F***ing Shakespeare

Matthew Lippman’s most recent collection, Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, is the winner of the Levis prize from Four Way Books. He is the author of four other poetry collections—A Little Gut Magic, American Chew, Monkey Bars, and The New Year of Yellow.

It was a delight to talk to Matthew about poetry, baseball, music, unfinished basements, and a world-saving moment discussing this astounding video with Bobby McFerrin about neuroscience and the pentatonic scale that Lippman references in his own TedX Talk. Share both videos far and wide for what ails you.

We will say this about Matthew’s collection: during this time, when things seem to continue to fall apart each day in new and horrifying ways, these poems feel like they will “love you many times from pockets, from sandwiches… from a rooftop with billowy sheets.” And that feels pretty damn good right now.

Also, check out Lippman’s web-based project Love’s Executive Order, “dedicated to posting one poem a week that is directly related to the presidency of Donald Trump. A protest. A commentary.A running rumination on this part of our American story.”

Find more of his work at his website.

“It is my belief that we would not know John James Audubon today if it weren’t for [Lucy].”

For our third installment of F***ing Shakespeare Shorts, Juditha Dowd reads from her gorgeously soft-spoken collection, Audubon’s Sparrow. The collection is a biography-in-poems that lyrically imagines the interiority and emotions of Lucy Bakewell, the wife of the artist and naturalist John James Audubon. We also have a chat with Juditha about the empathic power of stepping into another’s shoes, and what it means the tell the stories of women who are too easily lost in historical records. This is a really owlsome episode, folks!

Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems was released on May 19th from Rose Metal Press. You can order it here.

Honorable Mentions:

• The National Audubon Society (of course!)

• John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes

• German composer Heinrich Schütz

Judith is the author of a full-length poetry collection,Mango in Winter, as well as poetry chapbooks, short fiction, and lyric essays. She reads with the Cool Women ensemble in the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia area and occasionally on the west coast.With her husband and two Maine Coon cats Juditha lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware River.

Find more of Judith’s work at her blog.

Welcome to our second installment of Shakespeare’s Shorts, where your favorites from F***ing Shakespeare host the virtual book tour that no one would have wanted before COVID-19, but that is now giving us a literary lifeline as we’re locked inside! Join us as we keep our thumbs on the pulse of amazing new literature, so it doesn’t get lost to quarantine.

And we have a particularly special guest on today’s episode! Jabari Asim’s poetry book Stop and Frisk comes out this Friday, Juneteenth 2020, from our very own press, Bloomsday Literary. Y’all, this book is already making national headlines. Part rap sheet, part concept album, Jabari’s Stop and Frisk is a deft piece of literature that couldn’t be coming out at a better time. The collection seems to sing from infinitely deep lungs, as Jabari dives into the epidemic of police brutality and what it means to be a Black person in a public space, armed with a poetic scalpel and the gift of persona poetry.

As we chat, Jabari gives us a rec of an album to listen to in the morning before the day even begins. We also discuss unearned advantages and what it means to have enough privilege to pause and take a breath. Best of all, he gives an absolutely stunning reading from his book. If you’re curious about the poems between the pages of this “handsome volume” (his words, not ours!), then lend us your ear for just a few minutes.

You can pre-order Stop and Frisk from Bloomsday Literary here.

Also read his powerful collection of essays, We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival.

Honorable Mentions:

• Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen

• What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye

• Bobby McFarin by Bobby McFarin

• “A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert

HEY! We made a thing: it’s the Virtual Book Tour Quarantine edition of F***ing Shakespeare, we’re calling SHAKESPEARE’S SHORTS!

We wanted to get out there and see what’s happening in the land of books — talk with authors who have books out now, right this second, when it’s very hard to be out in the world with a new book because you can’t actually be out in the world. One of those people who is all dressed up with a fancy new book, and nowhere to go, is the incredible Lee Matalone. Her new book, Home Making, is a sucker punch of gorgeousness. I was able to dip in a read a bit of it, and loved LOVED the opening (in fact, I have a deep connection to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where some of this novel takes place, as my grandparents lived at the foot of the Appalachian Trail in the Blue Ridge of North GA — so in a way, this felt a little bit like home for me, too).

Author of Home Making, Lee Matalone, makes her F***ing Shakespeare debut to read from and talk about her debut novel.

Order her new “novelette” here.

Also read her fantastically unsettling “short little weird stories” (her own words!) here.

Honorable mentions from Lee:

• Solmaz Sharif’s Look

• Alison Roman’s cookbook, Nothing Fancy

• Benjamin Moser’s pulitzer prize winning Sontag biography

• St. Augustine’s Confessions

• Garbage reality TV, LOVE ISLAND (Can I say how ridiculously gleeful it makes me to see Love Island directly following Confessions? Just me? )

We have one more bit of brightness to send your way with this interview of two writers in the AWP Writer 2 Writer Mentorship program, mentor Chris Cander and mentee Amy Hanson. Chris was unable to attend the conference, like so many, but we were able to catch up virtually with both of them just after the conference closed.

Short story writer Amy Widmoyer Hanson’s writing has won the 2018 New Letters Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Iowa Review award judged by Kelly Link. She has been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short story prize and is currently completing the draft of a new novel.

Chris Cander, who is a friend to the show and the author of the beautifully penned novel, The Weight of a Piano, which we talked about extensively in season 3, joins us to discuss the writing process, highs and lows of the publishing journey, and how knowing someone who has been around the block a time or two is worth its weight in gold for a new writer. Turns out there’s plenty to be gained along the way as a mentor, too.

Follow Amy Hanson @amywhanson1 and Chris Cander on Twitter and Instagram @chriscander.

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference. Here’s Day Three!

Richard Z. Santos 1:22

Santos’ debut novel Trust Me came out on 3/31/20 from Arte Público Press. The main character is an “East Coast political hack” who moves from D.C. to Sante Fe and “stumbles into corruption and danger.” We talked multiple POVs, airport mottos (Sante Fe: Connecting You to the World!), and the similarities between teaching American high school students and working on political campaigns. Having his novel helpfully ‘shredded’ by Tim O’Brien led to a final draft, and after “50 encouraging rejection” letters from agents, Arte Público said a resounding YES. Working with them was a great experience. He has a finished draft of his second novel, and he’ll be planning the Writers, Agents, and Editors Conference for the Writers League of Texas that will hopefully still be happening in June. Follow him on Twitter @richardzsantos.

Yodassa Williams 12:26

Delightful cannot even begin to describe Yodassa Williams, whose beautiful debut YA fantasy novel, The Goddess Twins, comes out on May 19th. It follows identical sisters who discover they are goddesses when their mother goes missing - “in other words, true life.” As a teen, Williams spent a summer in London with cousins who encouraged her to explore her creative side. Inspired by these black magical girls (“literal black girl magic”), her book is a coming of age run through the Fantasy filter (her dad’s obsession with Dune had to figure in somehow!). In 2014, a revelation at Burning Man resulted in Williams leaving her industry fashion job and writing The Goddess Twins. Her advice for finding a publisher? Look for publishing contests and use contest dates as your deadline. She continues to tell stories through words and clothing. Follow her at @yodawill on Twitter and @yodawill12 on instagram.

Alia Volz 27:53

We speak with Alia Volz about her fascinating debut memoir, Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, And The Stoning Of San Francisco. A hybrid of heavy social issues and personal history, the book comes out, surprise, surprise, on 4/20. Volz’s folks ran the first high volume cannabis edibles business in San Francisco - underground, illegal, and very popular. After AIDS hit SF, the famous brownies “became part of the dawn of medical marijuana” and “the transition from party drug to panacea.” The book started out as an oral history: Volz started recording her mom and other people in the community, and even a SFPD police officer! She shopped that version in 2009 and it did not sell because publishers thought the market was “too niche.” Now, of course, that seems quaint and hilariously short-sighted since cannabis culture is so ubiquitous (and big business). Ultimately Volz became even more interested in the historical context and used the memoiristic voice as a way “into and through” the 70s and 80s in SF. A Macdowell Colony fellow -“transformative” for her - Volz called out fellow authors Bridgett M. Davis (The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers) and Tony Dokoupil (The Last Pirate). Follow her @aliavolz.

Sonia Hamer 42:00

On this special installment of the Blazer, Danial Peña interviews Hamer, a student in the University of Houston Creative Writing program. “A lot of different kinds of nerd,” she talks about wearing orange to scare away viruses (her fave virus are bacteriophages) and how “Bacteriophages” could be a cool D&D character who casts spells.

David Laidacker-Luna 45:12

Fiesta Youth LGBT is an organization for kids 12-18 years old that meets every Tuesday in San Antonio. Laidacker-Luna connected with the LGBT Writers Caucus who invited Fiesta Youth to AWP. It’s their first conference ever, and both Laidacker-Luna and the kids who were able to attend are bowled over by the welcoming and fun group at AWP. Austin is an established partner and Fiesta Youth has a sister organization in Corpus Christi. Recently, the McAllen AIDS council visited to learn about opening their own facility in South Texas - it’s all about partnerships and how accepting people can be. Follow @Fiesta_Youth on Twitter.

Chad Abushanab 55:13

Abushanab is the author of the poetry collection The Last Visit, which won the 2018 Donald Justice Prize judged by Jericho Brown and now out from Autumn House Press. The collection began as Abushanab’s dissertation project. He read “Halloween” for us (on page 31!) - a triptych of masculinity, violence, and addiction. He drafted the last poem, a Ghazal, initially as one poem, but he and Jericho Brown simultaneously had the idea to break it up throughout the book. Ghazals appeals to Chad because of his Middleastern heritage and the intrinsic musicality (meter, rhyme) of the form. He was afraid to show his poems to his mom, so he dedicated the book to her. His enviable collection of bylines is the result of both doing the work of creating memorable poems, and being extremely particular about where he submits. He only queries poetry journals he absolutely loves, so that his poems can join a known and beloved poetry community. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @chad_abushanab.

Viktoria Valenzuela 1:07:56

The Blazer with Daniel Peña speaks with Valenzuela, who’s wearing a 100,000 Poets for Change t-shirt. People around the world wear the shirt on the last Saturday of September to mourn and continue to call out BP for the oil spill. Valenzuela hails from Oswego (near Daniel’s beloved Ithaca) and is wearing a “Prince purple” Mayan design swirl depicting a person breathing a flower into the air (i.e. poetry). Victoria is currently shopping her poetry chapbook about motherhood, In Bed. Her activism is human rights for mothers, including the mothers separated from their children at the borders. Daniel quotes Caroryn Forché: “It is possible that we are not human beings to them.” According to her, Daniel is wearing the wrong Puma. Follow all the things she’s doing for and about mothers @ViktoriaValenz.

Tori Cárdenas 1:17:55

We met at AWP last year in Portland, which makes us all old friends by now. Newly the Executive Editor of Skull + Wind Press - publisher of Leslie Contreras Schwartz’s new book WHO SPEAKS FOR US HERE - Cárdenas’ goal is to help all the different circles of writers in Albuquerque interact. The dream is to have a brick and mortar and a reading series. Their “sci-fi + green chili” podcast with a friend, Eminent Domain, will be recorded on set in Sante Fe, and they found an actor who sounds exactly like Cárdenas’ real life Grandpa: “I’ve sanded away my northern mountain Taos accent” so hearing it in this context is yet another reminder of how important both representation and language are, and how entwined the two are.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden 1:32:05

Winter Counts, a literary thriller-cum tale of identity set on the Rosebud Indian reservation, comes out from Echo Harper Collins in August 2020. A member of the Sicangu Lakota nation, David Heska Wanbli Weiden grew up in Denver and on Rosebud. The novel follows Virgil Wounded Horse, a so-called “enforcer,” who’s hired to dole out “justice” on the reservation. A law called the Major Crimes Act forbids native nations from prosecuting felonies that occur on the reservation. Since the FBI almost always declines to prosecute as well, someone like Virgil is hired to beat up the criminal. David’s agent, Michelle Brower of Aevitas, signed him on the spot at AWP 2018’s writer-to-agent program, and overall his journey was relatively smooth. Now he does everything he can to lift up marginalized voices as an AWP mentor. One of eight winners of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowships, an academic, and a teacher of fiction (he recs the Save the Cat series for plot), Wanbli Weiden enjoys “marrying” different genres of writing. Up next: a nonfiction collection of essays about the mass

Anna Lena Phillips Bell 0:58

Anna Lena is the editor and art director for Ecotone* and an editor for Lookout Books at the University of North Carolina—Wilmington. She talks about Ecotone’s mission and aesthetic, how to balance the two for publication, and dishes about her absolute stunner of a craft book, A Pocket Book of Forms.

*While recording the episode, I refer to Anna Lena as an editor at Ecotone. She is the editor and art director there. My sincerist apologies for the goof on the tape.

Paulette Perhach 17:15

On the mini segment of “Daniel’s Blazer,” Paulette Perhach talks with Daniel Peña about who she’s wearing, her book Welcome to the Writer’s Life, and how “Broke Back Mountain” was the best thing she’s read.

Courtney Maum 22:57

Courtney Maum—author of Costalegre—discusses her new book Before and After the Book Deal,a “what to expect when you’re expecting” for writers published by Catapult. She’s also, interestingly, a product namer for several cosmetic companies in Connecticut and host to a writers’ retreat called The Cabins.

Norma Elia Cantú 44:52

Norma Elia Cantú is the Norene R. and T. Frank Murchison Endowed Professor in Humanities at Trinity University as well as professor emerita at the University of Texas in San Antonio. She trekked the El Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2011 after an inspiring panel with Sandra Cisneros and then wrote a blog El Camino A Year Later about her experience. Her other works reflect her passion for the border, boundaries, and the culture of the regions. She is also a contributor to Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos.

Michaeljulius Y. Idani 1:06:50

Working with Rita Woods, Michaeljulius Idani is a mentee through the Writer-to-Writer Program hosted by AWP. He thanked his wife for her immense support and giving him the opportunity of honing his craft outside of academia. He’s also worked on the aesthetics of bookstagram on his Instagram account that pays homage to his early interest in photography of HBCs. (He’s also the velvety voice you hear in the opening credits for the AWP reels. Thanks Michaeljulius!)

Christopher Miguel Flakus 1:20:18

An MFA student at the University of Houston, Christopher Miguel Flakus talks with us about his experience as a founder and co-editor of the new Defunkt Magazine. Defunktshowcases “compelling,accessible, and culturally relevant work--anything the mainstream is ignoring or marginalizing.”It’s a glorious and artful nod to zine and punk culture.

Jeneé Darden 1:36:04

A reporter for outlets including NPR and KALW, Jenee Darden reminds us of the importance of broadcast and audio media. She also shares a mental health awareness anthology she’s contributed to, We’ve Been Too Patient, and her own collection of essays and poems, When the Purple Rose Blooms.

Fantastic advice from the authors, poets, & industry professionals at #AWP20. This is part one of a three-episode series featuring Bloomsday Literary’s partnership with #AWP20 to bring you all the literary goings-on from this year’s conference.

Angela “AJ” Super 0:00

Angela Super is the author of Erebus Dawning, forthcoming from Aethon Books. We caught up with her while she took a break from woman-ing the table for the Debut Novelists 2020 booth. She hands out lovely advice to up and coming writers/neophytes/worriers on her Bloggy Blog and was an absolute joy to kick off our AWP special episodes. Follow her on Twitter @AllBrevityWit, where she delivers lovely advice free of charge on how to #PitMad, #PracPic, and #FriFirst.

Outspoken Bean 15:30

Performance poet, teacher, and slam poetry coach talks with us about all the ways poetry can connect people in the community. Bean shares about his youth advocacy work for young writers with Space City Youth Slams. If you’re a young person looking for a way in, check for updates on Youth Poetry Slams and opportunities to engage. We talk five minute poems, #midweekstanzas. Bean loves his poetry kids so much, he is missing Coachella. That is dedication. Also we learn things about sand clocks. Bean would love to hear from you @outspokenbean on all the social media.

Katharine Coldiron 37:10

We speak with Katharine Coldiron about her gem of a novel, Ceremonials, a “bisexual ghost story about love and obsession,” inspired by the Florence and the Machine album of the same name. We talk about the non-profit organization, VIDA — for which she writes interviews — and the good work they do to shine light upon the gaps in representation across gender lines in all aspects of the publishing industry. We reference an amazing interview on the origin of VIDA in Literary Publishing in the 21st Century. Book Recommendation Bonus: check out Katharine’s listical, 5 Craft Books off the Beaten Path.

Follow Katharine @ferrifrigida.

Johnny Payne 58:30

Director of the MFA program at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Johnny Payne, talks with us about how to make your creative writing sample especially attractive to the application committee. He talks about the virtues of finding a CWP that fits your exact needs and is honest about delivering on those. Continuing a favorite thread of this our beloved podcast, we address the concept of literary citizenship (i.e., why it pays to not be an a**hole). Craft book manual he teaches: Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays.

Icess Fernandez 1:10:00

We finish up Day 1 on an optimistic note from Icess Fernandez, author, teacher, and generally inspiring woman of all trades. From finding the right place to submit your work, to writing away the stigma of mental illness, and feeling fantastic doing it, we cover all the topics. Phuc channels the spirits of John Grisham or Johnny Cash (who can tell?). Icess dispenses quality writing advice in her blog and podcast, Dear Reader: Mental Health and the Writing Life. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Today on the show, Phong Nguyen, an absolute treasure trove of Twain trivia, author of The Adventures of Joe Harper. We do talk lots about writing dialect and the editors that love/hate it, why three-quarters of your way into writing a manuscript is the absolute sweet spot, and how living in Missouri and not Brooklyn is actually a blessing for the working writer. There’s the key, kids, get out of your big city cultural meccas and get thee to the Midwest! Our most prized nugget to come out of the show: Nguyen suggests Holden Caulfield should be rewritten as a 2019 incel, and we are here for it.

Buy The Adventures of Joe Harper and more of Phong’s books:

• Roundabout: An Improvisational History

• Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History

• Memory Sickness, and Other Stories

He has also gushed more with Full Stop about Joe Harper.

Check out a few of his stories published elsewhere:

• a reprint of “Ho Chi Minh in Harlem” in Hyphen

• “Senior Paper: On Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Micah Lipshitz” in issue no. 1 vol. 11 of Pank Magazine

• “Demographic Futures” in issue no. 3 vol. 92 of Prairie Schooner

• “Two-Step and Wannabe” in issue 77 of Painted Bride Quarterly

Phong has also been a keynote speaker for Writefest in 2019 and on The Chattahoochee Review’s Guest Author Series for Alternate History.

Visit his website for more works circulating or much-needed writing prompts, and/or check out his Twitter for vlogs and wonderful nuggets of knowledge.

Photo credit: Sarah Nguyen

US Cover, Outpost19