woman Had to Fight: The Radical Life of Sue Shelton White".  Listen to us discuss Gay's story on how she started writing and how she decided to write Sue Shelton White's biography.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

https://www.amazon.com/Some-Woman-Had-Fight-Radical-ebook/dp/B0859NBB58

BIO: Gay Majure Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and has worked as a writer, editor and project manager in software development and investment banking in Dallas, New York and London. She earned a master’s degree in family and consumer sciences from the University of Tennessee at Martin and is now an author and registered dietitian in Jackson, Tennessee.

Book Synopsis
Some Woman Had to Fight: The Radical Life of Sue Shelton White
This biography explores the personal, political and professional life of Sue Shelton White, a militant suffragist, pioneering Tennessee lawyer and vocal leader in the controversial protests and tireless lobbying campaign for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women their equal right to vote 100 years ago.

 [email protected]

Check out Susana H. Case!  She is a NYC poet & a sociology professor at New York Institute of Technology.  Listen to us discuss how her academic work and poetics intersects & where she gets her ideas!

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://susanahcase.com

Susana reads from her book:

http://broadstonebooks.com/Susana_H_Case.html

The poems in this collection are inspired by the ways in which gender (and sometimes other divisions) creates opportunities for both victimization and survival. A theme woven throughout is the tension between being objectified and being human. There are three sections. The first section is organized around the idea of the stereotype of the living doll, and rebellion against that concept. The middle section, an ekphrastic section, is inspired by the life and the nutshell studies, crime model constructions, of Frances Glessner Lee, "mother of modern forensics," and includes some black and white images that are in the public domain. The third section, which includes the title poem, focuses more fully on the negative effects of objectified existences.

Bio: Susana H. Case is the author of seven books of poetry. Drugstore Blue, from Five Oaks Press, won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). She is also the author of five chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes. Her most recent chapbook is Body Falling, Sunday Morning from Milk and Cake Press. One of her collections, The Scottish Café, from Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press in Poland. Her poems appear widely in magazines and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in: Calyx, The Cortland Review, Fourteen Hills, Portland Review, Potomac Review,Rattle, and RHINO, among others. Dr. Case is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City.

I introduce to you Anne Marie Wells @amwellswrites from Wyoming, a poet and playwright.  You will find interesting tidbits about her work & her life: when she was a nanny for a rock band she wrote a draft of 70,000 word novel in 3 days, among other things! 

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://annemariewellswriter.com

------------------------------

Enemy Bridge

My enemies will someday hold their dying mother in their arms,
and their crooked hole of a mouth
screaming anguished into the air above
will become my next breath.
We will share the same chorus of pain,
the secret song that unites us all,
a universal refrain that asks us to
bless this world for its suffering
for it’s the only thing that builds the bridge of empathy.

Selected by Muddy River Poetry Review, Spring 2020

----------------------------------

Shell

Holding the shell of the man he used to be to my ear,
his tidal voice crashed ashore,
calling me to watch a nest of turtles
break free from their sandy womb, frantic
to find their ocean mother;
a race from first breath to moonlit waves.
I will remember you this way,
I promised.

Selected for publication by In Parentheses, Winter 2020

----------------------------------

Bio:

In 2015, Anne Marie Wells published her children’s book, MAMÃ, PORQUE SOU UMA AVE?/MOMMY, WHY AM I A BIRD? (Imprensa Universidade de Coimbra). She earned first place in the Riot Act Regional New Play Festival in 2017 for her play, LOVE AND RADIO (AND ZOMBIES... KIND OF), and earned second place in 2018 for her play, LAST. ONLY. BEST. In 2019, the Wrights of Wyoming judges blindly selected four of her theatrical works for the statewide play festival in Cheyenne (LAST. ONLY. BEST.; MISS SNICKLEFRITZ'S MURDER MYSTERY; THE DOOR; and INDIGO SIREN). In 2020, her play LAST. ONLY. BEST. was selected for publication in The Dallas Review, and her 10-minute play, THE DOOR will appear in The Progenitor Art & Literary Journal.

Anne Marie is also an avid storyteller and performed in and won several Cabin Fever Story Slams and was selected by The Moth to perform in a 'Main Stage' event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2019.

Her poems have appeared or will appear in In Parentheses, Lucky Jefferson, Unlimited Literature, Soliloquies Anthology, Muddy River Poetry Review, Variant Literature, Poets' Choice, Meniscus Journal, Changing Womxn Collective, and The Voices Project.

Facebook: @annemariewellsriter

Instagram: @anne___.marie

Twitter: @amwellswrites

Pintrest: annemariewellswriter

Tumblr: @annemariewellswriter

This week, I talk to Filipino American writer, Jason Tanamor.  It was great discovering his work & learning more about him and his writing processes.  His latest book: "Vampires of Portlandia" is a Filipino American urban fantasy novel.   

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com

http://tanamor.com