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.-
Séance - Hana Choi
Hana Choi’s project for the 2023 Jack Straw Writers Program is a piece of short fiction that takes place at an immigrant detention center. The piece focuses on a group of detainees who perform a séance to summon the spirits of their fellow inmates who committed suicide. In her conversation with curator Priscilla Long, she speaks about her decision to start writing, her perspective on who she writes for, and her experience working as a pro bono lawyer for detained asylum seekers. “I’m an immigrant, so I often write about immigrants. And my Jack Straw project about detained immigrants, I think their stories need to be told more. More often. More loudly.”
Music by Bryan Smith, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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The Words Were Writing Themselves - David K. Rea
David K. Rea‘s project for the 2023 Jack Straw Program is a collection of poems and prose writing. In his conversation with curator Priscilla Long, he talks about his life after newspaper work, his daily writing practices, and how he considers himself a lifelong student of poetry. “I’d like to have a few people I’m friends with and close to remember some of my work, things I’ve done, that might help them see a little more how life is.”
Music by Bryan Smith, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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PK, Cancer & the Tragic Ruts of Time - Geri Gale
Geri Gale’s project for the 2023 Jack Straw Program is a memoir titled PK, Cancer & the Tragic Ruts of Time that delves into the emotional complexity of breast cancer while also being a love letter to her wife PK and to the world. In her conversation with curator Priscilla Long, she talks about the artistic influences in her life, how PK helped her survive through cancer, and the impact cancer has had on her work. “PK is the rock, the foundation, and she’s the one that helped me survive through this cancer. I don’t think that I would have ever been able to do it without her.”
Music by Bryan Smith, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Inching Towards Joy - Garfield Hillson
Garfield Hillson’s project for the 2023 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of poems that explore what it means to practice joy in a world that is constantly trying to take it away from marginalized people. In his conversation with curator Priscilla Long, he talks about why he decided to investigate joy in his poems, the ways he is inching towards hope, and where he sees his work in 10 years. “There’s been so many times where I performed sadness and grief and pain. . . . I don’t want that pain in my body to be honest, right? I don’t want that stress that it does to you, no matter how well it performs. I’m like, what would it feel like, to actually like, hold joy in your body?”
Music by Bryan Smith, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Difficult Women - Ruth Schemmel
Ruth Schemmel’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Program is a collection of short stories about women who don’t fit in. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, she talks about the series of events that led her to take her art seriously, as well as the expectations placed on women in the modern day. “I’m sort of exploring dissatisfactions and frustrations through these stories. Definitely my characters are not role models.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Windows Into Desire - Carrie Beyer
Carrie Beyer’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Program is a collection of poems in which she explores giving voice to church women who would normally be silenced. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they talk about the German-American Anabaptist community which inspired her project, the hidden soundtrack for survival and liberation in her writing, and the idea of “writing into descent.” “I think that type of honesty is something I really try to connect with in my poems. . . . That piece of conveying emotion, no matter how harrowing it may be, I think is an entrance to connecting with other people through art.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Resee - Erin Langner
Erin Langner’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Program is a collection of essays in which she uses works of art to reflect on her time growing up in the Chicago suburbs. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they discuss how the music from her adolescence inspired her project, why objects can be vessels for truths, and how her experience as an art critic helped shape her intentions as a writer. “Understanding yourself is a way of becoming a better citizen, becoming a better parent, becoming a better member of the community, and becoming the best person that you can be.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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A Grito Contest in the Afterlife - Vincent Rendoni
Vincent Rendoni’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program is a poetry book titled A Grito Contest in the Afterlife that celebrates the lessons he’s learned from his elders. In his conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they talk about his origin story as a storyteller, his inspirations as a writer, and the way he finds elation in morbid moments. “If anything, the joy and whimsy comes from death . . . This will all end, so who cares if your parents don’t like what you write or who cares what people think. Do what makes you happy, because it will conclude.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Constraints and Jumping Off Points - Emily Parzybok
Emily Parzbok’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of essays centered on female archetypes. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they talk about how her relationship with these archetypes has changed over time and the grace in telling complicated stories. “I think I often want there to be confusion and messiness, but of the kind that isn’t painful, of the kind . . . that just really leaves space for the mystery of being human.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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As Long As You Need Holding - Jessica Gigot
Jessica Gigot’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program is a poetry manuscript in response to ecological grief. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they discuss the unique aspects of ecological grief, the lessons she’s learned about nurturing from being a farmer and a new mother, and how the ideas in her previous poetry collection Feeding Hour led her to her new work. “Just that that change is happening and not knowing how that’s going to affect the world that I know now or the community that I know now, I can’t grieve that loss yet, it hasn’t happened yet . . . it fills me with a lot of different feelings, and I think that’s where this work is coming from.”
Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
