The Missouri Review

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Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 57, “Stories for the Ineffable,” from Maya Shanbhag Lang. Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Best Memoir of 2020, and featured on several international “Best Of” lists. Her prose entry for the Miller Audio contest, "Stories for the Ineffable," was based on What We Carry. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, named a Must-Read Novel by CBS and InStyle and long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The daughter of South Asian immigrants, Lang holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and lives in New York with her daughter. And that wraps it up for the 2021 finalists for the Miller Audio Prize. Thanks most of all to all who entered, and stay tuned for an announcement to come revealing the winners, and thanks to all for their patience as we tried this new experiment. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

**CW: Sexual Assault, Child Abuse** Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 56, “Silent No More,” from Sharon Sobatta. Sharon Sobotta is a writer, a reporter for Pacifica KPFA in Berkeley, California, the program director of a women's and gender equity center, a mom and a doula. Sobatta notes: I am submitting the story of a woman, June, whose roots are in the same small Wisconsin town as mine. I knew nothing about her (as she's five years younger than me), until she reached out to me last summer as I was in the thick of covering the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis via zoom interviews. If not for the pandemic, my girls and I would have been in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as we were every summer. June reached out with pictures of 'Justice for George Floyd' rallies from different cities in Wisconsin and shared that she was following my coverage. Along with June's posts on my social media pages, were the posts of boys who had grown into men from my hometown, who were more sympathetic with the officers or the business owners impacted by the worldwide outrage than to George Floyd, who had the life squeezed out of him under the knee of Derek Chauvin. After engaging with me over my coverage of Floyd's death and calls for police reform, June asked if she could share a piece of her writing with me. It was then that I realized that June was the Jane Doe that had been alluded to in my Wisconsin newspapers years earlier. June agreed to do an interview with me. We spoke, not for the normal thirty minutes that I usually allot for interviews but for three hours and thirty-three minutes. It turned out that June had an arsenal of traumatic experiences with a police officer in Whitehall, Wisconsin known as a nice guy. She recalled being thought of as trailer trash and being referred to first, as the daughter of the town whore and later as the town whore. This kept her silent and afraid for many years. While June ultimately was tracked down by federal investigators and became a key witness in the case against the officer, this interview was June's first time sharing her story in full. A thirty minute version of this story that also incorporated the voice and analysis of a gender sociologist aired on KPFA's International Women's Day special on March 9, 2021. The interview took place in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic lockdown. Before you listen to this piece, I will mention that I’m not going to offer a comment after this piece. In lieu of that comment, I will offer this content warning: what follows is the chilling, terrifying, infuriating, and wrenching account of brutal sexual assault, the assault and menace of a minor, and the pathological abuse of power by someone sworn to protect and serve the very person who is targeted for abuse. What also follows is the sound of someone who has done tremendous work to move beyond being a victim to being a survivor courageously telling her story. By any measure, this is the story of human triumph in the face of staggering, grotesque horrors. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 55, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, Paul Allman, with “Gravity Dance.” Allman’s comic novel Otis: On the Occasion of His Foray into the Wilderness of Civilization, was published by St. Martin’s Press. He has also published two YA novels, The Knot and No Pain, No Gain. His award-winning essay, The Frequency, was published in Harper’s Magazine. Other stories have appeared in Film Comment, Folio, Public Illumination and Witness, where his short story We Have Time won a Pushcart Prize. His plays have been produced by the 78th Street Theatre Lab, Theater 80 at St. Mark’s Church, the Florida Studio Theater, the Sundance Children’s Theater, Theater for the New City and The Broome Street Theater. He was Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and also the Sundance Institute. Allman has taught in NYC’s Authors in the Schools Program, and led writing workshops at the YMCA of St. Louis, his home town. Episode 56 will be here for you before you know it, so stay tuned. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever you are, for episode 54, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, Land wo’s “Poet in exile / Poète en exil.” Landa wo’s fiction and poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and several anthologies . With roots in Angola and Cabinda, Landa wo is an Afro-French poet member of Société des Poètes Français. Politically engaged his work deals with prominent issues of social justice, discrimination and cultural strife. “Poet in exile”, Landing Places, Immigrant Poets in Ireland, Dedalus Press 2010 “Poet in exile”, 2007 Winner Metro Eireann Writing Competition judged by Roddy Doyle ‘‘Poète en exil’’, 2005 féile filíochta, International Poetry Competition Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Learn more here: Twitter: @wo_landa Instagram : landa.wo https://linktr.ee/Landa_wo Episode 55 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 53, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Clarity,” from M.M. Kaufman. M.M. Kaufman splits her time between New Orleans and Georgia. She earned an MFA in the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and holds a Fulbright Scholarship for her time teaching in Indonesia. She is the Managing Editor at Rejection Letters, reads for No Contact, manages social media for The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, the Saints & Sisters LGBTQ Festival, and Micro Podcast of Literary Hub. She has work published with Slush Pile Magazine, Memoir Mixtapes, The Normal School, Hobart, Shift, Metonym Journal, Sundog Lit, Orangeblush Zine, and Our Name is Amplify. Find her on Twitter @mm_kaufman and on her website mmkaufman.com. (She/Her.) "Clarity" was originally published in Hobart. Social Media: Twitter @mm_kaufman and Instagram @mmkaufman. Miller Aud-cast #54 is on its way, so stay tuned. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever that is, for episode 52, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Back Roads,” by Summer Hammond. Summer Hammond has traversed every state in the continental USA in a fuchsia 18-wheeler. This is her go-to 'fun fact.' Also that she and her husband, Aly, earned their bachelor's degrees online while long haul trucking. Summer went on to teach 9th grade Reading in Austin, TX. Her most recent back road adventure was: moving cross country with Aly and achieving her MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington - at the tender age of 40. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Haunted Waters Press, Broad River Review, and the Texas Review. She is a 2021 Rash Awards in Fiction finalist. Artist Notes: This piece first appeared as "Back Roads" in Sunspot Literary Journal, Volume 3, Issue #1, 2021. Follow Summer Hammonds on social media at the following handles: Twitter: @SummerDHammond Instagram: summerdhammond Episode 53 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 51, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, “Behind the Curtain: The War for the West,” from Jacqueline Guzda. Jackie Guzda is an Associate Professor at Western Connecticut State University where she creates Behind the Curtain, an investigative documentary podcast about current and political events. BTC began as a political comedy podcast, evolved into an interview format and finally in its current form. It will someday return to its roots but for now Jackie serves as host of Lifelong Learners, a vlog/podcast in which she interviews amazing movers and shakers in the Educational Technology world. Learn more about her at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-guzda-ph-d-ba41a52a/ Episode 52 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 49, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, Genevieve Simmons “birdcast: Downtown Cincinnati” Genevieve Simmons, or G (they/them), is a maker of music, melder of movements, and vessel of many generous mentors. Raised in the Bay Area, California, they have lived all over the world, settling most recently in London for an Msc in Environment, Politics and Development at SOAS. Please feel free to reach out if their work resonates, or you feel inspired to collaborate in any medium. Show notes: birdcast began as a conversation with G's dear friend Vikram about how to capture an unprecedented time of social upheaval. Listening to cries of a Red-tailed Hawk while discussing the conspiracy that birds aren’t real, they figured that beginning interviews with a question about animals might break the ice better than asking for an opinion on climate change. As a result, five birdcasts in total, spanning from Portland to Minneapolis, New Haven to Texas, can be streamed on soundcloud. Living out of a CRV for three months during quarantine, G spoke with protestors for Black Lives Matter, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar right before the election, independent business owners, and many others. They even throw in some bird facts. A mix of podcast and experimental audio, they especially enjoyed when recordings contained cacophonous cracklings and other auditory blemishes. They hope you enjoy listening, and continue to pay attention to the sounds of the world. Aud-cast 50 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever here might be, for episode 48, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, Bryce Berkowitz’s “Hepburn Manor, Los Angeles.” Bryce Berkowitz is the author of Bermuda Ferris Wheel, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, New Poetry from the Midwest, The Sewanee Review, The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other publications. He teaches at Butler University. Currently, he is at work on a novel, a second poetry collection, and several TV pilots. Here’s what he has to say in his ARTIST’s NOTE: "I wanted to teach my students how to record podcasts—even though I’d never recorded one myself… A couple friends encouraged me to learn how to use Audacity, a free recording program, before assigning the project—wise words for obvious reasons. Instead of recording a podcast, I recorded this poem then layered some music beneath it. I’ve always read my work out loud whenever I write. There’s no better way to tap into your voice. Recording and listening helps smooth out the edges in the lines. Over 15 years ago, I used to write lyrics, make beats, perform, and record music. So, this process felt familiar, although ancient too. It was a life I’d left behind, despite enjoying it for many years. After putting together this track, I shared it with several friends who still make music, and we’ve discussed collaborating—poems to soundscapes, instrumentals, etc. We’ll see what comes of it. For now, the idea of working with old friends on new projects is exciting, and I’m looking forward to that, and I’m happy to share this piece too." “Hepburn Manor, Los Angeles” was originally published in Muzzle Magazine. You can read or follow along here: https://www.muzzlemagazine.com/bryce-berkowitz.html. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. It’s good to have you back, or here for the first time, with episode 47 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, Paul Richmond’s “Life Stories.” Paul Richmond was named Beat Poet Laureate twice by National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. Massachusetts 2017 to 2019, U S National Beat Poet Laureate 2019 - 2020. Paul is best described as political, deadpan and wryly humorous delivered in his own style. He has been called, “Assassin of Apathy – power of words / humor - on the unthinkable, the unsolvable, to analyze to digest to give birth to creativity and hope.” He has performed nationally and internationally and he has six books published. Artist Notes: “Life Stories” is made of two pieces performed by Do It Now, featuring Paul Richmond: “Flash Cards” and “Family Traditions.” Do It Now changes personnel, the core being Paul Richmond, Spoken Word and Tony Vacca on balafon, percussion and donso ngoni, John Sheldon on Guitar. Joining them for this set is Avery Sharpe on acoustic bass, Charles Langford on saxophone and Derrik Jordan on percussion. “Family Traditions” features Paul Richmond, Spoken Word and Tony Vacca on donso ngoni, and Avery Sharpe on acoustic bass. Alan Stockwell was the audio engineer and mixer for both pieces. Check out the website for more: www.humanerrorpublishing.com . Keep listening after the piece to hear managing editor Marc McKee and contest editor Bailey Boyd talk about the artful, complex layering of music, stand-up comedy, and spoken word that goes into making this entry so provocative and entertaining. Aud-cast 48 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. It’s good to have you back, or here for the first time, with episode 46 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, Mohan Fitzgerald’s “For Frank Ponomarenko, For Feeding The Birds.” Mohan Fitzgerald is a musician and writer born in Boston and raised in Toronto. His audio storytelling work is the culmination of years of training in both creative writing and music. He studied composition and audio production at Berklee College of Music and received an MFA in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University in May of 2021. His print work has been published with Guernica, Bellevue Literary Review and Southern Indiana Review. He makes music for podcasts, most recently composing the theme for an Ohio State Theatre, Film and Media Arts Department reimagining of Paul Bae’s groundbreaking fiction podcast The Big Loop. He continues to work on audio projects and is drafting a novel about a hermetic movie buff and an unscrupulous video rental mogul. Artist Notes: “For Frank Ponomarenko, For Feeding The Birds,” is Mohan’s third complete audio story. He produced the piece independently, and composed as well as performed the original theme music. The piece is based on a short story published in Canada’s EVENT magazine. Mohan wrote the story with no intention of producing an audio version, but discovered that the text was ripe for adaptation. The story deals with silences and echoes, strains on communication, auditory illusions, and the surprising power of resonance. Mohan plays with scale and size in both the sound design and music production for the piece, conveying intimacy through close microphoning techniques and distance using projected spaces, long reverb tails and echoes. But if anything, the story is about distance yielding intimacy, people from different worlds coming together because of a shared curiosity over their differences. “For Frank Ponomarenko, For Feeding The Birds” is, Mohan hopes, a kind of secular prayer, a meditation on our small moments of revelation and connection, how unexpectedly they emerge, and how long—despite their seeming insignificance—they seem to reverberate. Mohan has produced longer scale audio works, covering all aspects of production and music performance. They are available on his website mohanfitzgerald.com. Thanks for being here with us for Miller Aud-cast 46, featuring “For Frank Ponomorenko, Feeding the Birds,” from Mohan Fitzgerald. Aud-cast 47 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.missourireview.com/the-missouri-review-newsletter-sign-up/. As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. It’s good to have you back, or here for the first time, with episode 45 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, Julia Tagliere’s “Ithaca Kitty’s Got Beef.” Julia Tagliere’s work has appeared in The Writer, Potomac Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Washington Independent Review of Books, and numerous anthologies. Winner of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition for Best Short Story, the 2017 Writers Center Undiscovered Voices Fellowship, and the 2021 Nancy Zafris Short Story Fellowship, Julia completed her M.A. in Writing at Johns Hopkins University and serves as an editor with The Baltimore Review. She is currently working on her first story collection, Reliance. and hosts live, bimonthly literary readings through the MoCo Underground Reading Series. Follow her at justscribbling.com. Here's what Tagliere has to say in her Artist Note: "When I was a very little girl, our dear, old family friend had an ancient calico cat named Eco, who was the meanest, most wretched creature that ever coughed up a hairball. He liked to hide under the couch and hiss at people all day long, and for some reason, I always thought of him whenever I read Eugene Field's poem, "The Duel," which I did a lot back then, because it was in my favorite book of children's stories. Many, many years later, in 2020, I was researching something completely unrelated for my current collection, Reliance, and stumbled upon the alleged inspiration behind Field's poem: The Ithaca Kitty, an 1892 plush toy designed by two women, Celia Mattison Smith and Charity Smith, and modeled after Celia's pet cat: Caesar Grimalkin. It didn't take long for Eco, Caesar Grimalkin, and Field's calico cat to join forces and take up an uncomfortable amount of space in my mind--as cats do--and this silly little piece is the result. I had a lot of fun writing it." Learn more about Tagliere and her work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JuliaTagliere.JustScribbling Twitter: https://twitter.com/juliascribbling https://www.instagram.com/julia_justscribbling/?hl=en Keep listening after the piece to hear managing editor Marc McKee and contest editor Bailey Boyd talk about low level mobsters, the voices people imagine for their cats, and how impossible physics plays into the comedic strategies of the piece. But now, “Ithaca Kitty’s Got Beef,” from Julia Tagliere. Aud-cast 46 is sneaking up on you, so BE ALERT. As the road warning sign I passed a thousand times in my youth said, “The world needs more lerts.” Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. A quick reminder: TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. It’s good to have you here for with episode 44 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, Beth Connor’s “The Lorelei.” Beth Connor lives in the Pacific Northwest and loves to share stories through voice, dance, and the written word. She is the author of Hollow City, has narrated several audiobooks, and produces the podcast Crossroads Cantina. In her Artist Notes, she has this to say: In “The Lorelei” we meet Melinoe in a story written by Heather McQuaid. This story was inspired by Heinrich Heine's poem "Die Lorelei" and was produced and performed by Beth. Heather's short stories have been shortlisted on Reedsy and the Bridgend Writers Circle competition, and she's finishing her first feature-length screenplay, 'a taste of blue.' Learn more about Connor at her website, or follow her on FB, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also follow Heather McQuaid on Twitter. Handles are listed in the show notes. Social Handles www.bethconnor.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/JBethConnor Twitter: @JBethconnor Instagram @JBethConnor Heather: Twitter: @h_mcq Stay tuned after “The Lorelei” to hear managing editor Bailey Boyd and managing editor Marc McKee discuss the exquisite production and the layered elegance and effectiveness of the piece. Aud-cast 45 is right around the corner, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. A quick reminder: TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. It’s good to have you back, or here for the first time, with episode 43 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, “Vox Rex,” by Robert Morgan Fisher. Robert Morgan Fisher won the 2021 Montana Humor Prize, the 2018 Chester Himes Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the 2019 John Steinbeck Award and Runner-up for the 2021 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Prize. His fiction and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including The Saturday Evening Post, Whitefish Review, Upstreet, Pleiades, The Colorado Review, Cowboy Jamboree Magazine, Storyscape Journal, The Wild Word, The Arkansas Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Dime Show Review, 0-Dark-Thirty, Psychopomp, The Seattle Review, The Spry Literary Journal, 34th Parallel, The Journal of Microliterature, Spindrift, The Rumpus, Bluerailroad and many other publications. He’s written for TV, radio and film. Robert holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently on the teaching faculty of Antioch University in several capacities. Since 2016, Robert has led the UCLA Wordcommandos, an acclaimed twice-weekly writing workshop for veterans with PTSD. He often writes companion songs to his short stories. Both his music and fiction have won many awards. Robert also voices audiobooks. Learn more at his website (www.robertmorganfisher.com) or follow Wordcommando on Twitter. Social Handles: www.robertmorganfisher.com https://twitter.com/Wordcommando Aud-cast 44 is right around the corner, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. A quick reminder: TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Happy New Year, writers, readers, listeners, and friends. May 2022 look favorably on us as we try to put it all back together, or dismantle it with just purpose. We’re back with episode 42 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, “The History of Policing Black People in America - with David A. Love,” a segment from the podcast Black Guy White Guy Talking, from Elwyn Laud-Hammond and Zachary Watterson, featuring a conversation with David A. Love. BGWGTalking was born of a friendship across color lines which developed between two fathers willing to deeply unpack truths and untruths and discuss the important personal impact race and race relations have on their lives. Elwyn Laud-Hammond and Zachary Watterson both live in Philadelphia and raise daughters who are about the same age. Elwyn is an appraiser and entrepreneur, and Zach is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer who also works in construction. The audio documentary “The History of Policing Black People in America - with David A. Love - BGWGTalking #10” is a segment of an episode from the podcast, 'Black Guy White Guy Talking,' originally published on September 24th, 2020. In this segment they welcome distinguished professor, journalist, and commentator David A. Love to discuss American Policing; the history of law enforcement in America, the police as an occupying force, and the desperate need to transform racist and violent policing. The beatmaker brainorchestra composed the beats: “Galaxy Tee” is the intro and “2 Sugars” the outro. BGWGTalking is available on Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music. David A. Love is a professor, journalist and commentator who writes investigative stories and op-eds on a variety of issues, including politics, social justice, human rights, race, criminal justice and inequality. He is a writer for CNN, The Appeal, theGrio, First Boulevard, Al Jazeera and BlackCommentator.com. In addition, Love's work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian and HuffPost, and he has been quoted by The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic and The New Republic. Aud-cast 43 is right around the corner, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. A quick reminder: TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Happy New Year, listeners. May 2022 be recklessly good to you. Let’s start it off with episode 41 of the Miller Aud-cast, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Bittersweet,” from Trevor Stephenson. Trevor Stephenson is the pen name of Brian Hicks, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, from the Gentle Peacemaker Clan, with Cherokee and European ancestors. Raised in the shadow of the Osage Hills, born miles from the reservation boundary, Trevor is a recent graduate of the Middlesex University Masters in Novel Writing Program, and a past recipient of The Alumni Scholarship from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is at work on a novel about a mixed blood Indian dealing with historical and generational trauma. His work addresses what it means to live in the liminal position between American Indian culture and the dominant US society. The following is from his artist’s note: Much of my personal story emanates from the domain given to my ancestors by the Creator: this piece is meant to demonstrate respect for the land as well as how our current state of being should be understood in terms of our relation to the physical environment. I believe the land, water, and sky speak for themselves, however, understanding what is being communicated requires dedicated awareness. Stick around after the piece to hear managing editor Marc McKee and contest editor Bailey Boyd talk about how carefully and poignantly this piece does the work of allowing personal feeling to move into broader and deeper reckoning with history and its distortion and erasure. Aud-cast 42 is right around the corner, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Can I remind you of something before we go? TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The Aud-cast is back for episode 40, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, “The Story Lady/Cindarella,” from Sally Stevens. Sally Stevens works in film and television scoring, sound recordings and concert in the Hollywood music business as a singer/choral director and lyricist. She served as Choral Director for the OSCARS broadcast for 22 years, and her voice can be heard on literally hundreds of film and television scores. She sings the main title for The Simpsons, now in its 32nd year of airing. Her other passion is writing, and her short stories and poems have been included in Mockingheart Review, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Raven’s Perch, The OffBeat, Funny in Five Hundred, Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined, The Los Angeles Press, The Voices Project and No Extra Words podcast. Had the pandemic not shut them down, this would have been her 22nd summer at the University of Iowa summer writing workshops. She has recently completed a memoir about her journey through the music world of Hollywood, including the touring years in concert with Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole and Burt Bacharach. She is also a fine art photographer and has had several Black & White Fine Art Photography exhibits in the Los Angeles area. Some of the photos from her series of film composer portraits were included in an exhibit at Cite de la Musique in Paris, in 2013. Artist Notes: The notes about this particular material — when I was a kid, I wanted to be another Lucille Ball when I grew up. Life took me in another direction, but I just love doing readings and hearing the audience laughter. This piece was so fun to create, and I’m just thrilled that it will hopefully be enjoyed by folks I would never otherwise have a chance to share it with. My love and thanks to TMR. Social Handles/Websites: www.HollywoodFilmChorale.com www.SallyStevensWriter.com www.SallyStevensPhotography.com/filmscoring.html Stick around after the piece to hear managing editor Marc McKee and contest editor Bailey Boyd talk about how the funny unfolds in this clever project. Aud-cast 41 is on its way soon, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The Aud-cast is here for episode 39, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, “The Common Memory Project,” from Carolina Hotchandani and a bevy of collaborators and participants. Carolina Hotchandani is a poet and Goodrich Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, and other journals. She received the Rona Jaffe scholarship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2021 and was a Pushcart nominee in 2017. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband and daughter. Notes on the piece: The Common Memory Project was collectively created by students from a course I taught at the University of Nebraska-Omaha in the spring of 2021, Trauma in Our Society. In our class, we discussed how the pandemic is a globally traumatic event, yet, ironically, we have experienced this trauma in our small, physically distant bubbles. When we come away from this experience, it is likely that our memories of the pandemic will be as disparate as the cultures of our individual households. How will we emerge from this experience more unified if we have been divided throughout this time? In response to this question, my class contributed to a podcast by interviewing people whose experiences of Covid-19 have contrasted their own. I wove their recordings together, wrote and recorded a voice-over narration, and then my husband, the manager of Siouxland Public Media, produced and honed the podcast. The result is an artifact that begins the daunting project of forging a common memory of this harrowing experience. Contributors to this project: Carolina Hotchandani, Goodrich Assistant Professor of English, who instructed the Medical Humanities/English course Trauma in Our Society at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the spring of 2021. Mark Munger, General Manager of Siouxland Public Media in Sioux City, Iowa. The students of Trauma in Our Society, a Medical Humanities/English course at the University of Nebraska-Omaha: Christina Beck, Alaina Cornett, Hannah Dubas, Andrew Jantz, Cat Jensen, Nellamor King, Leigha Little, Ayah Nuwwarah, Breanna Potter, Susan Sanchez Medina, Etta Sherman, and Alaina Wallick. Stay tuned after the piece for a brief discussion of its vitality and reference with managing editor Marc McKee and contest editor Bailey Boyd. Aud-cast 40 is on its way soon, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, managing editor, and the weather on the internet is half a billion dogs, 13 mudslides, 5 of which are on fire, gossip that looks like advertising, and advertising that looks like gossip: hang onto your brollys. Thankfully, the Aud-cast is here for episode 38, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Time Travel,” by Toni Ann Johnson. Toni Ann Johnson's short fiction and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Hunger Mountain, Callaloo, The Emerson Review, Coachella Review, and elsewhere. A novel, Remedy For a Broken Angel was nominated for a 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. A novella, Homegoing won Accents Publishing's inaugural novella contest and was released in May of 2021. A linked story collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste won the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction and is forthcoming from The University of Georgia Press in 2022. "Time Travel" is part of this collection. Johnson was the Humanitas Prize-winning screenwriter of the TV movie Ruby Bridges. She also wrote the second installment of the Step Up dance franchise, Step Up 2: The Streets. Learn more and follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Her social media handles will be up in the show notes. Social handles: Twitter handle: @toniannjohnson https://twitter.com/toniannjohnson Instagram is treeladytoniann https://www.instagram.com/treeladytoniann/ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/toniannjohnson/ Stick around after the piece to hear me and contest editor Bailey Boyd marvel at the ingenious conceit and the potent emotional resonance, and then listen to it again. Bask in its wisdom and charity. Aud-cast 39 is on its way soon, so BE ALERT. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Here we are at episode 37, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Decoys,” by Greg November. Originally from Philadelphia, Greg November grew up also in New York and then Connecticut. For the past decade he's been living and writing in Seattle, after half a decade doing those things in Southern California. If you called him bi-coastal, he'd say you were right. He is a 2021 Jack Straw Writer, teaches writing and film at North Seattle College and Highline College, reads submissions for New England Review, and was a finalist for the 2020 Curt Johnson Prose Award for Fiction. His work has most recently appeared in Boulevard, Carve, Hawaii Pacific Review, Epiphany, and Juked, among other places. He has an MFA from UC-Irvine. From his artist notes: "Decoys" has experienced a few different lifetimes, and is one of the oldest stories I have in terms of how long I've been working on it. The original draft was written while I was in college, somewhere in the early 2000's. A later version made it to the workshop table in grad school. It's been as long as 50 pages and has had a few different titles. Characters have emerged and then disappeared. The current version, I believe, is the right one. Stick around after the piece to hear me and contest editor Bailey Boyd marvel at the constructive elegance and emotional complexity of this story, and then listen to it again. You will be rewarded. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, managing editor, and is it just me, or is the internet wearing pajamas? This is episode 36, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor. That finalist is “Turkeys,” from the series SAFETY IN THE FIELD, part of a body of short film and audio projects inspired by educational audio-visual material: training films, filmstrips, foreign-language instruction records. This entry comes to us from Christian Baskous, with help from Paul Bates, Sonnie Brown, and Marcos Martinez. CHRISTIAN BASKOUS is an actor, writer and director. His original work for radio has played and been serialized on non-commercial stations across the US and Canada. He's appeared in motion pictures, plays and on TV and recorded popular audiobook versions of works by Charles Bukowski, Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and others. Make sure you keep listening after the piece to hear contest editor Bailey Boyd and I talk “Turkeys,” and consider the subtle—and not so subtle—elements that build its comedy. To echo Christian Baskous, thanks for listening! Aud-cast 37 is on its way soon, so look forward to listening to that in the coming days. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Aud-cast #35, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. How lucky for you to be here in this moment, where we can spend some time listening to the latest poetry finalist for the Miller Audio Prize, Gabriela Frank’s “Ode to Loki (or, An Absurd Glorification of Existential Loneliness).” You are in for a treat. Gabriela Denise Frank is a Pacific Northwest writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her work has appeared in True Story, Pembroke, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Baltimore Review, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She serves as the creative nonfiction editor for Crab Creek Review. Until February 2021, she had no idea who Tom Hiddleston was. www.gabrieladenisefrank.com In her note on the piece, Frank has this to say: "This tumble of a poem began with a monthlong subscription to Disney+ in the dark days of February 2021. My husband and I binge-watched The Mandalorian and had twenty-eight days left on our subscription. We scoffed at the Marvel Cinematic Universe—we had only seen Iron Man at that point—because the whole thing seemed super commercial, and there were too many characters to keep straight. By March, we had watched every movie. The development arc of Loki was the most intriguing to me. Who is this Tom Hiddleston guy? Turns out he had been in a lot of movies, and one highly publicized romance with Taylor Swift, which I had completely missed. At some point, I realized it was the conflicted character that Hiddleston created rather than the movie star who captured my imagination. Definitely a bad choice for crush. We writers channel a little (or a lot) of ourselves into the characters we create--as do the best actors. Where was the line here between character and actor? Between appearance and truth? A love affair with Loki was bound to end badly, but what sort of person would be drawn to him? We were all stuck inside eating the same meals watching the same shows, and from that notion—the trapped obsessive with nothing but time, imagination, and an internet connection on her hands—an idea was born." For more, follow Frank on Twitter and Instagram, where her handle is @CivitaVeritas. Aud-cast 36 is on its way soon, so make sure your ears are on their toes. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Aud-cast #34, the podcast featuring finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize from the Missouri Review. Good thing you’re here: for our latest Audio Documentary finalist we have Tazeen Zahida and her interview of the novelist Bapsi Sidhwa, recorded first for the interview series “Pass-e-Aaina,” which translates to “The Person Behind the Persona.” Born in Karachi and raised in Saudi Arabia, poetry and literature played a major role in Zahida’s upbringing. She grew up immersed in the writings of Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Shakespeare, and Shaw. She eventually found her voice in playwriting. An unapologetic bilingual, she writes plays both in English and Urdu. Tazeen’s work is inspired by current affairs, social issues, family dynamics, and her experiences of living in the Middle East and America. Her work aims to represent the unrepresented and tell the untold stories in an authentic manner. That work has been commissioned by The Society for Performing Arts Houston (SPA) and Silicon Valley Shakespeare, and she works under the banner of her company Tee Zee Productions. “The Person Behind the Persona” is an interview series that shines a light on South Asian women who have inspired a number of generations through their tireless efforts to better the world. Trying to discover the person behind the persona, these interviews aim to explore the lives and the careers of these incredible women. This interview was the first of the series. As Zahida writes, "Bapsi Sidhwa represents all the old school values that we so fondly reminisce about. From the way she dresses up, to the way she conducts herself and the way she guides aspiring writers. Like all great people, she has this aura that makes you want to be at your best when you find yourself in her gracious company. Bapsi as a person is defined by compassion, while Bapsi as a writer is defined by fearlessness of expression. These two traits are evident in her heartfelt accounts of human suffering and triumph. I continue to be in awe of her, not only as a great writer as well as a person." Stick around after the interview to hear Bailey Boyd and I discuss the interview and reflect on and continue the valuable conversations about the specific insights and wisdom therein, and the importance of interviews like this in general. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Aud-cast #33, I am Marc McKee, managing editor of the Missouri Review and it’s a 1000 o’clock and ten pineapples on the internet. It’s my pleasure in whatever moment this is to introduce the latest Audio Documentary finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, Janet Horvath, with her piece “A Musician Who Can’t Tolerate Sound.” Janet Horvath, is a lifelong performing classical musician, soloist, author, speaker, and educator. The Minnesota Orchestra’s associate principal cello from 1980 to 2012, she has appeared as soloist with orchestra, and in recital and chamber music throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. The author of the award-winning book Playing (Less) Hurt—an Injury Prevention Guide for Musicians, she has worked with instrumentalists to establish a holistic approach: to play with ease and eloquence, while preserving good posture and maintaining comfort. A pioneer and authority in the area of the medical problems of performing artists and a passionate arts advocate, Janet’s masterclasses and seminars are well-regarded by both amateur and professional musicians, teachers and students, and health care providers. Presentations include for the San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and at colleges, conservatories, and conferences from coast to coast. She has appeared on the BBC, CBC, and NPR national radio stations and television. Her Tiny Love Story appeared in the New York Times, May 2021 and she is an audio-documentary finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Contest hosted by the Missouri Review. Recent essays include A Musician Afraid of Sound published in The Atlantic, October 2015, and in national and international music publications—Musical America, Chamber Music America, Strings Magazine, The Brass Herald, and Strad Magazine among others. A contributing writer for the online classical music e-magazine Interlude.HK , she has penned over 300 feature articles about music and musicians. Through her writing and musical performances, Janet creates restorative conversations, offers spiritual sustenance, and explores music’s life-bringing and healing power. She is currently at work on a memoir to those same ends. She earned her master’s degree in music performance from Indiana University studying with Janos Starker and completed her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University St Paul, Minnesota. Make sure to stick around after Horvath’s powerful work of memory to hear contest editor Bailey Boyd and I ruminate and exclaim over it in wonder. Thanks as always to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Just as a reminder, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of exhilarating (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Aud-cast #32, featuring the latest poetry finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, Brian Beatty, and his stellar, haunting work, “47834.” Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows (Ravenna Press, 2021); Borrowed Trouble (Cholla Needles, 2019); Dust and Stars: Miniatures (Cholla Needles, 2018); Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem (Kelsay Books, 2017); and Coyotes I Couldn’t See (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016). Beatty lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he works as an advertising creative. Hobo Radio, a spoken-word album of Beatty’s poems featuring original banjo and guitar music by Charlie Parr, was released by Corrector Records in January 2021. The “47834” sequence is culled from Brazil, Indiana and was originally recorded for Hobo Radio. Look for him on Twitter, where he is known as @brianbeattympls.

Hello and welcome to Aud-cast #31. We’re grateful you’re with us, and for this aud-cast, we are featuring “Pieces of Grief: Loss in a Pandemic” from Wendy Spitzler, aka Felix Obelix, the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary. We want to note up top that the piece can be emotionally intense, and there are mentions of death and loss. Listener discretion is advised. Wendy Spitzer, aka Felix Obelix, is an inquiry-based interdisciplinary artist with a diverse output that spans music composition and performance, visual and community artmaking, audio, research, and modes of participatory inquiry. Her projects often explore themes of time and memory and are executed collaboratively. She has a Bachelor of Music in Performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) and a Master of Music in Creative Practice from Goldsmiths College, University of London (UK). After time spent in Prague and London, she now lives and makes art in central North Carolina. You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram @felixobelix and find out more on her website: felixobelix.com. Artist notes: “Pieces of Grief: Loss in a Pandemic” is the third segment of a seven-segment audio documentary on grief and loss that premiered online in October 2020. The piece integrates field recordings; anonymous voicemails from community members experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic; archival interviews from folks who survived the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic; and original music composed, performed, and recorded by Wendy Spitzer, also known under her artist moniker Felix Obelix. For the voicemail portions, she set up an anonymous hotline and asked the public to leave messages talking about their experiences with grief during the pandemic. Voices from these two global outbreaks, almost 100 years apart, sit next to each other: the listener is invited to compare and contrast these voices, as well as experience the collapse of the two tragedies across time. As the pandemic recedes, the piece also serves (and will serve into the future) as a kind of auditory time capsule of our months in limbo. All seven segments and more information about the project can be found at: https://felixobelix.com/piecesofgrief Stick around after the piece to hear contest editor Bailey Boyd and managing editor Marc McKee consider the piece, and weigh its artistry, its honoring of the spectrum of loss in the wake of the pandemic, and the optimism of such an artistic and humane gesture.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast #30. The finalist you’re about to hear is Mara Naselli, in collaboration with Gil Teixiera and Liza Barley, and the piece is the wonderfully realized evocation of humanity during the pandemic entitled “Drinks on the Porch 2020.” Mara Naselli is an editor and writer. Her work has appeared in Agni, The Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, LARB, and elsewhere. She is a 2014 recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. "Drinks on the Porch" is her first audio collaboration. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband and two sons. Gil Teixeira and Liza Barley are musicians, composers, sound artists, and music educators. Gil's recent performances and installations have appeared at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (Portugal), the Barbican Center (UK), Lydgalleriet (Norway) and the Thrival Festival (USA). Liza has lived and worked all over the world, including ten years in Tanzania, East Africa, where she founded and directed Umoja Arts Project, a community art space for education, performance and empowerment. Gil and Liza live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with their two children. Be sure and keep listening after the poem as contest editor Bailey Boyd and I take some time to marvel over it. Keep your ear to the wheel, and you will shortly be rewarded by Miller Aud-cast #31, coming soon. Thanks to Patricia Miller for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast #29, featuring “The Perfect Husband,” by 2021 Miller Audio Prize humor finalist Marina Hatsopolous. Marina Hatsopoulos is a recovering tech entrepreneur who lectures about entrepreneurial topics at MIT, Harvard, Brown and other universities. Her business articles and creative writing can be found at www.windystreet.com. Her creative writing has been published in Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary, Santa Monica Review, and numerous other literary journals. She was Founding CEO of Z Corporation, an early leader in 3D printing out of MIT and has served on public and private company boards. Her Tedx talk, “From the Ashes of Crisis Arises Opportunity,” is about the impact of startups on job creation, providing the opportunity for socioeconomic mobility and social impact. Her husband Walter Bornhorst supported this particular piece being published on condition that she not pressure him to go to Morocco. Make sure you stick around for a brief conversation about the piece with me and contest editor Bailey Boyd. And make sure you learn all you want about the author at the following social media handles: https://www.instagram.com/marinahatsopoulos/ https://www.facebook.com/MarinaHatsopoulos/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinahatsopoulos/

Welcome to Aud-cast #28—if it feels like we’ve been away awhile, that’s because we have. I’m Marc McKee, managing editor at the Missouri Review: hello again. We’re happy to be back, and make sure and look for the rest of the finalists for this year’s Miller Audio Prize as we move toward the last quarter of 2021 with a cautious if weary optimism. It’s truly an honor to be able to present the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, AE Hines, with the stunning, complexly exhilarating poem “Bohemian Rhapsody, 1991.” AE Hines (he/him) is a queer poet who grew up in rural North Carolina and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. His poetry has been widely published in anthologies and literary journals including I-70 Review, Sycamore Review, Tar River Poetry, Atlanta Review and Crab Creek Review. A recent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he is winner of the Red Wheelbarrow Prize and was a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Writing at Pacific University, and his debut collection, "Any Dumb Animal,” will be released from Main Street Rag in November 2021. SPECIAL NOTE: all October pre-orders are being used as a fundraiser for the Trevor Project to prevent LGBTQ+ youth suicide, where some generous donors are matching $ for $ every book pre-sold before the November release. More info at www.aehines.net. Keep an ear bent for Miller Aud-cast #29, coming soon. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Remember, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello everybody, we’re back with the 27th episode of the Miller Aud-cast. It’s an honor today to present the latest finalist in the Poetry category for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, “IntroDICTION,” from Angela Kariotis. Angela Kariotis is a creative, a thought leader, and a divergent thinker. Her varied experience makes her unique and nimble. She is an advocate, educator, artist, and a project director. Angela is a future aesthetics performance artist writing about race, ethnicity, and class in America. Called "a lithe and vital writer-performer" by The Star-Ledger, Angela Kariotis "possesses the raw energy to light up a small city" heralds The Chicago Reader. "But it's her sly and engaging use of language that makes her work memorable in dynamic performances that are serious and seriously funny.” As a presented and commissioned artist, Angela has brought her unique performance style across America and beyond to venues such as The University of California-Los Angeles, Contact Theater in Manchester, UK, Legion Arts in Iowa, the Off-Center in Austin, TX, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the Hip Hop Theater Festival in New York City. With its deft balance of narrative, critique, and movement, as well as Angela's visceral and fluid performance, her work has connected with audiences across the U.S. "A one-woman artistic showcase in her trail-blazing storytelling." -Los Angeles City Beat. Winner of a NJSCA Playwriting Fellowship and National Performance Network Creation Fund Awards, Angela couples her masterful performances with cutting-edge residency work. A master teaching artist for 20 years, Kariotis is committed to literacy through the arts, theater for social justice, and art-making as a liberatory practice. For her classroom teaching, Kariotis integrates contemplative learning, and restorative circles into her pedagogy. Her work is hyper focused on classroom inclusivity and active learning. Kariotis facilitates strategies to create an equitable classroom and to support co-intentional teaching with an empowered and diverse student cohort. Learn more at her website: https://angelakariotis.squarespace.com. Stay tuned after this ear-bending, mind-delicious piece to hear contest editor Bailey Boyd and I have a brief, admiring conversation about it. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #28, coming soon. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Thanks for being with us on the Miller Aud-Cast #25, featuring “All My Visits to the GAP, In No Particular Order,” from Marissa Castrigno. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #26, coming soon. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. By the way, our 31st annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize is now accepting entries. Winners get $5000 + publication, promotion, and some other goodness to be decided later. Head over to our website to learn more: https://www.missourireview.com/contests/jeffrey-e-smith-editors-prize/. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, Episode 24. In this episode, we feature three poems from David Olimpio, a finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry. David Olimpio grew up in Texas, and currently lives and writes in Philadelphia. He is the author of This Is Not a Confession (Awst Press, 2016) and the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Atticus Review. You can find more about him at davidolimpio.com, including links to his writing and photography. He Tweets and Instagrams as @notsolinear. From David: "This little triptych of poems sprang forth in quick succession during a period of intense sadness and transformation where I was shedding some old stuff to make way for some new. What all three poems have in common is the theme of divorce and the associated feelings of loss (of love, of life, of identity). One of the poems is about an abortion. Another is about perceptions of self around the concept of masculinity. The pieces are part of a larger collection I am building around these themes. An interesting side note is that each poem also draws inspiration from a particular Mad Men episode. Somehow that show feels deeply important to my life in a way I can't adequately explain coherently. And maybe that's what poetry is for: to adequately explain things incoherently. I've never felt satisfied with just the writing of words on paper. I like to accompany text with sounds or images. I've long made "photopoems," [link: https://davidolimpio.com/category/photoblog/] most of which are actually written by my dogs while I am sleeping, or otherwise unconscious, and then edited by me later. But a new interest of mine is working with audio and video, mixing the written word with those mediums. (Of course I'm kidding about the dogs — they're also involved in the editing process.) I tend to hear my poems as I write them, the inflection, the tone, the pauses. For me the aural quality of a poem isn't an afterthought. It's more integral to the way I conceive a poem, or even a piece of prose. I'm glad there are projects like the Miller Aud-Cast to showcase audio literary work. It's really the preferred way I like to share my writing." Instagram: @notsolinear Twitter: @notsolinear Medium: @davidolimpio Website: davidolimpio.com Much gratitude to David Olimpio for sharing his poems with us, and for the conversation they inspired. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #25, coming soon. We hope you’ve been enjoying the Aud-cast, and remember: if they’ve inspired you to record your own creative work, whether in poetry, prose, humor, or audio documentary, submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for this year’s contest was just extended to June 22. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize.

Hello everybody, we’re back with our 23rd Episode of the Miller Aud-cast to share with you all “Love Tunnels,” a finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, written and directed by David Zane Mairowitz and by Malgorzata Zerwe. Here’s what they have to say for themselves: "We are both radio free-lancers, we've worked in and for many countries, separately and together, and we like to keep our microphones open and ready whenever we can. In 2011, we found ourselves on a car trip from Denver to San Francisco, lasting about four weeks, and with a stopover in Las Vegas to "legitimise" (not our word) our relationship. Right away we decided to talk to and record anyone along the way who had anything poignant to say about the marriage ritual, among others a Native American Navajo horse-tamer, Colorado Bible-preachers who wanted to marry us in their hotel, as well as a tour guide in Taos who filled us in on D.H. Lawrence's stormy marriage there. This became our Radio Road Movie, which includes our recordings in Vegas itself, attacked by wedding sharks on the street and embarrassed by a kitschy wedding sermon conducted at the open window of our muddy rental car. The current piece is a truncated version of a longer feature." Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #24, coming soon. In the meantime, DO NOT SLEEP: submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, who joined me for this Aud-cast, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Welcome to the Missouri Review’s Miller Aud-cast. This is episode 22, you lovely internet you. Today we’re gorgeously dealing with Daniel Dyer’s "When Staring Into the Horizon’s Headlights,” a finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose. Daniel M. Dyer is strikingly handsome, overwhelmingly intelligent, and constantly sarcastic. A California native, he has been published by The Dallas Review, Malibu Magazine and several other publications before he released his debut book, When Did This Bullshit Become Poetry? which charted as an Amazon #1 New Release and best seller. He is the co-founder of the videography company Visual Candy, which he operates alongside his brother. When he’s not hunched over his weathered desk he is most likely taking photos of uncomfortable squirrels, or being loud in otherwise quiet public locations. Above all, he is extremely grateful for this opportunity. This short story will be included in a book of similarly styled tales. The goal was to make you, the reader, have a good ol’ fashion cry. Or at least crave a good cry. I hope I have accomplished that goal. Thank you so much for giving it your time. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast lucky #23, coming soon. We hope you’ve been enjoying the Aud-cast, and remember: if they’ve inspired you to record your own creative work, whether in poetry, prose, humor, or audio documentary, submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for this year’s contest is June 15. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, intern Olivia Douglas, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, Episode 16. In this episode, we feature Marina Favila’s entry, “Holy, Holy,” a finalist in the Humor category for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Marina Favila is Professor of English Emerita at James Madison University. She has published essays on Shakespeare, poetry, and film in academic journals, such as Modern Philology and Texas Studies in Literature and Language. Her published creative work includes pieces in Weirdbook, Wraparound South, and Flame Tree Press’s Haunted House Short Stories anthology. Here’s what Favila has to say about the piece: “When I told a friend I needed to write artistic notes for “Holy, Holy,” she suggested I address how almost everything that makes us laugh juxtaposes the sacred and the profane. We’re academics by trade, so that sounded like a smart way in. Unfortunately, what I discovered is that any time you try to explain why something’s funny, it ceases to be funny pretty quickly. So . . . I like Christmas stories. I try to write one every year. Of course, 2020 was pretty harrowing; and along with losing someone I adored, well, it was a crap year. But the person I lost loved to laugh—great, deep, soul-satisfying, belly-in, belly-out laughs. He also trafficked in the sacred and profane, spirit and body, especially the body, and he wasn’t afraid of a good Rabelaisian snort. He loved Shakespeare, too, especially the gravedigger’s scene in Hamlet, with its fall-of-a-sparrow stretch between godlike apprehension and Yorick’s dirty skull. So maybe this story is my way of trying to create a similar stretch for myself: from the grave to the gravedigger’s scene, from mourning to mirth. I wanted to celebrate the union of body and spirit, though I admit my connection is a bit unconventional. Anyway, hope the story makes you laugh. And what the hell, Merry Christmas!” Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #17, coming soon. And don’t forget, submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for this year’s contest is June 15. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at www.missourireview.com.

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, Episode 15. In this episode, we feature the poet Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie, a notable entry in our 2020 Miller Audio Prize contest. Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a Zambian-Ghanaian poet who grew up in Botswana. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She is a Hopwood and Meader Family Award winner as well as a finalist of: The Brunel International African Poetry Prize, The Palette Poetry Spotlight Award, The Furious Flower Poetry Prize and Wick Poetry Center's Peace Poem contest. Akosua has received fellowships from Callaloo and the Watering Hole. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Obsidian, Birdcoat Quarterly, Wildness, Bettering American Poetry, WusGood?, and The Felt. She is currently working on her first poetry collection. In this series of rich, dazzling and evocative poems, Afiriyie-Hwedie strives with fierce and elegant success to articulate the body, to map it onto our moment, and to understand it as “a war,” “an open window, a loosening belt,” a project of construction in resistance to oppressive forces and open to pleasure that should be any body’s birthright. In the conflations of the divine and the gritty beauties of the material world, these poems call us to a higher understanding of ourselves, and of everyone else. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #16, coming soon. And don’t forget, submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for this year’s contest is June 15. Learn all about it at our website, www.missourireview.com.

It has come to this, the internet: no, not that, it’s time for Episode 14 of the Miller Aud-cast. I am pretty sure that I am still Marc McKee, managing editor of the Missouri Review. This episode we are bringing you “Scribbles,” a notable entry in the 2020 Miller Audio Prize by Liz Parker Garcia. Liz Parker Garcia is a biracial (Vietnamese and White) poet who holds an MFA from Hollins University. Each poem featured in "Scribbles" started out as a quick freehand sketch that Liz drew to help her engage creatively when she felt blocked by stress and fear during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The poems that flowed from this practice emerged in the same loose, free-flowing manner. They are like verbal scribbles. Learn more about Liz and her work at https://www.lizparkergarcia.com. It has been just over a year since the Covid pandemic altered the world we thought we knew, and began the long introduction to the world we actually live in. Garcia’s poems document the early period after the initial shelter in place order introduced us to forms of isolation that we’re still coping with in addition to the threat of a highly infectious, mutating virus. Though the details are sometimes mundane, sometimes anguished, and punctuated by everyday sounds we ofen gloss over, Garcia achieves a kind of assertion of life that is replenishing. These poems feel and help us to feel deeply, what is lost and what returns. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast lucky #15, coming soon. Take heed! Submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for entry is June 15, which will be here before you know it. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at www.missourireview.com.

Hello, the internet: it’s time for Episode 12 of the Aud-cast. This episode we feature “On the Education of the Youth,” a decidedly dark humor entry by Harrison Gatlin. Harrison lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he's working on his MFA in Fiction. He turned 27 on the 27th of January this year but every day is still a coming-of-age story. He's currently writing a book about attention, addiction, and consumer products, and he swears he will spend less time on his phone this year. “On the Education of the Youth” is a notable entry from our 2020 Miller Audio Prize. The piece is narrated by a former third grade teacher who details his dedication to teaching the 8 year-olds in his charge about mortality. At first this just entails having his class read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” As he continues to conduct discussions about death and dying, the process invites in the children a kind of nihilism that ultimately leads to a concerning confrontation while the class is on a field trip. But you know, in a funny way. The tensions between what the students demand to satisfy their intellectual curiosity about death and that curiosity’s heartlessness in confrontation with a real world situation full of mortal danger are exaggerated just enough to be funny, and not so much that the questions raised lose their gravitas. See for yourself with Harrison Gatlin’s “On the Education of the Youth.” Don't forget, submissions are open for the Miller Audio Prize 2021, and the Missouri Review is always open for submissions. Check us out: www.missourireview.com

Hello and welcome back to the Miller Aud-cast! We have arrived at episode 11, and it is truly something to marvel at: “Adeline’s Gambol,” by actor and playwright Anne Undeland. Undeland is a playwright whose work has been presented in festivals on the East and West Coasts with her short, The Kiss, winning best play at the Ten Minute Play Festival at the West Side Y in New York in 2018. Her full-length play, Lady Randy, was produced by WAM Theatre and performed at Shakespeare & Co in Lenox, MA in 2019. She's is an active member of Howl Playwrights In Rhinebeck, NY and The Writers’ Rock in NYC and is at work on a new play called Mr. Fullerton (fans of Edith Wharton will recognize the name). Undeland has this to say about the piece: "Remember that song with the line, 'you're my baby, you're my pet?' What happens when a woman takes that idea and runs with it, literally? Strap yourselves in for Adeline's Gambol, a wild chase through the forest deep in Victorian crinolines, frilly bows, and full-throated female rebellion." Listeners should note that one of Undeland’s playwriting groups, Howl Playwrights, has posted Adeline's Gambol on their YouTube page as part of their "First Monday" series. The group used to go to a nifty pub and do live readings of plays we wrote on the first Monday of the month. Alas, the before times. Now, in an effort to continue (at least in spirit), the group posts stuff online. Undeland say, “I went to town with Adeline, learned some Garageband and iMovie, and made a much more produced version with music and pictures.” Check out the links below to bear witness to that town going-to, and to learn more about Undeland. As always, the Miller Audio Prize is now accepting entries, and we're hungry for finalists. Learn more at our website, www.missourireview.com. "Adeline's Gambol": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2jeqF4HXds https://www.anneundeland.com/

This episode we feature the first finalist in the audio documentary category for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, Elizabeth Caldwell, whose piece is entitled “Another Inch.” Elizabeth Caldwell is an independent audio producer living in Norman, Oklahoma. "Another Inch" got its start in 2019 as a final project for a class. What you will hear is only a small fraction of the hours of tape collected for the story. If you want to hear more of Elizabeth's work, listen to her podcast Flyover Country. You can also follow her on Twitter (@eliza_well) and Instagram (@el1zabethc). https://flyovercountrypodcast.com/ Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #11, coming soon. In the meantime, DO NOT SLEEP: submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and TMR intern Olivia Douglas who joined me for this Aud-cast, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at www.missourireview.com.

Hello, the internet. This episode we feature the first finalist in the humor category for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. That finalist is “Ambrosia in Correspondence,” by Anya Krawcheck. Anya Krawcheck is an actor, writer and photographer. A Miami native, she currently lives in the South Bronx. Recent projects were featured in Tribeca Film Festival, Austin Film Festival & Big Apple Film Festival. Other appearances range from network television, independent film, site-specific immersive theater, and International play festivals. She is currently developing a new web-series about ghosts, friendship and dental hygiene. Krawcheck has this to say about the piece: “‘Ambrosia in Correspondence’ is an audio adaptation of the Ambrosia video series (viewable at the included youtube link—[we’ll put it in the show notes]). The Ambrosia series was developed in Spring of 2020 and was inspired by a family portrait and the discovery of mail-order vampire fangs. Ambrosia’s story is not a story about a speech impediment. It’s a story about being undead, you know?” Writing, production and sound engineering for "Ambrosia in Correspondence" by Anya Krawcheck and Brian Goodheart. Look for her on Instagram @kranya, learn more about her at her website, AnyaKrawcheck.com, and check out the links below to her IMDB page and YouTube channel. IMDB https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6943859/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 Ambrosia Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bLMwuiXzVl_m1emwlWD5Q Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

This episode features our second finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, the prose entry "Maps and Fires," by Jared Green, as adapted with Tracy Bull and Nivedhan Singh. Jared Green is a fiction writer, literary critic, and professor of English literature at Stonehill College. His poetry has appeared in Waccamaw, Tiny Seed, Emergency Index, and the anthology The Art of Living (forthcoming, Poetose Press), and his fiction and critical writing have been published in numerous journals, including Gulf Coast, Quiddity, The Write Launch, New Limestone Review, and Cagibi. He lives in Concord, MA. Tracy Bull is an illustrator and mother of three. She also happens to be the neighbor of the author and was honored to lend her voice to the narration of "Maps and Fire." Nivedhan Singh is a music producer, actor, director, and activist. His most recent work includes: Senior Program Direction with the national music education nonprofit, Notes for Notes, sound design for the award-winning Nashville Repertory Theatre, and audio post-production for film/music with his record label, Bedlam Sound. His short film, “Nivedhan: An Animated Short" (2019) has been featured in academic conferences and educational programs throughout the US. He is the lead singer and founding member of the musical groups Sleep Away Camp and Sex Habits, in addition to self-titled solo releases. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Be sure to follow Jared on Instagram (@jfgreen71), Facebook (facebook.com/jared.green), and at his website: https://nomadictext.wordpress.com/. Find more work from Tracy Bull at TracyBull.com and around Concord, MA, where she resides. As for Nivedhan, more of his work can be found on the Web at www.nivedhansingh.com. All Social media/Music links can found here: https://linktr.ee/nivedsingh1023. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #9, coming soon. In the meantime, take heed! Submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Learn all about it at our website. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and TMR intern AnnElise Hatjakes who joined me for this Aud-cast, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at missourireview.com.

This episode we feature the first finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize, Erin McCoy’s poetry entry “Woods.” Erin L. McCoy is a student in the University of Houston’s Ph.D. program for literature and creative writing, and holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in Hispanic studies from the University of Washington. She won second place in the 2019–2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, and her poem, “Futures,” was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Narrative, Bennington Review, Conjunctions, Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Nimrod International Journal, and other publications. She is acquisitions editor for Seattle-based independent publisher Entre Ríos Books and an assistant poetry editor for Gulf Coast. She is from Louisville, Kentucky. Follow Erin on Twitter and Instagram (@erinlmccoy) and learn even more on her website www.erinlmccoy.com.

Hello hello hello and here we are, it’s Episode 6 of the Aud-cast! This episode features “The Distant Sound of Bees,” a collaboration between the poet Molly Bashaw and the saxophonist and composer Johannes. Molly Bashaw is the author of the poetry collection "The Whole Field Still Moving Inside It," printed in 2014. Her essays and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New England Review, The Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, and others. Johannes Liepold is a jazz saxophone player and composer, and founding member of the duo, JONIK. The text was written by Molly, the sound engineering and production are by Johannes (facebook.com/jonikmusik). All sounds and music were written, created, performed and recorded by Molly, Johannes, and the honeybees. “The Distant Sound of Bees” is a deeply felt reflection on a couple’s efforts to conceive after losing a child. The fruitlessness of these efforts lead them to beekeeping, and the result is a yearning odyssey in Bashaw’s voice, Liepold’s saxophone, and the cloud of buzzing around their hive and the bees’ circuitous forays. The hive itself becomes a material, living presence that contains its own promises and possibilities, and forges connections and reconnections to family and community. In the face of certain want and uncertain outcomes, this attentive and moving piece finds the only resolutions many of us have, in ritual, in family and friends, and “desperate love.” Enjoy. Learn more about the Miller Audio Prize: https://www.missourireview.com/contests/audio-contest/ Learn more about TMR: https://www.missourireview.com/

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast #5. This time on the podcast we are featuring Caitlin Gildrien’s poem “A Whale Beached on an Inland Sea.” Caitlin Gildrien is a writer and visual designer living on a 200-year-old farmstead at the feet of the Green Mountains of Vermont, on traditional Abenaki land that was once the bottom of an ancient sea. Her work can be found in Rattle, the Rumpus, Poets Reading the News, and more. She is currently looking for a publisher for her first chapbook, Cradlesong for the End of the World. “A Whale Beached on an Inland Sea” finds the poem’s speaker compelled to pull over to the side of the road and attend what at first appears to be a beached whale. As the vivid, affecting description deepens, the implications of this presence grow to global proportions. Submissions for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize are open now. Learn more here: https://www.missourireview.com/contests/audio-contest/. TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at www.missourireview.com, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@Missouri_Review), and stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter: www.missourireview.com/the-missouri-review-newsletter-sign-up/. Stay safe, and be well.

Hello and happy New Year: this is Miller Aud-cast #4. This time out we feature Vivien Schüetz’s submission in the Audio Documentary category, “Not In the Cards.” Vivien Schüetz is an independent audio producer from Germany living in Brooklyn. She studied Journalism and Radio Art in Germany and is now an independent radio journalist for German public radio and podcasts. Her microphone gives her the chance to peek into ordinary people's lives. She is currently working on a documentary about orthodox women in Brooklyn who push boundaries. Find her at https://www.torial.com/vivien.schuetz or on Twitter @vivienschuetz. In “Not in the Cards,” we meet Robert, who lost his sight at birth, as he reflects on growing up blind, coming to the realization that he was gay, and what these realities would mean for him. Sometimes hearing him in conversation with his helpers, and mostly hearing from him directly, this is a deeply humane and empathetic listen to a very particular existence: listen on as “Bob” gives us the opportunity to hear what his life is like in his own words. Thanks to Vivien Schüetz for bringing us this life. Special thanks to Robert, who Schütz wants you to know that you can reach out to, if you like, at harlynn [at] panix.com. Thanks also to the musicians who contributed to the production of the piece: Colin Stetson / http://www.colinstetson.com/ (“And It Fought To Escape”), Blue Dot Sessions / https://www.sessions.blue/ (“Rubber Ball Machine,” “Ultima Thule”), Bexar Bexar / http://westernvinyl.com/artists/bexar-bexar.php (“Kt”) and The Album Leaf / https://thealbumleaf.com/ (“The Light”). Click on the links in the show notes to discover more about them. Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast # 5, on its way next week. Thanks also to the Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. Finally, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: subscribe or submit your work today! Learn more at www.missourireview.com.

Hi there, readers, writers, & friends. For the third episode of the Aud-cast today, we present Karyna McGlynn's humor piece, "My 3rd 9am Appointment with the University's Writer-in-Residence." A deft blend of precise satire and controlled absurdism, "My 3rd 9am Appointment..." revels in exposing the self-Romanticizing narcissism of its speaker, gently suggesting the harm he is capable of without straying from being truly funny. Karyna McGlynn is a writer, educator, and collagist living in Memphis, TN. She is the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande 2009) and Hothouse (Sarabande 2017), which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. She earned an MFA in Poetry from University of Michigan and a PhD in Creative Writing & English Literature from the University of Houston. Recent honors include the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, a visiting professorship at Oberlin College, the 2020 Rumi Prize in Poetry from Arts & Letters, and the 2020 Florida Review Editors' Award in Fiction. She’s currently working on a book about Kate Bush and co-editing the anthology Clever Girl: Witty Poetry by Women. Find her at www.karyna.io or on instagram/twitter @karynamcglynn. The Miller Aud-cast is the re-envisioning of the Miller Audio Prize from the Missouri Review. Submissions for the 2021 prize are open now through Submittable. Learn all about it here: www.missourireview.com/contests/audio-contest/.

Hello, there, readers, writers, & friends: it's episode #2 of the Miller Aud-cast. This time out, we feature a wry nightmare from Jim Vockler Whyte. "The Shrinking Island" details the brutal unraveling of a family whose plane has crashed on an unnamed island, a dark allegory for our time, with its network of issues, from climate to class and beyond. Jim Vockler Whyte is a writer and editor whose work has been published by Tin House, Confrontation, VICE, The Lifted Brow, and Voiceworks. He holds a BA in Media Arts & Production from The University of Technology, Sydney. He grew up and lived on Bundjalung country in the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales, Australia, and has lived and worked in New York City since 2014. His website is: www.jimvocklerwhyte.com. The Miller Aud-cast is the re-envisioning of the Miller Audio Prize from the Missouri Review. Submissions for the 2021 prize are open now through Submittable. Learn all about it here: www.missourireview.com/contests/audio-contest/.

Welcome to the first episode of the Miller Aud-cast, the new podcast from the Missouri Review. For our inaugural episode, we are honored to present Roberto Carlos Garcia, reading poems from his forthcoming collection, [Elegies], which will be published this December by FlowerSong Press, and which you can pre-order here: https://www.flowersongpress.com/books-1/p/elegies. The Miller Aud-cast is the re-envisioning of the Miller Audio Prize from the Missouri Review. Submissions for the 2021 prize are open now through Submittable. Learn all about it here: https://www.missourireview.com/contests/audio-contest/.