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.-
Communication – Alison Stagner
2016 Jack Straw Writer Alison Stagner‘s poems balance lyricism and beauty with threat and violence as she attempts to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between our internal selves and the outer world. She talks to program curator Karen Finneyfrock about this and other fascinations, as well her method of writing poems orally, often while walking her dog. “I think the walking helps me pace my poems and helps me syntactically. . . . Because when you’re not writing anything down, you have to keep track of the thought process that goes into the sentence.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Brother – Casandra Lopez
2016 Jack Straw Writer Casandra Lopez has worked in several literary forms, including poetry, fiction, and essays. Her project during her Jack Straw fellowship was a hybrid work of creative non-fiction, crossing and blending genres to explore the grief and loss that followed her brother’s murder. She talks to program curator Karen Finneyfrock about making the transition from fiction to poetry, art as activism, and writing about grief.
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Pinweight – Anis Gisele
2016 Jack Straw Writer Anis Gisele‘s project for the Writers Program is Pinweight, a young adult novel inspired by her own experience. She talks to program curator Karen Finneyfrock about her connection to the book’s main character, finding herself as a writer in the slam poetry scene, and surviving as an artist in a rapidly changing city.
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Monsters – Corinne Manning
2016 Jack Straw Writer Corinne Manning talks with program curator Karen Finneyfrock about the development of her novel Potential Monsters and the feedback she received that led her to reevaluate her relationship to the narrow confines of contemporary literature. “That . . . fueled me to explore how I can tell my stories authentically without being concerned with what is considered mainstream literature.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Firstborn – Shin Yu Pai
Multidisciplinary writer and artist Shin Yu Pai, known primarily for her poetry, worked on a collection of personal essays about her relationship to Taiwanese identity during her time as a 2016 Jack Straw Writer. She talks with curator Karen Finneyfrock about her writing and research practices, and why she chose to explore these particular themes in the form of essays. “This particular project is one for me that explores cultural roles, gender roles, and my relationship to family in terms of my relationship with my father . . . as well as my relationship to my son.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Up South – Robert Lashley
2016 Jack Straw Writer Robert Lashley talks with program curator Karen Finneyfrock about Up South, the forthcoming collection of poetry he was working on during his Jack Straw residency. Robert also shares his thoughts on his favorite forms of poetry and some of the writers who’ve inspired him, including his uncle, Moses Williams. “He considered himself like an old school singing-school-style poet . . . that was very interested in making a poem read orally and also read on the page.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Maria – Ruby Hansen Murray
2016 Jack Straw Writer Ruby Hansen Murray‘s novel The Heart Stays People tells the story of Maria, a 16-year-old Osage girl raised by Cherokee who longs for her own people and doesn’t know what to do next. She talks with Curator Karen Finneyfrock about the challenges of creating an original story that reflects history accurately. “I feel compelled to . . . do the best I can to understand how people saw the world at that time and to convey what their decisions might have been. I also feel compelled to write a strong narrative which frees itself from real people and what might have happened or what did happen.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Disaster - Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum
2016 Jack Straw Writer Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum talks with Curator Karen Finneyfrock about her in-progress collection of short stories addressing many forms of disaster, from the personal to the geological. She also shares some of her process as a writer and her thoughts on the perfection of the short story: “There’s a sense of complete delight in the beauty of control that the story offers.”
Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Incidentals – Linda Andrews
Linda Andrews‘ work – whether poetry, prose, or a hybrid of the two – is always written with an ear for the spoken word. She talks with 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft about writing for the ear, her experience as a teacher, and doing rewrites while driving through the Palouse. ” I think it’s so important to hear what we write through our voice. It’s the best way, I think, that we know what we’re writing about.”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Humboldt – L. J. Morin
For her Jack Straw Writers Program project, L. J. Morin (Lisa Carcia) wrote a series of poems inspired by the tale of a parrot in Venezuela who was the last known speaker of a dead language. She speaks with 2015 Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft about Alexander Von Humboldt, the tirelessly curious discoverer of this parrot, as well as the many challenges involved in turning history into poetry.
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
