YourArtsyGirlPodcast

Rae Luskin is an award winning creative activist, author and artist.  Listen to her give tips on how to gain a new or different perspective through visual and creative exercises as well as writing prompts.  This is a lively episode jam-packed with great ideas for art lovers, novices and seasoned professionals.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://thewinningadventure.com

Bio: Rae Luskin is an award winning artist, author, activist and the creative mindfulness mentor dedicated to raising awareness of creativity as a positive catalyst for health and well-being. She specializes in interactive presentations, providing creative tools and strategies to foster self-worth, resilience, healing, and out of the box thinking. For twenty years she has helped individuals and teams discover their passion, purpose and authentic power to become confident and effective change leaders and creative problem solvers. Rae, a community activist passionately focuses her lens on improving the lives of women and children whether designing art work for Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s “ask” gun safety campaign or sharing her personal story of healing from childhood sexual abuse.  Rae believes when we share our stories of resilience, people know they are not alone and it creates a positive ripple of hope. In 2016 she received woman of Distinction award and was nominated for Beauty In Beauty Out award. She is the author of Art From My Heart a self-discovery journal, Stuck to unstoppable journal and the Creative Edge: 30 days of creativity prompts  and the Benjamin Franklin award winning inspirational book, The Creative Activist: Make the World Better, One Person, One Action at a Time.  She has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Roosevelt University and a Master’s degree in Urban Planning.

https://youtu.be/BLGDYoqTp0s

Edward Vidaurre is the barrio poet from East LA & Poet Laureate of McAllen, TX.  He has amassed several collections of poetry and has been a pivotal voice in the LatinX literary community where he runs Flowersong Books and continues to write and publish.  Listen to us discuss his process, his influences, his experiment with jazz and heavy metal music, and him reading a couple of his inspiring poems.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

JazzHouse ~ compelling love songs to the intensity of everyday life; from the magic in the routine to the marvels and miraculousness of living. Edward Vidaurre takes us with him on his life trip, from East LA to the Rio Grande Valley and the all the far reaching roots that accompany him in the form of ancestors, spirits, family, and other familiars.

JAZzHOUSE is a base camp, and a life. We are invited in to share some food, some cafecito, or a glass of wine - to sit awhile and be grateful for every minute we are alive.

BIO:

Edward Vidaurre, the 2018-2019 McAllen,Texas Poet Laureate and author of six collections of poetry: I Took My Barrio on A Road Trip (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015),Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Press 2016), and Ramona & Rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy & Unedited Necessary Poems (Hercules Publishing 2018),JAZzHOUSE (Prickly Pear Press, 2019) and forthcoming from King Shot Press, WhenA City Ends. Vidaurre has been published in several literary journals and anthologies.

Vidaurre was the Director of Operations in 2018 for the Valley International PoetryFestival, moderator for Poets Responding, and founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino - a reading series in the Rio Grande Valley. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and resides in McAllen. He writes from the front lines of the Mexican-American borderlands of El Valle in south Tejas. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, California.

Poet Laureate: City of McAllen 2018-2019
Publisher: FlowerSong Books
Founder of Pasta, Poetry & Vino

http://edwardvidaurre.blogspot.com/

[email protected] 

We are definitely having fun here at http://YourArtsyGirlPodcast.com! Michelle Peñaloza has a new full-length poetry collection, "Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire" & we were all abuzz about it! We also discuss the necessary "hustle" of promoting our poetry because the struggle is real, ya'll. That's why tapping into "community" & getting on this podcast show is such a symbiosis of sorts.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://michellepenaloza.com

Michelle Peñaloza is author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, which won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize and will be published in August 2019 by Inlandia Institute. She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Her work can be found in places like Prairie Schooner, upstreet, Pleiades, The Normal School and Third Coast. She is the recipient of fellowships from the University of Oregon, Kundiman and Hugo House as well as the 2019 Scotti Merrill Emerging Writer Award for Poetry from The Key West Literary Seminar. Michelle has also received scholarships from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives, farms, and writes in rural Northern California.

Michelle made a "mixtape" for her poetry collection. Check it out!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3uAR57qg44gKhnG3uDQTtG?si=Y5vAGHaNTxGbLswX4wPBeg

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor is a storyteller, writer and poet residing in Washington state. We talk about her new collection of poetry "Dancing Between Bamboo Poles", her rich family history, about being "silenced" and Filipino stereotypes, to name a few.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://rebeccamabanglomayor.com

Rebecca's email: [email protected]

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor’s non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in print and online in several journals and anthologies including Katipunan Literary Magazine, Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults, Kuwento: Small Things, and Beyond Lumpia, Pansit, and Seven Manangs Wild: An Anthology. Her poetry chapbook Pause Mid-Flight was released in 2010. She is also the co-editor of True Stories: The Narrative Project Vol. 1, and her poetry and essays have been collected in Dancing Between Bamboo Poles. She has been performing as a storyteller since 2006 and specializes in stories based on Filipino folktales and Filipino-American history.

Rebecca, as Rebecca A. Saxton, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University in 2012, her BA in Humanities from Washington State University in 1998, and her
MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003.

Artist’s Statement:
As a Filipino American writer and performance storyteller, my art is based on the impact of heritage on shaping and informing personal experience and the importance of self-expression as a method of healing. I view my writing and performing as subversive acts against invisibility and silence in a society where women of color are often viewed through an objectifying, exoticizing lens. Raised in a family focused on assimilation, I grew up sheltered from the Vietnam War and the Marcos dictatorship by a shield of language. Becoming a socially aware cultural activist has been a process of understanding the impact of the American Dream trope on my family and upbringing. As a result, I have connected with diverse ethnic groups who also value art as a method of self-expression and an act of compassion. A desire for wholeness drives my art which seeks to weave past and present, folktale with fact, subjectivity with objectivity into works which entertain and enliven others.

This episode takes us to Baguio, Philippines, where I talk to fiction writer and poet, Monica Macansantos.  We talk about her writing process, her travels, her education, influences, and publishing process as we catch her at the brink of getting her novel published. Please keep an eye out on this fabulous Filipina writer!  

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

 http://www.tayoliterarymag.com/monica-macansantos

Monica Macansantos was a James A. Michener Fellow in Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA in Fiction and Poetry. She also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington, International Institute of Modern Letters. Her fiction has appeared in failbetter.com, Women's Studies Quarterly, The Masters Review Anthology, Day One, and TAYO Literary Magazine, among other places, while her nonfiction and journalism have appeared in Aotearotica, Takahe, New Naratif, ​SBS Life, and VICE, among other places. Her essay,"Becoming A Writer: The Silences We Write Against", was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2016. Her novella, "Leaving Auckland" (serialized in three parts on failbetter​), was a Top 25 Finalist in the Summer 2016 Glimmer Train Fiction Open, while her story, "Stopover", earned an Honorable Mention in the Winter 2013 Glimmer Train Fiction Open. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook (2014) and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2012 & 2019). She is currently Branches Nonfiction Editor of Rambutan Literary ​and is also working on her first novel. She is represented by Kerry D'Agostino of Curtis Brown, Ltd. in New York City. 

https://www.monicamacansantos.com/publishedwork.html

Dr. Gregory Byrd is a poet, novelist and professor at Florida's St. Petersburg College.  We discuss his new poetry collection, his completion of his first novel, his growing up in Florida in a working class family, and how it shaped his aesthetics.  

http://www.yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

Order your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Name-God-Who-Speaks-Poems/dp/1680031864

This is the Name for the God who Speaks

Father, you would know these primal prayers,
light flashing in the west behind live oaks,
a sky-slashed language dead after Conquest.
From that living world, we share only lightning,
an old god speaking light out of darkness,
a chant of rain as alphabet where water flowing
is a word.

I found picture of us twenty-five years ago,
after your divorce. We stood in front of the old
Florida Keys house where I grew up.
You poured concrete there
to appease those Calusa gods,
then steered your small boat into their vast ocean
where you taught me words
that cannot be spoken for greenrayed depths,
the language of whale sharks surfacing,
fishblood across decks and on hands.
Loneliness of the Gulf Stream moves,
over the horizon lightning chants,
dark, by the time you hear its name.

 
Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared widely in journals such as the Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Milosao (Albania, in translation), Poeteka (Albania, in translation), and many others.  Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005), which won the first Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for Florida Poets.  He has received a Creative Pinellas Rapid Returns Fellowship (2016), Fulbright Fellowship to Albania (2011), an SPC Distinguished Teaching Award (2015) and a Pushcart Prize Nomination (1988).  Greg has a B.A. from Eckerd College, M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Greg’s scholarly and artistic interests are influenced by the culture and landscape of Florida as well as by his studies in poetry.  Tampa poet Silvia Curbelo writes that Greg’s poems “embody the restless energy of the Florida landscape, a place of stories fathers tell over beers and heroes facing unordinary times.”  In his poems, you’re likely to come across references to Puccini, Beethoven, Faust, or Genesis in one line and then to images of Everglades muck, rusted shotguns or dead tarpon in the next.

He has recently finished a novel about an American pilot flying for the British during World War I, Where Shadow Meets Water.  When not working on his writing, Greg fishes the flats near Clearwater, sails, rides his bicycle and works on his 1966 Ford pickup. He is founder and advisor of the Student Veterans Association at St. Petersburg College.

C.V.: https://gregorybyrd.wordpress.com/curriculum-vita-gregory-byrd/

Website: http://gregorybyrd.wordpress.com/poetry/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/GregoryByrdPoetry

Casey Clague is my first featured poet who is local to me here in the Tampa Bay area.  They just completed their MFA in Creative Writing from University of South Florida. Listen to them read a couple of poems and learn more about their future goals and their interest in literary criticism and what they do for the local literary/art community in Tampa.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://caseyclague.com

Casey Clague holds an MFA from the University of South Florida. They live in Tampa where they cofounded the Read Herring reading series and serve as Assistant Poetry Editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection. Critical and creative work appears or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle; Permafrost; Gravel; New Writing; and elsewhere. 

ANATTA

Darling, according to physics,

with the air    pulled out

from around

                        our atoms

and the atoms compressed,

we could fit in a sugar cube.

Humanity, I mean.

The skin-bound        

                             divisions of us.

Finally, the closeness

we sought

                    when we pricked  

our fingers     to make blood

brothers and sisters.           

What we came close to in sex

but even then           

                           were separated

by a silk-thin veil of sweat.

Before entropy sends its tendrils

through          our blank spaces,

crushes down our bodies

in city buses and offices,

let’s draw out            the dead air.  

Forget it like a hymn.

                                     Don’t say:

In that viewless room

we would all just face

the center. What would we do

                        with ourselves?

Kai Coggin is a Filipina American poet/writer with a newly released full-length poetry collection entitled "Incandescent" by Sibling Rivalry Press. Listen to us discuss how she came into poetry, the importance of her teachings, her amazing encounter and longstanding friendship with famed Chicana writer, Sandra Cisneros, and how she didn't know she submitted her first poetry submission to my literary & art online magazine, "The Manila Envelope", five years ago, among the many other "parallels" we have. She also reads a poem from "Incandescent" and explains the premise of it.  

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

You can order your copy here: 

https://siblingrivalrypress.bigcartel.com/product/incandescent-by-kai-coggin 

Visit her website: 

https://www.kaicoggin.com/

Incandescent

everything in me is a volcano
everything in me is a blazing new sun
everything in me is a conflagration of words
everything in me is a color that makes up wildfire
everything in me is a phoenix wing ablaze
everything in me is a heart’s inferno
everything in me is a lucent moon
glowing
growing
giving off light
light
light
in whatever form
I can
incandescent
means
emitting light as a result of being heated
and isn’t everything heated
and isn’t everything shamefully ablaze
and isn’t everything burning before us
and isn’t the whole wide world turning to ash
can we still find the light in all that is being lost
can we still project a vision that leads humanity forward
can we still search out beauty in the rubble
can we still shine amidst the trouble
can we name ourselves luminous
and believe it
we must
we do
if you recognize this is how you move through life
you are incandescent, too

Huda Al-Marashi discusses her mesmerizing Muslim-American memoir published by Prometheus Books, "Then Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story" in this episode.  We talk about her influences, her challenges writing about her family and her life and a lot about the writing craft. More importantly, she talks about the accomplishment of being picked up by a large publishing house after years of submitting and revising.

http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes

http://www.hudaalmarishi.com

Huda Al-Marashi is the Iraqi-American author of "First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story", a book the Washington Post called"a charming, funny, heartbreaking memoir of faith, family, and the journey to love. If Jane Austen had grown up as a first-gen daughter of Iraqi parents in the 1990s, she might have written this.”

Excerpts from this memoir have also been anthologized in Love Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim American Women, Becoming: What Makes a Woman, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women and Extreme Religion.

Her other writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the LA Times, al Jazeera, VIDA Review, Refinery 29, The Rumpus, The Offing and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Cuyahoga County Creative Workforce Fellowship and an Aspen Summer Words Emerging Writer Fellowship.

Huda currently resides in California with her husband and three children. Visit her at www.hudaalmarashi.com.