You May Contribute A Verse

Today’s conversation launches year three of this podcast project, revisiting time spent last September with Ryan Van Loan, author of the Fall of the Gods series, including The Sin in the Steel, published in July 2020, and The Justice in Revenge, publishing July of this year. So happy to have the chance to speak with Ryan again. If you haven’t yet listened to the conversation we had last year (it's the episode next to this one!), do so now and get to know his earnest goodwill, his fandom, his discipline, and his immense drive. Ryan and I cover a lot of ground again, discussing contracts, critique groups, complications, characters, and changes. What happens when you begin to get the thing you seek? As it turns out, Ryan’s watching that play out along with his scrappy protagonists Buc and Eld, though they’re having super different experiences with that achievement. Read The Sin in the Steel, available everywhere in hardcover now, in paperback June 29!  Get The Justice in Revenge, out in hardback and ebook Ju

There are creators, like my guest today, debut author Ryan Van Loan (@RyanVanLoan), whose fresh insight and earnest goodwill go beyond what’s on the page or in the work and build you into a fan.These are the conversations I (@JoshMonkwords) strive to have, and consistently manage to find (which I hope comes out in our chats – check the archive).Ryan Van Loan’s debut novel, The Sin in the Steel, was released on July 21st of this year. It buckles the swashes and takes us on a journey of magic, manipulation, mayhem, and monsters across a fantastical sea as a young, violently scrappy investigator gets to the bottom of a mercantile mystery alongside her stalwart solider compatriot.It goes deeper than all that, though – the sort of thing that gets glossed over in a lot of books gets confronted head-on in Sin. The trauma and presence of violence even past its end is a major factor that the heroes Buc and Eld face, and despite how prevalent conflict is in his novel, we don’t revel in it. The story also revels in foun

I (@JoshMonkwords) got a chance to catch up this time around with animator, artist, and parent Joanna Davidovich (@JoTheZette). You can lately find Joanna livestreaming her animation commissions, personal projects, and requests on social channels when she’s not balancing client work and two small kids. There’s a cloud over everything we do right now - 2020 is a doozy. We couldn’t have had a better timed opportunity to talk about the realities we’re all facing as we navigate family and work dynamics, and how both the pandemic and the natural progression of years have changed things for us. Joanna and I talk business too – she’s has been a working animator for well over a decade now, and uses her public persona as a live-streaming animator both to serve as inspiration, education, and entertainment to her audience, and to give herself company while she works. Here’s a good entry point to look up on Youtube if you’re not familiar with her work: Joanna finished a classic style cartoon called Monkey Rag a number

Our guest this episode is author, activist, and awesome advocate Claire Rudy Foster. They have a short story collection that came out in November 2019, titled Shine of the Ever, based in grunge-era Portland, Oregon. It’s a radical, joy-filled book of linked vignettes, characters intertwining in intimate ways, hurtling toward evolution, with no sad endings. It was named by O: The Oprah Magazine as one of the best LGBTQ books of 2019. Foster’s also a radically transparent and joy-filled freelance author, with pieces appearing all over the place: the Washington Post, New York Times, McSweeney’s – the list goes on. I became aware of Foster’s very personal voice and encouraging perspective for the first time in late 2017 and early 2018, as emotions… began to run a bit higher for many folks. Foster’s quite active on social media, and I have been fortunate to witness their evolution as a writer and of their identity as a queer, nonbinary trans person. Foster is on social media as @crf_pdx – buy their book and learn

Ausma Zehanat Khan is the author of two series that we talk about in our conversation today. She’s got an incredibly storied and qualified history as a former professor and current Ph.D in International Human Rights. Her debut, the first in her mystery series starring Toronto detectives Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak, was released in 2015 and deals with the aftermath of the 1995 Bosnian Srebrenica massacre as the central investigation, with a lot more to it that we’ll get into during our chat. Khan also has a fantasy series wrapping up this year. It’s a quartet of novels, originally planned at three but expanded in the style of George RR Martin, set in a fantastical version of the Muslim world. The Khorasan archives, incredibly, are an epic fantasy series that have come out one per year, starting with 2017’s Bloodprint and concluding with this year’s Bladebone. The books, starring Arian, Sinnia, and Daniyar, on a quest to right wrongs, depict an all too familiarly adjacent anti-intellectual setting, with the he

Carlin Trammel and I have been planning on having a chat about his long running podcast, Nerd Lunch, put together by both carlin as well as his two buddies, Jeeg and Pax, for many moons now   Nine years this podcast has run, and the occasion of my conversation with Carlin – or CT as he’s known on the podcast – was the end of that podcast. We talk a lot in our conversation about transition, finality, and the passion it takes to keep something going so consistently for so long. By comparison, I made the first season of verse show run from April to September, then took a break for as long as the show ran. Much love and many props to Pax, Jeeg, and CT, who have weathered a lot of changes to their personal life, as well as to how the internet works, over those nine years. #VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.

Children’s board books seem simple, right? In a sense they are. A handful of page turns to make sure you don’t lose the smallest of attention spans from the smallest among us. Simple illustrations and not a lot of words so kids can grasp broad concepts and explore pictures at a pace that suits them. If you’re not in the children’s publishing (#kidlit) world, you might also think a discussion related to books aimed at an audience of babies might not interest you. Joyce Wan is here to tell you that’s absolutely not the case. Our conversation today focuses on her path from architecture student through her entrepreneurship and ownership of her greeting card company and on to children’s book authorship and illustration. Joyce has, at time of recording, two dozen children’s books to her name. Over the course of her ten-year career in publishing, she’s picked up a lot of universal advice to share not just within this industry, but in any industry whatsoever. She’s learned that you have to find your strengths and you

Jeff Miller and I go way back – back to the days before cell phones, when MTV played music videos, before the Matrix, before YouTube and the internet as we know them were invented. Back in OUR day, all we had were trumpets and trombones and marching band trips. And we liked them! The best way I can introduce you to Jeff Miller and his work is, I think, through the lens of how I re-introduced myself to him over the years as lots of high school friends do, by liking precisely one facebook photo of the other person per year, just enough for it to not be creepy. I’ve seen for the better part of the past two decades what Jeff is as a singer-songwriter – touring, putting in the work, playing for intimate crowds, releasing albums steadily. What I didn’t understand before our conversation I do now, or at least I think I do a bit better. Jeff is a multi-instrumentalist primarily playing looping guitar, which will make more sense as a concept once you’ve listened to our chat. I am an unbiased journalist when I say he’s

Paige Walden-Johnson is a dancer, an Ohio native who has made St. Louis her home. She’s the founder and director of the local St. Louis arts, education, violence remediation, and community unification nonprofit appropriately titled CommUNITY Arts St. Louis. The third annual CommUNITY Arts Festival and Concert are happening on September 7th and 8th, 2019! As we enter a discussion of what CommUNITY is and what Paige and her team are hoping to do with the festival, some level-setting and history is necessary. We start our chat talking about a woman named Rain Stippec. Rain is a St. Louis dancer and was the victim of a random act of gun violence in February of 2017. She was shot eight times. Rain has since made a great recovery and I don’t want to spoil any of the conversation, but I think I need to in order to give context to who and what Paige and I talk about. The CommUNITY Arts Festival was set up to support Rain in her recovery in the festival’s first year, occurring over two weekends in late Summer 2017. Th

Bear witness to the dead, to those who may no longer contribute a verse. Today's episode is an essay meditating on the mass shootings - the terrorist attacks - that occurred in El Paso and Dayton on August 3.The victims of these attacks, and all like them whose lives are cut short, deserve for us to hear their names and pause to reflect how fortunate we are to have the chance to keep creating, keep changing the world.Why write a novel or make a movie or make music? Why try to advance equality for all, or make some small change to what seems like a doomed environment? Why even try to keep one bullet from taking an innocent life? Surely we can’t change things.Surely we can’t change things if we don’t try.I do find it helpful to look for the good in the world. Small things. Look for the helpers, as Fred Rogers tells us. Not just the helpers, but any place where you can find light shining on the world or shine some light in your own way.In trying, crying, stressful, messy times, look to the helpers in whatever wa

Lindsay Amer is someone we all should be aware of. Their TED talk, launched in June 2019, surpassed one million views within just a few weeks. This seven-minute video, which you should watch or listen to as soon as you can, begins with Lindsay singing and playing the theme song to their four-season YouTube video series called Queer Kids Stuff and ends with a very real entreaty for better LGBTQ+ representation in media and better conversations with kids, to arm them with a better understanding of the world outside the mainly heterosexual-presenting and cis, or normal, gender environment that makes up most media consumed by both kids and adults.The Queer Kid Stuff video series is very different from the Minecraft streams and political vitriol that makes up a lot of what uncurated YouTube has become. It’s fresh, bright, friendly, upbeat, welcoming, entertaining, and educational. All done with Lindsay, the engaging host, and their co-host, a voiced-over teddy bear, behind a desk covered in letter blocks that spel

My guest this week needs no introduction. That’s partly because she is a force of nature, a wonderful presence, an engaging encourager, and a real pleasure to talk to, but it’s also because I introduced her last week in part 1 of our conversation!If you haven’t already, do go back to last week’s episode and listen to the beginnings of my conversation with Samantha Berger, where we cover a lot of her history in children’s media, from working at Nickelodeon to her years at Scholastic to zine publishing to independent picture book authorship.We start this week by talking about more of her books – specifically in the follow up to talking about the sloth-love show Snoozefest at the end of last episode, we discuss the touching and therapeutic Rock What Ya Got, and go into why a book called Glam-Ma is so necessary for proper representation. Later in the conversation we talk about one of my favorites of hers, What If..., and why you should always create.Finally, do stick around for our discussion of Samantha’s work w

For those who may not know Samantha Berger, you’re missing out on a real good and delightful person. It would be impossible for me to track down all EIGHTY-some of her children’s books to read, as some of them aren’t even published under her name proper, but the recent ones are really good and usually pretty close at hand at your local library or bookstore. It’s also impossible to track down all the rest of the TV, illustration, voiceover, and other miscellaneous – yet critical – writing threads that make up the Samantha Berger tapestry.The more I read and learned about her as I prepared for our conversation, the more I felt intimidated by compressing all her writing experience – and otherwise! – into just one chat. We do manage to cover in this conversation the gamut from differences with your parents to zine publication to corporate culture to supporting peers to heavier backdrops informing more joyous works.Samantha Berger’s words in an email she wrote to me, "Believe in yourself and your work. Get it to t

My guest this week has been in my ears for almost the entirety of my time as a father, from the days of taking my older daughter for walks accompanied by the sub-genre he helped build, kindie music – that’s kid plus indie.Jack Forman is an educator, hailing from Seattle, born and raised. His work as an educator and entertainer of kids quickly evolved from formal teaching to family-friendly music with pals Drew Holloway and, later, Korum Bischoff. Together, the three of them comprise Recess Monkey.Recess Monkey has been around and hitting it hard for almost fifteen years. And when I say they hit it hard, I mean that in the band’s tenure thus far, they’ve released fourteen studio albums. Jack himself has released two in the last several years.Recess Monkey’s ponderous music catalogue is joy-filled, catchy, and at the same time relatable to current as well as former kids. While Jack plays bass and does vocals in Recess Monkey, he’s a talented multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer, producing his solo albums en

Kamal Bell is championing one of the most noble and traditionally patriotic American pursuits I could think of. It’s a fantastic conversation to have for the 4th of July.Through his ownership of the Durham, North Carolina-based Sankofa Farms, he’s looking to do a lot. He has worked since 2016 to render a dozen wild acres arable, while also balancing being a middle school teacher, raising his two boys, and bringing direct benefit to his community through Sankofa’s Agriculture Academy program as well as directly addressing our American food desert problem.#VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.

Uzma Jalaluddin is my guest for this episode! Uzma is an English teacher in Toronto, a parent of two boys, a columnist for the Toronto star with a regular parenting feature called Samosas and Maple Syrup, and a novelist with her debut work, Ayesha At Last, just having dropped in the US.If there’s anything I’ve learned from the initial handful of conversations making up this show, it’s that you pursue creativity best when it’s something you believe in with your whole heart. Where your heart goes, so goes your interest, passion, and time.Uzma first started work on Ayesha At Last in 2007. That’s a dozen years working on getting this story right, working around kids and a job about which she’s passionate, working through a dozen or so drafts, and a lot of patience. And editing.The passion, care, attention, and heart comes through in the writing of Ayesha At Last. It’s a love story perfect for the summer, with pages that fly by as the novel’s characters work through their arcs, both interwoven and distinct. Ayesha

Birds chirping in a blue sky, the wind whistling through the trees. The crunch of footsteps on freshly chewed Oregon grass. Somewhere, a dog barking.This is the pastoral Oregonian backdrop for my conversation with Karie Fugett. I hesitate to announce her as 'writer' Karie Fugett since, as our conversation alludes, you don’t always define yourself as one thing. We contain multitudes.Karie is a writer, though, among other things, and you can find her writing, including bits of her upcoming memoir, already available online.If you haven’t met Karie, or don’t know her online, or haven’t read her work already… her story is amazing and deserves to be told.At 17, Karie was a high school dropout. At 24, Karie became a widow. Her husband Cleve was injured by an IED in the Iraq war, later lost his leg, eventually to succumb to an overdose. Nine years after Cleve’s death, Karie works as a writer, editor, and memoirist, traveling to live in Oregon from her home in Alabama, telling their story through her words and experie

If you’re curious about what a dance company is or what goes into the seamless, flowing performances by well-rehearsed professional dancers that we’ve all seen, this conversation is for you because there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than you might think.Thanks to Rachel Bodi and Robert Poe, artistic directors of nonprofit ballet company Ballet 314, I now understand a little bit better what it takes to make a dance company. Experience, passion, support, a collaborative spirit. The right opportunity and the right network. The right vision to recognize the right time to make something new happen. Their care and passion for creating opportunities for local dancers while also connecting as directly as possible with the community fuels everything about Ballet 314.#VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.

Melanie Lee is a Singaporean freelance writer and author of the interview-based spiritual text Quiet Journeys as well as the six-book children's serial The Adventures of Squirky the Alien, helping children understand what it means to be adopted. Melanie works across genres, formats, lengths, and disciplines. She would probably be too humble to say this, but she’s serene, self-assured, and seems well aware of her place and position in the creative world.As with many of the folks I’ve talked to for this show, I’ve known Melanie for a long time - almost two decades. That being said, aside from social media connections she and I legitimately haven’t spoken for 19 years. I’ve always been curious as to what’s been behind her creativity, and I’m glad to be able to record and represent Melanie Lee’s work.#VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.

Kelly Light’s primary works, the ones for which she’s know the best, are two picture books for young kids called Louise Loves Art and Louise and Andie and the Art of Friendship, about an earnest girl named Louise who can’t put her pencil down for love of drawing. The art in these two books is expressive, animated, and dynamic. Like Kelly, Louise is at her best and happiest when she’s making art. The story we tell through our conversation touches on Kelly’s quick ascent to something some might call fame and glory, but also what’s more important about that mountain peak: the work it took to get to the top, and also a realistic look at what it takes to stay there, as well as what happens when you stumble from your peak. #VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.