Nicolette Daskalakis and Dyson Kona Smith

On the 6/11/25 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:The first guest on the hour is Nicolette Daskalakis, who joins the show to detail her career in the arts, which started as a high schooler at KDVS. Daskalakis reveals she was at one point the youngest ever staff member at the station, serving as the news director, before she went off to earn an undergraduate degree at USC and then to earn an MFA in France, impressively completed in the French language. Daskalakis details her inspirations for her most recent published poetry collection, Tell Me I'm Not On Fire (2024), before sharing a poem “Welcoming the Arsonist.” Dyson Kona Smith is the next guest of the hour, and he reflects on his undergraduate journey at UC Davis. Coming from Chicago, Illinois, Smith talks about his transition into academia and obtaining a multidisciplinary education. He shares praise for mentors, peers, and the campus-community radio station KDVS, before outlining the thematics of his senior thesis, Tomboy Ballet.  Smith then reads three poems, “Duplex,” “Mine/Chicago,” and “Afterlife Poem.”Born in the fog of San Francisco, Nicolette Daskalakis is a poet, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist based in Paris. Her writing has been anthologized by HarperCollins, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and published in numerous literary journals. Nicolette is the author of multiple poetry books, including Tell Me I'm Not On Fire (2024) and Portrait of Your Ex Assembling Furniture (2018). She holds a BA in Film & Television Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and an MFA from the institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse.Dyson Smith is a recent Statistics, English, and Sociology Graduate from the University of California, Davis. He was awarded the Herbert A. Young Award as the College of Letters and Science’s Medalist, given to the graduating senior they determine the most outstanding. His honors thesis in Poetry, Tomboy Ballet recently won the Lois Ann Lattin prize for UC Davis’s Best Honors Creative Writing Project. Poems from the collection have been published in journals such as Open Ceilings, Poet News, GTFO Poetry’s 2024 Anthology of Sacramento Poets, Euphemism and The Madison Review. Beyond poetry, Dyson is a social statistician who wrote his research thesis on the association between social proximity to gun violence and chronic health conditions in California. He has worked on other projects pertaining to housing insecurity in Davis and deaths of despair among formerly incarcerated persons. In the past school year, Dyson was a Community-Coordinator and DJ at the campus and community radio station KDVS, a researcher at the UC Davis Innovations and Research Lab, the producer of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, a data analyst for Davis's Data Driven Change Club, and a submissions reader for the literary magazine Open Ceilings. His mom owned a bike shop in Chicago. June 20th we will be taking a Summer Break from Poetry Night. Please plan to join us on every subsequent first and third Thursday of the month at 7PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery for the Poetry Night Reading Series. Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.