SoundPages
SoundPages is produced by Jack Straw Cultural Center as part of the Jack Straw Writers Program. This podcast features interviews and live readings from artists in the Jack Straw Writers Program. Each year a series of twelve episodes is produced featuring the current Jack Straw Writers and curator.-
The Godspore King - Gabriel Moseley
Gabriel Moseley’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a speculative fiction novel set at a fundamentalist Christian camp in the Olympic Peninsula, where the revelation of a child’s healing abilities leads to devastating consequences. In his conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they explore how the genre of science fiction allows him to tackle larger issues, some of his science-fiction influences, and how elements of his upbringing show up in his writing. “I think there’s something fascinating about this set up. You know, these kind of constrained environments and all the dynamics that go into it.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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The Dim - Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a novel that he describes as “Epic, leaning speculative fiction, with a horror lens.” The Dim centers on a headhunter who has a genetic mutation that causes his sense of physical pain to be dimmed and how that lack of pain affects him. In his conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they talk about why the ability to feel pain is important and how elements of his activism and trans identity inform his writing. “Even in this piece that I’ve just written, the grandfather is telling the grandson . . . you not having pain, good for you as a rebel, as a warrior. [A] woman . . . having childbirth, if you didn’t feel pain, this is not good. You may not be able to pick up the signals that you need to.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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A Killer Whale Calls - Catherine DeNardo
Catherine Denardo’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a piece of nonfiction narrative writing that celebrates the sounds of the Southern Residents, a community of endangered killer whales located in coastal waters of British Columbia and Washington State. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they delve into the importance of scientific accuracy in her narrative writing, why she chose to write about the Southern Residents, and why she feels hopeful for their recovery. “I felt like a lot of the writing was leading me in a sorrowful way. A lot of grief and a lot of exasperation about us not doing enough to save these killer whales. And for the Jack Straw project I felt like I wanted to write something a little more hopeful that was still accurate and truthful and more of a celebration about something wonderful about them.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Remora - Jarrett Ziemer
Jarrett Ziemer’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a multimedia project, a collection of poems paired with short films where he uses personification and the conflation of identities to tell introspective stories. In his conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they delve into how he first became aware of his use of personification in his writing, the importance of recording live readings, and how he was inspired to pair poetry with short film. “I mean as artists, we get to this point in our life where we almost have to be declarative. Like this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a poet. I’m going to be a fiction writer. But I very recently am deciding like, ugh, I just want to do it all. And how can these things work together to help tell the story that I’m trying to tell? You know, maybe help the reader see the poem, feel the poem in a different way.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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The Memoirs of Ruby Lovestone - Amontaine Aurore
Amontaine Aurore’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is an autobiographical coming of age novel set between 1963 and 1974, when her family moved to and lived in an all-white neighborhood in Seattle. The novel focuses on her search for a Black identity during a time of cultural, political, and social upheaval and change. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they explore some of the real life moments from the novel and how she keeps her writing authentic. “Life has always been very very funny to me. We can find humor in anything, I mean we can even find that in the darkest moments. So I want the pain and the joy to live side by side, because I think that’s what life is.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Summer Thinking - Becca Rose Hall
Becca Rose Hall’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a family epic novel set in the Pacific Northwest, homing in on the town of Home, Washington, an anarchist colony founded in 1896 on the Kitsap Peninsula. The novel switches between a homesteader living in Home and her great granddaughter, who in the present day inherits a piece of land there as well as a written document from her great grandmother. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they discuss why she writes about the Pacific Northwest, breaking down the idea of a utopia within the context of colonialism, and the threads between the revolutionary past and the revolutionary present. “There’s so many things that happened in the early 20th century . . . that directly kind of caused what’s happening now. . . . It’s just like a lot of things they just kind of ricochet off each other through time. . . . So you have to look back and look at long threads of kind of cause and effect.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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The Metagnosis Vignettes - Mary Pan
Mary Pan’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of lyric essays focusing on themes of mental health, caregiving, identity, and the idea of retrospective diagnosis. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they discuss the challenges of navigating the healthcare system, the stories she encounters during her medical practice as a physician, and how she came up with the title of her work in progress. “I really like this idea of metagnosis . . . which is this idea of coming to an understanding of a diagnosis after the fact, maybe as an adult. Something that you’ve had your entire life . . . and didn’t realize it until many years after the fact. And what does that mean when you look back on your life and look back on those stories of your lives?”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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I Shall - E.J. Batiste
E.J. Batiste’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of poems two years in the making, covering a range of topics including her experience as a person of color in the rural south, femininity, prayer, and history. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they explore her recent name change and what it means for her work, why she sometimes prefers printed poems, and how her queerness shows up in her writing. “I shall walk in the ethereal energy that I denied myself / That same energy they scoffed at / And told me to tone down.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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The Boy and the Pennies - McKenna Princing
McKenna Princing’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of fairy tale retellings set in the Pacific Northwest that focuses on social justice issues. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, she delves into the stories she wrote as a kid, the process of writing characters with underrepresented identities, and why she gravitates to fairy tales and horror as a genre. “There’s often some kind of truth being expressed in that kind of storytelling that is interesting to unpack and delve into a little bit more.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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They Say Art Is Healing - Allison Masangkay
Allison Masangkay’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a zine that will be a culmination of past work exploring manananggal (a female presenting winged mythical creature in Filipino folklore) based on her experiences of disability, gender, colonization, imperialism, and more. In her conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, Allison delves into why she decided to make the manananggal the centerpiece of her project, the academic authors she wants to introduce to non-academic audiences, and how her work challenges colonizers’ ways of thinking when it comes to disability and ableism. “Sometimes people take in different media, such as visual art or even speculative fiction . . . versus academic essays and critical theory writing, some people are able to process that information better than an essay. So, kind of part of why the zine will be incorporating all those different genres and media is to hopefully meet people where they’re at.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
Applications are open now for Jack Straw’s 2025 artist residency programs – and Writers Program applications are due October 31st. Visit us on Submittable for more information: https://jackstraw.submittable.com/submit
