Author: Cass Murphy

SR Pod/Vod Series – Authors Talk: Author Adrianne Kalfopoulou

Cass Murphy

Today we’re proud to feature Adrianne Kalfopoulou as our sixteenth Authors Talk series contributor, sharing the process behind writing her nonfiction essay “The Journey Where” in her podcast “Travelers.”

The search for belonging is a major theme that Adrianne discusses in her work, as well as being mindful of its greater context. “What I’m working on becomes a part of something outside of the space of the text itself,” she says, tying themes of travel and the open sea to Homer’s Odysseus and the current Middle Eastern refugee crisis.

The “kind of clash between world views and points of reference has often fascinated me, both personally in terms of my own kind of microcosm, but also how that connects with larger, more existentialist questions having to do with what people are willing to risk for greater freedoms that are never guaranteed.”

Adrianne’s podcast is a thoughtful discussion on the ideas present in a writer’s work and the world. 
You can listen to it on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Adrianne’s essay “The Journey Where” in Superstition Review Issue 16, and listen to her read it aloud in SR podcast #193. She has also been published in Issue 9.

 

More About the Author:

Adrianne Kalfopoulou lives and teaches in Athens, Greece. Her most recent publication is Ruin, Essays in Exilic Living (Red Hen Press 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in online and print journals including Hotel Amerika, The Harvard Review, WORDPEACE, and Superstition Review. She occasionally blogs on Greece, and is the Writing Program Director at Deree College in Athens.  adrianne kalfopoulou’s website

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Adrianne Kalfopoulou

Cass Murphy

Adrianne Kalfopoulou greyscaleThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Adrianne Kalfopoulou reading her nonfiction essay “The Journey Where” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can follow along with “The Journey Where” in Superstition Review Issue 16, and read more of Adrianne’s work in Issue 9.

Also check out Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s Authors Talk podcast, posted Friday February 12th.

 

More About the Author:
Adrianne Kalfopoulou lives and teaches in Athens, Greece. Her most recent publication is Ruin, Essays in Exilic Living (Red Hen Press 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in online and print journals including Hotel Amerika, The Harvard Review, WORDPEACE, and Superstition Review. She occasionally blogs on Greece, and is the Writing Program Director at Deree College in Athens.  adrianne kalfopoulou’s website

SR Pod/Vod Series – Authors Talk: Author Cathy Krizik

Cass Murphy

CathyKrizikHeadshot_BW_SquareToday we’re proud to feature Cathy Krizik as our fifteenth Authors Talk series contributor, sharing her thoughts on her writing process in her vodcast “Writing is Easy. Writing Well is Hard.”

“First Drafts are an Embarrassment” is the secondary title for this vodcast because, according to Cathy, “just because you can type doesn’t mean you can write.” Indeed, one of the topics she addresses is the role of the writer as editor, and it’s not just a nod to the importance of fine-tuning. Rather it’s a celebration of its “joy.”

Take, for example, the fluidity of paragraphs; how it really takes until the ending of a paragraph to even know what you’re saying, and that this ending frequently becomes the top (incidentally, exactly what happened to this much-shuffled blog post). And writing isn’t without its sadnesses, one of which Cathy summarizes as “falling in love with sentences, and oh, they’re so brilliant, but you gotta let them go in service to the story. Just put them in that word cemetery that is the most beautiful, saddest place on the planet.”

A kind of writer’s video blog about best practices and personal challenges, Cathy’s vodcast juxtaposes advice with personal examples to cover most of the ins and outs of a writer’s life. 
You can watch it on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Cathy’s essay “Prairie of the Mind” in Superstition Review Issue 16, and listen to her read it aloud in podcast #191, also on the SR iTunes Channel.

 

More About the Author:

Cathy Krizik has been published in The Penmen Review and The Prague Post. When she’s not making a living as a magazine art director and career counselor, she’s writing—an adventure she wishes had begun before menopause. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her wife and two cats because you can’t be a lesbian without owning cats.  cathy krizik’s website

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Cathy Krizik

Cass Murphy

CathyKrizikHeadshot_BW_SquareThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Cathy Krizik reading her nonfiction essay “Prairie of the Mind” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Cathy’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 16.

Also check out Cathy Krizik’s Authors Talk vodcast, posted Friday February 5th.

 

More About the Author:
Cathy Krizik has been published in The Penmen Review and The Prague Post. When she’s not making a living as a magazine art director and career counselor, she’s writing—an adventure she wishes had begun before menopause. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her wife and two cats because you can’t be a lesbian without owning cats.  cathy krizik’s website

SR Pod/Vod Series: Author Lori Jakiela

Cass Murphy

Lori JakielaToday we’re proud to feature Lori Jakiela as our fourteenth Authors Talk series contributor, reading her essay “Vox Humana” for her podcast episode entitled, “No Such Thing as an Ordinary Life: What Studs Terkel Taught Me About Being a Writer.”

“I believed that my life was too ordinary, too small to be worthy of art,” Lori explains in reference to an eighteen-year-old self and much-younger worldview. It would soon be challenged by an encounter with the famous historian Studs Terkel, whose abilities as a writer Lori seamlessly links to his genuine interest in people’s lives. Listening to her speak about the influence Studs had on her development – both as a writer and as a person – brings to mind the importance of having mentors and idols, and of allowing them to change you. Perhaps most importantly, it reminds us of the importance of having curiosity about all people, and appreciating their varied roles in art.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Lori Jakiela’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 12 and Issue 6.

 

More About the Author:

Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoirs Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe (Atticus Books), Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette) and The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious (C&R Press), as well as the poetry collection Spot the Terrorist (Turning Point) and several limited-edition poetry chapbooks. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Rumpus, Brevity, Superstition Review and more. Her essays have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize many times, and she received the 2015 City of Asylum Pittsburgh Prize, which sent her to Brussels, Belgium on a month-long writing residency. She has also received a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, was a working-scholar at The Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.

She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, the writer Dave Newman, and their children. A former flight attendant and journalist, she now teaches in the writing programs at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg and Chatham University, and is a co-director of Chautauqua Institution’s Summer Writing Festival. Her author website is http://lorijakiela.net.

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Author Jonathan Danielson

Cass Murphy

Jonathan Danielson_headshot1.jpg_0Today we’re proud to feature Jonathan Danielson as our thirteenth Authors Talk series contributor, discussing the writing of his essay “iTunes Playlist to Get You Through a Miscarriage.”

A scholarly approach to this craft talk “would be a disservice to the process of this essay’s construction,” Jonathan says early in his podcast. This idea perfectly mirrors the theme of the writer organically discovering his/her own answers that occurs both throughout Jonathan’s craft talk and in the emotionally-charged “iTunes Playlist to Get You Through a Miscarriage.”Both are reminders and illustrations of the potential of allowing writing to naturally reflect the experiences one has had.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Jonathan Danielson’s essay in Superstition Review, Issue 15.

 

More About the Author:

Jonathan Danielson is a frequent contributor to the Feathertale Review, and his work has been published by The Saturday Evening Post, Juked, Superstition Review, Southern California Review, Five Quarterly, Monday Night, and others. He teaches writing for Arizona State University, fiction for The Eckleburg Workshops, and serves as Assistant Fiction Editor for Able Muse. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter at JonathanIn2k.

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Author B.J. Hollars

Cass Murphy

Bj Hollars - realToday on the SR pod/vod cast, we’re proud to feature B.J. Hollars sharing reflections about his recently-released book, From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us about Life, Death, and Being Human.

Touching and reminiscent as it walks through past and present childhoods gifted with family pets, B.J.’s podcast “Counting Down Dog Years” brings lost moments of time into the present and, comfortingly, reminds us that this – the soon-to-be past – will help to create the future.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read B.J. Hollar’s work in Superstition Review, Issues 6 and 10, as well as his guest posts on the SR blog.

 

More About the Author:

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, including Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America, Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa, Dispatches from the Drownings: Reporting the Fiction of Nonfiction, and Sightings: Stories. His book From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human was released in 2015, as was This Is Only A Test, a collection of essays.

Hollars serves as a mentor for Creative Nonfiction and the reviews editor for Pleiades. An assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Deborah Bogen

Cass Murphy

Deborah-Bogen_portrait-11_for-internet-copy-21Today we’re proud to feature Deborah Bogen as our twelfth Authors Talk series contributor, discussing common misconceptions about writing in her podcast “The Writing Project.”

What it takes to write is something that might torment the minds of many an aspiring writer, or even established writers who ought to know better. In SR’s first podcast of the new year, Deborah Bogen talks about the ideas that she used to have in the beginning of her own writing career, and smartly counters them with a blend of reality and humor. Flimsy excuses such as being too old, young, or broke; mandatory time commitment thresholds one must reach; and what “real” writing entails are just some examples. As Deborah says, it’s about “what has worked or hasn’t worked for our own making of word art.”

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Deborah Bogen’s poetry in Superstition Review, Issues 12 and 10.

 

More About the Author:

Deborah Bogen’s three books of poems are Let Me Open You a Swan, winner of the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize 2009, Landscape With Silos, National Poetry Series Finalist and XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize winner 2005, and Living by the Children’s Cemetery, ByLine Press Chapbook winner 2002. Her poems and reviews appear widely.

In addition to writing poems, Bogen is currently at work on a trio of novels set in 13th century. Book One, The Witch of Leper Cove, explores traditional herbal medicine, blind ambition and the early Inquisition in England. Book Two, The Hounds of God, is set in Paris where Church politics, the strict structure of the noble classes and the power of art collide.

She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teaching occasionally, playing ukulele in the Highland Park Mini Band and writing lots of prose poems for a new manuscript, Prayer Flags.

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

 

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer John Messick

Cass Murphy

John Messick_headshot1.jpgToday we’re proud to feature John Messick as our ninth Authors Talk series contributor, talking about the balance of creative writing.

Creative writing – whatever the genre or style – “should offer insight to our readers on the higher-order concerns of the world.” So begins John’s podcast, and it continues its heartfelt seriousness through explorations of the idea of “story.”

Striking his own impressive balance between the personal and the profound, John examines the modern-day role of writing and offers a wealth of ideas to think about and apply to one’s writing. As he says in one of my favorite lines, “we can make the world just a little bit better for having taken the time to observe it well.”

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read John Messick’s nonfiction piece “Burn Operation” in Superstition Review, Issue 15.

 

More About the Author:

John Messick’s work has appeared in Tampa Review, Rock & Sling, Cirque Journal, Alaska Dispatch News, and other publications. His essay “Discovering Terra Incognita” was awarded the AWP Intro Journals Prize in 2013. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, teacher, fish researcher, and sled dog handler. He earned his MFA from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and currently works as a freelance journalist covering Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. He lives on the Kenai Peninsula in southcentral Alaska.

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’re now establishing a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer Elizabeth Frankie Rollins

Cass Murphy

ROLLINS-Author-Photo-BW-1Today we’re proud to feature Elizabeth Frankie Rollins as our eighth Authors Talk series contributor, talking about allowing writing to take its own rightful shape in her podcast “The Work.”

A writer’s work becomes a living, demanding entity in this podcast. According to Frankie, it ignores its writer’s whining, and doesn’t care much about the desire for companionable readers either. In five well-crafted minutes, she describes first “refusing to listen to something I didn’t want to hear,” then her eventual realization that each work has its own demands, regardless of the writer’s desires.

Frankie creates a place in her podcast where the writing itself is an active, though silent, participant in its creation. Here, “the work finds its true nature without the ego of the writer mucking up the process.” Here, “the work dictates what it needs, and you must comply.”

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Elizabeth Frankie Rollins’ story “The Ruins” in Superstition Review, Issue 9.

 

More About the Author:

Elizabeth Frankie Rollins has a collection of short fiction, The Sin Eater & Other Stories (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2013). Also, she has work in The Fairy Tale Review, Sonora Review, Conjunctions, Superstition Review, and The New England Review, among others. Rollins has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and won a Prose Fellowship from the New Jersey Arts Council. She teaches fiction and composition writing at Pima Community College in Tucson.

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’re now establishing a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.