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Weekly Shoutout: New Poetry Collection from Daniel Damiano (AC5), published by Bottlecap Press!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling writer/producer Amanda ReCupido! (linktr.ee/amandarecupido)
About our guest:
Amanda ReCupido is an author, book reviewer, playwright, storyteller and podcaster whose work has appeared in various humor and literary publications, as well as been recognized in several screenwriting competitions. Follow her online @amandarecupido.
All links here: linktr.ee/amandarecupido
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Amanda! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Fragile: An Anthology featuring David Scott Hay (AC114)!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Heather Bartel! (heatherelizabethbartel.com)
About our guest:
Heather Bartel is the author of the essay collection Exit the Body (Split/Lip Press, 2024). Her writing has appeared recently in FENCE, Birdcoat Quarterly, Leavings, Grimoire, and Heavy Feather Review. She is founder and co-editor of the literary journal and community The Champagne Room.
Heather lives, writes, and dances in Columbia, Missouri
https://www.heatherelizabethbartel.com/
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Heather! All the best!
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EXIT THE BODY, now available from Split/Lip Press!
https://www.splitlippress.com/exit-the-body
In Exit the Body, Heather Bartel makes an offering-as-essay-collection, if a collection of essays can include a tarot reading, a one-act starring dead and dreamed women, conversations with Sylvia Plath through a mirror, and letters to a living ghost.
Like journeying through the hallways of a haunted house, Bartel moves through a narrative landscape that shape-shifts, engaging in conversation with the women who haunt her to ask the question at the core of Exit the Body: what to do with an obsession with the mirror when the person in the mirror is either the only person you can trust or the one who is trying to kill you.
A dance with illusion and choice, Exit the Body is a meditation on the mind and its place within the body: what escapes, what ruptures, what is created, what echoes, and where we find ourselves on the other side.
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Eksik bölüm mü var?
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Weekly Shoutout: Listen to the latest episode of MyBadPoetry Podcast!
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*Just a heads up: this episode includes strong language at times.
Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author and game designer Shaine Greenwood!(shainegreenwood.com)
About our guest:
Shaine Greenwood is a Washington State-based author and game designer. His heart is buried in writing outlandish science fiction, gripping dystopian tales, and the occasional slice of literary fiction. He loves satire and social commentary (who doesn’t?) but believes that the foundational elements of a story shouldn’t be sacrificed to convey a deeper message—any story worth its merit must be entertaining at face value while reaching for complexity. When Shaine isn’t taking in the beautiful Washington landscape on a hike or backpacking trip with his lifelong partner, he can be found designing or playing board games with friends and family or tending to his mushroom cultivation hobby—mostly shiitake, lion’s mane, and portobello. Mycelium are one of the most fascinating and diverse living things on Earth, aside from humans. Aside from this collection of short stories, Shaine has written a collection of existentialist poems titled Fires Under the Great Neural Sky. You can find more information about his works, including his art, on his websites:
•Writing and art: shainegreenwood.com•Board games: https://otherworld.games
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Shaine! All the best!
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TRANSFIGURATION, now available here: https://books2read.com/u/bp1nnl
An alien from Area 51, a manufactured human, a human infused with the power of the sun, death on the terrifying and beautiful edge of space. These fourteen stories take us to the precipice of change, from the physical, mental, and spiritual to the larger and more nebulous moral and societal changes that transfigure us in myriad ways. The winds of change often arrive unexpectedly and with an unpredictable gusto. Throughout our lives, our bodies, minds, and souls evolve in a variety of ways. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Regardless, one certainty about change remains: We can’t control how or when it arrives on our doorstep.
This collection contains stories of people coming to terms with their mortality and the transition to death. Some meet their fates calmly and are pleasantly surprised, as is the case in Zero Percent—where misfortune falls Khana Lewis, leaving her drifting alone in space—and Ride or Die—where an alien rights activist husband and wife embark on a mission to rescue extraterrestrials from Area 51. Others gasp at their last breaths with fear or regret, like in Progeny—where a scientist throws her accomplished career away to illegally manufacture an evolution of humanity.
There are also stories of societal flux and the aftermath of such in Holographic Forefathers—where scientists work to make AI versions of the founding fathers to save the nation—and Patriot—which depicts a hyper-capitalistic globe from the perspectives of those loyal to the almighty dollar and those fighting to overcome it. Others, like Walt Whitman and The Sun and the Shepard, explore the warping of the body and mind into something new and how these changes affect the ever-shifting nature of relationships.
How will these characters be redefined under the weight of change? How will they become transfigured? How might you, if in their shoes?
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Jim Clayton's latest album, LOOK OUT!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Merrill J. Gerber!
About our guest: Merrill Joan Gerber has written thirty books, including The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine, and King of the World, winner of the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker, the Sewanee Review, the Atlantic, Mademoiselle, and Redbook, and her essays in the American Scholar, Salmagundi, and Commentary. She has won an O. Henry Award, a Best American Essays award, and a Wallace Stegner fiction fellowship to Stanford University. She retired in 2020 after teaching writing at the California Institute of Technology for thirty-two years. Her literary archive is now at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Merrill! All the best!
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REVELATION AT THE FOOD BANK, now available from Sagging Meniscus Press!
https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/revelation_at_the_food_bank/
ABOUT REVELATION AT THE FOOD BANK:These powerful essays share critical moments of a writer’s life: scenes from sixty years of passionate married love; suicides faced and suicide contemplated; trauma at the DMV; a night lost searching for a harpsichord in the mountains of Florence, Italy; the tale of a beloved cousin whose plane is shot down by Japanese Zeros; and a precious friendship between two women writers derailed by the poisons of religion and politics. In the titular essay (included in Best American Essays 2023) a food bank, assuaging the pandemic’s terrors with gifts of food and prayers, becomes a portal for intimate confidences entrusted to us by a voice of unspoiled authenticity and perennial vigor.
NOTICES:
“Often hilarious, deeply moving and warmly engaging, Merrill Joan Gerber’s collection of memoirist essays is delightful reading. ‘I have a lot to say from my own mouth’—so Gerber confides in her readers with admirable candor and enviable chutzpah. There is much here that is unnervingly intimate—close-ups of a very long marriage, painful memories of a brother-in-law who was abusive to his family before taking his own life, the disappointments as well as the rewards of an intense friendship with a famous woman writer embittered by religion and politics—all of it narrated in Merrill Joan Gerber’s distinctive voice.”—Joyce Carol Oates, author of Zero-Sum
“Written from her deepest truths, these intimate essays can be heartbreaking, maybe because we see ourselves in each of them. But they are told with such humor, such delicacy, that we close the book sighing, Yes, this is life! And this is why Merrill Joan Gerber has been one of my favorites for decades.”—Judy Blume, author of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
“Uncommonly candid, honest, emotionally precise; irresistibly scrappy, edgy, visceral. Sentence by sentence, one of the best collections of personal essays I’ve read in years.”—Robert Atwan, Series Editor, The Best American Essays
" ‘Revelation at the Food Bank’, the essay that anchors Merrill Joan Gerber’s collection, gives voice to the widespread rage of the covid and post-covid era. If Gerber’s anger is universal, her expression of it is wholly her own—brutally honest, transgressive and at times hilarious. The subsequent ten pieces, including a contentious exchange with Cynthia Ozick on the subject of Jewish identity, present in kaleidoscopic form the complexity of her art.”—Joan Givner, author of Playing Sarah Bernhardt
“Merrill Gerber’s new collection of essays adds up to a rich record of twentieth-century literary life, largely epistolary, in a period when epistles were epistles, not faxes, emails, texts or DMs. Closer to the present, she addresses the way we live now with a fine blend of pathos and wit, an exact intuition for the telling and well-timed detail, and all the freshness she must have had when she first picked up her stylus long ago.”—Madison Smartt Bell, author of The Witch of Matongé
“Merrill Joan Gerber is one of those fortunate writers on whom nothing is lost.Every encounter, every venture into the world leaves deep traces, which she recreates for her readers in exquisitely wry and wise language. Revelation at the Food Bank is rooted in intimacies, and yet touches on universal experience.”
—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Truthtelling: Stories, Fables, Glimpses“There are books that can be put together only after the author has turned eighty. Revelation At The Food Bank is one of them. Merrill Gerber’s language—hot, bright, bitter—as applied to marriage and the writing life is the work of one who has nothing to lose. Thus, her memoir is exciting, brutally honest, above all memorable.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time“Novelist Gerber (Beauty and the Breast) brings together intimate personal essays in this stirring compendium. The hilarious title essay weaves an account of how Gerber found unexpected community at a church’s food pantry (’They give me gifts, they welcome me…. I’m a Jewish girl, but I’ve never known the rewards of religion. Is it too late?’) with reflections on the small annoyances that accumulated over her 62-year marriage (’Why does he put so much cream cheese on his bagel?’)…. Gerber is a witty and astute observer with a keen eye for detail…. Elevated by Gerber’s wry voice and crystalline prose, this impresses.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Listen to SPACEWALKERS FFEEATCOPO this instant!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling poet MJ Gomez!
About our guest: MJ Gomez is the author of Love Letters from a Burning Planet (Variant Literature, 2023). His poems are featured in Surging Tide, the Dawn Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Selkie, and others. You can find him on Twitter @bluejayverses
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, MJ! All the best!
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LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET, now available from Variant Lit!
https://variantlit.com/product/love-letters/
PRAISE FOR LOVE LETTERS FROM A BURNING PLANET:
In his scintillating debut, MJ Gomez weighs love against grief, grief against god, and asks: which governs what? Replete with sensuous pauses and lush imagery, Love Letters _unravels pointedly and fearlessly, the way you would at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday, wine-drunk and unable to shake the rumor of a world you once built for someone.—Letitia Jiju, poet and editor for _Psaltery & Lyre
From its initial holy invocation of the poet’s name through the course of its burning and urgent trajectory, Love Letters from a Burning Planet sees MJ Gomez detail the intricate inner workings of a “palace of flame” in what can only be described as a triumphant debut. Poignant and deliberate at every turn, Gomez circles the body in an act of poetic ceremony, executed with heart-rending care. At its core, Love Letters reminds us: “[the] truth is we are all immortal except for our bodies.”—NAT RAUM, author of the abyss is staring back
MJ Gomez’s love letters from a burning planet crackles with language that sings and singes. “What should become of Man?” Gomez asks, and through self-portraits and studies, love letters and invocations, deftly answers: “a man is a song.” This is a radiant collection of poems that orbits devotion in all its pleasures and pains. Here are poems that bend light to make music. Here is a voice unafraid to speak in a world aflame.—Sarah Ghazal Ali, author of Theophanies
Electric, grand, and merciful. With blunt precision, Love Letters from a Burning Planet by MJ Gomez interrogates our human devotions to each other, and to the world. His debut reckons with the expanse of passion, of intimacy, and of love: “Magic doesn’t need to be real. / This body is enough, I swear.” Every poem brings new landscapes of memory to contend with these facts, overflowing with the worldly case of our own dissatisfactions and hopeless desires. Every poem traverses faith: religious, interpersonal, and individual. Gomez writes a universe beautiful and so, so human. “I send to you a flame / like a bullet / repenting.”—Daniel Liu, author of COMRADE
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Friend of the show Alvaro Saar Rios on The Scene Podcast, give it a listen!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Effy Redman! (www.effyredman.com)
About our guest: Effy Redman's writing investigates the intersection of disability and identity. She has work published in The New York Times, Vice, Ravishly, Chronogram, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review, among other places. She holds an MFA in Memoir from CUNY: Hunter College, where she received an Honorable Mention for the Helen Gray Cone Fellowship, and a BA in Literature/Drama from Bennington College, where she was an Ellen Knowles Harcourt Scholar and a Bennington Scholar. effyredman.com.
Twitter: @effyredmanFacebook: Effy RedmanInstagram: @effyredman38
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Effy! All the best!
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SAVING FACE, now available from Vine Leaves Press!
https://www.vineleavespress.com/saving-face-by-effy-redman.html
ABOUT SAVING FACE:What's in a smile? Or the absent smile? Saving Face is Effy Redman's thought-provoking answer.Born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Moebius Syndrome, Redman's grit and eye for beauty help her survive childhood bullying and adolescent doldrums. Her physical transformation at age thirteen via plastic surgery eviscerates her concept of image, just in time for her and her family to immigrate from hardscrabble Manchester, England to America's disorientingly scenic upstate New York. Not until diagnosis in young adulthood with bipolar disorder does Redman come out of the closet as a lesbian, finally claiming her most inherent identity. Saving Face is a searing personal tribute to anybody who has ever felt like an outsider. This memoir honors the grace of a face that stands out in a crowd, defying societal beauty norms. Disability meets transcendence, suffering becomes hope, and the individual expands into community. The inability to smile, in Redman’s book, lights a window onto the human capacity for redemption.
★★★★★ “This author goes where no other might dare.” Catherine Filloux, award-winning playwright
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Cruznotes is back! One email a month to bring you everything happening across the cruzfolio network, join Jaime's newsletter here: cruzfolio.com/cruznotes.
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Paul Cody! (paulcodywriter.com)
About our guest: Paul Cody was born in Newton, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School and from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, magna cum laude, With Distinction in English, and Senior Honors in Creative Writing. He worked at the Perkins School for the Blind for three years, and earned an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where he was twice co-winner of the Arthur Lynn Prize in Fiction. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, and was awarded a Stegner Fellowship by Stanford University (declined). He has worked as a housepainter, teacher, editor and journalist, was associate editor and staff writer at Cornell Magazine, where he twice won CASE awards for articles; and has taught at Cornell, Ithaca College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Colgate Writing Seminars, and in Auburn Prison. His published novels include The Stolen Child (Baskerville, 1995), Eyes Like Mine (Baskerville, 1996), So Far Gone (Picador USA, 1998), Shooting the Heart (Viking, 2004), Love Is Both Wave and Particle (Roaring Brook, 2017), Sphyxia (Fomite, 2020) as well as a memoir, The Last Next Time (Irving Place Editions, 2013). His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Harper’s, Epoch, The Quarterly, Story, the Boston Globe Magazine, and Cornell Magazine, and he has appeared on Voice of America as a Critic’s Choice. He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Paul! All the best!
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WALK THE DARK available May 27th from Regal House Publishing!
https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/walk-the-dark
ABOUT WALK THE DARK: Oliver Curtin grows up in a nocturnal world with a mother who is a sex worker and drug addict, and whose love is real yet increasingly unreliable. His narration alternates between that troubled childhood and the present of the novel, where he is serving the last months of a thirty-years-to-life sentence in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York for a crime he committed at age seventeen. His hope for redemption is closely allied with his memories, seen with growing clarity and courage. If he can remember, then life in the larger world might be possible for him.
Praise for Walk the Dark
"Paul Cody’s Walk the Dark is creepily beautiful, full of stillness and darkness. Cody takes us into places we don’t know and shows us strange states of mind that feel absolutely true. It’s both soothing and terrifying being in Oliver’s mind, because he sees such beauty but also feels forever separated from it. For decades now I’ve seen Paul Cody’s work as the ultimate cross between horror and literary fiction, taking us deeper into the weird American night than anyone in either camp. Walk the Dark is a continuation of that same world we know from Cody’s The Stolen Child and So Far Gone, both of which are great, terrifying novels." - Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, Emily, Alone; and Wish You Were Here
"Walk the Dark is harrowing and vivid, taut as a wire. Paul Cody intertwines terror and hope; he knows how to hook his readers from the start -- and on every page. Keep the lights burning when you open this spell-binding book." - Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Cruznotes is back! One email a month to bring you everything happening across the cruzfolio network, join Jaime's newsletter here: cruzfolio.com/cruznotes.
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author David Winner! (david-winner.com)
About our guest: David Winner is the author of three novels, Enemy Combatant, Tyler’s Last and The Cannibal of Guadalajara, winner of the 2009 Gival Press Novel Award and nominated for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Millions, The Kenyon Review and other publications in the U.S. and the U.K. He is the fiction editor of The American (www.theamericanmag. com), a monthly magazine based in Rome, a senior editor at Statorec magazine and a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail. Most recently, he is the co-editor of Writing the Virus: Work from Statorec magazine. Learn more at david-winner.com
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, David! All the best!
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MASTER LOVERS is now available from Outpost 19!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/master-lovers-david-winner/20232214?ean=9781944853884
ABOUT MASTER LOVERS: While clearing out his great aunt's midtown apartment after her death, author David Winner discovered artifacts of her storied existence: notes from opera stars, love letters and artifacts from the Middle East of the 1930’s. His Aunt Dorle Soria had been a co-founder of Angel Records and a prominent figure in the mid-century classical music world. But the more he learned about her world, the more complicated her story became, a twisted puzzle full of love and fascism, a record of a young woman grappling with her attraction to lovers with hair-raising political ties. A powerful work of family discovery, rooted in a bygone Midtown Manhattan and involving artists and politicians from around the world.
BOOKLIFE STARRED REVIEW! "An engrossing story about the life and times of a singular woman who lived life to the fullest... A fascinating 'fictional memoir' memoir of a trailblazing great aunt and her mysteries."
KIRKUS RAVES! "A fascinating blend of the personal and the historical, and a provocative comment on the ways in which both resist interpretive finality."
Full reviews and advance praise from Ann Beattie, Clifford Thompson and Sean O'Driscoll.
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout:Cruznotes is back! One email a month to bring you everything happening across the cruzfolio network, join Jaime's secret newsletter here: cruzfolio.com/cruznotes.
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Lee Upton! (www.leeupton.com)
About our guest: Lee Upton’s comic novel Tabitha, Get Up is forthcoming in May 2024. Another novel, a literary mystery, will be out in May 2025. Her books include her seventh collection of poetry, The Day Every Day Is (Saturnalia Books 2023), two short story collections, a novella, four books of literary criticism, and an essay collection. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the National Poetry Series Award, Poetry Society of America awards, the Miami University Novella Prize, the Open Book Award, the Saturnalia Book Prize, and other honors. www.leeupton.com
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Lee! All the best!
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TABITHA, GET UP is forthcoming May 22nd, 2024 from Sagging Meniscus Press, is now available for pre-order: https://bookshop.org/p/books/tabitha-get-up-lee-upton/21257767
ABOUT TABITHA, GET UP: Tabitha is a lonely fifty-year-old biographer who, in order to restore her self-respect and pay her rent, attempts to write two biographies simultaneously: one about an actor so famous his face is on the side of buses, and the other about a popular writer of children’s books recently outed as an author of erotic fiction. Is Tabitha ready to deal with interviewing an actor so handsome and charismatic she thinks he should be bottled and sprayed on belligerent people as a form of crowd control? Can she form a genuine friendship with a cult novelist who pressures her to compromise her values? While facing these and other challenges, Tabitha is bedeviled by memories of her long-ago divorce and the terrible wedding when, accidentally bumped on a balcony, she shot off into the shrubbery. Is it true, she wonders, that there’s probably a dead body beneath the floating rot of any marriage? When surrounded by pretentious beautiful people does it help to imagine their intestines are full of worms? Are champagne bubbles the devil’s air pockets? Is it ever too late to change your life—from the bottom up?
NOTICES:“For starters, Lee Upton’s novel Tabitha, Get Up is funny—really, really funny. On top of that, narrator Tabitha’s clumsy, desperate, charming search for human connection—not to mention a paying gig—is also a serious look at whether it’s possible to bluff and hustle a life together. You’re going to love this book.”—David Ebenbach, author of The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy
“Tabitha, Get Up is another remarkable book by the irrepressible Lee Upton, a novel that might remind you of the work of some of our finest living comic novelists—Elizabeth McCracken, Jincy Willett, Elizabeth McKenzie—but in the end is a book only Upton herself could have written. Its protagonist, Tabitha, is a glorious piece of work: a biographer with a feverish mind and a long list of antagonists and an indomitable spirit and an unforgettable voice and major money problems. I wouldn’t want anyone to live her life, but I very much want everyone to read her book. It’s Lee Upton’s best, funniest, and most ingenious work of fiction yet. Which is to say, it’s the best, funniest, most ingenious work of fiction you’ll read this year, and most other years, too.” —Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? and I, Grape
“There is no form of the novel. The novel has no form. The novel takes no form. The novel takes forms. It is a voracious form, the novel. Tabitha, Get Up, Lee Upton’s comely new novel, presents as a series of exquisite “Notes,” and thus a “Notebook,” a book of Notes, to self, to random others, to you who finds them. A compendium of memorandums makes up the meat of the matter, a tender texture to the text, marginalia that has been turned outside in, has migrated edgily into the heart of the heart. Formally the form is perfectly organic to this novel new novel, parts being greater than the sum of the whole, this map more detailed than the thing it represents, this round-up of resuscitation, reconstitution, and reply. Riding herd, Upton wrangles a novel that writes itself and rights itself. —Michael Martone, author of Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana
“Tabitha lives! In Tabitha, Get Up, Lee Upton has created an ebullient, witty, slightly nutty, and totally lovable character whose distinctive voice will stay with you long after you’ve closed the book. Smart, funny, crazy in the best sense, and a total joy!” —Iris Smyles, author of Droll TalesArts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).
HOW TO SUPPORT ARTS CALLING: PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A REVIEW, OR SHARING THIS EPISODE WITH A FRIEND! YOUR SUPPORT TRULY MAKES A DIFFERENCE, AND I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO LISTEN. MUCH LOVE,j
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Weekly Shoutout: cruzfolio.com/now!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling writer and editor C.M. Crockford! (www.cmcrockford.net)
About our guest: C.M. Crockford is the author of the full-length collection Birdsongs (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) as well as two chapbooks, Mark The Place (Thirty West Publishing, 2020) and Adore (Iron Lung Press, 2018). His essays, poetry, and fiction have been featured in The Cleveland Review of Books, Abducted Cow Magazine, CineSPEAK Journal, Vastarien, Serotonin Poetry, and Vast Chasm Magazine among many others. He also co-hosted The Barn: A Podcast About The Shield alongside Mason Maguire. Otherwise, Crockford reads crime fiction, collects punk badges and stim toys, and lives in Philadelphia with his cat Wally.
Socials:
https://www.instagram.com/cm_crockford/
https://twitter.com/cm_crockford
BIRDSONGS, now available from Alien Buddha Press: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CV5X9RCB/
ABOUT BIRDSONGS:"Birdsongs: Poems 2020-2023" by C.M. Crockford is a mesmerizing collection that transcends the boundaries of language to immerse readers in a kaleidoscope of emotions. Crockford's evocative verses paint vibrant landscapes where desire, resilience, and nostalgia take flight like free-spirited birds. From the raw intensity of "Animal" to the reflective echoes of "Winter's Visit," this book invites you on a poetic journey through the intricate melodies of life. With each poem, Crockford unveils a world where nature, love, and societal reflections blend seamlessly, creating a symphony of words that resonate long after the final verse. "Birdsongs" is an enchanting testament to the power of poetry, capturing the essence of existence with a grace that is both timeless and profoundly relevant.
In Birdsongs, C.M. Crockford gives us poems that take flight—but expect turbulence. This collection soars through sweaty basements, punk bars, and the harsh realities of contemporary life. With accessible language and animalistic passion, readers will find that these poems “hum hungry energy” and trill with biting candor.
—Adam Gianforcaro, author of Every Living Day (Thirty West Publishing House, 2023)
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, C.M.! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: My Bad Poetry Podcast!
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Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling Court Ludwick! (www.courtlud.com).
About our guest:Court Ludwick is the author of These Strange Bodies (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the founding editor-in-chief of Broken Antler Magazine. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and can be found in Denver Quarterly, Stonecoast Review, Necessary Fiction, Oxford Magazine, Full House Literary, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. Court’s art has shown at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, and she has visual work forthcoming in Zaum Magazine, Bleating Thing Magazine, and body fluids. She is the recipient of a 2024 Sioux Falls Arts Council Artist Grant, and she has taught workshops on hybrid writing and experimental form, most recently for The Dakota Writing Project and Vermillion Literacy Project. Court has an MA from Texas Tech University and is a current PhD student at the University of South Dakota, where she teaches literature and composition. Find Court on socials @courtludwick. Find more of Court’s writing and art on www.courtlud.com.
Socials:https://www.instagram.com/courtludwick
https://twitter.com/courtludwick
https://www.brokenantlermag.com
THESE STRANGE BODIES, A memoir-in-fragments, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in September 2024: https://elj-editions.com/these-strange-bodies
About THESE STRANGE BODIES:Court Ludwick’s These Strange Bodies is an intimate account of two tumultuous years and a clarifying dissection of how the female body exists in public and social spaces that are rooted in gendered and sexual violence. Composed of essays, prose poems, and the occasional experiment, this memoir-in-fragments navigates sexual assault, a mother’s arrest, a panic disorder diagnosis, a breakup, a stream of new lovers, a flirtation with stimulant drugs, and the ups and downs of trying to let it all go. As the collection grapples with memory’s fragmentary nature, past and present collide on the page. And as Ludwick charts the difficulty of filling in the gaps, threads blending cultural critique, human anatomy, poetry, and personal narrative expose the strange acts historically forced on bodies, the estrangement one can experience from their body, and the strangeness that is felt when trying to find a way through all this chaos, through all this strange.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Court! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Maria C. Palmer Arts Calling Episode 109!
Hi there,
Today I am so excited to be arts calling co-authors Maria C. Palmer & Ruthie Robbins!
About our guests:
Maria Costanzo Palmer is an author and grant writer. Growing up as the oldest child of an award-winning restaurateur, Maria unexpectedly became a daughter of the incarcerated. This experience ignited an interest in working for Get on the Bus, a nonprofit dedicated to uniting children with their incarcerated parents. A former host on L.A. Talk Radio, Maria was recently featured on Food and Beverage Magazine Live and has made a number of media appearances. You can find Maria on FB and IG @joecostanzoprimadonna and on Twitter @mariacpalmer. For more information, visit www.mariacpalmer.com.
Ruthie Robbins is an award-winning educator who worked for the Montour School District in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA, and for Johns Hopkins University Talent Development Secondary. Ruthie grew up in "The Rocks" but now teaches English Language Arts and music in Buffalo, New York. Best known as co-creator of a popular interdisciplinary unit for Pittsburgh's Kennywood Park, Ruthie is currently working on other books and is preparing to launch The Writing Factory Online, a comprehensive writing program for middle schools.
On the Rocks, now available: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C678ZVSV
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mariacpalmer
Maria and Ruthie: Thanks for this wonderful conversation! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent.
Much love,
j
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Weekly Shoutout: Arcade Bookshop Podcast!
What did you think of the episode? Send Jaime a message!
Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling author and coach Heather G. Marshall! (heathergmarshall.com)
About our Guest:Heather G. Marshall is an adoptee, author, speaker, teacher, coach, and traveler. Her short fiction has been published in a variety of journals, including Black Middens: New Writing Scotland, and Quarried, an anthology of the best of three decades of Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel. Her first novel, The Thorn Tree, released in 2014 (MP Publishing). Her TED talk, “Letting Go of Expectations,” centers around her adoption and reunion. Originally from Scotland, Heather is currently based in Massachusetts. heathergmarshall.com
WHEN THE OCEAN FLIES, now available from Vine Leaves Press!https://bookshop.org/p/books/when-the-ocean-flies-heather-g-marshall/20885419
About WHEN THE OCEAN FLIES:An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity on a collision course as Alison finds herself caught between the life and family she has so carefully constructed on one continent and the family from which she was taken on another. Shunned by her father's family, reunited with her natural mother, and reconnected with a long-lost love, Alison finds herself trying to shepherd her youngest child towards college while questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. When her natural mother uncovers a series of letters written to Alison from the grandmother she never knew, resurrecting the stories of generations of women-stories long buried by patriarchal rule-Alison realizes that she must find the courage to face and reveal the secrets of her own past. At what cost, though? And who and what will be left in the aftermath?When the Ocean Flies explores the pain of separation and abuse, and the power of love to heal even over huge gaps in time and geographical distance.
Letting Go of Expectations, Heather's Ted Talk, now available here:https://heathergmarshall.com/books-and-writing/letting-go-of-expectations/
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Heather! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Arcade Bookshop Podcast!
What did you think of the episode? Send Jaime a message!
Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling singer/songwriter Sam Chue! washingtonesrecords.com
About our Guest: Sam Chue, local outsider singer-songwriter plays a mix of his newest songs and a few tunes from the past. He has been playing original music in Bellingham and out of his car throughout the i-90 corridor since 2007 and he brings a refreshing spin to the folk genre.
Naegle Fowleri (IG @naeglefowleri) is the bassist and sometimes singer of the virtual band, howling brave. Listen to the episode to learn more about this mystery.
Washingtones Records is a Bellingham, Washington-based independent record label that goes the extra mile to empower artists that deserve a bigger audience. Sam Chue and Tim Mechling started Washingtones out of necessity. After a few releases of their own, they discovered a serious and surprising lack of music reviews, features, representation and media for independent artists. We’re dedicated to bringing physical and digital media to the northwest of the northwest. Independent music deserves your undivided attention. We always fight for the underdog.
Instagram: @washingtonesrecords | Facebook: @washingtonesrecords | YouTube: @WashingtonesRecords | TikTok @washingtonesrecords
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Sam! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: 2024 Jaime Updates!
What did you think of the episode? Send Jaime a message!
Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling author Tyler C. Gore! https://tylergore.com
About our Guest: Tyler C. Gore is the author of My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments, shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. My Life of Crime was also a First Horizon Award Finalist, and appeared in the Independent Book Review’s list of “Impressive Indie Books of 2022.” Tyler has been cited five times as a Notable Essayist by The Best American Essays annual anthology and is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship for Creative Writing. For many years, he served as art director of Literal Latte, and currently serves on the editorial boards of Exacting Clam and StatORec. His essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in many of the fine, high-quality journals preferred by discerning readers like you. He lives, as he dreams, in Brooklyn.
Twitter: @TylerCGore | Insta: @tylermustwashhands
MY LIFE OF CRIME: ESSAYS AND OTHER ENTERTAINMENTS, now available from Sagging Meniscus Press! https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/my_life_of_crime/
About MY LIFE OF CRIME:An awkward visit to a nude beach. A bike-pedaling angel careening through rush-hour traffic. The mystery of a sandwich found in a bathroom stall. A lyric, rainy-day ramble through the East Village. With the personal essays (and three other entertainments) in this debut collection, Tyler C. Gore reveals the artistic secrets of his life of crime: a charming wit, compassionate observation, perfection of style, and, over all, a winsomely colorful light tinged with just enough despair. Whether stewing over a subway encounter with a deranged businessman, confessing his sordid past as a prankster, or recounting his family’s history of hoarding, Gore is by turns melancholy, profound and hilarious. The collection culminates with the novella-length essay “Appendix,” a twisted, sprawling account of routine surgery that grapples with evolution, mortality, strangely attractive doctors, simulated universes, and an anorexic cat. My Life of Crime conjures up from the flotsam of an individual life something uncannily majestic: an insomniac contemplation of life in our eternal, twenty-four-hour New York City, infused throughout with its grit, humanity, unexpected romance, and the poignant intimacy of all the lives joined together within it.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Tyler! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Nighthawks Podcast!
Like the podcast? Thoughts/concerns? Jaime would love to hear from you, send him a message!
Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling author Hilary Zaid! hilaryzaid.com
About our Guest: Hilary Zaid has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, a James D. Houston Fellow at the Community of Writers and two-time attendee of Tin House Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, Ecotone, Day One, The Southwest Review, and The Utne Reader and elsewhere. Long-listed for the 2018 Northern California Independent Booksellers' Award for Fiction, her novel Paper is White is a 2018 Foreword Indies silver medalist and the winner of the 2018 Independent Publishers' Book Awards (IPPY) in LGBT+ Fiction. Her novel Forget I Told You This (Zero Street Fiction), is the inaugural winner of the Barbara DiBernard Award. Hilary holds an AB in English from Harvard and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Hilary has mentored aspiring writers through AWP's Writer-to-Writer Mentor program, the Golden Crown Literary Society and as a volunteer mentor and mentor-coordinator of the College Essay Mentors in the Oakland Unified School District, an equity program offering high school seniors from under-served communities.
Twitter: @hilaryzaid | Insta: @hilary_zaid/
FORGET I TOLD YOU THIS, now available from Zero Street Fiction!https://www.hilaryzaid.com/forget-i-told-you-this.html
About Forget I Told You This: Amy Black, a queer single mother and an aspiring artist in love with calligraphy, dreams of a coveted artist’s residency at the world’s largest social media company, Q. One ink-black October night, when the power is out in the hills of Oakland, California, a stranger asks Amy to transcribe a love letter for him. When the stranger suddenly disappears, Amy’s search for the letter’s recipient leads her straight to Q and the most beautiful illuminated manuscript she has ever seen, the Codex Argentus, hidden away in Q’s Library of Books That Don’t Exist—and to a group of data privacy vigilantes who want her to burn Q to the ground. Amy’s curiosity becomes her salvation, as she’s drawn closer and closer to the secret societies and crackpot philosophers that haunt the city’s abandoned warehouses and defunct train depots. All of it leads to an opportunity of a lifetime: an artist’s residency deep in the holographic halls of Q headquarters. It’s a dream come true—so long as she follows Q’s rules.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Hilary! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Nighthawks Podcast!
Like the podcast? Thoughts/concerns? Jaime would love to hear from you, send him a message!
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Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling writer and educator Kate Brandt! https://katebrandt.net
About our Guest: Kate Brandt is a graduate of the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in literary anthologies, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Literary Mama, Ginosko, and Redivider, among other publications. Hope for the Worst, her first novel, is informed by her experiences with Tibetan Buddhism, magic, self-delusion, desire, despair, and healing, as well as her travels through Europe, Africa, and Asia. Kate is also a teacher and teacher trainer in adult literacy in New York City. In this role, she is privileged to work with a community of smart, dedicated educators in service to adult students who, despite difficult circumstances, continue to pursue an education in the hope of improving their lives.
Twitter: @kbrandtwriter | Insta: @kbrandtwriter
HOPE FOR THE WORST, now available from Vine Leaves Press!https://www.vineleavespress.com/hope-for-the-worst-by-kate-brandt.html
About Hope for the Worst: At twenty-seven, Ellie Adkins doesn’t have all that much going for her–a dead-end job at a New York City nonprofit; a boyfriend who has left her; distant and divorced parents. But it is the suffering caused by Calvin, her Buddhist teacher, that she can’t get past. A year ago, Calvin seduced her, and his Buddhist teachings became her world. Now, he has dropped her, and Ellie struggles to reconcile his teachings—the idea that nothing has inherent reality; that the way to salvation is through abandonment of the self–with the intense pain in her heart. Ellie’s devotion to Calvin will lead her to undertake an expedition to Tibet on his behalf; there, injured and in danger on a solo trek, she will have to choose between devotion and her own life.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Kate! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Nighthawks Podcast!
Like the podcast? Thoughts/concerns? Jaime would love to hear from you, send him a message!
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Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling writer and educator Wendy Bashant!
About our Guest:Wendy Bashant taught and served as a dean and professor of English for thirty years at schools as diverse as UC-San Diego, Coe College, New College of Florida, Eastman School of Music, and California Western School of Law. Her writing includes scholarly articles, book chapters, poetry, and travel articles. She was a finalist for both the Peter Taylor Prize for Literature and the Gival Press Novel Award. Her memoir, The Same Bright Moon, was a 2023 New York Book Festival winner.
A graduate of Middlebury College (BA) and the University of Rochester (Ph.D.), she currently lives in San Diego with her husband and two cats. She teaches adult literacy through the public library system and volunteers at the San Diego Zoo. She also plays the harp and tries to practice her Mandarin with as much regularity and discipline as she can muster.
Insta: @wbashant1Twitter: @BashantWendy
THE SAME BRIGHT MOON, now available! https://www.amazon.com/Same-Bright-Moon-Teaching-Generation/dp/B0CDNM82VZ
About THE SAME BRIGHT MOON: In 2019, Wendy Bashant, a burned-out college dean, quits her job to teach two hundred students in the ancient, walled city of Xi’an, China. The year turns extraordinary when tensions between China and the U.S. escalate: first tit-for-tat tariffs; then a worldwide pandemic; finally lockdowns, closed consulates, and expelled journalists. All the while, accusations are lobbed back and forth like flaming arrows launched over the Pacific. Against this background of aggression, Wendy tries to teach a class in American culture. Instead, her students describe the realities of growing up in an emerging global power. Through their experiences and compelling perspectives, the students debate various issues, such as environmentalism, gender, healthcare and political conflict. The Same Bright Moon is a collaborative memoir highlighting the stories of these students through their assignments, discussions and poetry at the height of Covid-19. Their vibrant voices will challenge, inspire, and bring hope for the future.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Wendy! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Hey Playwright!
Like the podcast? Thoughts/concerns? Jaime would love to hear from you, send him a message!
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Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling photographer Kamal X!! (www.iamkamalx.com)
About Kamal, in his own words:I am Kamal X, a professional photographer who has been documenting my travels throughout the world since 2015. Photography found me at a time in my life when I felt confused and voiceless. I wasn’t sure of where I was internally and what direction I wanted my life to go. I welcomed my challenges and I found myself drawn to creating images that evoke emotions rooted in the many universal elements of the human experience. My goal is to tell stories from all walks of life and give a raw voice to the world we live in, through compassion and honesty.
BLACK ASTRONAUT, now available for purchase here:https://www.amazon.com/Black-Astronaut-Kamal-X/dp/1908211938/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/iamkamalx
About BLACK ASTRONAUT: THE STARS BELONG TO THE PEOPLEJoin award-winning photographer Kamal X on his epic search for beauty through a divided America.Black Astronaut is an extraordinary collection of powerful images that tell the stories of the everyday people behind the sensationalized headlines, a nuanced representation of the new Black America. Living, loving and fighting for a better world in difficult times. Open your heart to this electrifying collection of images, as Kamal X uses his camera to explore America after George Floyd, Covid-19, and Trump by finding beauty, humanity, and hope in the rage of a people under fire. Black Astronaut serves as a raw opportunity to re-evaluate one’s own intersection with the ongoing shifts in society that bring renewed threats to communities against a background framed by the unequal impact of economic volatility. This book is about looking at the recent past to try to find a direction for the near future.
Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Kamal! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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Weekly Shoutout: Switchyard Podcast!
Comments and suggestions welcome: Send Jaime a message!
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Hi there,
Today I am excited to be arts calling poet Richard Jeffrey Newman for a second appearance on the podcast!! (richardjnewman.com)
About:Richard Jeffrey Newman is the author of Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as the translation, The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press 2011). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series and is Professor of English at Nassau Community College.
His latest poetry collection, T'shuvah, is now available from Fernwood Press!https://www.fernwoodpress.com/2023/09/07/tshuvah/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/richardjnewmanMicroblog: https://richnewman.micro.blog/
Thanks for returning a second time, Richard, such a pleasure to catch up! All the best!
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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent. Much love,
j
https://artscalling.com
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