Let's Have a Renaissance: The DateKeepers Podcast with Itto and Mekiya Outini

In this special episode, visual artists Masha Ryskin and Serge Marchetta showcase work that they’ve created individually and as a couple and share the personal narratives and hidden wounds that undergird their individual and collaborative practices. Masha was born in the Soviet Union and pursued an academic education in painting in Moscow before relocating to the US and completing her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at the University of Michigan. Her work has since been exhibited in the US and internationally and has been reviewed in a number of publications, including Art New England and The New York Times. Her honors include several residencies, a Rhode Island Artist Fellowship, and two Fulbrights. Serge served Post Canada for 18 years before quitting in 1993 and to launch his artistic career. A graduate from Université du Québec à Montréal, he’s participated in and curated numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and the United States, directed the non-profit organization C2S Arts et Événements, and earned grants from the Fondation Ténot in France, Ragdale Foundation in the US, and Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec in Canada.  Since 2011, Masha and Serve have maintained a collaborative practice investigating memory, a sense of place, and displacement. Together, they’ve been invited to a number of residencies and exhibited their work internationally.

In this episode, we speak with singer-songwriter and producer John Garrison about lessons learned from a life in music, the cost (to your neighbors) of becoming a professional musician, and whether today’s pop musicians are still pushing creative boundaries. John has devoted his life to music as a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer for TV and film. He was a founding member and lead singer of the British alt rock band Budapest from 1999 to 2006, formed half of the duo Glass Ear along with actor Pernille Anderson, and since becoming a father has recorded three albums under the moniker Satellites.

In this episode, we speak with author Glenn Kurtz about the art of remaking oneself, thematic throughlines linking his three very different books, and the moral ambiguity of attempting to represent individuals and reclaim communities that history has sought to erase. Glenn began his career as a classical guitarist, graduated from the New England Conservatory-Tufts University double degree program, earned a PhD in comparative literature and German from Stanford University, and has authored three books: Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music (Knopf, 2008), Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2014), and Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It (Seven Story Publishing, 2025). His honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, his writing has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Artweek, Tema Celeste, and elsewhere, and he’s taught at both Stanford and the California College of the Arts. 

In this episode, we read one of our most popular stories, “Johnny, From Another World,” in which a freelance ground transportation specialist picks up a hitchhiker headed to Jerusalem in hopes of implementing a plan for world peace engineered by benevolent aliens. This one originally appeared in Literally Stories in August of 2025: https://literallystories2014.com/2025/08/06/johnny-from-another-world-by-itto-and-mekiya-outini/ We’re excited to bring it to you today, along with the story of how it assumed its present form. Sit back, and buckle in. 

In this episode, we speak with author Josh Weil about his daring choice to debut with a triptych of novellas, how crushes have shaped his life’s macro-trajectory, his year in the Soviet Union, and his approach to the structural challenge of writing plot-driven fiction about isolation. Hailed by Colum McCann as one of “the most gifted writers of his generation,” Josh is the author of four books: The New Valley: Novellas (Grove Press, 2009), The Great Glass Sea: A Novel (Grove Press, 2014), The Age of Perpetual Light: Stories (Grove Press, 2017), and What Came West: A Novel(Doubleday2026). His work has attracted literary accolades including the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the California Book Award, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, and the Pushcart Prize. He’s also the recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and two Fulbrights, among other honors. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and has taught there as well as at New York University, Brooklyn College, Sierra Nevada College, the New School, and elsewhere. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Jorge Grossman about his ongoing exploration of the lost the sound world of the Incan Empire, the Janus-facedness of multiculturalism, and why higher education in the West is in decline. Jorge’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and he’s received support from the Fulbright, the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, Copeland House, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and others. He holds a Master of Music from Florida International University and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from Boston University and now teaches at Ithica College in New York. 

In this episode, we speak with author Ben Miller about what happens when families fracture, how lives can be pieced back together, the centrality of creativity to healing, and the sacrifices we make to survive. Ben is the author of two memoirs, River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa (Lookout Books, 2013) and Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2020-2022 (Rutgers University Press, 2024), and one novel, The Parade (April Gloaming Publishing, 2026). His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The New England Review, The Yale Review, AGNI, Ecotone, The Harvard Review, and others. He holds an MA from New York University, his honors include a fellowship in writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he now lives with his wife, the poet Anne Pierson Wiese, while sustaining his writing by working odd jobs. 

In this episode, we speak with artist and curator Mitch Cope about the rapid rise and unfortunate fall of Power House Productions, the Detroit-based nonprofit he founded and ran in collaboration with his then-wife, Gina Reichert, in hopes of mitigating local fallout from the 2008 housing crisis. Mitch holds an MFA from Washington State University, has worked as an artist and curator for the Berlin-based, international research/art project Shrinking Cities, and served as the first Assistant Curator for The Museum of Contemporary Art. He’s participated in numerous creative collaborations, including the Detroit Tree of Heaven Workshop and the duo Design 99, and his work has been shown at the Smart Museum in Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Netherland, Kunsthalle in Dresden, and KunstWerke in Berlin, and elsewhere. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Andrea Clearfield about her work in the Nepalese Himalaya, where she collaborated with Tashi Tsering, the last remaining master of the Gar-glu (Tibetan court song) tradition, to preserve his ancestral melodies. She also wrote music inspired by her experience. Andrea has written over 175 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations and has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the MacDowell Foundation, and others. She holds an MM in piano from the University of the Arts and a DMA in music composition from Temple University, and she’s taught at the University of the Arts and held visiting lectureship positions around the world.

In this episode, we speak with author Kevin Brockmeier about his contributions to speculative fiction, his distinctive approach to narrative as thought experiment, whether the production of a book can ever justify suffering, and whether pain can make us beautiful to God. Kevin is the author of three novels, three story collections, two books for young readers, and one memoir, all published by imprints of Penguin Random House or Harper Collins. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, his work has been translated into eighteen languages, and his honors include an O’Henry Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

In this special episode, artist Heide Fasnacht discusses her creative process, the materiality of meaning, the value of imperfection, real loss, false nostalgia, and the importance of the arts in a rapidly changing world.  Heide’s work dealing with instability, ephemerality, fragmentation, and rupture spans a wide range of media: drawing, painting, photography, prints, and sculpture. She’s earned recognition from the MacDowell Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Gottleib Foundation, and others and has taught at Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, U Penn, and elsewhere.  This episode is guest-hosted by Nancy Princenthal, an art critic, historian, and winner of the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography for Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames & Hudson, 2015). She’s edited Art in America, to which she still contributes regularly, and has also written for The New York Times and many other publications. Like Heide, she has taught at Princeton, along with Bard, Yale, and others. 

In this episode, we speak with author Rose Whitmore about the moral imperatives that writers must uphold when writing nonfiction based on fallible memories and fiction set in cultures not their own. Rose’s debut novel, Exiled, set during Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship in Albania, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books. She’s the recipient of the 2021 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award from The Southern Review, and the Pedan Prize from The Missouri Review, and she’s received support from Hemingway House, Hedgebrook, the San Leandro Arts Commission, and others. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and has taught creative writing at Stanford University. 

In this episode, we speak with music theorist and cultural historian Roger Matthew Grant about the evolution of Western music in the eighteenth century, how to publish with a university press, the forces transforming the academic publishing landscape, how community-building can reshape our world in real time, and why literary authors and university presses should work together to bring about a renaissance. Roger is the author of two books, Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical (Fordham University Press, 2020), and has published articles in Critical Inquiries, Representations, The Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Theory Spectrum, and the Journal of Music Theory. His work has also earned him fellowships from the Stanford Humanities Center, the University of Michigan, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He holds a PhD in Music from the University of Pennsylvania, has been a visiting professor at both Harvard and Yale, and currently teaches and serves as Deputy Provost and Dean of Arts and Humanities at Wesleyan University.

In this episode, we read and discuss one of our stories, “The Virginity Consultant,” in which a donkey’s welfare is pitted against a village’s honor, and a question is answered in blood: In rural Morocco, who gets to save whom?  “The Virginity Consultant” was originally published in Mount Hope Magazine:  https://www.mounthopemagazine.com/the-virginity-consultant

In this episode, we speak with novelist Adam Gnuse about his debut, Girl in the Walls (4th Estate and Ecco Editions, 2021), and related matters: squatters, lurkers, secret rooms, how to know whether it’s a mouse or a ghost, things that go bump in the night, and home invasions. Also, how to sell your debut novel to the Big Four, why authors need to learn to stop worrying and love marketing, and what they won’t teach you in the MFA. Adam’s work has appeared in The Guardian, Gulf Coast, Literary Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Passages North, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Peter Gilbert about the energetics of narrative, the role of discomfort in a creative practice, musical-literary cross-pollinations, and the peculiar joys of collaborating with a spouse. Peter Gilbert’s music has been featured in festivals and conferences around the world, supported by artist residencies and other foundations in the US and Europe, performed by soloists of international renown, and produced in collaboration with dozens of outstanding ensembles. He’s also taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Dartmouth and Harvard, from which he holds his PhD. Currently, he teaches composition and music technology at the University of New Mexico, where he’s been awarded UNM’s Research and Creative Works Leadership Award. 

In this episode, we speak with poet Kathleen Peirce about how she published six collections of poetry with traditional presses, what prevents certain good books from getting published, and how she found—and lost—the love of her life in her sixties. Over her long career, Kathleen has racked up many honors, including the Iowa Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Whiting Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and recently retired from teaching at Texas State University. 

In this episode, we speak with textile artist Mark Newport about superheroes who knit their own suits and men who are called to heal and mend. Mark’s work has been featured in the prestigious Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 2019, China and in the 2019 Rijswijk Textile Biennial in The Netherlands, is included in the collections of museums around the US, and can be viewed at the offices of Progressive Insurance and Microsoft. He earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Eric Lyon about creativity, labor, and meaning, how we can adapt our professional practices in an increasingly AI-driven world, whether humans who make music are on the verge of their Gary Kasparov moment, and why the twentieth century was so weird. In addition to being a composer, Eric is an expert in the hardware and software of digital music production. In 2016, he served as a guest editor of the Computer Music Journal, editing two issues and curating their first binaural Sound Anthology. He’s also been honored with a Giga-Hertz Prize from ZMK, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and others. He holds an MM from Eastman School of Music and a PhD from UC San Diego and currently teaches at the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts. 

In this episode, we speak with author and poet Dan Beachy-Quick about how to teach oneself an ancient language and where exactly to draw the line between poetry and translation. Dan is the author of several books of poetry, a collection of linked essays responding to Melville’s Moby Dick, and a novel. He’s received a Lannan Foundation fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and the Colorado Book Award, among others, holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa, and teaches creative writing at Colorado State University. 

In this episode, we read and discuss three of our stories, all of which involve immigration and examine locals’ relations with immigrants, expats, foreigners, and other displaced persons.  “Leila Enabled” (1.16) was originally published in Volume 12 of the Harpy Hybrid Review(http://www.harpyhybridreview.org/hybrid_works/leila-enabled/). “Richard and Richard” (10.56) first appeared in Across the Margin. (https://acrossthemargin.com/richard-and-richard/). “The Reanimation of Hippocrates” (21.06) can be read in Issue 7 of The Lincoln Review, pages 69 – 73. (https://www.lincolnreview.org/issue7).

In this episode, we speak with multidisciplinary creative Mildred Inez Lewis about the joys of interdisciplinary work, the logistics of writing for stage and screen, ongoing irregularities in film financing and their impact on casts and crews, and what “experimental” theater actually means. Mildred’s work has earned her the AGE Legacy Award, the Grand Jury Award from Fusion Theatre, the Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Award, and the Humanitas PLAY LA Award, among others. She holds an MA and an MFA from UCLA and currently teaches writing, film theory, West African, and Caribbean literature at Chapman University. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Robert Paterson about what it takes to build an arts organization in collaboration with one’s spouse, the frustrating transience of modern life, and why music festivals need to be reformed. Robert and his wife, Victoria Paterson, co-founded both Mostly Modern Projects, where he currently serves as artistic director, and Mostly Modern Ensemble. His work as a composer has received support from MacDowell, Copeland House, the Utah Arts Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the American Composers Forum, the League of American Orchestras, New Music USA, and others. He’s also given master classes at several colleges and universities, including the Curtis Institute of Music, Aspen Music School & Festival, New York University, Cleaveland Institute of Music, and the University of Denver. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, and Cornell. 

In this episode, we speak with novelist Ron Nyren about finding the optimal balance of fact and myth in historical fiction, the importance of patience for the not-yet-published author, and why small presses are awesome. Ron is the author of The Book of Lost Light, a novel set during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2020, and a co-author, along with his wife, Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. His stories have appeared in The North American Review, The Paris Review, The Mississippi Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere, and he’s received a Major Hopwood Award, the Farrar Prize in Playwriting, the Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship, and others. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and teaches for Stanford Continuing Studies. 

In this special episode, visual artist and filmmaker Matt Marello shares the origins of his creative practice, an inexplicable encounter with an archetypal object from another dimension. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and the Best Experimental Video Award from the Digital Film Festival in Narrowsburg, Virginia, Matt earned his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has taught or served as a visiting lecturer at over half a dozen universities, and has shown work in venues around Europe and the United States.  

In this episode, we speak with composer Joe Cantrell about anthropomorphism, hoarding, planned obsolescence, the invention of the teenager, and smelly drums. Joe works with objects that are outmoded, cast-off, or broken to compose and perform music that investigates these questions. His work has been supported by the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The San Diego Art Institute, The Soundfjord Sequence Series Residency, and others. He holds an MFA in digital arts and new media from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a PhD in integrative studies from the University of California, San Diego. 

In this episode, we speak with poet and philosopher Troy Jollimore about problematic concept creep in philosophy and translation, why so much contemporary philosophy is stilted, and why it’s so hard to write a love poem. Troy holds a PhD in philosophy from Princeton, has published four collections of poetry, and has authored or edited four books of philosophy. His first collection, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2006, and his third, Syllabus of Errors, appeared on The New York Times list of the best books of poetry published in 2015. His work has also been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center in Palo Alto, and others. He currently teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the California State University in Chico, with Peter Fosl and Robert Jones, co-hosts a podcast devoted to the exploration of philosophical issues in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. 

In this episode, we speak with Tampa Bay-area painter Keith Crowley about defamiliarizing the mundane, the creative power of sustained attention, and how his background as a not-completely-gruntled homeschooler has shaped his artistic vision. Keith holds an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and has shown paintings in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. He’s currently exploring the possibilities of sculpture and 3D design. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Marti Epstein about classical music: what it is, why so many people think they hate it, and how to solve a marketing problem that’s now over a century old. Marti began her career as a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1986. Her work has since been supported by MacDowell, Guggenheim, the Fromm Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an Ettelson Composer’s Award, and others. She plays prepared piano with guitarist and David Tronzo in the Epstein/Tronzo Duo, teaches at Berklee College of Music, and serves on the faculty at the Boston Conservatory.  

In this episode, we speak with poet and journalist Christopher Merrill about being stranded at the US embassy in Kabul, why creativity depends on mortality, a memorable run-in with Gabriel García Márquez, and why you should never hire a menopausal Ukrainian to drive your van. For twenty-five years, Christopher conducted cultural diplomacy missions on behalf of the US State Department, traveling the world and liaising with writers and artists on every inhabited continent. His work, including six collections of poetry and six books of nonfiction, have been translated into over forty languages, and he’s received support from entities including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the government of France.

In this episode, we speak with multimedia artist Lesley Dill about the nature and function of language, the enduring power of Emily Dickinson, life in India, the difference between loneliness and isolation, and what it’s like to grow up with a paranoid schizophrenic father. For decades, Lesley has worked at the intersection of language, sculpture, printmaking, performance, and installation. She’s had over 100 solo exhibitions and been supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Guggenheim, and the Emily Dickinson Museum, and her work is now in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and MoMA. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Bobby Ge about linguistic and cultural hybridity, how to pass off anything as “American,” and what to do when you see a businessman carrying a Hello Kitty parasol. Bobby’s compositions, described by The Financial Times as “expressive and gripping” and by CityNews CBR as “exciting, frenzied, and unpredictable,” explore themes of communication, hybridity, and home. A winner of the Barlow Prize, he’s also received fellowships from the MATA Festival, the Bang on a Can summer festival, the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, and Copeland House. 

In this episode, we speak with visual artist Shiri Mordechay about surviving neglect on three continents and fashioning a rich creative practice out of the raw materials of trauma. Shiri is a painter and occasional sculptor whose work translates visceral and disturbing realities into the visual language of childhood dreams. Born in Israel to Iraqi parents and raised in Nigeria, she now lives and makes art in upstate New York. 

In this episode, we speak with author Connie Squires about how to balance thematic unity with differentiation in a story collection, the vapidity of middle-class suburban fiction, and what constitutes “gritty realism.” Connie is the author of three novels: Along the Watchtower (Riverhead/Penguin, 2011), Live from Medicine Park (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), and Low April Sun (University of Oklahoma Press, 2025), and a story collection, Hit Your Brights (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019). Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic and The Rolling Stone 500, among others, while her essays can be found in The Village Voice, The New York Times, and World Literature Today. She holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University and now teaches at the University of Central Oklahoma and gives regular talks and readings around the United States.  

In this episode, we speak with composer Ray Lustig and audio engineer Maximilien Hein about the importance of trust, the productive symbiosis of creativity and technical skills, and their latest collaboration, an opera about the revolutionary 19th-century obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis. Ray is a classical composer and rock musician with a background in molecular biology and a persistent interest in science, nature, and the mind. Max is a Senior Staff Audio Engineer at The Hit Factory with a Master of Music from New York University, where his research on spatial audio was published by the Audio Engineering Society. Their years of collaboration have borne many fruits, of which Semmelweis is but the latest.

In this episode, we speak with painter Julie Heffernan about getting lost in the woods with a baby, the Winchester Mystery House, the hidden wisdom encoded in paintings, flowers, nutmeg, Amitav Ghosh, volcanos, and the secret about spirituality that Vermeer was trying to expose. Julie’s work has been described by Rebecca Solnit as “a new kind of history painting” and by The New York Times as “ironic rococo realism with a social-satirical twist.” She’s received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fulbright, MacDowell, Camargo, and others, and has served as an artist-in-residence at the University of Tampa in Florida and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Along with Virginia Wagner, Julie is a co-founder of the online journal Painters on Painting. She holds an BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MFA from Yale and now teaches fine arts at Montclair State University.  

In this episode, we speak with poet and art writer Dean Rader about the convergence of the visual and verbal arts, what makes a poem, and the fraught relationship of critic to audience. Dean has authored or contributed to thirteen books, which range from the poetic to the scholarly, including the debut collection Works & Days, which won the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize; and he’s earned support from several prestigious arts foundations, including MacDowell and Guggenheim. 

In this episode, we speak with author and MacDowell fellow John Dalton about marketing excellent novels that seem to lack mass appeal, emergent developments in AI writing, and the future of authorship. John is the author of two novels: Heaven Lake, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award for fiction in 2004, and The Inverted Forest, which was selected as a best book of the year by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Wall Street Journal's "Book Lover" in 2011. He’s currently teaching at the University of St. Louis, Missouri while working on a third. 

In this episode, we speak with painter Kati Gegenheimer about one of her favorite subjects, luck: what it is, whether it exists at all, and what role—if any—it plays in residency applications. Besides luck, Kati’s work also deals with love and time. She’s been supported by residencies at Pollock-Krasner, The Goldey House, Elizabeth Murray, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and others and has participated in exhibitions around the US, particularly in her home city, Philadelphia. Kati holds a BFA from Temple and an MFA from Yale. 

In this episode, we speak with Cape Cod artist Sheryl Jaffe about the art of papermaking, the properties and uses of various organic materials, and how to think more productively about invasive species in a mixed-up and mongrelized world. Sheryl also has extensive teaching experience, both domestic and international, and her work has been supported by residencies at Yellowstone National Park and the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk and shown at galleries around Massachusetts and up and down North America’s eastern seaboard.

In this episode, we speak with Super Lawyer Elissa D. Hecker, who takes on several common misconceptions about intellectual property, trademark, and copyright law and shares what she thinks every writer and artist needs to know. Elissa has been recognized as one of the best lawyers in America for copyright law. She’s edited three books, Entertainment Litigation – Know the Issues and Avoid the Courtroom, In the Arena, and Counseling Content Providers in the Digital Age, and she’s a member of the Board of Editors for the Copyright Society’s Journal. She also practices business law, arts and entertainment law, and intellectual property law in New York. 

In this episode, we speak with oil painter David Molesky about the importance of legitimate alternatives to college, the role of AI in the breakdown of higher education in the West, and the threat potentially posed to visual artists by AI image generators. David’s compositions deal with themes such as masculinity, tragicomedy, heroism, and the tension between organic abstraction and mythological figuration. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New American Painting, and American Arts Quarterly and is held in permanent collections at Long Beach Museum of Art, the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art in the Philippines, and elsewhere. He’s also been supported by residency programs around the world. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Anthony Gatto about the evolution of music in the 20th century, imitation vs. innovation, whether the American dream is still alive for immigrant artists, and what he learned from studying under giants like Ornette Coleman and Harold Bloom. Anthony’s compositions for film, theater, opera, and the concert hall engage dynamically with literature and the visual arts and have earned support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Fulbright Association, and others. He teaches at City University of New York. 

In this episode, we speak with poet Michele Wolf about rebuilding communities in the wake of the pandemic, the importance of in-person readings, why emerging poets are struggling to publish debuts, and her own latest collection, Peacocks on the Streets (Broadstone Books, 2025). Michele is also the author of two other collections and a chapbook: Immersion (The Word Works, 2011), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Press), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Chapbook Series, 1995). 

In this episode, we speak with Kamala Sankaram, creator of the world’s first virtual reality opera, about online reading habits, comic books, tree growth, and data mining. A composer, a classically trained sitarist, and the leader of an award-winning Bollywood surf ensemble, Bombay Rickey, Kamala makes a compelling case for the importance of crossover projects that bring together highbrow and popular fandoms. She holds a PhD from the New School and serves on the music faculty at Mannes College of Music, and her work has been praised by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among others, and has received support from the MacDowell Foundation and many more. 

In this episode, we speak with poet and educator Peter Kline about the psychological and social functions of poetry, compare strategies for dealing with writer’s block, and discuss which sorts of literature AI can produce and why. Peter is the author of two poetry collections, Deviants (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013) and Mirrorforms (Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions, 2020). His poems have placed first in contests run by River Styx, The Southwest Review, and The Columbia Review and have been anthologized by Random House, Tin House Books, and Persea Books. He teaches at the University of San Francisco, and in 2012, he founded the San Francisco literary series Bazaar Writers Salon, which he still directs today.

In this episode, we speak with our friend and fellow MacDowell alumna, Helen O’Leary, about growing up on the margins, surviving disaster, the role of absurdity in the creative life, and the importance of self-love. Helen spent her childhood on a farm in rural Ireland, where she learned self-sufficiency and how to work with her hands. She’s been a practicing visual artist since the late 1980s and has won many awards in the last 30 years, including a few that she’s given to herself.

In this episode, we speak with choreographer Nami Yamamoto about making and dancing with puppets, what it means to lose a future memory, and how her creative practice has evolved as she’s aged. Nami has received support from the Jim Henson Foundation, City Artist Corps, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Movement Research, the New Dance Alliance, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and others, and her show Headless Wolf won the Bessie Award in 2017. She currently teaches at Lehman College and in New York City’s public schools. 

In this episode, we speak with our friend and fellow MacDowell alumnus Steve Chang about writing, thinking, masking, code-switching, genre-bending, emojis, and Camus. Enjoy!

In this episode, we speak with author Alexia Nader about the challenges of writing a first novel, techniques to sustain reader engagement across sections of a multigenerational novel, and how to overcome the fear that writing is a waste of time. Alexia’s debut, The Meaning of Daughter, is due out from the University of Iowa Press in 2026.