As Program Director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Chelsea Kern is the glue that holds so much of the indie literary world together, advocating for mission-driven independent publishers and magazines—and, with equal importance, introducing readers to the work this community produces. It is clear from our conversation, she has a passion for seeing big projects through to completion. We discussed the constant that is CLMP and how the literary landscape has transformed since the organization’s founding in 1967—becoming increasingly global and digital. CLMP, with Chelsea’s leadership, has taken these changes in stride with webinars, newsletters (that Bloomsday archives for reference religiously), and a listserv for magazines and presses to ask and answer each other’s questions. As a proud member of CLMP, we can confirm that this listserv is one of the crown jewels/hidden gems of the organization, which always saves us from having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to oddly specific publishing questions Google doesn’t have the answer to. We also explored Chelsea’s personal journey, from a CLMP fellow working in Diversity & Inclusion to Program Director. A go-between who works to connect us needy presses with the grant gods themselves, she has spearheaded vital programs like the Literary Arts Emergency Fund. Chelsea could be considered literary royalty, but she is a magnanimous monarch. We are grateful to have shared space with her in this episode.Honorable Mentions:Literary Advocacy Organization, Academy of American PoetsFellowship Program, American Council of Learned SocietiesGrant, Literary Arts Emergency FundLiterary Coalition, LitNetLiterary Foundation, National Book FoundationWriting Mentorship Program, Writers in the Schools (WITS)    Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 Conference and Bookfair.

Poetry “carr[ies] the most human of voices” for Deema Shehabi, a Palestinian-American writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and Kenyon Review. Shehabi earned her undergraduate degree in History and International Relations from Tufts University and Master’s in Journalism from Boston University, previously served as the vice president of the Radius of Arab American Writers, and has received four Pushcart prize nominations. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and Diaspo/Renga, the latter of which she co-wrote with Marilyn Hacker. In this episode, Shehabi shares how Diaspo/Renga emerged out of four years of email correspondence with Hacker. Together, we celebrate the collection as a testament to the “private humanity” between its two poets. Shehabi also speaks to the homes she’s found in Palestine, Kuwait, and California and the “perpetual expansion and contraction” that accompanies exile and return in her life. In negotiating this state of flux in her relationship with language, Shehabi talks about the burden of translation and always having to “teach people how to read” when she writes. Finally, Shehabi gifts us a striking reading of her poem, “Tracery of Dune and Chamomile,” which is modeled after Marie Howe and gazes upon the truth of humanity and intersections.Honorable MentionsRadius of Arab American Writers Diaspo/RengaEdward Said, “Reflections on Exile”Naomi Shihab Nye“Migrant Earth”, featured as Poem-a-Day on Poets.org Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair Photo credit: Omar F. Khorsheed

Exploring the specificities of a diaspora while also calling upon ancestral experiences is just one of the many threads Maha Ahmed weaves through her poetry. Like many members of diasporic communities, Maha’s experiences as an Egyptian American do not always resemble the grossly generalized “immigrant story.” We had the opportunity to chat with Maha about writing herself out of this pigeonhole, as well as how she experiences life as a student, scholar, and poet.She received her MFA at the University of Oregon, and is now a literature and creative writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston (Go Coogs!). She specializes in colonial Egypt, Arab-American diasporic literature, and Arabic to English translation. We talked with her about Rusted Radishes, a Beirut-based literary magazine, and the big-city-but-small-world way she was offered the position as its poetry editor. We dive deep into the US-centric and profoundly skewed notion that immigrants’ stories only matter once they land on US soil. It is exactly for that reason, Maha insists, people of the diaspora can acknowledge ancestral ties to a place even when it may feel uncomfortable to do so with a hyphenated or dual identity. Honorable Mentions: Rusted RadishesArs Poetica, published in The Recluse, Issue 17Professor Tim Mazurek Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Matt Bell is an author, English professor, and editor. He currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. In this episode live from the conference floor at AWP 2023, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of his indispensable book on the craft of writing, Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. We also discuss his dystopian novel, Appleseed, and and his admiration for climate writing that restores hope for humanity.Listen to the full episode to find out what Bell means when he advocates for ‘radical revising’ and his mission to conceptualize revision as a process that can transform a draft into a novel, rather than an assignment needed to be completed for school. We also discuss his dreamy ten-plus-year relationship working with Soho Press (shout out to the indie stalwarts!), and some of the advice he gives to his students: 1) allow readers space to figure out things for themselves, 2) experiment with non-traditional writing structures, and 3) work through tangly writing problems together. Finally, Bell ends this episode with advice for gaining inspiration for your next work and the unfortunate discovery that you can learn what your agent truly thinks of you through their editorial notes (writer beware!). Honorable Mentions: A Tree or a Person or a Wall, Bell’s short story collection His incredibly good Substack (a must-read for any writer), No Failure, Only Practice In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, the “truly weird” novel (Matt’s words) that was allowed to just be itself by the good editors at Soho PressLastly, while we’re still down the rabbit hole, check out his non-fiction book-length essay on the video game, Baldur’s Gate II. Photo credit Jessica Bell Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Kristen Millares Young calls her novel Subduction “a study of recurrently going meta,” or “an examination of the longing that we have to be in contact with others who are not like us.” From exploring the notion of consent–not just sexually but also culturally–to the difficulty of the transmission of knowledge and the burden of whiteness, this novel plumbs the depths of the human consciousness. Kristen is a prize-winning journalist and essayist who regularly writes essays, book reviews, and investigations for The Washington Post, The Guardian, Literary Hub, and much more. Her recent novel Subduction, published by Red Hen Press, was named a staff pick by The Paris Review, called “whip-smart” by The Washington Post, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and won the Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book awards. We had the privilege of speaking with Kristen about Subduction, including her writing process, how her journalism informs her work as a fiction writer, and her appreciation for Red Hen Press. We also learned about the importance of cultivating a strong professional relationship with an editor and how building trust with them can allow a writer to push for what they believe in. Honorable MentionsEllen Akins review of Subduction in The Washington Post [paywall]Michelle Bowdler’s Is Rape a Crime Other Works by Millares YoungPie and Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter and BoozeIn conversation with Brad Listi on the Otherppl podcast Photo credit Natalie Shields

V.V. Ganeshananthan is an author, poet, and journalist, whose works have been featured in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota as a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Ganeshananthan also co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast with Whitney Terrell, which explores writers and literature as mouthpieces for our cultural landscape. In this episode, we talk about Ganeshananthan’s 18-year-long writing process for her latest novel. Ganeshananthan maps her journey with Brotherless Night, from “bluffing her way into” a novella class during her own time as an MFA student to her techniques for “fielding facial expressions” of doubt over the novel’s completion. We revel in our common ground in the literary ecosystem, with Bloomsday poet Jabari Asim and Kate and Jessica’s longtime mentor, Michael Knight, both appearing on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast. While fondly recounting how MFA writers at the University of Minnesota experiment in “speed-dating” to “workshop the workshop,” Ganeshananthan reflects on the value of an MFA program that isn’t genre-siloed and the living body of work that speaks to writers of color. Finally, while celebrating the release of Brotherless Night and asking what’s next for Ganeshananthan’s writing, we try to “remember how to start things.” Honorable MentionsBrotherless Night by V.V. GaneshananthanFiction/Non/FictionUniversity of Minnesota MFALetters to A Writer of Color edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour SoomroCraft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das photo credit Sophia Mayrhofer Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair

Amanda Niehaus has a PhD in Physiological Ecology. She is the author of numerous award-winning short stories, essays, and an acclaimed novel, The Breeding Season (Allen & Unwin, 2019). As part of her author profile (bestill our science-loving hearts) she writes: “Does science belong in literary fiction? As a scientist, I never thought so. But fiction connects with readers, enabling them to empathise with imagined lives. So what better way to communicate?”She was studying a unique marsupial species where the male invests so much into their reproduction that they only survive one breeding season. The metaphor was just too rich. That’s when she started writing The Breeding Season. What began as an award-winning short story eventually evolved into a novel—which was completely outside Amanda’s comfort zone. But as both she and Jess agree, you just have to trick yourself by writing it piece by piece. Check out the full episode as we discuss this, and many other traits of scientists-turned-writers, as well as the organization she founded with author, Jessica White, called Science Write Now, a publishing platform and community-based forum for creative writing about science. Honorable Mentions:Author, Lidia YuknavitchAuthor, Alice SeboldAuthor, Krissy Kneen

Corraling the myriad ways Sumita Chakraborty’s poetry collection gets at the heart of grief all but flummoxed me. Its meaning is still washing over me. But I’ll say that poet Rishi Dastidar did what I couldnt do when she wrote that it’s “a book to hold close, an amulet that transmutes the intensities of grief into something uplifting, the attempt to keep hold of wonder.” We are thrilled to get to talk to her today about this luminous debut collection and many other things, if we’re lucky.We were surprised to hear that Sumita’s introduction to creative writing and literary studies was in college. In her 13 years at AGNI Magazine, she worked in many capacities, eventually serving as poetry editor. It was in these positions that became accustomed to every angle of poetry publication before venturing in as poet herself. Sumita’s time at AGNI provided her this comforting(?) insight: no matter how talented and brilliant you are, your poems might still be rejected because of reasons beyond your control. We talk about her decision to publish her collection Arrow with Alice James Books, what it means to be a “sad girl poet” trying to be a “happy girl poet,” and how to honor and dismantle grief while somehow still managing to be playful. (Spoiler alert: she does it!) Honorable Mentions:Poet, Lucy Brach Breido Rachel Mennies’s The Naomi Letters from BOACortney Lamar Charleston’s Doppelgangbanger from HaymarketTaylor Johnson’s Inheritance from Alice James BooksAlice Oswald’s Nobody from W.W. Norton and CompanyBridget Kelly’s Song from BOALucille Clifton’s The Book of Light from Copper Canyon Press

Vanessa Garcia is a Miami-based novelist, playwright, journalist, and visual artist. Much of her work centers on her Cuban homeland, where her parents and grandparents were born. She is the author of incredible essays you can find all over the web and an immersive theater production called The Amparo Experience. She is the dreamer and 3D printer of so many incredible projects. Shade Mountain Press saw the beauty in Garcia’s 2015 novel, White Light, which interrogates one of Garcia’s obsessions, color. What if this character was a color? What would it mean if a chapter is cardinal red? We talk about the inspiration for that novel, as well as her most recent project, a radio play called Ich Bin Ein Berliner. This autobiographical story details her reaction to the fall of the Berlin wall and its rippling effect throughout Cuba. We explode the myth of the solitary writer and the rewards inherent in creating art in a collaborative fabric of creatives. Honorable Mentions:Poet, William BlakeFAU Theater LabDirector and Garcia’s creative partner, Victoria Collado

Photo credit: Mike Glier Aimee Bender graduated from UC Irvine and teaches at USC. Her books have received accolades in all the major outlets: from the New York Times, LA Times, & MCSweeney’s, to Oprah. Her latest novel, published July 2020, is The Butterfly Lampshade. When I was rattling off the list of Bender’s books, Kate deadpanned, “So she’s basically taken all the best titles from the universe.” In this episode, Bender reads from her latest novel. Of it, an astute reviewer wrote, “[it’s] as if we’d shrunk to fit inside a Joseph Cornell diorama... we feel as Francie does: that anything and anyone might be a two-way street, capable of passing from our side into theirs by means of illustration—or from their side into ours by means of emanation...and after ‘slipping into being...we really ought not to be here.’” Listen as we discuss why exposing your kids to things like modern dance and The Blue Man Group is a good thing, how to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on but also feel confident enough to vary your form as a writer, and remembering the mindless goodness (and potential writing prompt) in just staring at an object in space. (N.B. Your phone’s screen does not count.) Honorable Mentions:Flannery O’Connor’s reminder to us all:“There’s a certain grain of stupidity that the writer can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.” (from O’Connor’s essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”) Best writer note to your younger self: “Write what you like, kid. Enough of this posturing.”Aimee Bender’s Incredible Backlist:The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakeThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt: StoriesThe Color MasterAn Invisible Sign of My OwnWillful Creatures: Stories