McKENZIE FUNK

McKENZIE FUNK

Journalist & PEN Literary Award-Winning Author of Windfall

As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime.

(Highlights) KAREN PINKUS

(Highlights) KAREN PINKUS

Author of Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary
Professor of Italian & Comparative Literature, Cornell University

For many years I wrote, taught, and published about climate change from a more philosophical, existential point of view, especially thinking about deep time, but I did come back to fuels with my Fuel book in part for the fact that so much of the press and so much of public discourse confuses fuel and energy, and it’s still happening today. I thought about this so long and the same themes, the same tropes are still being recycled.

KAREN PINKUS

KAREN PINKUS

Author of Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary
Professor of Italian & Comparative Literature, Cornell University

For many years I wrote, taught, and published about climate change from a more philosophical, existential point of view, especially thinking about deep time, but I did come back to fuels with my Fuel book in part for the fact that so much of the press and so much of public discourse confuses fuel and energy, and it’s still happening today. I thought about this so long and the same themes, the same tropes are still being recycled.

(Highlights) MITCH HOROWITZ

(Highlights) MITCH HOROWITZ

Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

MITCH HOROWITZ

MITCH HOROWITZ

Historian of Alternative Spirituality & PEN Award-Winning Author

I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.

(Highlights) MARGE PIERCY

(Highlights) MARGE PIERCY

Novelist, Poet & Activist

People who take care of sick people and AIDS and teachers and garbage collectors and people who work in daycare…all the things that have to happen in society we pay shit for. We pay an enormous amount of money to people who can throw a ball through a hoop. We pay an enormous amount of hedge fund people. All the people who take over corporations go in and destroy get immensely rich while the people who do what we actually need doing, what we must have to survive, the people who grow food, the independent farmers that used to exist…

MARGE PIERCY

MARGE PIERCY

Novelist, Poet & Activist

People who take care of sick people and AIDS and teachers and garbage collectors and people who work in daycare…all the things that have to happen in society we pay shit for. We pay an enormous amount of money to people who can throw a ball through a hoop. We pay an enormous amount of hedge fund people. All the people who take over corporations go in and destroy get immensely rich while the people who do what we actually need doing, what we must have to survive, the people who grow food, the independent farmers that used to exist…

(Highlights) DR. SUZANNE SIMARD

(Highlights) DR. SUZANNE SIMARD

Professor of Forest Ecology
Author of Finding the Mother Tree

Think of yourself as a tree. You’ve got neighbours that you live beside for hundreds if not thousands of years, and none of you can move around, so you just have to communicate in other ways. And so trees have evolved to have these ways of communicating with each other, and they’re sophisticated, they’re nuanced. They include things like transmitting information through these root networks that link them together. They transmit information to each other through the air, so they perceive each other, they communicate and then they respond to each other. And that language is complex.

DR. SUZANNE SIMARD

DR. SUZANNE SIMARD

Professor of Forest Ecology
Author of Finding the Mother Tree

Think of yourself as a tree. You’ve got neighbours that you live beside for hundreds if not thousands of years, and none of you can move around, so you just have to communicate in other ways. And so trees have evolved to have these ways of communicating with each other, and they’re sophisticated, they’re nuanced. They include things like transmitting information through these root networks that link them together. They transmit information to each other through the air, so they perceive each other, they communicate and then they respond to each other. And that language is complex.

(Highlights) NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

(Highlights) NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

Interview Highlights

Days are filled with things that happen. And you have to sort of determine whether you're going to make choices for things to happen or just react to things that are happening around you. And why not choose to go do things. You're not going to see art unless you go to the museum.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

Actor · Comedian · Filmmaker · Magician · Singer · Writer

And I remember I was just the whitest kid ever from small-town New Mexico in this big city of Los Angeles…I'm sitting there watching this play about a lower middle-class African-American man in Pittsburgh and his family. And I just remember being so moved, moved to tears at 13, 14 years old…And it was so moving. And I did think even back then, I recognized the impact that the theater can have on someone that isn't even anything like what they're like.

(Highlights) DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ

(Highlights) DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ

Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.

DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ

DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ

Pushcart Award-Winning Poet

When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.

(Highlights) MARCIA SCHEINER

(Highlights) MARCIA SCHEINER

President & Founder of Integrate Autism Employment Advisors

For autistic individuals, there’s really sort of two paths. There are those today, about 35% percent of 18 year olds with an autism diagnosis who do go on to college or some form of post-secondary education, and then those who don’t. Of those who don’t and want to work, there’s about a 55% unemployment rate. And those who go to college and then look for employment afterwards, there’s about a 75 to 85% underemployment rate. So you can see the unemployment rates whether you go to college or not are astronomical, but they’re even higher if you go to college, which is sort of counterintuitive.

MARCIA SCHEINER

MARCIA SCHEINER

President & Founder of Integrate Autism Employment Advisors

For autistic individuals, there’s really sort of two paths. There are those today, about 35% percent of 18 year olds with an autism diagnosis who do go on to college or some form of post-secondary education, and then those who don’t. Of those who don’t and want to work, there’s about a 55% unemployment rate. And those who go to college and then look for employment afterwards, there’s about a 75 to 85% underemployment rate. So you can see the unemployment rates whether you go to college or not are astronomical, but they’re even higher if you go to college, which is sort of counterintuitive.

(Highlights) JANET BURROWAY

(Highlights) JANET BURROWAY

Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in America

There’s a lot of controversy about that idea at the moment, about whether fiction is truly empathic and how much freedom the imagination should have because, as one of my friends says, the imagination is not free. It comes from all of the places that we come from. So it’s a controversial notion, but I am firmly on the side of literature is empathic. In fact, I think that all the arts are empathic because all the arts basically say, ‘Wait a minute. Look at it this way.’ And they allow us to see from some other vantage point than our extremely self-interested selves.

JANET BURROWAY

JANET BURROWAY

Novelist, Playwright & Author of Most Widely Used Creative Writing Text in America

There’s a lot of controversy about that idea at the moment, about whether fiction is truly empathic and how much freedom the imagination should have because, as one of my friends says, the imagination is not free. It comes from all of the places that we come from. So it’s a controversial notion, but I am firmly on the side of literature is empathic. In fact, I think that all the arts are empathic because all the arts basically say, ‘Wait a minute. Look at it this way.’ And they allow us to see from some other vantage point than our extremely self-interested selves.

POETRY & PROSE

POETRY & PROSE

Welcome to The Creative Process’s poetry and prose series. In this episode, we’ll be hearing powerful readings of poems and prose from various writers. 

To begin, we have Neil Gaiman (www.neilgaiman.com), acclaimed writer of The Sandman, American Gods, Stardust, and Coraline, read some of his poetry. His contributions to practically every literary genre have earned him a place in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living postmodern writers. Gaiman’s work has been honored with many awards internationally, including the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Gaiman reads his poems “A Writer’s Prayer” and “These Are Not Our Faces”. 

Poet and novelist Marge Piercy (www.margepiercy.com) reads poems from her newest collection, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light. She has written 17 novels including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers, 19 volumes of poetry, and critically acclaimed memoir, Sleeping with Cats. She is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes. In her segment, she reads ““Language has shaped my life”; “Who can hold them, what can save them?”; “Can’t you hear them?”; and “This is our legacy”. 

Alice Fulton, (www.alicefulton.com) shares poems from her most recent work, Barely Composed. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. Fulton reads “Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber” and “Triptych For Topological Heart”. 

EJ Koh (www.thisisejkoh.com) reads an excerpt from her memoir, The Magical Language of Others, the winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award and Longlist for the PEN Open Book Award. She also has written the poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Slate, and World Literature Today. 

Alice Notley, writer of over 40 volumes of poetry, reads from her newest collection Certain Magical Acts. Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize,  the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award,  the Griffin International Prize, two NEA Grants, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a lifetime achievement award. She is also a visual artist and collagist, and a book of her poem-drawings is forthcoming from Archway Editions. Notley reads two poems “Two of Swords” and “I The People”.

Margo Berdeshevsky, NYC born, writes from Paris. Her latest collection: “Before The Drought” (Glass Lyre Press/ National Poetry Series finalist.) Newest poetry collection, “It Is Still Beautiful To Hear The Heart Beat” is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Author of “Between Soul & Stone” and “But a Passage in Wilderness” (Sheep Meadow Press), “Beautiful Soon Enough” (1st Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Award, for FC2) Other honors include Robert H. Winner Award from Poetry Society of America. Published in Poetry International, New Letters, Kenyon Review, Plume, The American Journal of Poetry, The Collagist, Prairie Schooner, Big Other, PN Review, Under the Radar, Beltway, and many more. “Kneel Said The Night” waits at the gate.

Gerald Fleming is the author of the poetry collections One (Hanging Loose Press, 2016), The Choreographer, Night of Pure Breathing, and Swimmer Climbing onto Shore. His work has appeared in many magazines over the decades, including New Letters, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, Carolina Quarterly, New World Writing, Volt, and The Prose Poem. The former editor of the magazines Barnabe Mountain Review and Forward to Velma, he is currently editing the limited-edition vitreous magazine One (More) Glass and The Collected Poetry & Prose of Lawrence Fixel

Jess Wilber is a recent graduate of Oberlin College, where she double-majored in Environmental Studies & East Asian Studies with a double-minor in Politics & History and a concentration in International Affairs. She has been working with Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) since her freshman year of college and helped to pioneer their current programs for students in Higher Education. She was among the first members of the Campus Leaders Program, which seeks to educate and empower students to become effective climate advocates and organizers in their communities.Beyond her climate work, Jess is a musician, poet, certified mediator, and nationally and world-ranked equestrian in the Morgan Horse circuit. 


To be included in special podcasts celebrating poetry and prose. You can submit a reading of your work at www.creativeprocess.info/poetryprose and we'll get in touch about the possibility of taking part in an interview for the creative process.

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(Highlights) SARA PARETSKY

(Highlights) SARA PARETSKY

Author & Mystery Writers of America “Grand Master”
I started writing out of a desire to counter stereotypes of the roles that women traditionally played in crime fiction, in which case they were wicked. They used their bodies to do good boys to do bad things. Or they were virgins who couldn’t tie their shoes couldn’t tie their shoes without adult supervisions. Or they were victims, most often. And so I wanted a detective who was like the women that I knew who could solve their own problems, who didn’t need to be rescued, who could have a sex life that didn’t make her a bad person…

SARA PARETSKY

SARA PARETSKY

Sara Paretsky is the author of nineteen books, including sixteen V.I. Warshawski novels. She was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association and the CWA Gold Dagger for Blacklist.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Lilian Liu. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.