S4:E32 Matt Sedillo with Victoria Bañales

In this episode, Matt Sedillo takes on the Western canon, discussing how many of the literary greats, such as Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, disparaged Mexico/Mexicans. In his poems, Matt reclaims Chicanx/Latinx/Indigenous literary traditions and histories. Matt Sedillo has been described by critics as the “best political poet in America” as well as “the poet laureate of the struggle.” Sedillo was the recipient of the 2017 Joe Hill Labor Poetry award, a panelist at the 2020 Texas book festival, and a participant in the 2011 San Francisco International Poetry Festival, and the 2022 Elba Poetry Festival. Sedillo has appeared on CSPAN and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Axios, and the Associated Press, among other publications. Sedillo has spoken at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba, at numerous conferences and forums, such as the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education, the National Association of Chicana/Chicano Studies, the Left Forum, the US Social Forum, and at over a hundred universities and colleges, including the University of Cambridge, among many others. Matt Sedillo is the author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and City on the Second Floor (FlowerSong Press, 2022). Sedillo is the current literary director of The Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. Matt Sedillo’s website ‘THE POET LAUREATE OF THE STRUGGLE’: WHY MATT SEDILLO IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE BEST POLITICAL POETS IN AMERICA PROLETARIAN POETRY RETURNS: A REVIEW OF MATT SEDILLO’S ‘CITY ON THE SECOND FLOOR’ I, Like You, Am Made of Stars: Matt Sedillo’s Mowing Leaves of Grass

S4:E29 Farnaz Fatemi hosted by Julie Murphy


Listen to this episode with Farnaz Fatemi, hosted by Julie Murphy, by clicking here.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and member of the Hive, reads from her debut book, Sister Tongue, that won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize (selected by Tracy K. Smith). Julie Murphy and Farnaz Fatemi discuss longing, language, loss, identity and sisterhood as they weave through the remarkable poems in this collection. 

Farnaz’s poetry and prose appear in Poets.org (Poem-a-Day), Pedestal Magazine, Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, SWWIM Daily, Tahoma Literary Review,Tupelo Quarterly, phren-z.org, and several anthologies (including, most recently, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me). She was awarded the Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman Fellowship by Djerassi and has been honored by the International Literary Awards (Center for Women  Writers), Poets on the Verge (Litquake SF), Best of the Net Nonfiction, and Pushcart. She is a member of the Community of Writers. Farnaz taught Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1997-2018.

Listen to or read Farnaz’s poem Farnaz, selected for a Poem-a-day in March 2022 by guest editor Brenda Shaughnessy.

S4:E28 Gregory Orr Hosted by Dion O’Reilly

Listen HERE

Gregory Orr reads from his new book Last Love Poem I will Ever Write. Dion O’Reilly and Gregory Orr discuss the “threshold,” the boundary between the tolerable and intolerable and how poetry crafts disorder, revealing tools to survive or, even better, to discover the Beloved. We discuss the lyric poem, the villanelle, and how moments of bliss and pain turn us into poets and lovers of poetry, bringing deeper meaning to our lives. Greg has a new book, Selected Books of the Beloved, that came out in August 2022.

S4:E27 Naomi Helena Quiñonez with Victoria Bañales

Listen to the episode here

Celebrated Chicana poet Naomi Helena Quinoñez reads and discusses poems that thematize divine feminine power, women’s spirituality, racial oppression, social justice, and more.   

Naomi Helena Quiñonez is a poet, educator and activist, and author of three collections of poetry, Exiled Moon, The Smoking Mirror, and Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de Colibri. Quiñonez edited several critical and literary publications including Invocation L.A: Urban Multicultural Poetry Anthology, which won the American Book Award, Decolonial Voices, and Caminos Magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in American History and contributes to the scholarship of Latino/as and women of color. Quiñonez has been featured throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Writers Festival, the Nuyrican Café, the De Young Museum, and the Miami Book Festival. She has shared the mic with Quincy Troupe, Octavia Butler, Luis Rodriguez, and Ana Castillo. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Review, Infinite Divisions, Voices of our Ancestors, and Maestrapeace. Recently Quiñonez received the Teyolia Community Award from the San Francisco International Flor Y Canto Festival.  She’s also an honoree of the San Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a recipient of the Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry, a Rockefeller Fellowship, the American Book Award, and a California Arts Grant. She is featured in Notable Hispanic Women and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. She currently lives in Oakland.

For more information about the author’s books or to purchase copies, contact Naomi Helena Quiñonez at naomiquinonez@yahoo.com 

S4:E25 Cate Kennedy Speaks with Dion O’Reilly

Cate Kennedy chats with Dion O’Reilly and reads from her book, The Taste of Water.

Listen HERE

Cate Kennedy is the author of two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections and a memoir.  Her awards include the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Poetry for her collection “The Taste of River Water” (Scribe, 2011) and the NSW People’s Choice Award for her novel “The World Beneath” (Scribe 2009, published Australia, the U.S.A, the U.K, France and Hong Kong). Her short story collections are both on the Australian school syllabus as study texts.  She teaches widely both in Australia and the U.S., and has just completed her PhD in Creative Writing.

S4:E23 Tim Fitzmaurice talks with Farnaz Fatemi

Listen Here

Hear Tim Fitzmaurice talk about and read from his book of poems, The Things We Take With Us: New and Selected. We talk about writing, poodle personas, Santa Cruz, and community in poetry. Bonus tracks: Tim singing and playing guitar!

The Things We Take With Us is available in Santa Cruz at Bad Animal Books and Bookshop Santa Cruz and by contacting him at timfitz@ucsc.edu. That way the book is free with a contribution to the Prison Arts Project at williamjamesassociation.org.

You can find Tim on IG @tim.fitzmaurice1 and on Facebook