Artspeak Radio with Jennifer Case and Marcy Smalley

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, August 12, 2026, 9am -10am CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes authors Jennifer Case and Marcy Smalley. JENNIFER CASE- Part memoir and part cultural reflection, The Carework Project combines intimate storytelling with research, interviews, and visual art to explore what care means in a time of climate crisis. “Care work is climate work.” Jennifer Case first encountered this message during the pandemic, while monitoring her daughter’s attempts at virtual learning and trying to keep her toddler from running naked into faculty Zoom meetings. The phrase appeared online beside photos of backyard gardens and essential workers in masks, offering an unexpected validation: caring for others—whether children, the ill, or the earth—is vital work. Intrigued, Case began exploring the connections between personal, domestic, and ecological care. What started as research through the lenses of feminism and economics grew into a larger investigation that touched on environmental thought, Indigenous teachings, disability studies, and the psychology of empathy. Along the way, Case developed a broader spiritual and ecological awareness that changed how she viewed the act of caring itself. Part memoir and part cultural reflection, The Carework Project combines intimate storytelling with research, interviews, and visual art to explore what care means in a time of climate crisis. Case shows how caregiving, often invisible, gendered, or undervalued, is central to our survival. She examines how trauma and burnout affect our ability to connect, and how healing can start with the smallest gestures of attention. The book invites readers to envision a world where care is not a burden but a source of mutual renewal and belonging. Visually striking collage postcards enhance the text. The result is a hybrid work that feels both timely and timeless, honoring the messy, creative, and transformative act of caring for one another and the living world. Why This Story Matters Now ● The Carework Project is the rare book that tackles all types of caregiving (not just one, such as childcare or eldercare) and does so through the lens of climate change and environmental justice. The connection between carework and climate change is underexplored and sets this book apart from other works about caregiving. ● The book is also incredibly timely, directly engaging conversations surrounding climate change, caretaking, and mental health in a manner that will appeal to literary readers, environmental activists, mothers, and careworkers of all types. Target Audiences The Carework Project appeals to multiple audiences: general and literary readers, environmental activists, all kinds of caregivers, and anyone interested in topics relating to environmental humanities, women and gender studies, healthcare and mental health studies, human consciousness and spirituality, and literary nonfiction about social justice. Interview Opportunities Jennifer Case offers compelling perspectives on: ● Feminism and gender studies, especially relating to the act of caregiving and motherhood ● Environmental humanities, climate anxiety, and a broader ecological awareness ● Mental health and healthcare, especially relating to the effects of trauma and burnout on connection and the importance of small gestures of attention to healing ● A vision of a world in which care is a source of mutual renewal and belonging Author Bio Jennifer Case teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas. She also serves as an assistant nonfiction editor at Terrain.org and is the supervising editor of Arkana. She is the author of The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World, We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood, and Sawbill: A Search for Place, and her work has appeared in Orion, the Sycamore Review, and Fourth River. She lives in central Arkansas. www.jenniferlcase.com MARCY SMALLEY, author, Piloting the Currents: Growing Up In Turbulent Times 1962-1973 Born into the uneasy normality of postwar Kansas City, a girl comes of age in the fast changing world of the 1960’s. With a government in crisis and social traditions failing, she navigates the counter-cultural rapids and family upheavals. Buoyant with curiosity, she creates an adulthood beyond the one expected of her. A look back then begins to reveal parallels with today’s world. Marcy A. Smalley, a retired urban planner, is a writer, and musician.  Her writing has appeared in The Sun and other publications.  She edited Threshold – A Life’s Journey to Prairie, by Elaine Jones, Blurb Press, 2024.  Her musical scores have been performed locally.  As an urban planner she assisted in the development of the Kansas City regional transit plan. She and her husband Barrie (a Habitat for Humanity volunteer) live in the Kansas City area near their children and grandchildren. This is her first book. www.marcysmalley.com